Teaming for the Mission: Why Collaboration Wins in Complex Environments with Bob Ritchie and Lauren Knausenberger

Speaker A: Welcome to today's show. Today we are super excited because we have not one, but two guests on our show. We have Lauren Knossenberger and Bob Ritchie from seic. Lauren goes all the way back from one of the Original founders of AFWorks, who is also formerly the Air Force CIO and currently serves as the Chief Innovation Officer at SEIC, Bob Ritchie, who's really the godfather of the Air Force Cloud One program and currently the CTO of saic. Bob and Lauren, welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Good to see you, Rob. Those were some, uh, weighty titles you gave us there. I'm going to start calling Bob Godfather.

Speaker C: The Bob Father.

Speaker A: That's a. Yeah, the Bob Father. Well, appreciate you guys taking time with us. The first thing I'd love to cover with you guys is I'd love to hear a little bit more about the mission and vision of SEIC and how both of you in your roles contribute to those aspirations. Lauren, do you want to kick us off?

Speaker B: Absolutely. And hopefully by the time we get to this end of this podcast, you'll be excited to have two guests again with this cast of characters here. But I will share that I was attracted to SAIC coming out of the Air Force largely because Tony Towns Whitley had taken over as CEO and she had a vision that was so much in line with what we had all been trying to do within the, within the Department of Defense. She had come to the helm of this, this 50 year old defense company and she really wanted to do everything that she could to absolutely make it relevant for another 50 years and beyond. Doing the things that our war fighters really, really need and our civilian folks as well in government. And also just really believed in building a strong partner ecosystem and, uh, coming into this role, get to work with folks like Bob as the CTO, driving tech strategy for this Fortune 500 company, building the capabilities that we need to go to market. And then we also get to do fun things like build a ventures portfolio, which, you know, it had been a career before the, uh, Air Force, the last time I had been in Ventures. But I do think that partnerships and ventures are so important and the way that we go about it at saic, leveraging those things to truly build an ecosystem to solve the hardest problems in front of us for defense and civilian customers. That's really what brought me to saic and that's really what I hope to bring to SAIC with, with Bob and the rest of our incredible team.

Speaker C: Awesome. Yes. So I'll just, I'll piggyback on that. I've Been at SAC now 20 years, which is kind of wild. But started as an intern. Both, both parents were Marines. So what Lauren was saying about that kind of call to mission was really interesting. As a tech nerd, not really cut out to be a Marine myself, but still wanting and very passionate about giving back to the mission. SAC was a really interesting and unique place to be able to contribute in the software and cloud and DevSecOps and cyber ecosystem and make real mission impact. Right. Build software and get it into the hands of warfighters was something that I experienced at SAC that I hadn't experienced elsewhere. And that was something that was very special and powerful. Right. Because you think about the uh, motivation 2.0 or 3.0 and the ability to have not only mastery and autonomy, but a real sense of purpose. And that's something that has been unique in my experience in both the kind of defense domain of IT and OT delivery in defense domain. But very something very palpable and special about working at sac. And then like Lauren mentioned, so starting as an intern and now being the cto, I have the rare privilege of getting to talk with our interns a lot about what that journey was like and pitfalls and setbacks along the way and other things like that. But one of the things that um, is, is been so powerful about SAC's dedication to powering our nation through technology as its kind of purpose and mission is that you really get exposed to these fine grained nooks and crannies about the way the federal government operates. Yes. In Department of Defense, absolutely. But it starts to open your eyes of okay, how does Defense Logistics Agency support the Department of Defense? How does the Department of Treasury support National Security with things like swift? How does CBP and DHS support like. And then because we talk a lot about in defense, Title 10 and Title 50. Right. Defense at Intel. And this is uh, a candid, naive moment. Realizing there are 40 other titles in between title 10 and title 50 was like, oh my gosh, as you kind of grow up in your career and ah, at sac, it's been a unique place where you really get exposed to the nuances of why all those titles exist and you appreciate the dots that connect of how the world works. So not just how the federal government works, but how the world works in a new and unique way.

