Thank you, John, for that kind introduction, and thanks for everything you do for the Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute. And good afternoon, everybody. It is great to be here in person at the Reagan National Defense Forum.
[Applause]
And I’m glad to see so many friends and valued colleagues, including a truly outstanding delegation from the Department of Defense. This is indeed quite a crowd.
And I’m honored to be here at the Reagan Library. The old saying is that institutions are shadows of people, and this library is a tremendous extension of the legacy and optimism of President Ronald Reagan.
He always believed that Americans were up for a challenge—up for meeting hard problems with a can-do spirit.
He had bedrock beliefs: a love of democracy, a zeal for free enterprise, and an implacable opposition to autocracy.
Yet President Reagan also showed a willingness to change. And to work together, even with an old foe, to try to make all our children safe from the specter of nuclear war.
That’s central to his legacy—not just the vigor that he showed in waging the Cold War, but the vision that he showed in helping to end it.
In today’s changing world, I hope that we can again summon Ronald Reagan’s sunny conviction that this country can be stronger, prouder, and better.
His confidence in the power of liberty.
His enthusiasm in the face of challenge.
And his openness to seize an opportunity for statesmanship.
Now, if you’re looking for some of that spirit today… if you’re looking for optimism, and pragmatism, and patriotism… and if you’re looking for a can-do attitude in American life—well, look no further than the United States military.
Our outstanding men and women in uniform volunteer to work hard and to sacrifice mightily. And they don’t expect any rewards besides the quiet satisfaction of a mission achieved, and the fellowship of teamwork, and the honor of defending our democracy.
So we’re enormously grateful to them, and to their families as well.
And in return, we owe them clear thinking about the challenges of our changing world. And we owe it to them to make the world of the 21st century far more secure and far less bloody than the world of the 20th.
You know, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that over the past few days. And my team and I took the long way to California—by way of South Korea, where we held our important annual security talks with key allies.
This was my third trip as Secretary of Defense to the Indo-Pacific. And that’s yet another sign of the priority that we give to the region, and our commitment to its security, and prosperity, and openness.
In part, that’s because of something that everyone who lives in California understands: America is a Pacific power. And we will always be.
And the Indo-Pacific is a region of great opportunity—and real challenges. One of those challenges is the emergence of an increasingly assertive and autocratic China. And that’s what I’d like to focus on today.
Now, President Biden has said that we are in “stiff competition” with the People’s Republic of China. And as he’s made clear, Beijing is the only competitor [quote] “capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system.”
So we’ve got to be clear about the challenge of China, and about what we need to do to meet it.
I’d like to focus today on the security dimensions of this competition. Because we’ve seen two decades of breakneck modernization by the People’s Liberation Army.
And China’s military is on pace to become a peer competitor to the United States in Asia—and, eventually, around the world. China’s leaders are expanding their ability to project force and to establish a global network of military bases.
Meanwhile, the PLA is rapidly improving many of its capabilities, including strike, air, missile-defense, and anti-submarine measures. And it’s increasingly focused on integrating its information, cyber, and space operations.
So that means new areas of competition in space and cyberspace, where the norms of behavior aren’t well-established and the risks of escalation and miscalculation are high.
Meanwhile, China is pouring state funds into key sectors, including quantum research. And Beijing is pursuing what its leaders call “indigenous innovation” to cut its reliance on imports. And all that is fueling swift advances in PRC technology, with significant implications for China’s military.
China’s nuclear posture is changing as well. The PLA has been rapidly advancing its nuclear capabilities. And that includes growing its nuclear arsenal to at least a thousand warheads by 2030, and modernizing its delivery systems, and building a nascent nuclear triad.
Now, we always assess not just capabilities but also intentions and actions. And the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party have been increasingly vocal about their dissatisfaction with the prevailing order—and about their aim of displacing America from its global leadership role.
China’s President, Xi Jinping, regularly talks about [quote] “great changes unseen in the world in a century.” And he recently assured his fellow Party members that [quote] “time and momentum are on China’s side.”
President Biden has been very clear about his concerns over China’s human-rights abuses and its bullying of other countries. And Beijing is misusing technology to advance its repressive agenda at home and exporting the tools of autocracy abroad.
Now, I’ve repeatedly described China as the “pacing challenge” for the Department of Defense.
But I chose the word “challenge” carefully. We seek neither confrontation nor conflict. And as President Biden has repeatedly made clear, “we are not seeking a new Cold War or a world divided into rigid blocs.”
So yes, we’re facing a formidable challenge. But America isn’t a country that fears competition. And we’re going to meet this one with confidence and resolve—not panic and pessimism.
