President's Commentary: Trust Is an Urgent Operational Need

The word “trust” is used so often within the national security and defense community that some might consider it cliched or devoid of meaning. Trusted allies. Trusted partners. Trusted data. Community of trust. Culture of trust. Zero trust.

But let me tell you firsthand what trust means to me.

Everywhere I served throughout my Army career, I was blessed to have a great relationship with the Defense Information Systems Agency, which we all know as DISA. When we were executing Army Enterprise Email, it was that partnership with DISA that ensured we were successful. Whether I was commanding the Army Network Technology Command (NETCOM), serving as the Army chief information officer, working with the Joint Staff J-6, supporting major combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan or serving in Korea, DISA was always a key and trusted partner.

DISA continues to be a proven partner supporting the military services, defense agencies and the combatant commands. The agency, for example, coordinates, synchronizes, manages and secures communications networks and services throughout the Indo-Pacific theater and provides reach-back capabilities to the continental United States. The agency supports U.S. and coalition communication and operates the data centers, satellite teleport facilities, video distribution and key joint mission systems the command depends on every day. This includes the cybersecurity of all the above, and the agency’s zero-trust solution known as Thunderdome will greatly enhance the resiliency of these critical capabilities. They also work very closely with the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command on the modernization of all joint infrastructure required to meet the full array of technical requirements.

Trusted relationships with international partners and allies are vital to all the regional combatant commands, but perhaps especially to Indo-Pacific Command, which has arguably the most complex mission of all. The command’s area of responsibility covers more of the globe than any other geographic combatant command. The 36 nations in the region contain more than 50 percent of the world’s population, 3,000 different languages, several of the world’s largest militaries and five nations allied with the United States through mutual defense treaties.

The command’s area of responsibility also includes some of the world’s toughest terrain, two of our most challenging adversaries in China and North Korea, a highly contested electromagnetic environment and a sophisticated and persistent cyber threat.

It is fortuitous that AFCEA is hosting both the TechNet Indo-Pacific conference and the TechNet Cyber conference practically back-to-back this month. We consider both to be flagship events allowing an ethical forum for the military, government, industry and academia to hold open and honest discussions and to build those critical, trusting relationships needed to conduct their missions. In rapid succession, we are bringing the right leadership and teammates to both events and will foster those critical conversations to build a community and culture of trust to support national security.

TechNet Indo-Pacific is the largest event of its kind in the region. It focuses on the issues that military leaders have identified, including full-spectrum cyber operations as adversaries use cyberspace to conduct operations below the threshold of conflict. TechNet Cyber 2022, meanwhile, is a forum for the AFCEA community—military, government, industry and academia—to discuss and plan how to achieve persistent engagement, presence and innovation. It also presents an opportunity to devise a new strategy to build cyber resilience and defend networks.

Our plan is to identify AFCEA flagship events that will bring the most up-to-date and valued information—as well as the synergy our partners need and expect. I’m quickly reaching the conclusion that we must keep the cyber domain at the center of our core mission, and we will continue assessing how AFCEA can best support our community and expand on those flagship events with an even greater number of trusted partners.

The synergy from these events promotes trusted relationships that lead to trusted solutions providing warfighters, first responders and others the data they know they can trust.

For our community, trust is no cliché. It is an urgent operational need.