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A new military-industrial complex: How tech bros are hyping AI’s role in war

The current debate on military AI is largely driven by “tech bros” and other entrepreneurs who stand to profit immensely from militaries’ uptake of AI-enabled capabilities.

the new military-industrial complex wherein business leaders are framing the future direction of war, despite their lack of military experience.

Bulletin, By Paul Lushenko, Keith Carter | October 7, 2024

Since the emergence of generative artificial intelligence, scholars have speculated about the technology’s implications for the character, if not nature, of war. The promise of AI on battlefields and in war rooms has beguiled scholars. They characterize AI as “game-changing,” “revolutionary,” and “perilous,” especially given the potential of great power war involving the United States and China or Russia.

In the context of great power war, where adversaries have parity of military capabilities, scholars claim that AI is the sine qua non, absolutely required for victory. This assessment is predicated on the presumed implications of AI for the “sensor-to-shooter” timeline, which refers to the interval of time between acquiring and prosecuting a target. By adopting AI, or so the argument goes, militaries can reduce the sensor-to-shooter timeline and maintain lethal overmatch against peer adversaries…………………..

 It encourages policymakers and defense officials to follow what can be called a “primrose path of AI-enabled warfare,” which is codified in the US military’s “third offset” strategy……………………

The current debate on military AI is largely driven by “tech bros” and other entrepreneurs who stand to profit immensely from militaries’ uptake of AI-enabled capabilities. Despite their influence on the conversation, these tech industry figures have little to no operational experience, meaning they cannot draw from first-hand accounts of combat to further justify arguments that AI is changing the character, if not nature, of war. Rather, they capitalize on their impressive business successes to influence a new model of capability development through opinion pieces in high-profile journals, public addresses at acclaimed security conferences, and presentations at top-tier universities.

To the extent analysts do explore the implications of AI for warfighting, such as during the conflicts in Gaza, Libya, and Ukraine, they highlight limited—and debatable—examples of its use, embellish its impacts, conflate technology with organizational improvements provided by AI, and draw generalizations about future warfare.

It is possible that AI-enabled technologies, such as lethal autonomous weapon systems or “killer robots,” will someday dramatically alter war. Yet the current debate for the implications of AI on warfighting discounts critical political, operational, and normative considerations that imply AI may not have the revolutionary impacts that its proponents claim, at least not now.

………………………………………………….. Our research suggests that three related considerations have combined to shape the hype surrounding military AI, informing the primrose path of AI-enabled warfare. First, that primrose path is paved by the emergence of a new military industrial complex that is dependent on commercial service providers. Second, this new defense acquisition process is the cause and effect of a narrative suggesting a global AI arms race, which has encouraged scholars to discount the normative implications of AI-enabled warfare. Finally, while analysts assume that soldiers will trust AI, which is integral to human-machine teaming that facilitates AI-enabled warfare, trust is not guaranteed.

………………………………………………………………….The primrose path of AI-enabled warfare is paved by a new military-industrial complex. Countries typically acquire military technologies, such as drones, for reasons that relate to supply, demand, and status considerations………………………………………………………………………

The political economy of the primrose path of AI-enabled warfare is different. It flips these defense acquisition processes on their heads such that industry drives, rather than responds to, militaries’ requirements for new capabilities. This approach reflects the United States’ historical preference for technology standards that are based on a “bottom-up, laissez-faire corporate-led strategy,” which emphasizes the anticipated economic advantages of leading-sector innovation.

These industry drivers consist of businesses that are funded by venture capitalists, including Anduril, Black Cape, Inc., Clarifai, CrowdAI, and ScaleAI; established defense contractors such as AWS, ECS Federal, IBM, Maxar, Microsoft, Palantir, Raytheon, and the Sierra Nevada Corporation; and business magnates like Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Eric Schmidt. ………………………………………….. Luckey, founder of Anduril, promises to “save western civilization…as we make tens and tens of billions of dollars a year.”

