It was an honor to host US Deputy Secretary of Defense Dr. Kathleen Hicks at Stanford\u2019s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation. (Think of the Deputy Secretary of Defense as the Chief Operating Officer of a company \u2013 but in this case the company has 3 million employees (~1.4 million active duty, 750,000 civilians, ~800,000 in the National Guard and Reserves.)