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NATIONAL GUARD ON-THE-RECORD TELEPHONIC MEDIA ROUNDTABLE

JUNE 7, 2022

TOPIC SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS

National Guard Cyber 

Shield 2022

▪ Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard Neely, Adjutant General of 

Illinois and Commander of the Illinois National Guard and a 

Master Cyber Space Officer.

▪ Mr. George Battistelli, exercise director and Deputy Chief 

Information Officer, ARNG

▪ Army Lt. Col. Jeffrey Fleming (ILARNG), exercise Officer in 

Charge.

▪ Army Lt. Col. Carla Raisler (KYARNG), exercise Training 

Officer

▪ Army Capt. Cumah Blake (MNARNG), exercise Staff Judge 

Advocate

Introduction:

Our nation, states, communities, corporations and institutions are under attack each and every day; but 

rather than bombs and bullets our adversaries are using binary ones and zeros. And, just as it has for more 

than 380 years, the National Guard is playing a key role our defense.

The National Guard is conducting its annual unclassified Cyber Shield exercise June 5-17 at the Army 

National Guard Professional Education Center on Camp Joseph T. Robinson Maneuver Training Center, 

North Little Rock, Arkansas. This annual exercise began in 2007 and involves more than 800 National 

Guard Soldiers and Airmen from throughout the United States and its territories as well as partners from 

other government agencies and the private sector. 

The exercise is a result of the National Guard’s commitment to defend critical infrastructure from the 

growing threat of cyber assaults. It is conducted in an unclassified environment to allow for more 

involvement from partners outside the Department of Defense. The mission of Cyber Shield is to develop, 

train and exercise cyber forces in the areas of computer network internal defensive measures and cyber 

incident response. These capabilities facilitate National Guard Cyber Teams’ abilities to conduct missions 

to coordinate, train and assist federal, state and industry network owners that are threatened by 

cyberattack.

The focus of this year’s exercise is on the National Guard’s role in protecting U.S. Department of 

Defense computer networks. In addition to assisting outside agencies, the civilian-acquired skills that 

many cyber National Guard members possess also strengthens the military’s ability to protect the 
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military’s own networks against attack. As in defense of external networks, relationships and 

communication established outside the military, but within the bounds of operational security, are 

important in defense of the military’s computer networks.

The on-the-record telephonic media roundtable was conducted Tuesday, June 7, from 11-11:45 a.m. (EDT).

Dialogue:

[Name] [QUESTION/RESPONSE]

Mr. Wayne Hall Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, members of the media, thank you 

for joining us for today's Media Roundtable, focusing on the National 

Guard's cybersecurity mission through Exercise Shield 2022. Before we 

begin, I want to remind everyone that this event is on the record. Our 

nation states, communities, corporations and institutions are under attack 

each and every day. But rather than be. But rather than bombs and 

bullets, our adversaries are using binary ones and zeros. And just as it 

has more than 300 New Years, the National Guard is playing a key role 

in our defense. The National Guard is conducting its annual unclassified 

cyber shield exercise June 5th through 17th at the Army National Guard 

Professional Education Center on Camp Joseph Robinson, Maneuver 

Center, Training Center, North Little Rock, Arkansas. Today we have 

with us Major General richard Neely, adjutant general, Illinois National 

Guard and a master cyberspace officer. Mr. George Battistelli, exercise 

director and deputy Chief Information Officer, Army National Guard. 

Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Fleming. Illinois Army National Guard. Who 

is the exercise officer in charge. We have Lieutenant Colonel Carla 

Raisler, Kentucky National Guard, who is the exercise training officer, 

and Captain Cumah Blake from the Minnesota National Guard, who is 

exercise staff judge advocate. This roundtable will last approximately 45 

minutes. We'll begin with opening remarks and introductions from the 

panel members. Major General Neely, over to you, sir. 

Maj. Gen. Richard Neely Well. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for that introduction. So 

when we talk about cyber attacks, whether it's state sponsored, 

independent criminals. We've all seen these attacks attack not only some 

of our private infrastructure, but our critical infrastructure at every state 

and department as well as within the Department of Defense. If I look 

back to my own state of Illinois, just in the past month, the City of 

Quincy Municipality Network was hobbled by ransomware attacks. Last 

year, the Illinois Attorney General's computer networks were also 
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attacked. And as many of you are probably aware, the Illinois Board of 

Elections Network was attacked in 2016, as well as several other states. 

