THE PENTAGON FINDS ITS VOICE: There was a time when the Pentagon was known as “the building that speaks,” as in: “The Pentagon said today …” But lately, the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson, Dana White, has been largely AWOL from the building’s storied briefing room, having not done a formal on-camera session since late May. Two months later, it was revealed that she was under investigation by the Department of Defense Inspector General over staff complaints about her management style.

HAPPENING TODAY: This morning, Mattis will welcome his South Korean counterpart to the Pentagon with full honors on the River Entrance parade field to mark the beginning of the 50th U.S.-ROK Security Consultative Meeting. Later, Mattis and Republic of Korea Defense Minister Jeong Kyeongdoo will sign a document and take a few questions from reporters.

5,200 IS ONLY THE START: Expect more troops to deploy to the Mexico border. That was the message from Gen. Terrence O’Shaughnessy, the head of U.S. Northern Command, when questioned about the troop numbers during a visit to the Pentagon press area Tuesday. “No, no, I can tell you 5,239 is not the top line,” O’Shaughnessy said. “Anyone who gives you a number right now is uninformed because we don’t have that number. … What I can confirm is there will be [an] additional force over and above that 5,239. The magnitude of that difference, I don’t have an answer for you now because we don’t know that answer now.”

The general did shoot down reports that the Pentagon had readied the deployment of up to 14,000 service members. “I honestly don’t even know where that came from. That is not in line with what we’ve been planning.” But for now, it is unclear where the final number might fall in between that and the current figure. The other big unanswered question of President Trump’s border deployment is cost, and again O’Shaughnessy said there was little to offer so far.

“The cost is unknown at this time because as we continue to develop it will be undoubtedly a level of effort to track that. Everything that we are moving we have a cost code associated with that and so it is being tracked,” he told reporters.

ARMED AND JUDICIOUS: At least some of the deployed troops will be carrying their weapons, and O’Shaughnessy said the Pentagon is already taking precautions. “There could be incidental interaction between our military members and migrants or other personnel that might be in that area, so we are making sure that our soldiers, our Marines, are going to be fully trained in how to do that interaction,” he said. The training will include border vignettes and operational scenarios taking place at Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio, Texas.

Meanwhile, the typical rules of engagement will apply, meaning troops would have the right to defend themselves. “Let me be clear here, the U.S. military personnel that are going have very clear guidance that we’ve given them. It’s the standard rules for the use of force. It’s similar to if we were going to any location within the United States. We have these rules in place for a reason. It allows us to have a very standardized set that applies to multiple situations,” O’Shaughnessy said.

MATTIS GIVES YEMEN 30 DAYS: During his question-and-answer session at the Institute of Peace yesterday, Mattis demanded that both sides in Yemen stop fighting and start talking.  “This has got to end, we’ve got to replace combat with compromise.”

“We’re calling on all the parties, specifically the Houthis and the Arab Coalition, to meet in Sweden in November and come to a solution,” Mattis said. “Not to talk about subordinate issues, about what town they’re going to meet in or what size table is they meet around, but talk about demilitarizing the border so that the Saudis and the Emirates do not have to worry about missiles coming into their homes, and cities and airports.”

Mattis said peace talks could be at hand after a summit in Bahrain where he discussed bringing an end to the three-year-old war between a Saudi and United Arab Emirates coalition and Houthi rebels backed by Iran. “We’ve got to move towards a peace effort here, and we can’t say we’re going to do it sometime in the future. We need to be doing this in the next 30 days. We’ve admired this problem for long enough,” Mattis said.

AROUND THE WORLD WITH MATTIS: In his hourlong conversation at USIP with former Bush administration official Stephen Hadley, Mattis took the audience on a quick tour of the world’s hot spots, and says he views them from three angles: power, urgency and will.

Russia: “In terms of raw power right now, I look at Russia and the nuclear arsenal they have. I look at their activities over the last 10 years, from Georgia and Crimea, to the Donets Basin, to Syria — I can go on and on and on — their violations of [the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty], for example. But in terms of just power, I think it’s clearly Russia that we have to look at and address.”

Withdrawing from the INF Treaty: “Through denial and deceit, Russia has continued not just to do research and development and fielding, but now standing up multiple units that are armed with a weapon that is clearly a violation. And eventually, Russia, I believe, through a slip, revealed that the missile they said did not exist did exist. And once they realized that it was revealed, they, then, said, ‘But it doesn’t violate the treaty.’

“We have done everything we can, I think, diplomatically. The diplomats are still trying, by the way, as we speak. We have made it very clear that, when two nations sign a treaty and one violates it and even denies the violation and then continues violating, as they field the weapon, that is an untenable situation. It also jeopardizes the trust you need for any other treaty.”

China: “China, on the other hand, seems to want some sort of tribute states around them. We are looking for how do we work with China. I think that 15 years from now we will be remembered most for how did we set the conditions for a positive relationship with China.”

