When Russia Invaded Ukraine, the US Department of Defense turned to a team of experts in machine learning and artificial intelligence to understand an avalanche of information about the conflict.
“We’ve brought data scientists to the fore,” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks told WIRED in a recent interview. These tech experts created machine learning code and algorithms, creating systems that are “particularly valuable for synthesizing the complex logistics picture,” she said.
Due to the sensitive nature of the operations in Ukraine, Hicks says she cannot provide details about what the data team has been up to. But Hicks says this helps prove a point she and others have been making for some time within the Pentagon — that technology is fundamentally changing the nature of war and that the US must adapt to maintain its lead.
“I like to say that bits can be just as important as bullets,” says Hicks, referring to the importance of software, data, and machine learning. Not only is technology advancing faster and in different ways; the US is also facing new international competition in emerging areas such as AI. Russia may be less of a technological threat, but China has emerged as a formidable new near-peer rival. “We know from the written statements of the Chinese government that they are very much looking for progress in AI,” Hicks said.
During the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, AI algorithms have been used to transcribe and interpret Russian radio chatter, as well as identify Russian individuals in videos posted to social media, using facial recognition technology. Low-cost drones that use off-the-shelf algorithms to detect and navigate are also proving to be a powerful new weapon against more conventional systems and strategies. An unprecedented hacking campaign against Russia shows how cybersecurity skills have become a powerful weapon against a nation-state adversary. New weapons can now also be developed at breakneck speed, as demonstrated earlier this month when the US said it had developed a modified drone specifically for use by Ukrainian forces. In contrast, the United States Air Force’s newest jet fighter, the F-35, has been in development for more than 20 years, at an estimated $1.6 trillion lifespan.
While the US is helping Ukraine rise above its weight by providing financial aid, conventional weapons and new technologies, there are those – inside and outside the Pentagon – who are concerned that the US is not well equipped to adapt to the challenges of war in the future.
“Every major company has the same problem,” said Preston Dunlap, who last week stepped down as chief architect of the Department of the Air Force, a role that has involved modernizing technology development and acquisition. Dunlap likens the situation to how large successful companies can be disrupted by technological change and more agile competitors, a phenomenon that business school professor Clayton Christensen called the “innovator’s dilemma.”
Dunlap wrote an open letter of resignation recommending steps the Department of Defense should take to embrace a faster, experimental, and technology-oriented culture. He says the US military, like a company facing technological disruption and nimble competitors, struggles to change direction because it encompasses so many people, systems and ingrained ways of doing things. He suggests that change advocates like Hicks can only do so much. “I’m concerned about operators having to go into some kind of contingency” [conflict] without the available technology,” he says. “That’s just not a place I want us to be.”
