Rotating Chair Garanin answers journalists' questions on the Joint Staff and defense budget

The following is an excerpt from the transcript of a small-scale press conference held by the Rotating Chair of the Council, Garanin, in the Secretariat Press Hall on the afternoon following the signing of the Framework Agreement of the Joint Staff of the Space Force.

Q: Mr. Chair, will the Joint Staff supersede the national Space Forces?

Garanin: No. The agreement is clear: command authority over national armed forces remains unchanged. The Joint Staff performs the same function that national railway departments did over a century ago—standardizing timetables, track gauges, and signal lights. The enemy will not wait for us to finish arguing for four hundred years before launching an attack.

Q: Critics argue that the defense budget is crowding out public welfare expenditures. How do you respond?

Garanin: The defense budget is indeed substantial, and I must account for every penny to every taxpayer. This is precisely the purpose of this website's budget section. However, allow me to remind you: the crisis was not an exam question we chose. What we can choose is our posture of preparation—whether we prepare calmly today, spread over four hundred years, or leave it to our descendants to prepare hastily in four hundred days.

Q: One final question. Some scholars argue that the four-hundred-year countdown will cause humanity to collapse from the waiting. What is your view?

Garanin: (Silence for about ten seconds) The Council has a special committee studying this scholar's concerns, and I respect him. But I am seventy-one years old this year; I have seen pre-war Europe and New York in Year 1 of the Crisis Era. Let me share my observation: the human species does not collapse during long waits; rather, it turns waiting into life itself. Our task is to ensure that this life is worthy of the wait.

The full transcript of the press conference will be compiled by the Public Information Division and archived in the Document Centre.