Name: Powering National Security
Uploaded: 2025-10-16
Duration: 16 min 54 s

With an annual revenue of approximately $7.5 billion, SAIC Inc. (Science Applications International Corporation) is one of the largest tech contractors for the U.S. government, with a mission to strengthen and transform America’s national security and critical infrastructure. Against the backdrop of President Trump’s proposed Golden Dome for America, Toni Townes-Whitley, ranked number 82 on the 2025 MPW list, joins us to discuss working with the government to keep Americans safe, and the continually evolving landscape of emerging technology.

Powering National Security

Conferences

Tony, we are speaking about national security at the same time that we just saw this historic ceasefire agreement between Israel and Gaza. At the same time, I think we all know that over the last few years we have seen a rise in global conflict, not just in the Middle East but elsewhere as we just heard. And we've also seen that the nature of war warfare has has changed. So I want to start by just asking you to tell all of us in the room here what do we need to be thinking about, what do you see as the biggest shift, um, you know, both the rise and again just the changes in how wars are fought today. So what we're seeing initially as you've mentioned a couple of the regional conflicts, you can't look at the situation in Israel, the situation, uh, quite frankly in North Korea, around the world, the various regional conflicts throughout Europe and the Middle East, and, and not see the effect of aerial warfare, just the absolute modernization speed and scale of aerial warfare. We see the introduction of various emerging technologies like hypersonics, electronic warfare, different kinds of capabilities around uh aerial systems, and it immediately challenges the speed and scale with which the US has traditionally thought about its perimeter defense. Those areas where we had large seas or oceans between us and adversaries are no longer the boundary conditions that we have experienced. We have adversaries that operate in multiple domains that go beyond land, sea, and air, but cyber and space. So in a multi-domain environment, our ability to understand the threat, see the threat, react. Is one that is more connected by data and the ability to integrate data across so many different nodes, uh, and being able to do that in a predictive way. How we build whether it be munitions or weapons systems changed by digital engineering and different digital forces and opportunities and so with a company like SAIC we've for 57 years kind of been at the intersection of commercial technology being introduced to very austere and difficult complex mission environments and we have to acknowledge that we are also um. Engaged with a peer adversary that is operating on multiple modes. Not just in terms of militaristic, economic, um, political. And and cyber and all the various attacks, and I think one of the things that probably keeps us up at night in the national defense world is the fact that our adversary can use their entire industrial base. They leverage every aspect of their industrial base. Some of our industrial base, what we call our defense industrial base has grown anachronistic over time, has aged with legacy capability as we introduce new commercial technologies, and we haven't really seen the urgency of the signal yet. That we need to in fact enlist all of our industrial base. In fact, I think I wear this bracelet. Many of my team does, it's not an exciting bracelet, so it's not out there for your uh purchase for those of you who are on the, you know, on the bizarre floor there, but um. WID TIW, which I pulled that bracelet from another phenomenal leader, Alexis Bonnell from the Air Force Research Lab, but she had everyone wearing the bracelet. WID TIW says, would I do this in war? The urgency that she was holding her team accountable that make every decision as if you were doing this in a war environment. The balloon has gone up. How do we, because there's things we do as a country that are amazing when we've got a threat right in front of us. The question is, how do you keep that pace, that urgency, that prioritization when the threat may be a bit diffused or you don't have a clear sense of timing. Um, you touched on this a bit just talking about data. I think we still, we kind of we think warfare, we think missiles, kinetic warfare. Just real briefly explain what SAIC does, has been doing for a long time, and then I want to get to what's changing today. Yeah, so for a long time we've talked about bringing more technology. Uh, into and moving, if you will, the way we think about national security, both our critical infrastructure as well as defense and the intel space with more emerging technologies around AI obviously which we call sort of operational AI that is AI for the battlefield, if you will, for the war fighter. Uh, but, but data, um, data integration, data migration, cloud, cloud-based, secure cloud-based capabilities, digital engineering, uh, robotics, and, and all things that I know people are tracking on the electronic, I'm sorry, on the tech front. I think we see an equation evolving at SAIC. Because of our legacy, the equation says that to operate moving forward in the current environment with which we have to not only protect the United States but its allies as well and go in coalition environments, we have to have enough mission experience