At the direction of Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro, the Japan Coast Guard earlier this month launched a new Maritime Economic Deterrence Enforcement Council to protect commercial companies and other vendors from adversaries seeking to take advantage of them.
The move comes as the Navy and Marine Corps increasingly look to private providers and other non-traditional suppliers in Silicon Valley and other regions for high-tech capabilities such as artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and maritime drones. I was disappointed.
“Our potential adversaries are certainly pursuing a range of actions that go beyond the use of military force, including exploitation of the investment industries and innovation ecosystems that power the economies of the United States, our allies, and our international partners; These include the exploitation of supplies, cascading vulnerabilities, hostile capital investments in companies developing technologies critical to our nation's fleets and forces, and ongoing intellectual property with so many concerted actions. This is theft. [are] It aims to weaken competitive advantages not only at sea, but also on the global economic stage. And this is having a huge impact on the U.S. economy,” del Toro said Thursday at an event hosted by Aspen Strategy Group at Bloomberg headquarters in New York.
The council will be co-chaired by Vice Adm. Francis Morley, principal military undersecretary for the assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, and Chris Diaz, chief of staff for SECNAV. The membership also includes other representatives from the research and development and procurement communities, intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and supply chain and critical infrastructure subject matter experts.
“This brings together several commands that are already focused on countering hostile economic activity that directly impacts our Navy and Marine Corps,” Del Toro said.
Del Toro said the council, called MEDEC, is authorized to act through powers already granted to the Department of the Navy.
The group will focus on mitigating hostile foreign investment risks, protecting innovation, addressing supply chain integrity, and protecting research activities across both government and the private sector.
“Efforts by organizations to protect the defense industrial ecosystem are not new, but by bringing organizations together as a focused, unified council to address maritime economic deterrence, we can better align our efforts. synchronize and be a leader in the larger Department of Defense economic deterrence initiative.'' MEDEC's work goes beyond preserving the military advantage of Sailors and Marines. We are committed to these efforts to better support our customers, our business partners, and the investment community that relies on us to design, test, and build the technologies and capabilities we will adopt and commercialize in the future. '' said Del Toro.
The commercial sector is driving many of the technological advances the Navy wants to leverage for next-generation platforms and capabilities, such as unmanned systems and advanced algorithms. Some of these companies are small and medium-sized enterprises that may be particularly vulnerable to hostile activity.
Rapid developments in high-tech technology, driven by competition from great powers such as China, are forcing the Navy and Marine Corps to think differently about how they operate and rapidly acquire new capabilities.
“This set of circumstances has created a very porous environment for us. So where is the money for risk investments, how do we protect it, and how do we lay down the fundamentals of technology protection early on? We need to work with all of you to make sure that we're on the same page about how to establish, and at the same time, a lot of small businesses and technology companies that are really trying to drive that forward. We need to do it wisely so as not to build prohibitive barriers to entry for the industry,” Morley told industry participants at an event on Thursday.
Del Toro said the Navy and Marine Corps already have “1,000” AI-related projects, and the technology is expected to change the way the department does business.
The Maritime Service is experimenting with different types of drones, artificial intelligence capabilities, and related technologies at multiple theaters, including five.th Middle East fleet, 4th Latin American fleet, and 3rd and 7th Indo-Pacific fleet. And there are also plans to integrate more ships into the force as the Navy pursues a so-called “hybrid fleet” of manned and unmanned platforms.
SECNAV suggested investors could keep more innovators alive in the Navy ecosystem.
“What I really want is for the private sector to take a hard look at what our requirements are, of course, but also everything that's actually on the table to meet those requirements. look at small and medium-sized businesses, and even large corporations. There's a lot of innovation happening. There's a lot of innovation going on in the world. There are a lot of small technology companies that are coming up with great ideas that are solutions, whether it's AI, quantum, machine learning, or many other high-tech portfolios. I think we should actively look at companies and the ideas they're coming up with and support and invest in them so that they have the capital they need to work with the government. We know that sometimes. .It's challenging,'' he said.
Morey pointed out that the Navy also needs to bring cutting-edge technology to large-scale military production.
The use of relatively low-cost robotic systems in the commercial sector has made it possible to experiment with services, take risks, create prototypes and sometimes fail without making huge capital investments, he said. It pointed out.
“We recognize that in uninhabited space we must understand and learn now. [But] We have to start establishing programs of record and scale to keep the industry in the game and deliver real products,” Morley said.
Some technologies, such as artificial intelligence capabilities, will come from lower down the supply chain, he noted.
“A lot of this technology is technology that is going to be deployed to third- and fourth-tier suppliers. [level]. right? We're probably not going to contract directly for AI algorithms, but we're going to contract for airplanes that have mission computers that do something that requires AI algorithms. So our ability to infuse that technology through Prime or other methods – we have some work to do on that,” he said.