As a result, the Illinois National Guard has been working working 

closely with the Board of Elections in cyber defense. The National Guard 

is uniquely situated to assist with these types of attacks from outside the 

military network. Our state and federal mission, as well as our citizens, 

soldiers and airmen, bring in civilian-acquired skills that are tremendous 

to help in this regard. What isn't discussed as much is how those 

uniquenesses of the National Guard also help the federal mission of 

protecting the Department of Defense and the federal government 

networks. Those same civilian-acquired skills such as working in a 

private industry, those relationships with educational institutions, 

relationships with tech sectors such as some of the largest tech sectors in 

our country and the corporate industrial world is invaluable for our 

primary mission of protecting our own networks. Cyber Shield 2022 is 

putting the spotlight on that primary mission this year. The Department 

of Defense and the private sector need to continue to work together to 

develop cyber defense together, to share best practices in protecting our 

infrastructure. Knowing that 85% of all our critical infrastructure is 

owned in the private sector, the SolarWinds attack that was discovered in 

December of 2020 is what we refer to as the supply chain attack. Just 

demonstrating the importance of this type of collaboration. That 

sophisticated. And most likely state-sponsored, attack hit both private 

and government networks. Protecting against these attacks like this will 

also require collaboration. As with all other emergencies, it's not a good 

idea to be trading business cards in the middle of a crisis. It's all about 

planning and training together. And that's what's great about Cyber 

Shield. Cyber Shield is special because it integrates at all levels of 

government, tech, industry, law enforcement and other partners. These 

military cyber warriors have a significant advantage over their activeduty counterparts as they bring in those unique civilian acquired skills 

and experiences in addition to their military cyber training. This year's 

exercise will have 20 participants, 20 states participating, as well as 

Guam. And the private sector will also be involved, as well as some of 

our top-notch educational institutions from across our country. From the 

Department of Defense, we will have the Navy also involved, as well as 

Coast Guard from Homeland Security. We also have a special workshop 

with several of our National Guard state partnership countries as they get 

a glimpse into how we manage cyber defense operations. These 

organizations came to the table because some of our cyber warriors from 

individual states asked them to participate. This really gets to the 
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strength of the National Guard as a community-based organization and 

how we can connect to be the connective tissue between the Department 

of Defense in our communities, across our nation, to ensure that our 

nation is protected. In some cases, some of the National Guard cyber 

warriors work in the same organizations that are now participating in 

Cyber Shield. It is said no problem is solved from top down. The best 

solutions come from those who are solving it and then it's implemented 

across the organization. This is true with Cyber Shield. This exercise 

started several years ago with just a few cyber soldiers getting together to 

try to fill some training gaps. And it has evolved into it evolved into one 

of the largest unclassified cyber training exercises in the military with 

more than 800 participants. It is, it continues to evolve and we will 

continue to evolve the exercise as it threat evolves. So with that, I will 

pause for Mr. Battistelli to make a few comments about this year's cyber 

exercise. Thank you. 

George Battistelli Hey. Good morning, everybody. I'm George Battistelli. I am the deputy 

chief information officer for the Army National Guard, and I'm also the 

Cyber Shield Exercise director. So thanks to Major General Neely for 

excellent scene setting and opening comments. Really appreciate that, 

sir. Appreciate your leadership. For the last several years, we've 

experienced multiple challenges in the United States that our cyber 

adversaries have taken the opportunity to seize upon. We saw it during 

the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, where foreign attempts to 

spread disinformation were rampant in an attempt to disrupt the 

democratic process and distract and divide the American people. It also 

became a factor during the COVID-19 pandemic, where disinformation 

was again being spread. Social media has changed the way we 

communicate and consume data in that manner. It's important for us to 

continue to train our soldiers using real-world events so they're able to 

cut down the noise and focus on their mission for the exercise. And in 

the real world, we strive to achieve and maintain information advantage 

over our adversaries. For Cyber Shield 2022, we have a simulated social 

media platform on the cyber range the teams will have to pay attention to 

so they can potentially glean information or disinformation as they 

conduct their hunt, clear, defend mission. This year, our scenario is a 

SolarWinds-like supply chain event, where the teams will simulate a 

response on the Department of Defense Information Network, also 

referred to as the DoDIN. In past events, we focused more on election 

support or critical infrastructure protection. However, once SolarWinds 
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kicked off, and to a lesser extent Log4J, it became clear that we needed 

to focus on responding to an event on the DoD. This is because the 

authorities are different depending on what status our soldiers are in, 

whether they're in a state active duty status, Title 32 or Title 10, which is 

why having a JAG on our leadership staff is critical. In addition, the 

incident response toolkits are different for a response in the DoD and 

versus a state active duty response. For example, some open source tools 

that are readily available and used on a state active duty response are not 

approved for use in the DoD. As Major General Neely stated in the 

National Guard, we have some of the most talented cyber warriors in the 

Department of Defense. This is because many of our soldiers on orders 

for this event are industry leaders in their respective field when not on 

orders. I am always amazed by the breadth and depth of knowledge these 

soldiers bring and their thirst for continued knowledge. I learn something 

every year and I am always confident to come back. I feel confident that 

these are the teams defending our cyber landscape. They understand the 

environment. They protect the boundaries, and they defend it from all 

adversaries. With that, I'll turn it over to the soldier who's making this 

operation go, the exercise. OIC [Officer in Charge], who I give the 

commander's intent to and he moves out swimmingly. Lieutenant 

Colonel Jeff Fleming. 