Speaker A: And I guess for the rest of the show we'll cover titles 11 through 49. One of the things that I really value about interacting and working with you guys is how well you understand really both sides of what it takes to build systems within this defense apparatus that's been around for a long time with a lot of major players will also work with, with a lot of the newer tech startups like Defense Unicorns and others that are starting to enter the ecosystem. And so one of my questions for you, for really both of you, and maybe this time around. We'll start with you Bob, is what was really the trigger point for this new wave of defense tech startup interest? Certainly I've been serving in the military. Prior to being at Defense Unicorns ten years ago, there certainly weren't as many defense tech startups as there is today. What do you think changed?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think for me and it was really about six years ago with the Defense uh, Innovation Board put out the Swap Report which was a really powerful, well articulated framing of how software is different. And I know it was probably about six or seven years lagging of the whole McKinsey software is eating the world sort of narrative. But seeing that sort of take root I think started to open the eyes of oh, the Department of Defense and federal government is starting to take this kind of trend of software defined everything more seriously. And so that was uh, I think a clear demand signal. If not, it didn't. It took a little while for like action within the department to take hold but it was at the same time a clear demand signal to the, the kind of classic defense industrial base but the broader industrial base of America that is opportunity now to contribute to mission and get bureaucracy out of the way. Now it's one of those things like Declaration of Independence, uh, we hold these truths to be self evident that all people are created equal. And we arguably that is a, a, a noble goal. We're still on that path. It'll take a long time. We'll probably for it's an infinite game. We'll probably forever strive for that. Same with some of the things called out in the dib Swap Report right there. There are things that came out of that that were really powerful and are starting to kind of grow even more in the limelight. With software acquisition pathway as an example, there's been a lot of really great adoption of lowering the barrier for entry and focusing on outcomes and objectives that has created an opportunity for someone who would say in the past the heavyweight bureaucracy involved in delivering value to the Department of Defense was insurmountable for a startup. And when you remove those barriers you start to kind of pivot away from defense industrial base being this kind of Galapagos island that was grown separately to an America's industrial base applied to defense. And so I think that 2019 to me is kind of the inflection point of where it all started to turn. And both yourself and Lauren were on the defense side at that point in time. Really helping that I know were key parts of crafting that.

Speaker A: Yeah. And Lauren, I'm super excited to hear from you. How much impact do you think things like AFWorks and Diu and some of these other innovation efforts that you personally were involved with for a number of years? How much of an impact do you think those programs internal to Defense really had in providing the opportunity for new tech startups to even enter the ecosystem?

Speaker B: I think they did make a big difference. And it wasn't just the afworks of, of the world themselves, but the entire network call it a movement of people that came together around that time. And I think. And of course there were so many factors that led to, to some of that momentum happening. And I loved Bob going back to the, to the Galapagos Islands parallel. I think I first heard that from Vago on his aerospace and defense podcast. But it's just so, it's so apt that you kind of come through the cold where the Cold War, there's a peace dividend. And all of a sudden we're consolidating this industry and also just with so much talent, leaving the government at the time too. Just we, uh, as a government, we diverted just an awful process for a really, really long time with acquisition. And that also just further messed up the cycle of incentives for the companies that were there. And in some ways I think that both government and the companies that had to compete in that space took a lot of, took a lot of. Of of blame both, both probably both fair and unfair for kind of how things went. And so there was this need to expand the defense industrial base. And you hear leaders as far back as 2016 being really, really clear on the need to expand that defense industrial base. Having things like Softworks and afworks show up to kind of be that, that friendlier front door. But it still took several years, I think, for it to be real that businesses could truly do business with the government. And it's still difficult today. And as much really good intent and executive order and all of the things that are happening even now are pushing through with such focus. The adoption across the acquisition enterprise is still pretty slow, unfortunately. But I do think that that community, you being a part of it at the time, I think that we came together and we showed what was possible and you had folks like Eric Schmidt and Neil Degrasse Tyson sitting on the Defense Innovation Board. Bob mentioned that paper, but all of us were involved in contributing to that paper. And you have folks like Eric Schmidt looking at that and seeing just, uh, with great clarity. This is a real problem. And I think that once you had Eric and actually a variety of other folks that I would now call kind of the leaders of patriotic capital. Thomas Tall is another one. There are, there are several. And of course Marc Andreessen, and he might have even been the original software is eating the world, quote, um, getting involved. And just some of these folks have actually said to me personally, you know what, I'm too old to put on a uniform, but I have capital, I've earned a lot of money and I want to invest that capital to help my country. And so you have this movement of people, you have folks like you and Jeff McCoy, Matt Houston and others showing that you can do amazing things from within government. You see the government changing their buying habits, at least in pockets, showing that it's possible. And then you have folks like Eric Schmidt throwing lots of money at startups. You have folks like Chris Brose just saying, hey, there is a better way to do this. And I love that Chris has taken that original vision and of course with his book the Kill Chain and turned it into a company and kind of standing behind what his beliefs are there too. So I think it really took all of that vision and that capital and it was a really beautiful time to be a part of that community that was kind of in government and adjacent at that time. Uh, I'll throw out Josh Marcuse as well as just being an incredible leader of the Defense Innovation Board at the time and making sure that there was visibility on all of those problems.

Speaker A: Bob, I'm, um, very curious to hear how you and Seic thinks about all of these emerging new tech startups. Do you guys view it as an us versus them, that in order to succeed one must triumphant and the other one needs to diminish? I'm kind of really curious how you guys look at these innovative companies that are now entering the market.

