E55 – Christine Fox: the REAL Charlie

There is a strange set of organizations that live betweenindustry and government called Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) and University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs).

They play an important—but largely misunderstood role—in national security.

What better way to understand it all than with a guest who’sone of the most famous pop-culture examples: Christine Fox.

She was the real person who was portrayed as ‘Charlie’,Maverick’s civilian love interest, in Top Gun! She spent 40+ years working as an analyst in UARCs and a civilian leader at the Pentagon, culminating in serving as the acting Deputy Secretary of Defense.

Today, she continues to serve as a Fellow at Johns HopkinsUniversity’s Applied Physics Lab (JHU APL), which is the nation’s largest UARC.

This interview has a ton of inside baseball that you won’t find anywhere else!

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00:00 intro

00:35 Top Gun

01:33 Christine Fox

02:53 origin of FFRFC & UARC

05:36 access to classified info

08:30 tech transfer

11:33 independence

14:42 threat analysis story

16:35 misunderstandings

20:29 software and competition

24:32 fix the gray

27:11 what if they disappear?

27:39 Navy Red Sea support

28:29 hypersonics

30:08 Golden Dome

31:01 whole of nation approach

38:20 2026 resolutions

39:42 closing remarks