Austin, who spent more than 40 years in the Army, including as the top American commander in Iraq during the last years of US combat there, noted that he had spent most of the past two decades in “the last of the old wars.” “The way that we fight the next major war is going to look very different from the way that we fought the last ones,” he said. “We all need to drive toward a new vision of what it means to defend our nation.” He spoke at a ceremony marking the arrival of Adm. John Aquilino as the new commander of US Indo-Pacific Command, succeeding Adm. Philip Davidson, who has been outspoken in his concerns that China is proceeding with urgency to be in position to potentially take Taiwan by force within several years. In his departing remarks at Friday’s ceremony, Davidson repeated his assertion that China is using “pernicious” behavior to challenge US dominance in the region and to remake the international order in its image. Austin mentioned no specific potential flashpoints for conflict in the Indo-Pacific region but said the US must develop a new vision of defense that takes greater advantage of new technologies, including quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and edge computing, which he described as a framework that allows data to be processed while it’s being collected, and to absorb and share it instantaneously. Austin said US defense will continue to rest on maintaining deterrence, which he described as “fixing a basic truth within the minds of our potential foes: The costs and risks of aggression are out of line with any conceivable benefit.”