As President Reagan put it, “The future doesn’t belong to the faint-hearted; it belongs to the brave.”
So we’re determined to deter aggression, and to prevent conflict, and to establish commonsense guardrails. And our new initiatives are part of a government-wide approach that draws on all tools of national power to meet the China challenge.
Now, this Department has been stepping up its efforts on China since the very first days of the Biden Administration. Our China Task Force sharpened the Department’s priorities and charted a path to greater focus and coordination. We made the Department’s largest-ever budget request for research, development, testing, and evaluation. And we’re investing in new capabilities that will make us more lethal from greater distances, and more capable of operating stealthy and unmanned platforms, and more resilient under the seas and in space and in cyberspace.
We’re also pursuing a more distributed force posture in the Indo-Pacific—one that will help us bolster deterrence, and counter coercion, and operate forward with our trusted allies and partners.
And we’re developing new concepts of operations that will bring the American way of war into the 21st century, working closely with our unparalleled global network of partners and allies.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will always stand ready to prevail in conflict—but America’s defense will always be rooted in our resolve to prevent conflict.
Now, what I call “integrated deterrence” will be the cornerstone concept of the new National Defense Strategy that I will release early next year. And it means integrating our efforts across domains and across the spectrum of conflict to ensure that the U.S. military—in close cooperation with the rest of the U.S. government and our allies and partners—makes the folly and costs of aggression very clear.
I’d like to focus today on two key elements of integrated deterrence, and those are partnership and innovation.
First, we’re building on a lesson that I learned over four decades in uniform: In war and in peace, we’re always stronger when we work together with our friends.
And that defines our approach to the China challenge. No, we’re not seeking an Asian version of NATO or trying to build an anti-China coalition. And we’re not asking countries to choose between the United States and China.
Instead, we’re working to advance an international system that is free, and stable, and open. And we’re strengthening our peerless network of allies and partners with a shared commitment to a peaceful and prosperous Indo-Pacific—a region where all countries are free from coercion, and where the rules that buttress stability and expand liberty are upheld. Together.
As one Western leader said in 1989, “We know more clearly than ever before that we carry common burdens, face common problems, and must respond with common action.”
No, that wasn’t Ronald Reagan.
It was Margaret Thatcher.
Now, my first trip as Secretary took me to Japan, South Korea, and India. A few months ago, I had the opportunity to visit with leaders in Singapore, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Yesterday, I was in Seoul. And early next year, I’m planning on heading back to Southeast Asia.
And in every conversation with our partners, I hear the same thing again and again: a call for the United States to continue playing our stabilizing role in the Indo-Pacific.
And make no mistake: we will.
That means joint exercises, such as the recent six-country, multicarrier operation in Asia. It means deepening our R&D relationships with our regional allies and partners. It means encouraging the helpful and growing security role that our European allies are playing in the region.
It also means strengthening the Indo-Pacific’s security architecture. That of course centers on our valued alliances and ASEAN—but it’s reinforced by a range of mechanisms, both old and new, including the Indo-Pacific Quad, and AUKUS, and the Five Eyes, and the triangle of the U.S., Japan, and South Korea.
Finally, we remain steadfast to our one-China policy and our commitments under the Taiwan Relations Act to support Taiwan’s ability to defend itself while also maintaining our capacity to resist any resort to force that would jeopardize the security of the people of Taiwan.
Now, we are working to bolster deterrence, and not seeking to change the status quo.
As President Biden told President Xi last month, we share a profound global responsibility: “to ensure that the competition between our countries does not veer into conflict, whether intended or unintended.” And we’re going to stick to what President Biden called “simple, straightforward competition.”
Yes, we have real differences, both over interests and values. But the way that you manage them counts.
And we’re going to be open and candid with China’s leaders. As President Biden put it, we need to talk “honestly and directly to one another about our priorities and our intentions.”
And big powers should be models of transparency and communication. So we’re actively seeking open lines of communication with China’s defense leaders—especially in a crisis. And both between our diplomats and our militaries, we’re taking steps to reduce risk and to prevent miscalculations.
So we’re going to build on President Biden’s discussions with President Xi, and President Biden’s push to develop ways to manage strategic risk, and work to build strong, sensible guardrails around this competition.
Now, I also want to focus on a second element of integrated deterrence. And it’s one that I’m especially looking forward to discussing with this audience—an audience with so many industry leaders, and entrepreneurs, and members of Congress.
And it centers on America’s unique competitive advantage in innovation.
