WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) spoke with General Christopher J. Mahoney, President Trump’s nominee to be Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Read excerpts from their exchange below or watch on YouTube or Rumble.
TUBERVILLE: “Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General, thanks for your service. Congratulations. Let’s follow-up on Senator Rosen’s talk on AI. We know the direction we’re headed. Future conflicts will be dominated by artificial intelligence emerging technologies like quantum computing. There’s basically two quantum computing models—gate and annealing. We only use one of them basically, and our adversaries use the other. Do you think that’s a smart way to handle this?”
MAHONEY: “Senator, thanks. Artificial intelligence, algorithmic-derived systems, are, again, if cyber has just become part of the normal war fighting domain, artificial intelligence is not too far behind. And we don’t need to look too far to see how it’s being applied, especially in the Russia, Ukraine example. We have to bring that in and make it a normal part of our programmatics.”
TUBERVILLE: “Thank you. Let’s go to a more simple topic here. I’m getting calls all the time—we’ve spent trillions of dollars on these wars over the years. But we can’t house our people on military bases. We have mold, roofs are falling in, kids are getting sick. But we can spend hundreds of billions of dollars on another country. We’re an all-volunteer army. Will you commit to helping solve this problem? I know it’s not just your problem, but it is a huge problem, probably, in recruiting. And again, our phone rings off the wall when it comes to this.”
MAHONEY: “Senator, I commit to you […] to do just that. And I’ll go on my recent experience in the Marine Corps and the Commandant’s emphasis on our Barracks 2030 initiative. While we’re unapologetic about the investments that we made over the last 20 years […] we have to get back into the installations and resilience business. We have to get back into the installations quality business. Two primary reasons. First, it’s an expectation among Soldiers, Marines, Guardians, Airmen, Sailors to have a good quality infrastructure place to live. Secondly, we have to look at it for what it is, which is a power projection platform. And we have to invest in that, Senator.”
TUBERVILLE: “Thank you—an investment in our soldiers, that’s what, I think, that’s what a lot of them are looking for. Recently, Secretary Hegseth has directed the dismantling of the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System. This is core of a slow and heavily bureaucratic acquisition process. In your role as Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, this change will largely be your responsibility. How will you ensure this rapid and agile system provide combat capabilities to the warfighter and allow us to keep pace with our adversaries.”
MAHONEY: “Senator, you hit it right on the head. And, if confirmed, as the Chairman of the JROC, and part of the reform process, one of my goals and priorities will be to make sure that we have end to end systems treatment of requirements to meaningful resources. And with acquisition built into that. So, if it’s three gears moving, they all need to be engaged with each other and you can only move at the slowest gear. We need to quicken all those gears requirements, acquisition resources and sync with them so that we get a good product. As Chairman of the JROC, if confirmed, we used to say cost, schedule, and performance as the three parameters that we would look at a program. I think we ought to move it to schedule or speed, cost, and performance. And I will make that a priority, Senator.”
TUBERVILLE: “Great. Sounds like you have a plan. Organization is key to winning. And you seem to be up on that. You know, one of the many things the United States Marine Corps does better than any other service is the ability to pass an audit. While not directly responsible for an audit, what lessons do you bring from the Marine Corps that will help the Department of War achieve a clean audit for the first time in many years?”
MAHONEY: “Senator, you already said it, you know, organization is the key to victory, and I’m very proud of the fact that the Marine Corps had two clean opinions. You heard it here first. We’ll have a third one. And to the extent that I can influence it, I will press to move the Department along in coming out of disclaimer and getting a clean audit.”
Senator Tommy Tuberville represents Alabama in the United States Senate and is a member of the Senate Armed Services, Agriculture, Veterans’ Affairs, HELP and Aging Committees.
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