U.S. and Utah are in 'a moment of strategic uncertainty,' defense experts say

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SALT LAKE CITY — National defense experts speaking at a conference in downtown Salt Lake City sounded the alarm on a shrinking defense budget, aging military infrastructure and lagging adoption of new technologies in the face of growing global threats.

"We're in a really dangerous moment globally right now," Matt Pottinger, former U.S. deputy national security adviser, told KSL.com.

Some speakers described the nation's current situation as on the "threshold of war," or a "hot cold war."

"It's not hard to make the argument in my mind that in a lot of ways World War III has already started," said Greg Little, senior counsel for big data company Palantir.

A less bleak perspective was presented by Sue Gordon, former principal deputy director of national intelligence, who described the present as "a moment of strategic uncertainty."

The summit was organized by Utah's 47G, a group comprised of government, academic, industry and venture capital organizations in the aerospace, defense and cyber spaces. Aaron Starks, 47G president, said around 800 attendees showed, around half from out of state.

Panelists said major prime contractors and smaller start-ups are finding new ways to collaborate. According to Palantir's president, Aki Jain, there has been "massive improvement over the last 20 years for innovation in the private sector making its way into the Department of Defense rapidly."

Data has become a new frontier, especially for multinational corporations looking for opportunities and risks. Increasingly, businesses are pouring resources into developing their own private intelligence networks, according to Greg Levesque, CEO of intelligence company Strider.

Participants presented new technologies, from drone hunters to deepfake detection software. Executives spoke about producing fleets of autonomous drones gathering impossible amounts of data, of AI targeting, skirmishes from 400 miles away and military bases on the moon.

While impressive, the general feeling among speakers and panelists was that the U.S. must accelerate technological innovation to keep pace with its rivals.

"We have not yet really embraced the reality of a digitally connected world," according to Gordon. With technology changing faster than government contracts can be completed, "speed is the advantage that secrecy once was."

Sen. Mitt Romney, in a video interview with Starks played for conference attendees, said, "We need to dramatically increase our investment in military technology and hardware. At the same time, we need to make changes in our own system such that we're able to address the challenges that we have."

Romney mourned the state of the national debt, at almost $36 trillion, and said the annual interest payments of around $1 trillion could be better spent.

"It is a national security as well as domestic well-being reality," Romney said, "that this debt and the interests associated with it are keeping us from doing the things that are necessary for us to be the leader of the free world."

Other entrepreneurs agreed with that assessment. Brian Schimpf, CEO of defense technology company Anduril, said, "There is no world where the (Department of Defense) will spend the amount of money necessary to be competitive with their own AI strategy."

Starks told KSL.com that less than 2% of defense spending, or around $25 billion annually, goes toward science and technology innovation. Coupled with instability inherent in federal contracts, Starks said "over the past 12 years, there's been a 30% decline in entrepreneurship and aerospace and defense."

The gap between defense contract incentives, and the money needed to be on the cutting edge will continue to be addressed through private capital investment, according to Starks. "Venture capital firms around the country in 2023 put about $40 billion into the defense market," Starks said. "and we're not even scratching the surface,"

Maj. Gen. Kenyon Bell, commander of the Ogden Air Logistics Complex at Hill Air Force Base, spoke at the conference, and later with KSL.com.

"It's been said that great communities make great military installations," Bell said. "You don't have all of the answers within the Department of Defense. In fact, we don't have the resources to develop some of those answers."

"We rely heavily on industry to come up with some of those neat creative technological advancements," Bell said.

Utah will have an increasingly important part to play as national defense becomes more critical, according to Pottinger, who is now CEO of a geopolitical research firm in the state. "A significant part of Utah's economy is tied to U.S. national security," he said, "and that's going to be something that the United States comes to rely on even more heavily in the years ahead."

Already, $11 billion is being invested in infrastructure modernization at Hill, according to Bell, digitizing the depot, upgrading aging hangars and tools. They "anticipate a 30% increase in workload," in the same time period, Bell said.

In the last few years, Utah's economy has been impacted significantly by the war in Ukraine. "Utah companies have sold over $100 million in technology contracts and products to Ukraine since the war began," Starks said, adding that 47G is working to position the state to promote and continue taking advantage of increased defense spending in the future.

"You hate that war does this, but economically speaking, it's impacted Utah in big ways," Starks said.

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Collin Leonard

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Collin Leonard is a reporter for KSL.com. He covers federal and state courts, as well as northern Utah communities and military news. Collin is a graduate of Duke University.