Speaker C: Yeah, no, I would say absolutely not. Us versus them, just first and foremost. And this was kind of another kind of parallel catalyst, if you will, of the kind of wave that we've seen is kind of the community model and yourself and Lauren being a big part of bringing kind of the open source community and foundation principles to the ecosystem that, that has proven time and time again in private sector to be the way and, and that more than anything is at the core of how we look to partner and as Lauren mentioned venture in this ecosystem more effectively moored and I guess unapologetically moored in this focus of mission outcomes. So it becomes this really great not a filter if you will, but at least a authentic message of who we are, what we're about. And I know I overuse Simon Sinek quotes but uh, the do and say the things that you believe and you'll attract others who believe what you believe. That is at the core of how we partner and how we see this ecosystem growing. You mentioned Cloud One at the start of the call. So back in 2019 we started around 2019, 2020 when Cloud One came out of protest and go on a whole different podcasts about the trials and tribulations of government protests. But that's a different, different topic probably for a different day. We came out of that and one of the first things that we, we saw based on those beliefs was establishing a community of practice. So Cloud1, the program is a government contracted program, right? Run out of acquisition shop and a PMO et cetera. But Cloud one the community is a completely separate thing that supports, supports the program as well as the broader ecosystem. And that's been really cool to see grow. I think it's north of 250 vendors now in that ecosystem who in one way or another have contributed to helping the mission move forward. And not just hey, moving to cloud for the sense of cloud, but moving to cloud as a strategic enabler to get better agility. And I say better agility. Everyone is on a varying degree of spectrum of kind of getting continual delivery of value through agile principles. But it is at least a improving we're moving that, that ball forward. The other is so the open source kind of commitment this is and, and I think shoot, what was it Cube sphere, right is the latest falling victim of. I'll just say it's a little inflammatory abandoning its community. It is really important as a entity in the world, but especially in the space of national security, to understand, appreciate and support the value of open source communities. And so while SAIC has been a longtime consumer and a what I would say yet to be a prolific contributor directly to open Source, we do bias towards companies that are dedicated to open source and the ability to help support those companies succeed. Which is one of the most amazing things about what you've done with defense unicorns is just the, the one of the top Kubernetes contributors in, in the world, uh, in the industrial base for sure and then the largest I think open source contributor in the industrial base. So those sorts of principles and values of that dedication to mission and the kind of high standard of craftsmanship around software delivery that it takes to do your software development in the open is something that really attracts us as how we go and think about partnerships.

Speaker A: I can't talk about SCIC without bringing up how much I love the book that was written by the SCIC founder. Uh, I think the actual book's title, it's the uh, SCIC way. I think it's super fascinating to me because there's a lot of times books written about companies and then someone else is interviewing people trying to figure out this is, this is how it started, this is why it started all these other things. Super fascinating because very rarely is that book actually written by the founder. And so I actually read that book when I was starting Defense Unicorns. I read it again probably two years later and it's, it's really for me was incredibly insightful to see how, how he thought about SEIC in the early days and, and I think you, you still see a lot of that DNA today. And so really my question for you Lauren was as Bob is talking about scic's view of not uh, really us versus them. I think one of the things I've heard from him before is it's really about mission focus, mission commitment and that's really separates ultimately the winners and losers. I'm really curious from your perspective, from uh, SAIC's perspective, how do you view this, this trend, this, this new wave of innovative startups that are entering the ecosystem and seeing is it, is it, is it friend, is it foe, is it partner, is it ally? And how you as a Fortune 500 company kind of really look at this from a risk or opportunity perspective.

