Why he matters: Rozanski has seen it all at Booz Allen. He started with the company -- one of the world's largest defense contractors -- in 1991 as a summer intern.

Q: When you hear "future of defense," what comes to mind?

A: Speed. I'm obsessed with speed. The pace at which the world is changing, the pace at which our adversaries are changing -- we need to be faster than them.

Q: When will wars be waged solely by robots?

A: This is not the answer I would like to give, but the answer is now. If you think through the warfighting domains, in cyberspace, we're essentially almost at computer-to-computer conflict. Then you go to space with all the debris and the congestion and everything out there, autonomy is around the corner, and as it becomes a contested domain, same thing. Then you start to think about underwater and all these other domains.

Q: What region of the world should we be watching? Why?

A: Space. I think what's happening in orbit is going to affect the entire world.

Q: How many emails do you get a day, and how do you deal with them?

A: An infinite number. We run a triage operation, essentially.

Q: What's your secret to a successful overnight flight?

A: Because of my lifetime as a management consultant, I have a Pavlovian response to airplane smell. I sit on a plane and I fall asleep, and I wake up either at touchdown or after.

Q: What's a piece of gear or tech you can't go without?

A: I am completely addicted to the Apple ecosystem. I think I own everything they make. Not every model of everything they make, to be clear, but I own everything they make, including an Apple Vision Pro.

Q: What advice would you give your younger self?

A: My career took off when I stopped worrying about my career and started worrying about learning stuff.