Looking Ahead: National Security in a New Administration with Nadia Schadlow and Stephen Rodriguez

This episode of Building the Base features a discussion with Nadia Schadlow, a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, and Stephen Rodriguez, an investor in the defense tech space who is leading The Atlantic Council's work on Software-Defined Warfare. Nadia and Stephen have extensive backgrounds in national security: Nadia spent many years at the Defense Department and was the architect of the 2017 National Security Strategy under President Trump, while Stephen has experience spanning the intelligence community, policy world, tech startups, and now The Atlantic Council. Overall, the discussion highlights the value of bringing together diverse perspectives from government, industry, and academia to tackle the complex challenges facing national security today. This episode was recorded live at the Reagan National Defense Forum on December 7, 2024.

Five Key Takeaways: 

1. The adage "DoD does not have an innovation problem, it has an innovation adoption problem" holds true. Both Nadia and Stephen emphasize the need to accelerate the adoption of cutting-edge technologies across the commercial and defense sectors. Stephen recently contributed to an Atlantic Council report (alongside co-host Hondo) on this topic. 
2. Heed the Four Ms: The idea of Software-Defined Warfare is all about finding practical, near-term ways to enhance the capabilities of the military's existing platforms and systems, rather than just focusing on long-term future tech. Stephen stresses the importance of identifying the right Four Ms - "Money, Mission, Motivation, and Mechanism" - for companies looking to work with the military.
3. Crafting a national security strategy... where to begin? Nadia explains (from experience) that crafting an effective NSS is all about clearly defining the country's key interests, understanding the challenges, and proposing high-level solutions; the departments then have to figure out the operational details.
4. Crisis of Repetition: In her 2024 Breaking Defense op-ed, "America's crisis of repetition is hurting national security," Nadia proposes four steps by which Washington can break the cycle of writing reports that are never fully implemented: 1) aggregate what's been done, 2) assess why past administrations failed to achieve goals, 3) research existing legislative authorities, and 4) assign accountability for leading implementation.
5. Optimization opportunities exist, leveraging AI and DOGE: Nadia suggests that AI could be used to "identify the regulatory environment" and "point out how many duplicative and repeating and inane regulations there are," helping to enact regulatory reform that ultimately speeds up DoD innovation adoption.