Speaker B: So I, I think it is, I think it's absolutely fantastic. I think it's also not well understood what, what the, what the reality is on the ground because you think of Palantir not really a startup anymore but you know, with, with intel roots and Anduril, SpaceX to, to an extent, still super not a startup but kind of came up through there. So there are a couple of really big names that are at the forefront of kind of the poster children for wow, you can be really successful as a startup in national security and defense and, and hey we, we're thriving and you have other companies like Raft that are coming up and there's, there's a longer list of players that are, that are making it, hey, Defense Unicorns, congratulations, you'd be on the list of, of those national security startups that did a ah, did a successful raise and are really contributing but there are so many that still really really struggle. And, and a lot of it is because a lot of companies do need to start with, with commercial revenue and focusing on a government use case is just enough lack of initial focus on your commercial market to kill a small company. And so I love that startups and venture backed startups are looking at the national security ecosystem. I love that more Americans and especially tech enabled Americans are saying I want to use my technology skills to help my country and not just build the next consumer app as much as I love my, my Uber Eats and all but is still really hard and, and and you saw it in government when we were in affworks one of the big things that we wanted to do was bring in more non traditional companies, especially smalls and just make it friendly and help them to go through. And we were part of restructuring the Cibber program so that you could get a phase one really easily and kind of carry through. And that worked really well for a number of companies. But you know it still was really really hard in a lot of cases and it wasn't always even necessarily kind of the best mission fit companies that came through. And so one of the things that I love about my job now is I'm in a Fortune 500 company that has a venture arm that has partner needs, that has a book of business where we're solving problems for the government today. Really big gnarly problems. And, and so we can look at uh, that book of business and we can say okay, who is the best at solving X? And the answer to that, it may be us. It may be Microsoft or Google or Amazon that we partner with, it may be defense unicorns, it may be a new startup that has an interesting new way to secure OT or a really interesting technology that we think is going to change undersea autonomy. We actually do have investments in companies like that. But I love that we can from our vantage point look at funded contracts and literally grab a company and be like you come help us solve this and actually give them the capital to make sure that they are going to make it to the next stage, that their balance sheet is going to come through intact, that they have real revenue coming from mission and that they are no kidding solving a real right now defense problem. And I think that's amazing. That's where the magic happens. And I think that being at a Fortune 500 company that's been at this Such a long time, but having the humility to say we do these things better than anybody else. But there are a lot of things where we're the ecosystem and the thing that we have to do better than anybody else is find the individual pieces and pull them together in a way that solves the problem better than anyone.

Speaker A: There's been a ton of changes over the last, even the last just six months in terms of defense policy and funding. I'd, uh, actually love to hear from both of you on this question because I think the perspective would be very insightful. But I'd love to hear from you. What are some of the changes that have been going well and what are some of the changes that hopefully fail fast and ultimately iterate to something that maybe temporarily caused some setbacks?

Speaker B: I'll start with one. So I know that I've been definitely pushing and the company has definitely been pushing toward all of those things that I believed to add value and be awesome. On the government side, faster commercial buying cycles, buy your Sprint teams, buy outcomes. Instead of writing long proposals. Come and show your stuff. Like, come and actually show me how you solve the problem. And so I love that there is so much rhetoric and there's so much push toward doing things that way. And that's good. But even as in a Fortune 500 company that's been around for a long time, even as folks like Bob and I and others push to do those right things and do them very, very well, it definitely is, I don't know, sad, disappointing in a way to see how slow the adoption still is and especially with, with a lot of folks, a lot of folks leaving government, government is thinning down again. So you have a lot of talent leaving and you have a lot of, a lot of folks that are trying to do the right thing. But, but at the moment are, are kind of, maybe even more scared than they used to be to, to buy the software by the Sprint or buy the outcome because. Because there's just so much of a gap in folks leaving to kind of train them and empower them and help them to feel like they can do something that is actually the administration is pushing really, really hard. And I guess 20 years of acquisition reform, at some point you say, how long do we need to reform? But there's so much backup to do things the right way, and yet we still seem to kind of fall into kind of what's comfortable and not want to take the right kind of risk. And I always worry that when you don't take the right type of risk, that you are opening yourselves to all sorts of the wrong kinds of risks and the outcomes that you specifically don't want that creep up on you when you could be delivering outcomes quickly. I know Bob's pretty passionate on this topic too, so I'll hand the baton. Sure.