Lt. Col. Jeffrey Fleming Hey. Good morning. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Fleming from the 

Illinois Army National Guard. And I'm serving as this year's officer in 

charge of Cyber Shield. 

Lt. Col. Carla Raisler Good morning. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Carla Raisler with the Kentucky 

National Guard. This is my 6th year participating in Cyber Shield. I've 

had several positions, including team leader assessment. And this year, 

I'm the training officer responsible for educating and training our 

information assurance workforce. 

Capt. Cumah Blake Good morning. I'm Captain Cumah Blake with the Minnesota National 

Guard and serving as the staff judge advocate for the exercise. My role is 

to help implementing the legal considerations into the planning of the 

exercise. And during the exercise I provide technical oversight of the 

judge advocate participating and advising the teams. 

Wayne Hall Thank you all. So with that, we would respectfully ask that all 

participants please state their name and affiliation before asking a 

question; and being respectful of time, we ask that media please keep to 
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one question with a follow up. We will allow for additional questions 

should time permit. If we are unable to address your question, we will 

take note of it and get to get you an answer as soon as we can following 

the roundtable. All right. So first, we'll go to CNN. Ellie Kauffman, are 

you with us? Do you have a question? Ellie. All right. Not hearing 

anything. We'll move on to CBS. Eleanor Watson, are you with us? And 

you have a question? 

Eleanor Watson Wayne I'm here. I just have a quick question on the workshop with the 

State Partnership Program, which, um, which countries are participating 

in that workshop? And can you give me a little more details about the 

workshop? Thank you. 

Wayne Hall So. Yes, so I'm going to go to Lieutenant Colonel Fleming. Sir, would 

you mind addressing that question? 

Lt. Col. Jeffrey Fleming Yes. Thank you. So the SPP, as you can imagine, with the global events 

going on the RSVPs are still flowing in. So, we don't have a final 

confirmed list of attendees yet. But what that workshop generally 

consists of we bring in speakers from across the DoD or some of our 

civilian partners and just kind of discuss with them and show them this is 

how we conduct a cyber exercise. These are the things we include. We 

talk to them about a little bit how we get to the planning of it; different 

features that we have at it; and then talk about the execution of the event 

itself. And then the follow-on or end of that is we'll actually walk them 

around and show them some of the stuff that we can so they can get 

eyes-on and generate additional questions so that they can go home and 

work to replicate this with their state partner back in their own forces. 

Wayne Hall Thank you. 

Maj. Gen. Richard Neely If I could just add to that, I think what's important about this workshop is 

so many times the United States looked at as some of the best for cyber 

security and cyber defense and what it does with our state partners, it 

really provides a new level of confidence when they come in and see not 

only the workshop but again, the unclassified collaboration that occurs at 

Cyber Shield. I think that's the most important ingredient there. When 

they go back and try to implement this collaboration, this planning and 

training that Jeff mentioned just a few minutes ago. Thank you. 
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Wayne Hall Thank you. All right. So we'll go over to next question, ABC News Matt 

Seyler, are you there and do you have a question? 

Matthew Seyler I ... No question for me. 

Wayne Hall Thank you. All right, Matt, thank you. 

George Battistelli Hey, Wayne, you're on mute. 

Wayne Hall Thank you. It wouldn't be a zoom without a mute malfunction. Steve 

Beynon from Military.com, are you online? Do you have a question? 

Steve. All right. Nothing herd. I'm going to go ahead and move on. IOCI 

Radio. Are you online? If you have a question. IOCI Radio. Kim 

Howard, are you online? Hey, moving on. WSIU Benjy Jeffords. Are 

you on line? If you have a question. Benjy. 

Benjy Jeffords I'm here. 

Wayne Hall Do you have a question, sir? 

Benjy Jeffords Not right now, I don't. 

Wayne Hall All right. Thank you. All right. We will go to C4ISRNET colin 

Demarest, are you online and do you have a question? Colin, are you 

there? Nothing heard. Kari Williams, Reserve and National Guard 

magazine. Are you online and do you have a question? 

Kari Williams Yes, I am. Thank you. I was just wondering how the command cyber 

readiness inspection program that relates to the training and things going 

on over the next few days with Cyber Shield or if it does at all. 

