WEBINAR: Artificial intelligence and the wars of the future

Artificial Intelligence (AI) will define the wars of the future, and the U.S. defense and political cultures have yet to catch up. The U.S. pioneered AI over 50 years ago, but now America’s largest adversaries, China and Russia, threaten to outmatch the U.S. in the cyber-battlespace.

Joe Sestak, a retired three-star admiral and two-term Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania, argued that thinking needs to evolve past the number of ships that can be deployed. It needs to evolve to focusing on countering the looming Chinese ability to use quantum computing to breakthrough passcodes protecting our most sensitive national secrets.

“Today, the real domain of warfare, the dominant domain of warfare, and increasingly so ever day, is the public commons of cyberspace, and that’s everywhere, even over land. And anyone can be in it or out of it misusing it,” Sestak said. “And so what is important about artificial intelligence is how it greatly enables and adversary or ourselves to use it in warfare.

“It is also greatly enabled by other technology, quantum computing and the 5G network, you can break passwords if all works out in the next decade because its based on, not electrical switches, but subatomic particles,” Sestak continued. “You can be able to break a password in nanoseconds, and the other side won’t even know that you’ve done it.”

Sestak cautions that China owns data that travels across 5G networks via its “Digital Silk Road,” and half of the world will use China’s 5G network unless something changes. This will give China the ability to use the billions of pieces of data to improve their algorithms and take ours down using AI. Overcoming this requires the U.S. putting its emphasis on dominating cyberspace.

Ken Rapuano, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Security and Global Affairs in the Trump administration, noted that AI technology is undergoing a shift toward the ability for machines to autonomize and to achieve cognitive autonomy.

Sestak, who commanded the USS George Washington aircraft carrier battlegroup and served as Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Warfare Requirements and Programs, pointed out the importance of AI in giving commanders capabilities to neutralize enemy hypersonic missiles. Such missiles travel in excess of 3,800 miles per hour, too fast for human operators to counter in time.

Many in Congress have a profound ignorance and understanding of the AI issue, which is a huge obstacle to proper implementation in the U.S. military.

Sestak noted that President Dwight Eisenhower’s original draft of his famous 1961 farewell address included criticism of Congress, lumping it in with the “Military Industrial Complex.” It originally was to have said the “Military Industrial Congressional Complex,” but the president dropped it to avoid offending Members of Congress, Sestak said.

“I can remember going to Congress, and I wanted to be on the Cyber Committee [in the House Armed Services Committee],” Sestak said. “I remember sitting next to a wonderful congresswoman, and I remember asking her why she was here she said, ‘To protect my depot.’”

Members of Congress and Senators often put protecting jobs in their states and districts ahead of fulfilling strategic goals and consequently get in the way.

“We’re really behind the curve in a lot of respects,” Rapuano said, pointing to the fact the U.S. did not really start pivoting toward confronting peer competition with China and Russia until 2018. “We have been focused for the last very few years on peer competition, cyber in particular, because that is an area where particularly sophisticated adversaries are looking to target our vulnerabilities, and we know there are many vulnerabilities in cyberspace.”

AI remains novel to many people, Rapuano said. Many people don’t understand what it is. He noted that the U.S. needs to invest in AI in such a way that it is used in such a way that it can be used to bring about victory.

“AI obviously has applications throughout economic, social and every sphere that there is,” Rapuano said. “Nearly all DoD officials understand AI’s important, but many struggle with what it actually is.”

He warned that AI should not be deployed haphazardly before the technology is ready because the results could be disastrous.

“We need to not be doing a ‘Ready, Shoot, Aim,’” Rapuano said. “Then we put ourselves behind the curve for whoever knows how long because of it.”

Sestak called for the military to do daily cybersecurity drills to prevent American military assets from becoming infected with worms, viruses or other cyberthreats due to the negligence of U.S. service personnel.

“Much like you had the Billy Mitchells or whatever it was that understood the new warfare out there, if you don’t appoint leaders who really understand it, we will never get there to where that above everything else has to be done,” Sestak said. “And for me, how we transformed to the aircraft carrier after awhile, to how we moved to a nuclear-powered submarine, what a revolution!

“We have the same type of an approach here.”

The nation needs to be able to defend itself first and get into the computer systems of hostile nations.

America needs to get China out of our supply chain and move away from Chinese dominance over our cellphones and other technologies, and Sestak noted that he thought the Trump administration did the right thing to work to decouple from China.

“All 300 critical materials that we use in the military, parts of it come from China,” Sestak said, calling for the intensive inspection of all Chinese-made components before they can be used. “The important part of this battle is that if we don’t have our allies and friends with us, this is not one we can protect democratic values, never-mind a war.

“That network, that AI affects one of there and it affects us here. That 5G network will be connected to ours, and if they have a piece of gear over there collecting our information, it’s going to be going through there.”

The Chinese threat is an opportunity to come together with our allies and build common cause.