Robert Cardillo: The world is "owned by those who ask"
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Photo illustration: Axios Visuals. Photo: Planet Labs PBC
Robert Cardillo, the chief strategist and chairman of the board at satellite imagery firm Planet Federal, wants you to be rested and inquisitive.
- Asked in an interview with Axios what advice he'd give his younger self, he offered: "My quick answer is get more sleep. But I strongly believe the world is owned by those who ask."
- "If you keep that unasked question in your head, it's not doing anyone any good," he said. "Just the two words 'why not' or the one word 'why' can be very useful."
Why he matters: Cardillo has decades of experience in national security. He's a former director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and former deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
- He's also a familiar face at the annual GEOINT Symposium, held this year in St. Louis.
Q: When you hear "future of defense," what comes to mind?
A: What comes to my mind is that we're able to reimagine the necessity to be secure, to protect life and liberties and pursuits in a way that leverages evolving technologies.
- It has frustrated me inside government with some of the barriers that we put up to that end. Now that I'm on the other side, on the industry side, I see those barriers from a different point of view.
- I'm generally an optimist, by my nature, and I remain optimistic about the future of defense. But, boy, it takes too long, and the system just sometimes can't get out of its own way.
Q: When will wars be waged solely by robots?
A: Well, I don't want to be around, and I wonder about humanity when that happens. I'm a big fan of the term "human on the loop." I thought "human in the loop" was one too high a bar, given the speed of technology. But I remain committed to my belief that the human has to be on the loop.
- If the robots are deciding to go to war, we have a much bigger problem. When are they going to decide to stop? Why would they stop with other robots? Et cetera.
Q: What's a national security trend we aren't paying enough attention to?
A: Water. I think people obviously understand the importance of water rights and the necessity to core human existence.
- I worry that we don't think hard enough about the security and stability implications of an eroding confidence in having access to water.
Q: What region of the world should we be watching? Why?
A: I'm a big believer that India is the next big thing. I have great admiration for the leap that they are in the midst of making.
- I think India's core democratic principles will advantage it going forward, to create a successful, long-term, enduring value proposition.
Q: How many emails do you get a day, and how do you deal with them?
A: A couple hundred? I unfortunately have a number of accounts. Personal. A couple of works. One nonprofit. So that's a problem.
- How do I deal with them? I guess not well.
- I am spending more and more time unsubscribing to things. I just go, "I can't deal with this." I'll try to keep my Axios subscription, of course. Everything else is going.
Q: What's a piece of gear or tech you can't go without?
A: AirPods.