Similarly, Musk’s Starlink uses low-earth orbit satellites to provide militaries’ assured communication in expeditionary and contested environments. Earlier in its war with Russia, Musk decided if Ukraine could use the Starlink satellite network, thus shaping the country’s military operations against Russia on the basis of his fears of crisis escalation. Schmidt’s new start-up, White Stork (previously Swift Beat), is designed to develop fully-autonomous drones. Schmidt, capitalizing on his previous roles as Chairman of the National Security Commission on AI and Director of the Defense Innovation Board, also instantiates the new military-industrial complex wherein business leaders are framing the future direction of war, despite their lack of military experience.

……………………………………………………………………………..the primrose path of AI-enabled warfare is also shaped by a military-industrial complex that provides technical warfighting solutions as a service, meaning they often do not respond to validated military requirements. Thus, companies’ have hedged their bets, investing billions of dollars into end-to-end AI-enabled technologies that they assume militaries will need to purchase to maintain lethal overmatch of adversaries during future conflict. This also means that businesses, especially their software engineers referred to as field engineers, are embedded within military organizations to an unprecedented degree that may muddle the legitimate use of force, at least for some critics.

………………………………………….. an assumption that a monopoly over these technologies will result in economic gains that undergird military power and shape the global balance of power. Russian president Vladimir Putin argued that whoever leads the development of AI will dominate the world; President Xi Jinping intends for China to surpass the United States as the world’s leader of AI development by 2030; and the United States is outspending other countries for AI development……………………………….survey research in the United States shows that support for AI-enabled warfare among both the public and military is strongly shaped by a perceived AI arms race globally.

This perspective has implications for the legal, moral, and ethical considerations that shape countries’ use of force, which scholars emphasize to greater or lesser degrees when characterizing future war. Skeptics caution that AI-enabled warfare will deskill humans and supplant their agency, leading to unintended consequences including crisis escalation, civilian casualties, and accountability and responsibility gaps for these outcomes.

………………………………………………………….Soldiers do not trust AI. The military-industrial complex, and the narratives of an AI arms race that encourages it, assumes that soldiers will trust human-machine teaming. In a recent opinion piece with Schmidt, Mark Milley, formerly chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, pontificated that “soldiers could sip coffee in their offices, monitoring screens far from the battlefield, as an AI system manages all kinds of robotic war machines.” Despite this sanguine prediction, it is unclear what shapes soldiers’ trust in AI, thus encouraging them to overcome inherent skepticism of machines.

…………………………………………………………………. Our findings suggest that soldiers’ trust in AI is not a foregone conclusion. Further, we found that trust is complex and multidimensional. Importantly, these findings are consistent across the military ranks.

First, senior officers do not trust AI-enhanced capabilities. …………………………………………………………………………………

Visualizing the future of war. Still, it is not only likely, but probable, that AI will shape future warfare in unique ways. As discussed above, the development of AI for commercial applications is re-ordering the defense acquisitions process…………………………………………………………………….

The use of AI to create novel text, images, and video will likely exacerbate the challenge of cognitive warfare. This form of non-lethal warfare explains the social engineering of adversaries’ beliefs, with the overall intent to affect their defense priorities, military readiness, and operations. In this way, countries will attempt to harness AI to produce misinformation and disinformation, which are designed to mislead and deceive opponents, and across the competition continuum ranging from peace to war.

During competition, countries will likely use AI to stoke social, political, and economic grievances among their opponents, such that their defense planning and military readiness are embroiled by increasing levels of partisanship, social unrest, and even political violence…………………………………………………………………………………….

During armed conflict, the confusion created by AI-generated psychological operations will threaten situational awareness required for timely decision-making. In the worst case scenarios, this could cause misidentification of friendly forces, leading to fratricide…………………………………………………………….

In the more distant future, as AI matures, further delegation of military operations would likely go to autonomous systems. This is often referred to as minotaur warfare, such that machines control humans during combat and across domains, which can range from patrols of soldiers on the ground to constellations of warships on the ocean to formations of fighter jets in the air…..  https://thebulletin.org/2024/10/a-new-military-industrial-complex-how-tech-bros-are-hyping-ais-role-in-war/

October 13, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | technology