Mark Esper

“In many cases, the reason why our child development centers are not at full capacity is that we have an insufficient number of providers.”

“We may be a little bit late - we are late - coming to the recognition that we are in a strategic competition with China.”

“Our legacy platforms have served us well for decades, but we're running out of upgrades that will keep us ahead. Technology is changing too fast, and our enemies are too adaptable.”

“I raised the standards on recruiting.”

“I've got a lot of military kids who are not in on-base child care, and they should be. So it's things like that I'm going to change, either from a funding perspective or a policy perspective.”

“The goal is to deter war, and this can only be done with a strong, modern, and ready military that has overmatch in all domains.”

“When I went to West Point, I was there with cadets from 50 other states and territories. Cadets from other countries, and you learn all of these things about our country, about our culture, our heritage, our ethnicity. At the end of the day, you come back, we all wear green, and we all consider ourselves an Army.”

“We do not want war with Iran.”

“We are at war, if you will, in the cyber domain now, constantly battling countries, such as Russia or China, who are trying to do everything from steal our technology to influence our elections to put out disinformation about the United States.”

“I felt that I had, again, great freedom to do what I wanted to do. I felt that I was trusted to train my soldiers, and I was accountable for it.”

“The biggest challenge is clearly China, in the years 2035 and beyond. I mean, the size of the country, its economy, and everything - they're - it is a big strategic competitor for the entire Department of Defense and country.”

“We certainly have the best special operations forces in the world and know how to do counterterrorism extremely well.”

“I went to war for this country. I served overseas for this country.”

“The Army I grew up in was focused on high-intensity conflict against a peer competitor called the Soviet Union.”

“The bottom line is this: in an era of mounting fiscal challenges and competing demands, we must actively seek ways to free up time, money, and manpower to invest back into our top priorities.”

“It is an honor of a lifetime to be appointed secretary of defense and to lead the greatest military in history.”

“Now, 'high-intensity conflict' is a fancy word for saying tanks on tanks, aircraft shooting each other out of the sky, a great deal of violence at a level we haven't seen since probably the Korean War or World War II, where you have big armies facing off against one another.”

“In the Army, I grew up with this view that you're asked to do anything that is illegal or immoral or unethical, then that would be the point at which you have to consider resignation, and you'd be willing to do that.”

“President Trump has called on other nations to do more, and they have responded. By the end of 2020, our NATO allies will spend an additional $100 billion on defense, an unprecedented increase that will make the alliance stronger.”

“I've been studying China for quite some time now, and I'm big on China as well. And I think we need to be very concerned about Chinese technology getting into our systems or the systems of our allies.”