Reference News Network, October 16 report: The U.S. "Fortune" magazine website published an article titled "U.S. Top Defense Company CEOs Talk About the U.S. 'Outdated' Aging Infrastructure" on October 13, authored by Nick Lichtenberg. The abstract of the article is as follows:

A top U.S. defense company's CEO said that the biggest threat to national security is not technology, opponents, or resources, but the fact that a significant portion of the U.S. defense strategy is out of step with the times.

Tony Towns-Whitely, CEO of Science Applications International Corporation, spoke at the "Most Influential Women" conference, saying, "The regions where we are separated from our adversaries by vast oceans are no longer the boundary conditions we are familiar with."

She pointed out that the United States' adversaries operate in areas beyond land, sea, and air, as well as in cyberspace and space. She conveyed the message that the U.S. still has a lot of work to do to successfully defend against such enemies.

Towns-Whitely said that for 57 years, Science Applications International Corporation has been at the "intersection" of commercial technology, which is introduced into very complex mission environments. She sees that the U.S. adversaries are operating in multiple modes... "I think one thing that could keep us up at night in the defense field is that our adversaries can leverage their entire industrial base."

She added that this is not the case in the U.S., as the U.S. industrial base has become "out of date over time." She said that what she considers the industrial base has "aged" and entered a state of "legacy capabilities." "We have not really recognized the urgency of the signals that we actually need to mobilize all of our industrial base."

She continued, saying that the geeky and tech-obsessed answer is that you can connect everything with data to overcome the U.S. attitude of refusing to act like its adversaries.

This CEO stated that modernization is not just about buying the most advanced hardware. It is about rethinking old policies, integrating new technologies, and combining the strengths of legacy systems with rapid digital innovation. She pointed out that despite impressive progress in areas such as digital engineering and battlefield artificial intelligence, the underlying systems still face urgency.

To illustrate this issue, the CEO described a practice borrowed from military leadership: these leaders and their teams wear bracelets engraved with the acronym "WTIW" (Will I Do This in War?), to remind themselves every day to take action with the speed and seriousness required to deal with real crises. Although the nation can impressively mobilize when facing an existential threat, it is much harder to maintain this capability during peacetime, when enemies lurk in ambiguous and unpredictable ways.

This CEO urged a change in mindset, advocating for the abandonment of terms and concepts rooted in the past. She said, "I think the expressions we use are also out of step with the times. I think the defense industrial base is transitioning to a national security innovation ecosystem." (Translated by Feng Xue)

Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7561692965005967899/

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