to know what a great mission outcome looks like. You have to have enough digital experience and technology to know what works in different mission environments and what we're solving for in a deductive way. And you've got to know how to integrate those two because legacy, we're not gonna walk away from all of our legacy platforms and capabilities, but how do you introduce new? And then you have to add to that an ecosystem. I would argue that the words that we use are even anachronistic. Defense industrial base, I would suggest is transitioning to a national security innovation ecosystem. If we're going to be able to compete. And protect and do the types of work that we do out of the defense and intel sector, we have to have an ecosystem focused on national security, not just physical perimeter, but quite frankly critical infrastructure here in the US, which is as much a target as what we're used to in terms of military bases, and we have to then engage the technologies with the knowledge of the mission to build an ecosystem when we, for example, when we think about counter UAS or counter on. Unmanned aerial systems, like drone attacks were particularly on display in Ukraine. And the ability for a $10,000 drone or a $500 drone to take out an exquisite multi-million dollar system was on display. So counterattacks, counter UAS is a critical area for the Department of Defense war depending on how you reference it for national security. And yet when you look at that, when we bring a solution around that, we bring about 40 partners to the table. We bring garage startup capability all the way to a hyper scalar like a Microsoft or an AWS or others, and we're doing that because you have to be able to plug and play new technologies into existing, and that has to work in a mission environment. You've got to be able to demonstrate that outcome. So I think where SAIC feels like it's position. we have the history of the mission. We have that passion. A third of our company, uh, our veterans, and we've had a chance to engage with some of the female veterans here and we're so thankful for your service. 2/3 of my company have have some form of classified security clearance, but to operate in this new world order, it's not enough to just be a part of the ecosystem. You gotta build it. You've got to bring in companies, you gotta bring in startups, you got to engage with large players, and you gotta be able to demonstrably prove. The least sexy word right now in national security, but the most important, which is interoperability. If things can't work, imagine a coalition war fight where you've got 9 coalition partners, 9 other countries. You've got to get data to war fighters that are of different classification levels, and all the 9 countries have their own classification levels. Now we're talking about what feels like a large language model to determine how you get that data just in time and only that data that they are allowed to see by way of access. This sounds like the nerdiest example I can tell by your faces. I need to find something new. I get it. Geeky folks enjoy this. We do. But the fundamental piece of this is we can't do coalition war fighting unless data could be integrated, integrated across legacy and new, and integrated across many, many different platforms. That's why companies like SAIC exist, and that's quite frankly what gets us up in the morning. So let's make this more real. I think we've all heard about and Read about the Golden Dome missile defense system which there's an initial budget for at least 25 billion. um, can you talk a little bit about just just kind of take us through how your what your role is in this and how this kind of ecosystem approach comes into play here? Is this an opportunity for that? It is, and I think quite frankly it is, it's an integration opportunity first. It's an architecture. Because to understand Golden Dome is to understand that this country has invested in all five of those domains, whether it be air, land, sea, cyber, or space, we've invested lots of technology and capability. The issue isn't that we don't have sufficient tech. We do, we can obviously improve and move on. The issue is how do you integrate that in a golden dome environment that is by definition uh multi. Varied equation that has to be solved for across multiple domains and different kinds of technology and capabilities and so a company like SAIC can prove out pieces of that through simulation through digital twins. We can show where you're able to, as we've done with NORAD, one of the, the um uh combatant commands within the military, how you can get to a common operating picture by integrating data from multiple sources and whether that's legacy or new. And how we can understand what the continuous surveillance of that airspace looks like. We do that by also operating in what we call the LEO or the low Earth orbiting satellite world, which suggests that space is now a contested arena for for threat. We have obviously commercial space ventures that are interesting and and are important for this country, but space is also a tactical threat environment for protecting this country and protecting our coalition partners, and Golden Dome has to operate across all five of those domains with architecture that's integrated so we spend some time demonstrating, simulating, prototyping, as well as showing where we deliver that in different parts uh across the department. of Defense. And then let's go