Now, integrated deterrence requires us to weave together cutting-edge technology, operational concepts, and state-of-the-art capabilities to seamlessly dissuade aggression in any form, domain, or theater.
And so that means that innovation lies at the heart of American security.
Now, huge advances in AI, and edge computing, and nanotechnology are already underway in America—much of that right here in California. Nobody innovates better than the United States of America. But we can’t take that for granted.
And at the Department of Defense, that means that serious changes to some of the ways that we’ve done business must be done.
So let’s face it. For far too long, it’s been far too hard for innovators and entrepreneurs to work with the Department. And the barriers for entry into this effort to work with us in national security are often too steep—far too steep.
On my recent travels, I’ve seen some outstanding examples of cutting-edge tech—including weeks ago in Bahrain, where I saw unmanned, solar-powered, Navy vessels that use AI to build a shared picture of the surrounding seas.
But it often takes too long to get that kind of innovation to our warfighters. So let’s say some great California start-up develops a dazzling way to better integrate our capabilities. All too often, that company is going to struggle to take its idea from inception to prototype to adoption by the Department.
We call this syndrome “the valley of death,” and I know that many of you in this room are painfully familiar with it.
It’s bad enough that some companies get stuck in the “valley of death.” But some brilliant entrepreneurs and innovators don’t even want to try to cross it and work with us.
So the Department has to do better.
Let me tell you about some steps that we’re taking to transform the way that we do business.
First, we’re paving new pathways for American innovators and entrepreneurs to work with us.
Consider the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—better known as DARPA. It is legendary for scientific breakthroughs. But now, DARPA is also connecting its top research teams with corporate leaders and U.S. investors so that those teams can build successful businesses with the cutting-edge technologies that they develop.
Second, we’re doubling down on our Small Business Innovation Research program—which, as it happens, was signed into law by President Reagan. This program helps fuel American firms to pursue R&D tailored to the Department’s unique tech requirements. And so far this year, we’ve awarded funds to more than 2,500 small businesses working on groundbreaking tech.
We’re also doing more to integrate the Department’s innovators into tech hubs around the country where academics, and business leaders, and innovators thrive. So we recently opened defense innovation hubs in Seattle and Chicago, adding to other sites from Austin to Boston.
The goal here is simple: to connect with new talent who will help us compete and win, on challenges from countering UAVs to responsibly leading the AI revolution.
And finally, we’re making it easier for companies to safely cross that “valley of death.”
And I would like to commend the congressional leaders who have tackled this issue, and many of you are here today. But we need all of your help. And this is urgent. We can’t just keep funding programs and platforms that will be irrelevant. And we must streamline the acquisitions process—or we’ll tie one arm behind our backs.
So the Department of Defense has established the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve to let us quickly see if promising tech and prototypes can help our warfighters. It helps identify our most pressing capability gaps and makes funds available to test new technologies that could be game-changers. And it lets the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Space Force, and the Marine Corps try out innovative tech together at scale for the first time.
Because when we maintain our technological edge, we maintain our military edge.
And let me be clear: The United States of America has an advantage that no autocracy can match—our combination of free enterprise, free minds, and free people.
Even in times of challenge, our democracy is a powerful engine for its own renewal.
So I will put the American system up against any other. And I’ll do so with great pride and total confidence.
No other country had the creativity to put such phenomenal computing power into our pockets. And no other nation has our astonishing universities, our grounding rule of law, and our restless spirit.
So let me offer a call to action to American businesses, large and small… and to everyone in this room, including industry leaders.
Join with us. Work with us. And help keep our country strong.
Let’s meet this moment.
With all the innovation and ingenuity that America can muster.
Because America’s strength in the world rests on its strength at home.
Innovation in America is rooted in the creativity of an open society and the ingenuity of an open mind.
As President Reagan put it in 1988, “progress is not foreordained. The key is freedom—freedom of thought, freedom of information, freedom of communication.”
Ladies and gentlemen, in America, we don’t fear competition. As President Biden says, “In the competition against China and other nations of the 21st century, let’s show that American democracy and the American people can truly outcompete anyone.”
This is America.
We’re still a country that can do great things—from vaccinating people against a terrible virus to saving the lives of civilians in peril to building a new architecture for global security.
Great powers today must shoulder great responsibilities.
For the safety of our citizens.
For the defense of our democracy.
And for the security of our world.
So we’re going to do our part.
We’ll meet the challenges of the 21st century. But we’ll face them with fortitude, not fear.
Democracy has always been our roadmap to success and security.
And I wouldn’t trade it for anyone else’s.
Thank you very much.
[Applause]