George Battistelli Hey, Wayne, I can take that one. So thanks for that question, Kari. One 

of the things that we've looked at for Cyber Shield specifically is how do 

we continue to to harden our enterprise? And we look at the command's 

cyber readiness inspection. I look at that almost as a compliance-based 

inspection, whereas for for Cyber Shield, we're really trying to train the 

defensive cyber operations personnel. So while they're looking at 

whether the devices are hardened as they're going through all of their 

scanning and they're trying to determine where the boundary is and 

where they're protecting, I think the command cyber readiness inspection 

is just a little bit different because the command cyber readiness 
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inspection is really some of your cyber hygiene. And while we do have a

cyber hygiene team in the the Army National Guard, this event is really 

more focused on training our defensive cyber operations warrior so that 

they when they respond to an event, they they understand what the 

requirements are over. 

Wayne Hall Thank you, anybody else like to add to that?

Lt. Col. Carla Raisler This is Colonel Raisler. So when we talk about with the training, we 

have 15 different courses, as Mr. Battistelli mentioned. We're working 

towards our being able to improve the ability for our cyber warriors to 

respond to incident responses, either on the DoDIN or in a civilian 

capacity. Those classes are industry-level courses such as security-plus, 

incident responder handler’s courses, teaching them the basics on when 

they get on the network. What type of things are they looking for and 

how can they respond? 

Wayne Hall Thank you, ma'am. Next, we'll move on to WAND TV. Caryn Eisert, are 

you online and do you have a question? Caryn. All right. Nothing heard. 

Alexandria, Alexandria. Kelly from NextGov, you online? Do you have 

a question? 

Alexandria Kelly Hi. I'm on mute. Nothing for me right now. Thank you. 

Wayne Hall All right. Thank you. KMOX Radio Audacy. Megan Lynch, are you 

online? Do you have a question? 

Megan Lynch I am. Yes. Thank you very much. I do have a question. You know, when 

we're talking about the SolarWinds incursion, we're talking about an 

incident of a commonly-used software. So I'm curious for Cyber Shield, 

when you're running through these exercises, what are you looking at 

from the time frame? Maybe of the point a glitch is discovered and 

someone tries to take advantage of that to the time. You have to keep 

them from executing that on a system. 

Wayne Hall Mr. Battistelli. 

George Battistelli I'll take the first part of that and then I'll kick it over to Jeff Fleming and 

team for the second part of that. And so thanks Megan. A lot of times 

what we tell people, especially for any kind of cyber incident response, is 

that the first thing you want to do is take a deep breath. A lot of times the 
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event has already happened. We are really detecting it after the event has 

happened. And so we are at that point trying to determine what the scope 

and the scale is. And so now the difference for us specifically in 

defensive cyber operations is that we're always on defense and we have 

to be right 100% of the time, and the adversary only has to be right one 

time to get through. And so as far as the technical pieces and parts of 

how we're doing that, I'd kick that over to Lieutenant Colonel Fleming 

and team and let them talk further on that over. 

Lt. Col. Jeffrey Fleming Yeah. Hey, thanks, George. Um, so as far as the specifics. So the 

scenario evolves every year depending on guidance from Cyber 

Command, National Guard Bureau and the events taking place in the 

world. So this year specifically is, as we said earlier, it is a supply chain 

type attack. And the the blue teams this year will be walking into a 

network and they know they're showing up for incident response. So 

we've done some different things in years past, but this year they're 

showing up, hey, you know, you know, something's happened and they 

need to show up and respond to it. One of the great things that has 

evolved over the years from some of the experts that are here is the team 

doing the adversary emulation ... in playing the bad guys is very keen to 

make sure the blue teams all come away with something. We understand 

across the different 54, there's varying skill levels and experience levels. 

And so the group that we call the red team, they are, they go into the blue 

team cells and help them out. So to your point about how are they 

finding these things and different things like that? So for our newer 

teams that struggle, we have what we call a purple day. And so the red 

team will go in there and show them, hey, this is this is where the attack 

started. This is where you should have caught it. These are some of the 

different ways you can have seen it, and then they'll talk through them if 

time is available to do some of the remediation for those events. 

Megan Lynch Fantastic. 

Wayne Hall Anybody else have anything to add to that? 

Megan Lynch Sorry. 

Wayne Hall No go ahead. Do you have a follow up? 

Megan Lynch Yeah, I was going to ask a follow up. You know, you mentioned the 

world events. Obviously, we can't ignore what's going on in Russia, in 
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Ukraine right now with Russia. So, you know, what are your teams 

looking at that and, you know, watching what's happening there as 

instructive in in what you're doing for this exercise? 