to, you know, something like FAA. Part of understanding the modernization of our airspace just as travelers, as civilian travelers, is knowing how do we surveil the US airspace, how do we protect it, and how do we use traffic control capability and modernization. So if you're going to play in the Golden Dome space, and we don't think it's a big bang, you'll hear that trust me, Golden Dome has been called everything and everyone's in it right now. It's kind of a trendy thing to talk about, but the fundamental distinctions between who's sort of playing and engaging in that space will be who can operate with an architecture that can integrate. Who can demonstrate in small packets in simulation what sort of defending defending the airspace looks like, who can create a common operating picture, and who can do that with coalition partners around the world. So we feel like we're pretty well situated, but it's not, as I said, it's not just a thrust, a single thrust. This is sort of what we do every day. I think it's in the DNA of the company. Um, I'm gonna go to you guys for questions if you have a question for Tony, please, uh, we already have one. You can go ahead and ask it now then. Uh, there's a microphone coming over to you. Locked and loaded. I didn't plan this, but it's so great to hear you. Yes, so my name is Ashley Tappin. I'm with Insignia. We're a consulting firm and we're one of the sponsors for the NPW, um. I'm curious a couple questions. One, when you talk about the anachronism that you're dealing with in this industry in the defense industry, how do you as a leader, get people to think differently and act differently so that they can speed up the the modernization of these anachronistic, uh. Sure. Infrastructures and then my second question is, um, what do you make of the of the context of calling the United States Defense Department now the Department of War? Which you're still getting used to obviously evidently you can see I'm still working through it um um I'll take that first question first. hey, um. So Look, I think one thing that we, we as a company do, but I think obviously there are many companies in our space, and we do a lot of simulation and digital twins and abilities to put a scenario, show the, uh, if you will, the acceleration of that scenario, what good can look like, how fast we can move. There's a lot of focus coming out of the department of war right now relative to speed to the war fighter, speed, speed, getting technology direct commercial tech into these important commands. One way to do to show what is slow, what is slowing the process, often it's not tech, it could be policies that have been created over time. It can be authorities that are, we have some stove pipes across our military and Intel, and so oftentimes we use simulation as a way of saying if we solve for X this is how fast we can move like reverse engineering, we need to get this quickly. Let's now look at all of the gaps across that root cause analysis. And so that's one. Even when you look at munitions and weapons systems, we've learned so much using tech. We use digital engineering to recreate the production line for the Mark 48 torpedo, the heavyweight torpedo, that it's going to be obviously critical if you think about the Indo-Pacific and long distances where we have to protect the country, but it was recreated after World War II by digital engineering, so you can use tech to recreate a munitions line, a production line. So there's a lot that we use with technology. How do I talk about DOW versus DOD? Let me just say that I think Uh, whatever we call the organization, here's what I love about, um, working in defense and I am a military brat and I've got a 3 star at home, OK, 91 year old father who is my roommate and, and he enjoys reading the National Defense Authorization Act, which is concerning. I, I'm trying to introduce him to Netflix and Hulu, but he is not there yet. So, uh, for those military in the room, I do a sit wrap or a situation report at 2100 hours every evening. Uh, with, uh, three-star retired, uh, Lieutenant General Cash McCall, who was first African American, by the way, as the Comptroller of the Army. Super proud of his 41 years. Super proud of my military family, and that's Air Force, Marine, and Navy and my family. And of course my service decision was Peace Corps. I copped out and did Peace Corps. Now I say all that to say, you know, how do we, what's important is that we, we respect the service of our service individuals that we respect the service, whatever we call the department. It's important that we respect what these individuals do and that we never lose sight of the sacrifice. Many of them are on multiple deployments in ways that I didn't experience when I was growing up. And we have a smaller group of individuals defending our country in many austere places over and over and over again. So the name we can go left or right on the name. My whole focus is support the war fighter in all that we do, our language, our actions, our resources, our budget support the warfighter. And those are great questions, thank you. Um, I want to just end on on this quick note, um, we, we had the pleasure of having Tony also speak in front of our veterans who you will all meet later and so got to hear a lot more about her dad, but thank you so much for being here sharing with us and with the veterans. Thank you, appreciate that appreciate all of this sounding. this one, thank you so much.