Speaker C: Yeah. So Lauren's spot on in terms of a lot of excitement over the last six months of change in terms of cutting through red tape from a policy standpoint, whether that's a memo or an executive order or otherwise. But that adoption curve is, like Lauren said, sometimes disappointing. I'll say at a technical level, what's been really fascinating. So some of the cyclical nature of technology and the cycles are just kind of speeding up, moving forward. You're starting to see kind of this return to the mid-20 teens understanding, uh, of where to buy, verse, build. Right. Uh, because. And uh, that's some of, some of the pressures of going faster. You have to make better pragmatic decisions about where in the values. Like where are you actually differentiating and adding value versus where can you draw a line in the sand and say someone else is doing this better? I used to make the joke in 2015, 2016 at how many companies are trying to out Amazon, Amazon at the time when they could Amazon just sitting here saying, just use us and we'll help you do better. On top. In 2018, 2019, as kind of the government was shifting away from pivotal cloud foundry as, uh, a platform they had built a lot of equity on, we saw another kind of cycle of dipping down into what could have been a commodity, but became like everyone was trying to differentiate at this layer below the value cut line. I see that over the last six months as coming right back into the spotlight where decision making is starting to buy effectively instead of iterating down. Whether that's buying a commercial SaaS solution, I, uh, can say it's definitely what influenced us over the last year to kind of remove some of what we were building ourselves in house and adopt things like UDS core. I'll say even three years ago, right when Czar first came out, it was like a, uh, breath of fresh air. I remember messaging McCoy and saying, hey, this is the greatest product I've ever seen. And I was objectively saying that, like, it was not the most complex. Right. And it was beautiful in its simplicity. It did exactly what it meant to do. And it really felt like kind of the return to the UNIX principles roots of do one thing, do it well and make it composable. And then seeing UDS come on top of that and then the Air Gap app store come on top of that. Now the registry on top of that. These are examples of things that are now there and available to folks that you can embrace and focus on where you add value. So sac, we embraced UDS Core UDS Software Factory. We had those capabilities in house, but there was a cost to developing and sustaining them so that we could focus on what is the mission integration we can do together on top so we could have that value immediately deployable to kind of help accelerate the kind of tailwind behind this new push to commercial outcomes and focusing on objectively delivering those outcomes. I'll say the other really cool thing is, so software acquisition pathway I thought was super in vogue for the last three, four years. But uh, you know, it just goes even further into the limelight when there's a SecDef memo and a whole bunch of press follows that the more that the government starts to embrace that of uh, I can put out a statement of objectives and have the risk be balanced of I'm going to get a company that's going to help me deliver on my objectives. I'm not going to prescribe how they do it. I'm not going to spend years in top level requirements decomposition down to your like and some of these requirements, right? One of my favorite requirements ever I saw in a solicitation was the government requires you to use S3. And I'm like, that's not a requirement, that's an implementation detail. But that was the theater that we used to live in in some of the kind of broken acquisition cycle that was there. And so as those objectives start to be, you can just, it's almost, I'll say akin to imperative versus declarative state in software, right? Imperative scripting is onerous and verbose and when you try and do requirements in that imperative fashion, you are eliminating your ability to go fast. That's why the software world moved to declarative so long ago. And again, it's a journey, right? There's still a lot of imperative scripting out there, but the ability to just state this is my desired outcome and have a reconciliation loop, continue to say, are you at your desired outcome? No, not yet iterate. Are you out there yet? No, not yet iterate. It allows you to then think at a more abstracted level of I'm just, this is the outcome I want to achieve. I want to achieve a strategic deterrence here. I want to achieve uh, an improved situational awareness. I want to lower the cognitive load on the operators Whether it's a war fighter or a National Guardsman sitting at an air defense sector, or it's an air traffic controller or it's a border agent with a, uh, heads up display, like an attack at the border that needs the latest information right at their fingertips. Those are things that is really exciting in the last six months because you're starting to see that declarative kind of contracting mode.

Speaker B: So Rob, I gotta add a little bit more cynicism and a little bit more hope here. The cynic side is, I mean Bob is so right. And I just don't want to have the same conversation in like five more years because I mean I've seen multiple secretaries since like 2018 and 2019 when you and I were in the Pentagon battling this, just like educating and putting out the prior version of software pathways and just all of that. And I would just love to see it truly be the default and that would just warm my heart. But on the true hope side and on the true progress side, Bob, I loved what you were saying about just uh, the cloud environment, platform environment. And what I will say is we have come a heck of a long way since kind of that 2017 era. I think I was still trying to educate four stars in 2019 on why collaboration tools might be important for the workforce to be more productive moving forward. And uh, just the sheer ability to get even the hyperscalers truly accepted in government, truly pushing enterprise cloud capabilities, collaboration capabilities, being being able to have an iron bank, being able to have an air gapped app store showing that warfighters can be empowered to select those types of platforms and can get really rapid mission outcomes. I think that does bring a lot of hope. And I've seen, I remember thinking in 2017, in the transformation role, hey, this is fantastic. We can make a difference in some spots and we can see our value so quickly. And then a CIO realizing like, oh man, as uh, CIO I have to kind of fix an entire enterprise and entire platforms and I'm probably not actually going to see the impact of that for some time. It's going to be things that happen on top of that and it's harder to kind of get the platform right. But I think that we have successfully, we, the defense enterprise and all of the people that kind of push forward, at least created a few mechanisms where you can rapidly deploy capabilities in a variety of places and you can have them consistently work for years securely driving outcomes across multiple levels of classification. And so that is pretty exciting. And looking back not that long ago and remembering how much we didn't have. Actually it's pretty impressive how far we've come in those ways.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. It's a night M and day difference from five years ago, which is night and day difference from ten years ago. Uh, we'll have to post, uh, edit some of Bob's comments, some of the kind words about Jeff McCoy and developing Zarf. We'll either have to scrub that or make sure he doesn't watch the show. Don't want his ego to get too big. But appreciate the insights. One of the things that I'm super interested to hear from you is what is really SAIC's approach and vision for partnerships and maybe hear a little bit more about your partnership with us at ah, Defense Unicorns.