George Battistelli Absolutely so. So I can answer that. And then I'd like to to push it over to 

two Major General Neely to get some comments on that as well. But 

every year when we plan the exercise where we're planning the exercise, 

we planned it about a year out. And so we're looking at events that are 

happening at that point. And really by the time we get to the exercise, it's 

almost obsolete because so much happens in a year in cyber as we're 

we're trying to to plan for these things. But we're all watching what's 

what's happening in Ukraine and, you know, obviously keeping abreast 

of that. But this exercise is specifically focused on defensive cyber 

operations capability. And so we're really looking at defense of the 

DoDIN, and that could be defense from anywhere, whether it's, you 

know, foreign, domestic, somebody who stumbles on to the wrong thing 

and starts to send a storm towards the network and, you know, something 

that's misconfigured. And so we're certainly keeping an eye on it, but it's 

not something that we've specifically built our scenario around this year. 

But I'd like to send it over to Major General Neely for a state perspective. 

Over. 

Maj. Gen. Richard Neely Thank you. Mr. Battistelli those are excellent comments. And I would 

just add to that is I really you know, what we're watching from afar 

occurring in Ukraine is something that's bringing us all together. And it 

really highlights Cyber Shield for us because what we've seen on, you 

know, our nation do is is really begin to collaborate at a much higher 

level. Rather, it's the release of information. And we talk a little bit about 

misinformation and disinformation early on as Mr. Battistelli in his open 

comments. But it helps us to become to have this awareness that we need 

to collaborate more closely state, local, private sector, federal 

government, Department of Defense, all of us have to be talking about 

these attacks and where these are coming from. And we know that are 

rather we're talking about a zero-day issue or we're talking about statesponsored attacks on our critical infrastructure structure. The more that 

we're aware and the more that we're communicating and the more we're 

knocking down disinformation and misinformation, we're all better off. 

And this really brings us together. I know my Department of Innovation 

and Technology from the state of Illinois, you know, we work very 

closely with them on a regular basis, rather, as I mentioned earlier, with 

the election security. But we also work with them whenever there is one 
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of these ransomware attacks, they may respond to it. But we maintain 

our awareness. We try to bring in best practices and help. And that 

relationship all began at a Cyber Shield; and I cannot emphasize, you 

know, the greatness of coming together at one of these exercises and 

bringing those other entities together to work together at one of these 

events. And so I think we can all take a page from what's happening 

today and continuing to develop our collaboration. Thank you. 

Wayne Hall Thank you, sir. Next, we'll go over to I'm sorry. 

Lt. Col. Jeffrey Fleming Supposed to say I just had one more. 

Wayne Hall Oh, please. By all means. 

Lt. Col. Jeffrey Fleming Yes. So one of the things you know is it again, was mentioned earlier 

about that, you know, this is the most professional group that that brings 

extra civilian skills to that. So to address those unknown threats that 

haven't popped up yet or haven't been discovered, as well as the evolving 

threats from wherever they come from. Our red team has some of the 

best folks in the industry, and they're able to recruit additional better 

folks to come challenge our blue teams. So I can't go too far into this 

year because I want the blue teams to get too much information ahead of 

time. But last year, one of our red teamers actually wrote their own piece 

of software to throw against the blue teams. So something that they 

would have had to find from scratch that wasn't out there. And 

additionally, last year, they brought a bug bounty hunter who had proof 

of concept code for a zero-day that he was able to test our blue teams 

against. So we do provide them a world-class set of threat emulators to 

challenge them at the highest levels to prepare for those those advanced 

threats. 

Wayne Hall All right. Thank you, sir. Next, we'll go to Dave Dahl with WTAX 

Radio. Are you on the line, sir? Do you have a question? 

NGB-PA (for Dave Dahl) Hey, this. Dave Yocum, I'm going to speak for Mr. Dahl here. I have a 

question. Good morning. It's Dave Dahl from WTAX Radio in 

Springfield, Illinois. General Neely, can you please recap what's 

happened good and bad, in cybersecurity since last year's event? Thank 

you so much. 
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Maj. Gen. Richard Neely Well, that's a broad statement, but thanks for that, David. Thanks for 

joining us, as always. You know, I think the Ukraine, Ukraine war that's 

going on with Russia attacking Ukraine, I think is, as I just highlighted a 

few minutes ago, the collaboration that I've seen from the ways CISA 

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Security Agency has as pulled 

together is is really a highlight that I've watched over this this last year. 

And you know, my working with the both here in the state of Illinois and 

at the federal level, I've seen the collaboration become much closer and 

much tighter with whether it's information sharing or if it's preparedness 

awareness of the new zero-days and that there's some things that have 

come out policy wise over the last several years that are now we're 

starting to see take effect. That I think is really helping us all to better 

understand from a policy, a legal perspective as well as more of a focus 

on our critical infrastructure, help us all to have a better awareness and, 

and increase our security overall of our nation. That, again, I made 

reference to 85% of our critical infrastructure is owned by private sector. 

