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CSBA has reappointed Dr. Travis Sharp to its senior professional staff, following the completion of his mobilization to active duty as an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve. Dr. Sharp, who first joined CSBA in 2018, returns to direct the Center’s defense budget studies program and lead CSBA’s efforts to inform policymakers, journalists, and the public about national security resources and investment priorities.

The United States is in a competition for global talent, as the Fourth Industrial Revolution[i] reshapes much of the world. The United States must engage in a major new challenge– a holistic Artificial Intelligence international competition while addressing the age-old American conundrum surrounding immigration policy.  The job outlook for technical professionals, specifically those in the fields of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, has never been brighter. These professionals have many opportunities where they can balance their desire for intellectual stimulation, impact, work culture, and compensation. For many organizations, the demand for AI talent greatly outstrips supply. This is in stark contrast to other sectors of the U.S. and global economy, which face the double challenges of a recession and the ongoing pandemic. Societal disruption from increasing automation looms as greater productivity continues to be achieved from a smaller workforce.

This is a hell of a way to run a Navy. The Department of the Navy’s revolving door of senior civilian leadership over the past four years, including two secretaries and three acting secretaries, has done a disservice to U.S. national security. New leadership will soon arrive, but the department should not squander precious time on restarting strategic studies, force assessments, and process improvement programs. Instead, steady and strategic civilian leadership is required to make progress in the marathon implementation of integrated force redesign.

American naval power can be a guarantor of the most important sinews connecting the international global system, and a welcome and unobtrusive instrument of diplomacy. Simultaneously it can be an intimidating backstop of assurance and support to allies and partners, and a hammer of deadly force sharply wielded from great distances against adversary shores and objectives, only to recede back silently into the ocean’s vast expanse. But American naval power cannot be generated by a department unmoored from strategic clarity and purpose. After two decades of high operational tempo, strained readiness, and deferred decisions, the Navy and Marine Corps now are belatedly shifting the fleet design to confront China. China’s increasingly assertive authoritarian regime seeks to rapidly transform into a naval peer competitor and leverage its new maritime power to underpin its ambitions to go global. Instead of pining for decisive blue water confrontations, accepting remote deployments ashore, or succumbing to China’s version of a Fabian strategy, the department should prepare the Navy and Marine Corps with a force design, and the commensurate expertise, experience, and cunning to be effective in the most intense form of naval combat: “firing effectively first” in the rapid, complex, and congested littorals.

Two decades into the 21st century, far too much of the U.S. military consists of systems that were designed and initially produced at the end of the last century, and in many cases back to the late Cold War. While the United States and its allies face growing threats from China and Russia, much of the U.S. military force structure has been worn out by the relentless pace of global operations over the past two decades.

As one example, the size of the U.S. Air Force’s combat aircraft inventory is at an all-time low, while the age of key elements of the combat aircraft fleet is at an all-time high. An urgent need exists to upgrade U.S. military capabilities, that can no longer be addressed solely by modernizing existing platforms. At the same time, the massive price tag associated with the response to COVID-19, along with the pandemic’s lingering impact on the U.S. economy, threatens to blow a hole in any future stability for the defense budget.

As the two-year-old Joint Artificial Intelligence Center shifts from a projects-and-products shop to the Pentagon’s hub for AI services and support, its leaders are working on priorities for “JAIC 2.0.” We suggest the center focus on six main efforts.

CSBA is proud to announce its inaugural fellows for the CSBA Defense Journalism Seminar Series. This seminar series is an in-depth program for working journalists in the defense and national security beats and aims to provide outstanding defense reporters with tools to master the foundations of defense policy, operational concepts, budgets, and the intricacies of contemporary national security processes.