Speaker C: So Lauren mentioned it earlier, kind of an ecosystem sort of mindset. And I would say sac, we talk about three E's experience, expertise and ecosystem in terms of what it takes to be this kind of mission integration community and being a mission integrator. And so leading with that, I'd say also unambiguously stating our own what we see national imperatives for the country to be around, whether it's undersea dominance or all domain war fighting, improved citizen experience, whether it's how we pay our taxes or how the census works or how you file for a patent or a trademark. Right there is safety of food from usda. There's tons in that border of the future. But next generation space. So those are the areas where we have stated and this is like with Tony and Lauren coming in and starting on the same day, this has been the tailwind of a lifetime to be a part of, of really kind of stating that upfront in the ecosystem and saying this is what we're about. We want to bring the right technology partners and mission partners together in this ecosystem to help advance those national imperatives. So that's, that's first and foremost how we kind of think about partnership. The other is embracing and feeling the understanding that the world's problems are way too big for any one company ever to tackle all of them. And um, I'm a nerd. So to me everything is abstractly just the UNIX operating system at its core. And that kind of principle of finding these clear bounds of fit for purpose single use components that can compose together well is how we think about partnerships. It doesn't mean you have to be one deep and so that's the kind of where, where you take those UNIX principles and apply it with the principles of capitalism. It also gives you really clear Signal of who are the players of each of these components. So you have a clear. If you're a potential partner of ours, you can say who are the other partners that are in this space that, uh, I'm going to be competitive mates with? Because the other cool thing we've seen is if all of us are dedicated to moving the mission forward, yes, as businesses, we want our businesses to succeed. But like Lauren said when she was cio, maybe it's her grandchildren that will see some of the benefits of like the butterfly wings that she was flapping in the CIO seat. It's the same in this partner ecosystem, is we really want the partners who care about that mission outcome and will be intelligent about their own business to how they can add the most value as their means of being a successful business, not how can they be the only one. And I think that's a philosophy that for years has kind of plagued the federal industrial base, not just the defense industrial base. Is there was such a premium on incumbency and being like, hey, this code base is so complex, it's too risky for you to ever move away from us. And that stifles innovation. And that's. That's like we're almost the anti that in our ecosystem of partnerships. And so that's. I'll leave it there and pass to Lauren, but that's kind of foundationally how I see it.

Speaker B: So Bob already pretty well nailed it. So I'll just footstep a couple things. First, we really do believe as a company in being a leader in that ecosystem and a mission integrator. Our core competency is solving really gnarly problems and bringing all of the tribe, all of the pieces together and solving the problem. We're not going to be a hyperscaler and an individual enterprise services provider. We can't possibly do all of those things better than everyone else. And the warfighter and the operators, they deserve the best capabilities for the mission. And so we do take it very seriously to constantly survey the environment and see who has amazing capabilities that we can bring in now, who has capabilities that we think we need in two years that maybe we should seed through our ventures program. Or maybe even maybe it would have been two years and now it could be six months through our Ventures program. And I love when, uh. So when I was an entrepreneur, I had a. I had a rule that I, I wouldn't do business with anybody that I didn't want to drink a beer with. And I love that. I love that that often happens here too. And I Know with, especially with partners like defense unicorns. Of course, of course you guys are great to have a beer with, but, but I know that if, uh, you say something that you're going to go do it and I know how much you believe in the mission. And so it's not about getting contract terms right? Like, if we say we're gonna go do something together, we're gonna go do it. And I think that is incredibly refreshing. And I think that that deep mission orientation, we see that in our partners and especially folks that have amazing capabilities, but also know where we can help them and where we can maybe help make, make very small pivots to a roadmap that will keep the company on North Star, but help it to come really rapidly into a defense mission. And I think Bob nailed it too, that, I mean, there are so many problems to solve across so many decades of different types of technology. And uh, even with huge budgets, it will take decades to do everything that is needed to really kind of get the, especially the defense enterprise to the place where, I don't know, will we ever be truly happy with the defense enterprise? I don't, I, I don't know. But, but I think that yes, many hands make lighter work and we, we know that it takes, it takes all of us. And there was, there was a period of time, I think not that long ago when I think the majority of the rhetoric that I was seeing in the press was unfortunately the types of statements that were seeking to divide different parts of the industrial base and to really, really say, hey, this class of company is better, or this class of company is horrible, or just really huge hyperbolic statements. And I have found it refreshing to see couple of articles come out in quick succession on how it really does take all of us to solve these problems. And it takes the diversity of the ecosystem and it takes the OEMs and it takes the integrators and it takes new thinkers and it takes startups. And I think if I would love to keep the rhetoric there, I would love to keep the partnership there and I would love for all of our policymakers to kind of put, push us there too. Because if we're too focused on who gets what slice of what pie and who's better, we lose sight of the fact that this has to be a team moving forward. And honestly, the more the merrier on this team. I'd love to see even more entrances into this space and I'd love to see also even more university action. Gotta have academia stepping up as well. Gotta keep the Tide of the research institution. There is plenty of work to do.

