  We present two complementary approaches to calculating the 2-point function
of stress tensors in the presence of a 1/2 BPS surface defect of the 6d
$\mathcal{N} = (2,0)$ theories. First, we use analytical bootstrap techniques
at large $N$ to obtain the first nontrivial correction to this correlator, from
which we extract the defect CFT (dCFT) data characterising the 2d dCFT of the
1/2 BPS plane. Along the way we derive a supersymmetric inversion formula,
obtain the relevant superconformal blocks and check that crossing symmetry is
satisfied. Notably our result features a holomorphic function whose appearance
is related to the chiral algebra construction of Beem, Rastelli and van Rees.
Second, we use that chiral algebra description to obtain exact results for the
BPS sector of the dCFT, valid at any $N$ and for any choice of surface
operator. These results provide a window into the dynamics of strings of the
mysterious 6d theories.
