Official websites use .mil
Secure .mil websites use HTTPS
Good morning, everyone! It is wonderful to be here with you today in my hometown of New York City.
I would like to thank the Aspen Institute and the Bloomberg Foundation for hosting us this morning.
I would also like to thank our moderator, Mr. David Westin, both for leading today’s discussion and for giving Vice Admiral Morley and me the opportunity to highlight the comprehensive work that the Department of the Navy is undertaking around the world.
As we gather here this morning, our Navy and our Marine Corps are indeed deployed around the globe, countering a diverse set of challenges posed by nations and non-nation state actors.
The challenges and threats we face today are global, ranging from Ukraine’s war with Russia to restore their national sovereignty, the PRC’s continued aggression across the Indo-Pacific, and Iran’s malign influence throughout the Middle East region.
In the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, we continue to work alongside our NATO allies and Middle East partners to counter the Iranian-aligned Houthi attacks against commercial shipping—attacks that threaten the lives of Sailors and other, innocent, civilian mariners.
As many in this room are aware, the Red Sea is one of our world’s main shipping routes, with 12-15 percent of maritime trade passing through it.
Since November, trade volume through the Suez Canal has dropped 42 percent, with most major shipping companies opting to bypass the Red Sea altogether over security concerns, adding weeks to delivery timelines and raising the price transporting a standard 40-foot cargo container from Asia to Europe from $1,500 in December to over $5,500 today.
These disruptions, increased shipping costs, and rising insurance premiums are paid for by citizens around the world at the grocery store, the gas pump, and the pharmacy—the impacts of which are felt most by countries that rely on their global partners for food security and vital medicines to protect their populations from some of the world’s deadliest diseases.
We will continue to take the necessary actions—both diplomatic and military—as part of international coalitions of like-minded nations to return stability to Red Sea.
Addressing the threats that adversely affect the U.S., our allies, and our partners who seek to use the global maritime commons for peaceful ends requires a national commitment.
However, our potential adversaries are pursuing courses of actions that go beyond leveraging their military might, to include exploitation of the investment, industry, and innovation ecosystems that serve as the engine of the economies of the United States, our allies, and our international partners.
Exploiting supply chain vulnerabilities, adversarial capital investments in companies developing technologies critical to our Fleet and our Force, as well as intellectual property theft are but a few of the concerted actions designed to weaken our competitive advantages not only at-sea, but on the world’s economic stage.
This past December, the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party released a report on these very issues, and identified actions Congress can take to address them.
The Biden Administration is clear-eyed about these economic threats posed by other nations, and we are taking concrete steps towards shoring up the seams that leave us vulnerable.
In 2022, President Biden unveiled our National Security Strategy. In that strategy, he highlighted how we cannot allow our strategic competitors to “exploit foundational American and allied technologies, know-how, or data” to undermine our collective security, nor should we allow them to violate the longstanding rules that have governed international trade and economic exchanges.
That same year, the President signed the CHIPS and Science Act, which has and will continue to strengthen our national security through historic public investments in research and development, science and technology, and the American workforce.
While these investments are critical in building and maintaining U.S. leadership in several industries vital to our national and economic security, equal attention must be paid to properly protecting them.
Last week, the National Science and Technology Council and the Office of Science and Technology Policy released the 2024 Critical and Emerging Technologies list.
This list contains numerous advanced technologies potentially significant to national security. Such as AI, hypersonic, and quantum to name a few.
And last month, the Department of Defense released our first National Defense Industrial Strategy, addressing these concerns. To address this concern.
The Department’s strategy outlines several steps our department can take, organized along four priorities, which are: resilient supply chains, workforce readiness, flexible acquisition, and economic deterrence.
We in the Department of the Navy are closely aligned with the NDIS, the broader Department of Defense community, and the White House on this issue.
We recognize that adversarial economic practices—through targeted investments and intellectual property mis-appropriation—are aimed at securing dominance in specific industrial sectors, and have wide-ranging implications to the technologies, critical infrastructure, supply chains, and businesses we rely on to ensure our Sailors and Marines maintain their advantages.
There is indeed an interconnectedness between innovative technologies, our naval advantages, and the growth of our economy in this era of globalization.
With a shift in reliance from the government to the private sector for conducting research and development of new capabilities, it is imperative that we shift our approach as to how we also protect those capabilities at the earliest stages.
And efforts within the Department of the Navy to make the necessary shift are already underway.
Earlier this month, at my direction, our department stood up the Maritime Economic Deterrence Executive Council—MEDEC, bringing together several commands that are already focused on countering adversarial economic activities that directly impact our Navy and Marine Corps team.
MEDEC—co-chaired by our Principal Military Deputy to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition, Vice Admiral Francis Morley, and my Chief of Staff, Mr. Chris Diaz—is made up of representatives from our research, development and acquisition community, supply chain and critical infrastructure subject matter experts, as well as members of our intelligence and law enforcement organizations.
MEDEC is empowered to act by authorities already granted to our department, and will focus on mitigating adversarial foreign investment risks, innovation and technology protection, supply chain integrity initiatives, and the coordination and protection of research efforts.
While the work to protect our defense industrial ecosystem by each organization is not new, bringing them together as a unified, focused council to address Maritime Economic Deterrence allows us to better synchronize our efforts and be leaders in the larger DoD Economic Deterrence initiative.
The work of MEDEC is more than just preserving military advantages for our Sailors and Marines—we are undertaking these initiatives to better support you, our business and investment communities that we rely on to design, test and build the technologies and capabilities we adopt and field.
As a former business owner, I know the time, sacrifice, and investments you put into creating the companies that drive our economy.
I also know that any loss or compromise of your core products and technologies causes irreparable harm—both to your businesses and to your employees who rely on you to make their livelihoods.
What’s more, this unintended proliferation of technologies developed here at home as well as by firms located in allied and partner nations pose risks for their use in ways that deviate from our shared values—ways that violate personal freedoms such as data privacy.
MEDEC is our Department’s acknowledgement of these risks, and represents our commitment to helping you identify and address them early, for the safety of our personnel, as well as the security of our allies and partners, depends on us getting this right.
Last September when I called for a new approach to our national Maritime Statecraft, I outlined several key industries that required a whole-of-government approach to building up industries that are vital to our country’s efforts to re-build and sustain our comprehensive maritime power.
As we broaden our engagements with our nation’s start-up, investment, and business communities that are responsible for driving advances in critical technologies, the work of MEDEC will only become more important.
As we move forward on Maritime Economic Deterrence, we welcome your input to ensure that the actions we take support our nation’s continued economic growth and protect our shared interests in maintaining our nation’s comprehensive maritime power.
Again, it is a pleasure to be with you this morning, and I look forward to your questions during our panel discussion.
Carlos Del Toro
22 February 2024
Subject specific information for the media
Events or announcements of note for the media
Official Navy statements
Given by Navy leadership
HASC, SASC and Congressional testimony
Google Translation Disclaimer