Speaker A: Well said as always. Ah, as everybody is really tracking from an international perspective, I think the, the concept of warfare has I think drastically changed. When you look at everything going on, especially with Ukraine and Russia and, and what the style of engagement looks like in a modern wartime uh, setting. Really curious from your perspective, how much those type of engagements do you believe is impacting the defense industrial base, is impacting the DoD and really would love to get your insights into how you think the DoD is going to evolve over the next five to 10 years to really adapt to modern warfare. And Bob, would love to hear your thoughts on that.

Speaker C: I would say the concept of information dominance has kind of taken root and this is for both defense on the DOD side as well as the industrial base writ large. But then understanding the problem is so much bigger than red force, blue force type of uh, engagement. Right. And so you mentioned the kind of the shape of warfare changing. Understanding the various asynchronous threats, the non kinetic threats that exist in the ecosystem, the non kinetic options that we would have at our disposal from a level of information dominance, I will say from a technology shift over the next five to 10 years, I think that's going to continue to be paramount. There is a natural fear, what I would say in the kind of public sphere of what does that information dominance mean in terms of a government having that level of insight across all dimensions of human life on the planet? That is, and that is a well understood and natural fear. So there's this balance that's going to I think continue to be challenged over how much information is necessary for a government to be able to protect its citizens and its way of life. In this new warfare ecosystem that we're living in and at the same time honor the privacy of makes us, uh, that makes us who we are, right? That private citizens have a right for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and have a right to privacy. And so there's, there's, I think that's going to be one of the main kind of pieces in the forefront. What I would hope is that we can lead it with objectivity. That's where technology is so powerful to me. As you can bring and you can model and simulate. And now kind of as AI is starting to get more in vogue, a lot of, a lot of the powerful AI that's at play is 20, 30 years old. Right. And certainly the large language models have taken a lot of the airtime away, but there is still a lot of very powerful and useful AI in play, that's, that's been in play for a long time. Um, but as it's being woven together to create kind of this ability to say what if you can start to use that objectivity to say almost like a risk based decision. If I don't have this level of insight, I can't protect from these threats, I can't prevent these threats, I can't do a strategic deterrence against these threats. And so you could, I see that is also going to come into the forefront of, uh, not only capability delivery, but capability delivery is going to be inherently limited by kind of that information dominance layer. And so that's where I see a lot of it playing out over the next five to 10 years.

Speaker A: And Lauren, how do you see the DoD continuing to evolve over the next five and 10 years?

Speaker B: That's a tough prediction to m make, but I, I do think that the department always aims to serve the war fighter and to adapt to warfare and to stay ahead of the puck. And I hope it achieves that goal over the next five years or sooner. There's still a lot of smart money on us having a bigger conflict within that period of time. And I know the department is gearing up to be ready to fight tonight. Tonight and to be ready to fight whenever we need to to, to protect our country. I do want to, I do want to weigh in a little bit on the, on the prior question. To that end though, we have learned so much from the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. And of course we talk about it a lot because we're learning about it so much. And I, and I think Bob hit on all of the things that we've learned from that conflict and how we've learned that warfare can change. I don't want us though, to be distracted into thinking that that is kind of the biggest thing in front of us. I would argue we are actively at war every day in the cyber domain. And uh, with Ukraine, you have a big world power that is showing that it does not have the kinetic might that it once had for sure. And that you can kind of level the playing field in a David and Goliath type match using commercial technology on the battlefield. But it's still a very different fight when you're going against a true peer or near peer. And there's a lot more unknown in that realm that our military prepares for every day. And so I do think that we need to remember which fight we're gearing up for and stay focused there and which fight we are already in it's absolutely not okay to have an adversary in all of our telecom and uh, gaining as much ground in the cyber domain as they are. And we're not even talking about it all that much. So those are the things over the next five years that I hope that the DoD will be very focused on and um, I'm a little bit removed from, from some of the internal building discussions at this moment, but I do hope that we are still very finely focused on our true near peer threat and the cyber domain.

Speaker A: The last question I really have for both of you is really, you guys have a tremendous history innovating at uh, uh, every seat you guys have had, you guys have made positive change for the mission both inside and outside the government. What recommendations do you have for the folks who are trying to innovate on the inside, trying to help the folks who are trying to innovate on the outside? Like what can government decision makers and policymakers do to make the mission better? What changes? What recommendations do you have? And Bob, we'll start with you.