So we we have to when we talk about, you know, power or water 

systems that we depend on, transportation that we depend on. So much 

of this is not owned by the government. And so we have to depend on 

others to ensure that their their cybersecurity is up to snuff, too, for life 

and safety of those. Hopefully that helps. 

Wayne Hall Thank you, sir. All right. So next, we'll go to ABC-7 out of Chicago. 

Jeff, Markchese. If I've got that name incorrect I apologize. Are you 

online or do you have a question? Jeff. Hey, nothing herd so I'm going to 

go ahead and move on to Matthew Whitlock from WICS. Are you 

online? Do you have a question, sir? Matthew. Nothing heard. I'm going 

to go on to WMAY Radio. Jim Leach, are you online and do you have a 

question, sir? Jim. Nothing heard. We'll move on to GLBT Public Radio, 

Charlie, are you online or do you have a question? Well moving right 

along here. All right. With that, I'm going to circle back are there. I'm 

sorry, KATV Channel 7. I don't think you have your audio on, but are 

you online and do you have a question? All right. Nothing heard. I'll start 

to circle back. Are there anybody is there anybody on line who didn't 

have a question earlier? Who would would like to ask a question? 

Nothing heard. All right. One last chance. Is there anybody else online 

who would like to ask a question? 

Kari Williams It’s Kari Williams with AmeriForce Media. I just had one more question, 

if that's okay. 
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Wayne Hall Yes, Kari, go ahead, please. 

Kari Williams Yeah. So I know just within the last couple of weeks or so, the Iowa 

National Guard held a cyber defense competition as part of its state 

partnership program with Kosovo. So how do you see like national scale 

events like Cyber Shield, kind of trickle down to training at the state 

level? Is that what they did with Iowa and Kosovo kind of an example of 

that? Or are there other ways that you see that see kind of takeaways 

from Cyber Shield go down to the state level? 

Wayne Hall I think we have lots of folks who can address that question. I'd like to 

start with General Neely. 

Maj. Gen. Richard Neely Hey, thank you for that question, Kari. I appreciate that. You know, our 

state partnership program and I've been involved with it for many years, 

nearly 30-year partnership with Poland, and we've watched it really 

evolve throughout those 30 years. And and early on it was about, you 

know, formation, marching in OCS classes, officer candidate courses and 

NCO courses and then really developing some of these military to really 

be part of NATO and other other professional organizations really 

bringing up their level of maturity as a military organization. And but 

here, more recently, there's a significant interest in cyber. And again, it 

goes back to the United States, does a great job of how we try to 

collaborate, how do we try to get after cyber defense. Mr. Battistelli 

discussed it earlier about, you know, you have to be 100% right or any 

hole in the net is going to be be taken advantage of. And so we're 

constantly looking at how to work that and that our partners from our 

state partnership programs come to to really see, you know, what we can 

share. Again, it's this unclassified exercises is an excellent example of 

how we collaborate and how we work together. And so many it so much 

of work that we can share with our partners really highlighting the 

unique, maybe some of the unique steps that we might take. As Colonel 

Fleming mentioned earlier, that you know, how the red team might 

attack the blue team that's trying to defend and understanding those 

techniques that we might use and as well as, even, again, those privatesector unique, unique acquired skills that we bring to that fight. Those 

are things that I think many of our partners are looking for. How to how 

do we do that? And so there's a there's a lot of good examples of where 

we'll continue to work with, I'm working very closely with, I just got 

done spending several days with my Polish counterpart that in charge of 

cyber and they're you know they're they're doing their best to make sure 
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that that they're coming up to speed with the rest of the world because 

they know cyber defense is really the one of the most significant threats 

that they have right now. So hopefully that helps out a little bit. 

Wayne Hall Thank you, sir. Mr. Battistelli, do you have anything to add before I go 

back to the team? 

George Battistelli Yes, certainly so. Unfortunately, I just lost video. Thanks for for Zoom, 

but as long as you can still hear me, I'm good to go. So you have me on 

audio? 

Wayne Hall Yes, we got you. Good. 

George Battistelli Okay. Excellent. So one of the things I would say to that is that I 

appreciate the comments there from Major General Neely. We we 

envision at the National Guard Bureau that the Cyber Shield exercise is 

the national-level cyber exercise for the National Guard. One of the 

things that continues to happen is that we also have regional exercises. 

So Cyber Yankee is an exercise held in the Northeast corridor where a 

lot of the northeastern states get together and they work out through their 

cyber pieces in parts there. And then we have a lot of state-specific 

exercises. One of the big challenges that we have is that the National 

Guard we always get it done. We always make things happen. Whether 

we're under-resourced, undermanned, we continue to complete the 

mission. And that's become one of our challenges as we've seen the 

uptick with all of the cyber exercise and the demand signal from cyber, 

it's always funding. And so we build in and we fund the Cyber Shield 

exercise. But one of the things that we're continuing to figure out is what 

the future of these cyber exercises looks like from a funding perspective. 

