Cavas asks Richardson, the chief of naval operations, about his March 1, 2017, memo to staff. Government Executive published the transcript:

Cavas: The March 1 memo was a ...

Richardson: It wasn’t to stop talking, it’s to be careful about what we talk about.

Cavas: But it’s had that effect, but even if you didn’t spell it out, it’s absolutely had that effect.

Richardson: Well, we might be searching for the right things to talk about, right, because my sense was that we talk to [sic] much about it openly.

Cavas: You’re searching for the right things to talking [sic] about?

Richardson: Just figuring out how do we change this dialogue? Right? So I want to talk less about military capabilities or find the right way to cast those so that they have the deterrent effect that you have without allowing potential adversaries to reverse engineer or come up with ways to defeat those technologies or warfighting concepts.

Cavas: In 10 months, are you still searching for a way to do that?

Richardson: There has been a lot of dialogue.