Speaker C: Sure. Yeah. So uh, well, Lauren's answer to this is going to be much more informed and rooted from being on the inside and now on the outside. But I, I will say in this industry engagement and I know that it's, it's hard in especially as how much kind of Lauren mentioned kind of churn and turnover there's been over the last six months but it's really imperative that like as much as we love to talk about technology, one of my favorite lines in the swap report is embracing I'm going to replace technology with software but our software with technology was technology is made by humans for humans. So moving like understanding that there is a innate human element and always will be in how we do this and that's one of the things I love about open source community model is it actually focuses on bringing humans together to solve hard problems, whether that's a community of practice or a community interest. So I think that is an important thing that we need to rebalance and not necessarily have it be expensive trade shows at large places. Those are great. It's always fun like Lauren said, to get together, maybe have a beer or. Lauren knows that my, my drink of choice is a Roy Rogers a Coke with grenadine.

Speaker B: It sure is.

Speaker C: So, but those are all well and good but the more we can do tabletop exercises and technical exchanges of ideas, I think the, the better we will all be. And it builds these kind of human to human bonds that regardless. So that's another thing I would I would call out is in the industrial base and in the Department of Defense. It is a very fluid ecosystem. We're not always going to wear the same badge that we've always worn. And that is something that I think both inside government and outside government, we all need to embrace that there are different places you can contribute to the mission, but the community remains the same. Right? Well, like we, the community who cares about this mission remains the same. So embracing that aspect I think is really important. I would love to wax poetic on the details of FAR reform and DFARs reform and the like. In terms of getting cutting bureaucracy through bureaucracy and red tape, I do see a lot of that happening. But some of the other aspects of, at least in the cyber front that Lauren was talking about embracing and moving towards continuous control within a cyber posture instead of paperwork and kind of the traditional RMF waterfall theory of like, I'm going to go through our RMF is a great process, but doing it via uh, a thousand page SSPs and then revisiting them once every one or three years has been broken since the beginning and it was never what was intended when we moved away from DiaCap. Right. Like, so you moved like long, long ago. It's like, oh man, people think RMF is bad. No, I'm just kidding. But, but, so that would be. The other thing is just to really lean into what's going on with some of the software. Fast track initiative and continuous control and continuous security over paper based processes. That is really going to enable folks to continue to kind of snowball downhill on continuous delivery of value.

Speaker B: I'll throw in a good little dose of cynicism here too. What I'll say to the policymakers is you have probably already done everything you need to do. And to the folks that are executing right now, you probably have law contract clauses, multiple memos from multiple secretaries and senior officials telling you that you can do the thing that you're trying to do, including getting your software accredited. I think we were down to like multiple times a day in like 2018 at Kessel Run. Like the path has been trod and there are ways to use it. I would ask the internal people that have power. I think Danny Holtzman has done a great job of almost trademarking. Yes. If it is a great place to start. And I, uh, will say that I saw many times a beautiful example of relatively junior folks with a passion to get something done, finding a senior champion who has to get a category of things done and then leveraging senior people, even just one, to build A, uh, coalition to go solve a problem. And that formula has worked very well in the dod. I've been the senior champion. Will Roper's been the senior champion. Danny Holtzman's been the senior champion. There are multiple people that, even if you're relatively junior in an organization, you can do amazing things when you can recruit the right, the right kind of coalition in the DoD, it does take a senior champion, and it does take people across the organization. You have to have at least one person in acquisition somewhere that you're pulling along. It helps if rob Slaughter and have an acquisition guy that knows tech pretty well and can run business. But it's just like in business, finding the right team to get things done and not accepting silliness and not accepting no the first time that you get it, but working, but working with people and finding that right team. Because, of course, if you run into the wall the same way, it's just going to hurt your head m more. You have to get a little bit creative sometimes, but that's what's needed when, when, when you truly believe in something and you know that it needs to be done. And so really, that is, that is what we need is, is more folks that are still within government to know that the path has been trodden to use the new ish ways of doing things, to partner with industry. Because yes, companies make profit, but companies are also really, really passionate about their country and the national security of their country, and truly, truly want to help. And so I know that we will show up, we will consult, we will whiteboard whatever is needed, and so will many others to help get to the right solution to whatever problem you're trying to solve.

Speaker A: Well, thank you both. It's been truly an honor to spend time with you. Obviously a huge fan of everything you're doing at saic. I am ridiculously excited about your partnership with Defense Unicorns and incredibly excited to be on this journey with you as we continue to make this nation more secure, more effective, and take really, the DoD into a more modern setting, especially from a technology and innovation perspective. And so, uh, thank you, both of you for your time and look forward to chatting again soon. Super excited. First time we got through with two guests. And for those listeners, stay tuned, remember to subscribe and hear from us in a couple weeks. Thanks.