Defense Innovation Project - Leslie Beavers

So Leslie, you've had a unique vantage point across intelligence ops and cybersecurity.

And when you look at the department today, what are the key elements that have to come together to create this true digital warfighting advantage?

A digital warfighting advantage to me is the ability to bring information together to enable you to sense, decide, and act faster than your adversary can.

And so when I think about that, I am looking for the ability for our information network to connect all of the various pieces of the warfighting and the operational network toys or equipment and locations people it's everything from sensors to uh information uh operation centers to um the warfighter out on the pointy edge, bring all of that information together.

So you have an accurate picture of what is going on and you can make a decision based on information that is more accurate and more current than your adversary.

So if you think about operational warfighting advantage from the perspective of, let's just use a police example.

So in that case, success would be the ability to tie together, for example, the cameras that are doing our neighborhood watch with the ring doorbells on everybody's doorbell with the cameras in the patrol cars to enable you to actually have a complete picture of where, you know, a perpetrator or, you know, a criminal is going and you're able to follow them.

In the military, that's something that you would have to do on a global scale.

So it's a pretty big challenge, but I think it's still fundamentally the same actions.

You've got to have the network connectivity, you've got to have the interoperability, and you've got to have the ability to share data back and forth.

And so data is really the root of success in the Digital Warfighting Advantage campaign.