Verbatim

“With partisan politics creating divisions between a multitude of stakeholders, I remind myself that military institutions in our democracies, particularly military leadership, serves as the ballast in the ship. While it may feel like the ballast slows progress as the ship of state attempts to quickly move towards its goals, the ballast creates stability when the inevitable storms arise. We as military leaders in our democracies must remember our roles, think long term, offer our military experience to decision-makers, and do what we can to provide a stability and be a calming presence.”

“If you want to become a cyber defender, it’s going to take me a little time to be able to train you and give you the experience. I can’t do it in four years—maybe not even six—but in eight, I can give you training, experience, exercises and get you to become a noncommissioned officer where I need you.”

“If the adversary’s training cycle is as little as six months and ours is five years … we lose the cyber war before it starts because we can’t scale our force as fast as the adversary.”

“The farther we get away from Zeus 95, the more pressure there’s going to be to downplay the connectivity needed for the mobility fleet. We don’t dilute the connectivity need for any other part of the Air Force. We don’t do it for the bomber fleet. We don’t do it for the fighter fleet. But we continually do it for the mobility fleet.”