In today’s Pentagon, the promise of artificial intelligence (AI) has become the equivalent of what logistics was to Admiral Ernest King, U.S. Fleet Commander and Chief of Naval Operations during World War II. Early in the war, King reportedly stated, “I don’t know what the hell this ‘logistics’ is that [Army Chief of Staff General George] Marshall is talking about, but I want some of it.”1 Recent Department of Defense (DoD) officials—following the thinking of political and corporate leaders—appear uniformly to perceive (or at least state rhetorically) that AI is making fundamental and historic changes to warfare. Even if they do not know all it can and cannot do, they “want more of it.”
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1. The origin of the oft-repeated quote is difficult to ascertain and is often attributed to “a staff officer.” Recent use includes Naval Supply Systems Command, “Logistics Quotations,” www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/navy/log_quotes_navsup.pdf.
2. The term “great systems competition” should be credited to the lectures and discussions of Dr. Chris C. Demchak, Grace Hopper Chair of Cyber Conflict at the U.S. Naval War College.
3. Aaron Mehta, “AI Makes Mattis Question ‘Fundamental’ Belief about War,” Defense News, 17 February 2018, defensenews.com/intel-geoint/2018/02/17/ai-makes-mattis-question-fundamental-beliefs-about-war/.
4. John Markoff, “Pentagon Turns to Silicon Valley for Edge in Artificial Intelligence,” The New York Times, 11 May 2016, nytimes.com/2016/05/12/technology/artificial-intelligence-as-the-pentagons-latest-weapon.html.
5. Zigfried Hampel-Arias and John Speed Myers, “What AI Can and Cannot Do for the Intelligence Community,” Defense One, 5 January 2021, defenseone.com/ideas/2021/01/what-ai-can-and-cannot-do-intelligence-community/171195/.
6. DARPA has initiated a program on protecting machine learning systems from “imperceptible perturbations” because of outside attacks called the Guaranteeing AI Robustness against Deception (GARD) program. This is different, however, from guarding against massive deception in the operating environment. See darpa.mil/program/guaranteeing-ai-robustness-against-deception.
7. A major theme of Keith B. Payne, The Fallacies of Cold War Deterrence and a New Direction (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2001).
8. Frank Hersey, “China to Have 626 Million Surveillance Cameras within 3 Years,” Technode, 22 November 2017, technode.com/2017/11/22/china-to-have-626-million-surveillance-cameras-within-3-years/; Anna Mitchell and Larry Diamond, “China’s Surveillance State Should Scare Everyone,” The Atlantic, 2 February 2018, theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/02/china-surveillance/552203/.
9. April Glaser, “How Apple and Amazon Are Aiding Chinese Censors,” Slate, 2 August 2017, slate.com/technology/2017/08/apple-and-amazon-are-helping-china-censor-the-internet.html; Glaser, “Is a Tech Company Ever Neutral?” Slate, 11 October 2019, slate.com/technology/2019/10/apple-chinese-government-microsoft-amazon-ice.html.
10. Aaron Ricardela, “Best Way to Realize AI Benefits: Don’t Shoot the Moon,” Forbes, 2 October 2019, forbes.com/sits/oracle/2019/10/02/best-way-to-realize-ai-benefits-dont-shoot-the-moon/. The quote is by Clive Swan.
11. “‘Whoever Leads in AI Will Rule the World’: Putin to Russian Children on Knowledge Day,” RT [Russia Today], 1 September 2017, rt.com/news/401731-ai-rule-world-putin/.
12. CAPT Wayne P. Hughes Jr., USN (Ret.), and RADM Robert Girrier, USN (Ret.), Fleet Tactics and Naval Operations, 3rd ed. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2018), 40–44.
