FAST, NOT LOOSE The United States, then, faces dueling risks from AI. If it moves too slowly, Washington could be overtaken by its competitors, jeopardizing national security. But if it moves too fast, it may compromise on safety and build AI systems that breed deadly accidents. Although the former is a larger risk than the latter, it is critical that the United States take safety concerns seriously. To be effective, AI must be safe and reliable.
So how can Washington find a sort of Goldilocks zone for innovation? It can start by thinking of technological development in terms of three phases: invention, incubation, and implementation. Different speeds are appropriate for each one. There is little harm from moving quickly in the first two phases, and the U.S. military should swiftly develop and experiment with new technologies and operational concepts. But it will need to thoroughly address safety and reliability concerns during implementation.
To strike this balance, the U.S. military will need to make sure its personnel get a better handle on all of the Department of Defense’s data. That includes open-source content available on the Internet, such as satellite imagery, and intelligence on adversaries and their military capabilities. It also includes data on the effectiveness, composition, and capabilities of the U.S. military’s own tools.
The Department of Defense already has many units that collect such data, but each unit’s information is siloed and stored in different ways. To more effectively adopt AI, the Pentagon will need to build on its ongoing efforts to create a common data infrastructure. The department is taking an important step by integrating its data and AI responsibilities under the aegis of the chief digital and artificial intelligence officer. But this reorganization will not succeed unless the new official has the authority to overcome bureaucratic barriers to AI adoption in both the military services and other parts of the Pentagon.
Giving researchers better data will also help ensure that every algorithm undergoes rigorous safety testing. Examiners, for example, could deliberately feed a wide range of complex or outright incorrect information into an AI system to see if it creates a faulty output— such as a directive to strike a friendly aircraft. This testing will help create a baseline idea of how reliable and accurate AI systems are, establishing a margin of error that eventual operators can keep in mind. This will help humans know when to question what machines tell them, even in high-pressure scenarios.
Manufacturing innovative and secure AI will also require a tighter connection between the Department of Defense’s Research and Engineering arm and the rest of the Pentagon. In theory, Research and Engineering is in charge of the department’s technological innovation. But according to a report by Melissa Flagg and Jack Corrigan at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, the Pentagon’s innovation efforts are disorganized, taking place across at least 28 organizations within the broader department. These efforts would all benefit from more coordination, something the Research and Engineering arm can provide. One recent reason for optimism is that Research and Engineering recently created the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve, an initiative that will allow the department to more quickly create prototypes and experiment with emerging technologies in high-need areas across the military, which should increase coordination and speed up adoption.
But the Pentagon can’t spur more effective innovation solely through structural reforms. It will need the right people, as well. The United States is fortunate to have a highly trained and educated military, yet it requires even more STEM talent if it is going to win the wars of the future. That means the Department of Defense must hire more personnel who study AI. It also means the Pentagon should offer coding and data analytics courses for existing staff and give extra cash or more time off to employees who enroll—just as it does for personnel who study foreign languages.
As part of its overhaul, the Defense Department will also need to change its culture so that it is not, as Michèle Flournoy, former undersecretary of defense for policy, described it in these pages last year, too “risk averse.” Currently, department officials often slow-walk or avoid risky initiatives to avoid the reputational damage that accompanies failure, burying promising projects in the process. This is completely backward: trial and error is integral to innovation. Senior leaders in the Pentagon should reward program managers and researchers for the overall number of experiments and operational concepts they test rather than the percentage that are successful.
Even unsuccessful investments can prove strategically useful. The Chinese military pays close attention to U.S. military capabilities and planning, allowing the United States to potentially disrupt Beijing’s own planning by selectively revealing prototypes, including ones that did not pan out. China might respond by chasing sometimes flawed U.S. systems, while being uncertain about what the United States will actually deploy or develop next. If the U.S. military wants to remain the world’s strongest, it must continue making its adversaries follow it around.
It will also need to develop ways to effectively use whatever technologies it does decide to deploy. Military power is ultimately more about people and organizations than widgets or tools, and history shows that even the most successful militaries need to incorporate new capabilities into their plans if they want to win on the battlefield. As conventional warfare makes an unfortunate comeback, the United States will need to adapt and restructure its military for the future—rather than resting on its laurels.
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