The U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Intelligence Community must preserve our nation’s competitive advantages in highly contested environments; real-time flow of information, reliable communications, and accurate data are absolutely essential to our country’s strategic efforts.

Our warfighters must succeed where stable communication links are sparse, bandwidth constraints impede data flow, cyber threats loom large, and the dissemination of misinformation challenges every piece of information shared across multiple domains. We must regularly ask ourselves… Where is high-value information stored? How accessible is it to the warfighter? And most importantly, can operations and mission readiness endure when the warfighter is completely disconnected from vital networks?

Join us as we delve into these questions. We will explore the critical role of data in contested environments, the challenge of ensuring data integrity, and the challenge of maintaining accessibility. We will examine these questions in the context of great power competition, national defense, and operational readiness.