Because a lot of times when you're using the range, you're bringing in 

personnel, these things are expensive. And so we always have our 

fiduciary responsibilities that we're taking care of as well. But I'd be 

remiss if I didn't pass it over to the panel to get their input also over. 

Wayne Hall Roger. Thank you, sir. I'm going to go to the panel over at the at the 

PEC. And I want to start with Captain Blake to ask that question. And it's 

from the Judge Advocate, Staff judge Advocate approach the to the 

piece. 

Capt. Cumah Blake Yeah. I think the Cyber Shield exercise is a great model for to bring 

down to the states and especially with their partnerships. And the reason 
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I say that is here at the Cyber Shield exercise is not just the cyberspace 

operators. There is an integrated team. And one of those aspects, for 

example, is the judge advocates, the attorneys, that are advising the 

teams on different legal considerations. And so when you do this at a 

smaller scale with your partnership, you're showing them the model of 

not only doing cyberspace operation in a vacuum, but how do you 

integrate with other members of your team that support and make those 

missions successful? So I think this is a good model that the states can 

use, especially with their partnerships. 

Wayne Hall Thank you, ma'am. Next. 

Lt. Col. Jeffrey Fleming Yeah. So. So one of the biggest challenges we have is across our 54 

states and territories that all have their own ways of doing things and left 

and right limits that they've been given. Additionally, they share a 

similar amount or larger amount of state partners all over the world who 

again have different limitations, capability sets, etc.. So as Captain Blake 

said, it's a good national set. It's amazing to be back in person this year 

because one of the things we've lost having the virtual of the last couple 

of years is that ability for everybody to come here to this national level, 

exercise and share ideas. And that is one of the you know, the unspoken 

and really almost the benefits of bringing everybody together is if we 

have a state that is excelling in one area or has figured out how to work 

with their attorneys to get through some of the red tape, to get something 

done, whether it's getting private sector top-level clearances and 

integrated into state cyber task forces or organizations, or collaborating 

with state partners in getting them, you know, on state networks and 

doing combined cyber missions. So if one state's able to do that and 

figure it out, they can come here to talk about it and share it. And then 

the rest of the states that have an appetite to do that can take those 

lessons learned, take those templates and bring them back to their own 

states and into their state partners to go to do some of that furtherance of 

ideas and share those ideas across the force. 

Wayne Hall Thank you, sir. Colonel Raisler, anything else to add? 

Lt. Col. Carla Raisler Yes, I think one of the aspects when it comes to partnership and learning 

is the actually the staff here. So the staff works together for the entire 

year to build the exercise out. And the vast majority of the staff at this 

event come year after year. And so we have built our relationships with 

the different states that we have staff members from. But it also allows 
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us to take the information that we learned from building the exercise 

back to our state and work with our partners there, either state partners or 

our SPPs, to recreate the events and the training model for them. 

Wayne Hall Thank you, ma'am. Before we go to closing remarks, we have time for 

one more question, if there's anybody else who would like to ask a 

question. Anybody else with an additional question. Okay. I've not heard 

anything. So with that, like to just let folks know we dropped a link to a 

story on National Guard.mil in the chat window here 

(https://ngpa.us/20087). That story is up. It's the first story out of cyber 

shield 2022 that you can pull up and resource as well. As you move 

forward. And with that, I'm going to go ahead and I'll start with General 

Neely down through Mr. Battistelli and then the leadership panel for any 

closing remarks. General Neely, over to you, sir. 

Maj. Gen. Richard Neely Okay. Hey, thanks, Wayne. Knowing to all those who joined us today, 

thanks for taking time out of your busy schedules to join us for this 

important media roundtable on Cyber Shield 2022. As you can hear an 

enthusiasm of our panelists and those joining you today, we really are 

big believers in the concept of how we collaborate and share this 

information with cyber defense. And as our nation becomes and our 

world becomes more of a dangerous place in cyberspace, it's more 

important than ever to continue this this level of collaboration. Secondly, 

I'd like to thank the staff for putting this together. And, you know, most 

everybody with dealing with Cyber Shield is a volunteer. That's an 

additional duty. Everybody from Mr. Battistelli down to Colonel 

Fleming and the rest of the team, there are all volunteers who have 

continued year after year to make sure that cyber shield continues to 

move forward as a priority because they are believers in it. As Colonel 

Fleming stated earlier, having it back in person this year is a significant 

advantage to be able to share those best practices across the National 

Guard and continue for everybody to bring our game up again, 20 states 

and the territory of Guam this year participating. So with that, thank you 

for your time and I'll pause here and turn over to Mr. Battistelli. 

