An updated policy tweaks wording in a bid to dispel confusion.
Did you think the Pentagon had a hard rule against using lethal autonomous weapons? It doesn’t. But it does have hoops to jump through before such a weapon might be deployed—and, as of Wednesday, a revised policy intended to clear up confusion.
The biggest change in the Defense Department’s new version of its 2012 doctrine on lethal autonomous weapons is a clearer statement that it is possible to build and deploy them safely and ethically but not without a lot of oversight Read More
Tag Archives: DoD
The AI “Revolution in Military Affairs”: What Would it Really Look Like?
To some defense professionals and officials, the phrase “revolutions in military affairs” may seemingly belong in the 1990s, along with talk about how reconnaissance-strike and other high-tech capabilities would “lift the fog of war.” This understanding, however, reflects a misinterpretation of a concept that still holds significant analytical power for assessing defense applications of emerging technologies. The revolutions in military affairs (RMA) framework—a mental model evaluating technology’s effect on warfare—can be extremely helpful in addressing this distorted understanding, particularly for thinking through the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on national security. For example, and as I have described in a longer paper, the RMA framework can help policymakers consider AI’s influence on defense amid the U.S.-China technological and strategic competition by illustrating the current limitations of AI’s military impact and highlighting areas where technological and intellectual progress could one day spark revolutionary changes. It also highlights that AI’s military impact could be limited in the near term without critical and careful thinking about how the technology is applied.
An RMA is a new combination of operational innovation and organizational change, often driven by technology. This combination is so transformative that it renders previous means of military operations obsolete. Read More
The US military wants to understand the most important software on Earth
Open-source code runs on every computer on the planet—and keeps America’s critical infrastructure going. DARPA is worried about how well it can be trusted
It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that the whole world is built on top of the Linux kernel—although most people have never heard of it.
It is one of the very first programs that load when most computers power up. It enables the hardware running the machine to interact with the software, governs its use of resources, and acts as the foundation of the operating system.
It is the core building block of nearly all cloud computing, virtually every supercomputer, the entire internet of things, billions of smartphones, and more.
But the kernel is also open source, meaning anyone can write, read, and use its code. And that’s got cybersecurity experts inside the US military seriously worried. Its open-source nature means the Linux kernel—along with a host of other pieces of critical open-source software—is exposed to hostile manipulation in ways that we still barely understand. Read More
Why business is booming for military AI startups
The invasion of Ukraine has prompted militaries to update their arsenals—and Silicon Valley stands to capitalize.
Exactly two weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Alexander Karp, the CEO of data analytics company Palantir, made his pitch to European leaders. With war on their doorstep, Europeans ought to modernize their arsenals with Silicon Valley’s help, he argued in an open letter.
For Europe to “remain strong enough to defeat the threat of foreign occupation,” Karp wrote, countries need to embrace “the relationship between technology and the state, between disruptive companies that seek to dislodge the grip of entrenched contractors and the federal government ministries with funding.” Read More
Smartphones Blur the Line Between Civilian and Combatant
In Ukraine, civilians are valiantly assisting the army via apps—and challenging a tenet of international law in the process
AS RUSSIA CONTINUES its unprovoked armed aggression, reports from Ukraine note that the smartphones in civilians’ pockets may be “weapons powerful in their own way as rockets and artillery.” Indeed, technologists in the country have quickly created remarkable apps to keep citizens safe and assist the war effort—everything from an air-raid alert app to the rapid repurposing of the government’s Diia app. The latter was once used by more than 18 million Ukrainians for things like digital IDs, but it now allows users to report the movements of invading soldiers through the “e-Enemy” feature. “Anyone can help our army locate Russian troops. Use our chat bot to inform the Armed Forces,” the Ministry of Digital Transformation said of the new capability when it rolled out.
Naturally, the Ukrainian people want to defend their country and aid their army in whatever ways they can. But certain uses of digital technology pose fundamental challenges to the traditional distinction between civilians and combatants in modern times. Read More
Pentagon’s New AI Chief Vows to Crack ‘Bureaucratic Inertia’ on Tech Advances
The Pentagon’s new head of artificial intelligence wants to speed up technological modernization after an onslaught of what he calls “valid” criticism from recently departed senior leaders who expressed frustration at slow progress.
Craig Martell, who was previously head of machine learning at Lyft Inc. and Dropbox Inc. and led AI initiatives at LinkedIn, told Bloomberg News in his first interview since starting his job as the Pentagon’s chief digital and artificial intelligence officer that he wanted to make progress despite the department’s labyrinthine “bureaucratic inertia.” Read More
Pentagon announces new leadership for chief digital, AI office
The Pentagon’s new Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) has hired nearly a dozen senior leaders to serve in its top positions — and met its June 1 deadline to reach full operating capability, FedScoop learned Wednesday.
This news comes nearly six months after the Department of Defense launched a major organizational restructure to place a number of technology-driving components under this newly established office, with the ultimate aim to better scale digital and Al-enabled capabilities across its massive enterprise.
“Following a multi-step process from [initial operating capability] to FOC the CDAO has fully merged and integrated the former component organizations of Advana, Chief Data Officer, Defense Digital Service, and Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. Legacy component names will no longer be recognized or used unless attributed to a product or capability specific to the department,” according to a statement from CDAO’s spokesperson. Read More
Preston Dunlap, the Pentagon’s first Chief Architect Officer, resigns
It’s almost time to pass the baton.
25,000 miles per hour is fast.
But that speed is necessary to defy the gravitational pull of the earth.
Defying gravity is hard, but not impossible.
Similarly, driving innovation and change in a large organization – let alone the largest organization on the planet, the Department of Defense – is hard, but not impossible.
I’ve spent the last 3 years working to defy gravity and get desperately needed technology into our operators’ hands.
Some of that technology was previously unimaginable. Read More
Artificial Intelligence: An Accountability Framework for Federal Agencies and Other Entities
As a nation, we have yet to grasp the full benefits or unwanted effects of artificial intelligence. AI is widely used, but how do we know it’s working appropriately?
This report identifies key accountability practices—centered around the principles of governance, data, performance, and monitoring—to help federal agencies and others use AI responsibly. For example, the governance principle calls for users to set clear goals and engage with diverse stakeholders.
To develop these practices, we held a forum on AI oversight with experts from government, industry, and nonprofits. We also interviewed federal inspector general officials and AI experts. Read More
Meet the NSA spies shaping the future
For someone with a deeply scientific job, Gil Herrera has a nearly mystical mandate: Look into the future and then shape it, at the level of strange quantum physics and inextricable math theorems, to the advantage of the United States.
Herrera is the newly minted leader of the National Security Agency’s Research Directorate. The directorate, like the rest of the NSA, has a dual mission: secure American systems and spy on the rest of the world. The budget is classified, a secret among secrets, but the NSA is one of the world’s largest spy agencies by any measure and Herrera’s directorate is the entire US intelligence community’s biggest in-house research and development arm. The directorate must come up with solutions to problems that are not yet real, in a world that doesn’t yet exist.
In his first interview since getting the job, Herrera lays out the tech—and threats—his group will now be focusing on. His priorities show how much the NSA’s targets are changing, balancing its work surveilling terror groups with an appreciation of how rapidly the geopolitical landscape has shifted in recent years. And he explains why the rise of new technologies, in terms of both threat and opportunity, are at the heart of what his group must contend with. Read More
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