Syria’s Bashar Assad: “If it wasn’t for the Iranian regime, not the Iranian people, the Iranian regime giving full support to Assad, he would have been long gone. And when that support was not even sufficient and Mr. Putin came in, we see the reason that I think eventually Assad will have to be managed out of power. I don’t think any election run under the auspices of the Syrian regime is going to have any credibility with either the Syrian people or with the international community.”

Afghanistan: “What we had done was created an army, and then we pulled the training wheels off too early, and in that I mean that only the Afghan special forces had mentors from NATO nations with them. … With NATO air forces overhead, no longer prohibited from supporting the Afghan army and I did say prohibited from supporting them, we would be able to always own the high ground. … The Taliban has been prevented from doing what they said they were going to do, which was to take and hold district and provincial centers, also disrupt an election that they were unable to disrupt.”

Militarizing Space: “One, it’s defend, we have to defend what we have in outer space that is used for navigation, communication, peaceful purposes, commerce, banking — all these kind of things. So we’re going to have to defend what we have. But also, we’re going to have to be prepared to use offensive weapons in space should someone decide to militarize it and go on the offensive. You cannot simply play defense. No competitive sport in the world can just play defense and win.”

US allies need us: “You know, it’s been eye-opening, as I came into this job that I never aspired to. I never met President Trump before he called me back to Bedminster as president-elect. … I had my views, I was out at Stanford University and I had time to study. I did not realize how many other nations looked to us as a calming or a confidence-building partner for them.

“And wherever I go, I find from South America to the Middle East, certainly to the Pacific, certainly in Brussels at the NATO meetings, that they all want us to stay. They all want us to keep at it.”

COUNTDOWN TO IRAN SANCTIONS: With five days to go before the Nov. 4 sanctions deadline, the State Department has posted on its website a handy countdown with a “daily reminder” of the 12 requirements that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has laid out for Iran to “act like a normal state.”

Yesterday’s daily reminder for the regime: “The Iranian regime must respect the sovereignty of the Iraqi Government and permit the disarming, demobilization, and reintegration of Shia militias.”

SPY BUDGETS SOAR: Congress secretly boosted U.S. spy agency funding last year, pushing the government’s intelligence “black budget” to its highest publicly known level, and raising questions about the reason for the surge. Funding for the CIA, National Security Agency, and 14 other civilian intelligence agencies soared nearly 9 percent to $59.4 billion in fiscal 2018, and military intelligence funding grew more than 20 percent to $22.1 billion.

Overall intelligence spending increased more than 10 percent to $81.5 billion, according to figures released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Defense Department on Tuesday, a month after the fiscal year ended.

CHINESE HACKERS CHARGED: The Justice Department has unsealed charges against 10 Chinese intelligence officers accusing them of a relentless campaign to hack into several U.S. aviation companies and steal corporate secrets over the last five years.

“For the third time since only September, the National Security Division, with its U.S. Attorney partners, has brought charges against Chinese intelligence officers from the JSSD and those working at their direction and control for stealing American intellectual property,” said John Demers, assistant attorney general for national security.

JSSD stands for the Jiangsu Province Ministry of State Security, which is a foreign intelligence arm of China’s Ministry of State Security, the government’s agency responsible for intelligence and political security.

THE QUOTABLE MATTIS: The always-quotable Mattis, famous for his off-the-cuff aphorisms, was in fine form last night. Among his gems:

“I don’t think all the great ideas come from the country with the most aircraft carriers.”

“War, I will just tell you — I’ve got a little experience in it — is basically one tragedy piled upon another tragedy. Welcome to war.”

“We need to be doing this in the next 30 days. We’ve admired this problem for long enough.”

“We can always coordinate inside the government better as we look back in history from that nasty argument with King George III, we decided to set up a government that could never be a king over us who would not be efficient.”

“For the first time in 70 years, we’re having an audit done of the U.S. Department of Defense, so I can look you in the eye and say, in the midst of all this, ‘we’re not taking your money and flushing it down the drain.’ We’re going to find a lot of problems in that audit. We’re going to tell you about them. We’re going to fix every one.”

THE RUNDOWN

Washington Examiner: Wisconsin man previously convicted of child sexual assault pleads guilty to conspiring to assist ISIS

Task and Purpose: Mattis Reveals Number Of Afghan Military Deaths Days After Dunford Says They’re Not Releasable

Bloomberg: Pentagon Girds for Audit Backlash That May Echo $435 Hammer Era

Reuters: Defense firms see only hundreds of new U.S. jobs from Saudi mega deal

Foreign Policy: Both Sides Are Overselling Trump’s Troop Deployment to the Border

Defense News: Head of US Army Rapid Capabilities Office to take top civilian job on the F-35 program

AP: Video: NATO, Russia hold drills in same area off Norway

Defense One: Military Intelligence Spending Just Posted Biggest Spike in a Decade

Air Force Times: Tyndall Air Force Base officials going ‘person by person’ to find out how to help evacuees

New York Times: Senior Saudi Prince Returns to Kingdom as Royals Confront Khashoggi Crisis

USNI News: China Expects U.S. Navy To Transit Taiwan Strait Again Soon

Air Force Magazine: USAF Airlift Plan Calls for Increase in C-17s, C-130 Reduction