George Battistelli Thank you, sir. Always appreciate your support for the exercise and your 

leadership and your perspective. So just to kind of close out this year, I 

made some notes on some things I wanted to make sure that that we 

covered. And so we already have about 500 packs on site. And in Little 

Rock at Camp Robinson for the exercise. So as you can see, the panel. 

They are all on site ar Little Rock. And so very different from years past 
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where we've gone virtual and we've gone hybrid. Everybody is excited to 

get back together. We're actually doing an in-person distinguished visitor 

day on 14 June this year. We haven't been able to do that in the past. And 

so this is really where the adjutants generals, the different leadership, get 

to see what their soldiers have accomplished and to see the goodness of 

the exercise and to see just how technical their soldiers are and what 

they're learning. And we like to bring the DVs [Designated Visitors] 

down, and we've got a great threat brief this year. And so we feel like 

this continues to push the envelope forward, because when we look at the 

leaders of the different states and Major General Neely is a perfect 

example. We like to to make sure that they understand exactly what their 

their cyber soldiers are doing, because there are there are some adjutant 

generals who have grown up that don't really understand the ones and 

zeros of cyber and what their soldiers are bringing to the fight. And so 

we want to make sure that we continue to educate. And so cyber is an 

education, just like data is an education. So years ago when we said we 

wanted cyber. Nobody knew what flavor of cyber we wanted, whether it 

was offensive, defensive, cyber protection team, cyber hygiene 

assessment team. We're starting to get into that with data now where 

everybody wants data, but we don't know what we want to do with it. 

And so we want to build on events like Cyber Shield, and we continue to 

offer that training not just to the soldiers but also to our senior leaders so 

that everybody understands. Because if you put me in charge of an 

aviation crew, I would have no idea what I was doing because that's not 

my background and not my skill set. And so we call on a lot of the 

adjutant generals and a lot of the leaders in the Army National Guard and 

the Air National Guard to be subject matter experts in a wide plethora of 

areas. And so it's our job to to make sure that we continue to push that 

information up and help understand and break down some of these 

technical problems to a non-technical senior leadership staff. And I am 

part of that non-technical senior leadership staff, but all of the technical 

folks that are sitting there on the Cyber Shield panel, and so I would push 

it over to them for closing comments because I really feel like they're the 

engine that makes it all go over. 

Wayne Hall Thank you, sir. And with that, we'll go back to the leadership team. I 

would like to start off with Captain Blake. 

Capt. Cumah Blake Yeah. I would just like to close. Like this exercise isn't just about 

training up our cyberspace operators an opportunity also, for example, to 

train up our attorneys, our judge advocates, where they're learning the 
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language of cyberspace during this exercise and what our operators do. 

So they're bringing their expertise, but learning the expertise from our 

cyberspace operators and combining those to make the teams more 

effective and efficient. So they're coming here, they're learning new 

skills, new areas of where to apply the law, taking that back home and 

giving it back to their states and also the operations that they do. So this 

exercise is not just beneficial to the individual cyber space operations, 

but the different sections that are supporting those operations and 

collaborating and being part of the team. 

Wayne Hall Thank you. Lieutenant Colonel Raisler. 

Lt. Col. Carla Raisler Thank you. And while this exercise is based on being able to defend the 

confidentiality, integrity and availability of our networks, it's also 

readiness. And by bringing these service members and providing them 

the industry level training that we provide them, we increase and 

improve the readiness of our force. 

Wayne Hall Thank you, Lieutenant Colonel Fleming. Over to you, sir. 

Lt. Col. Jeffrey Fleming Yes. Thank you. And so, as Lieutenant Colonel Raisler was saying is, 

yes, we do. We provide readiness for our federal mission. We provide 

readiness for the agents, general and the governors to protect the local 

networks across all of our different mission sets. It's you know, I'm 

merely to the OIC, but we have a staff here, too. And by another 50 of 

even more technical expertise than most people can imagine to put this 

exercise on. And as General Neely said, many of us are M-Day, we do 

not have a full time assignment to this exercise. We're here because of 

the passion of want to see it move forward. So that's why this exercise 

gets better and better every year. But thank everybody for their time for 

coming today and definitely encourage you to continue to follow the the 

press releases as the exercise moves forward, especially as we switch 

from our training week to our exercise week when the stress level goes 

up just a little bit for some of the defensive teams. And thank you. 

Wayne Hall Thank you, sir. And with that, I'd like to thank our participants this 

morning and our guests for joining us. For members of the media, if you 

have additional questions, please feel free to contact us by email. Thank 

you very much. That concludes today's event. 
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[End of Audio]

Duration: 47 minutes

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