Defense Writers Group
19 January 2024
Moderator: Good morning and welcome to this Defense Writers Group on Human-Machine Collaboration and Teaming in National Security. It’s timed to the release of an important new report from the Special Competitive Studies Project and the UK’s Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies.
Welcome, and thank you. A special thanks to Tara Rigler of SCSP for helping in planning this discussion and to giving us an early copy of this important report. I’ve had the honor of working with Tara ever since she was one of the very best senior press officers at the Pentagon in OSD/PA, and looking at Secretary Austin’s recent comms challenges, I think they need some of that professionalism back there, but that’s for a different Defense Writers Group.
Our ground rule, as always, we’ll be on the record today. You can record for accuracy and quotes, but please, no rebroadcast
of audio or video. If you want to ask a question just raise your chat hand or drop me a direct note. We have a full hour,
so I’m sure we’ll get to everybody. Normally Defense Writers Group strategy is we’re a correspondents’ forum and I usually start by asking the first question, but because this report is incredibly thorough and thoughtful and detailed, I’m going to make my first question asking all four of our special guests to give just a one or two minute introduction to what they think are the top line
headlines from the report, and then of course we’ll go around the room to correspondents. So thank you all for coming. First, to Ylber, please.
Mr. Bajraktari: Good morning everybody, particularly for those of you down here from the East Coast. It’s great to be here
with you. Thom, thank you so much for having us. I’m Ylber Bajraktari, Senior Policy Advisor with SCSP focusing on defense
and intelligence matters. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss the report with you.
