Zwischenspiel | "Smart Conflicts"?

The Zwischenspiel will be a short update on this blog every couple of days or so, since I won't be able to write longer posts as often as I would like to. So in the meantime Zwischenspiel will be a more regularly, though shorter, collection of thoughts to some topics regarding politics and technology from the daily grind. Zwischenspiel is german and probably best translated to Interlude.

Smart Conflicts

First, take a look at this tweet by Donald Trump:

We are by now used to calling our phones "smart". Or our homes. Google is planning on creating a smart city. The big tech companies are working very hard to make all aspects of our everyday life "smart" to make things easier for us, the paying customer. And we like it, do we not? The Smartphone made Apple the most valuable company in the world. But what about our weapons? Do we want them to be smart?

The up-and-coming arms race of the 21st century will be about who can create the most intelligent (and very soon even autonomous) weapon systems the fastest. We are beginning to see the results already. When Trump ist threatening to attack Syrian territory with 'smart' missiles, it is the result of advanced weapon A.I. systems, created by DARPA and some subcontractors of Alphabet. Michael Griffin, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, said recently "There might be an artificial intelligence arms race, but we’re not yet in it.” In reference to China and Russia, he added, “I think our adversaries—and they are our adversaries—understand very well the possible future utility of machine learning, and I think it’s time we did as well.” This puts every country, which likes to think of itself as 'ethical' (e.g. all of Europe) between a rock and a hard place. If we stand by our morals and we decide not to create those systems, what are we going to do when, let's say, China or Russia decide to do just that? In case of an open conflict between a country which has autonomous weapon systems and a country that does not, this war would be over very quickly. Not months or weeks. We are talking days. A ban on autonomous weapon systems only works, when everybody adheres to this agreement.

So what are we going to do? The first revolution of modern warfare has been the invention of gunpowder. The second was the creation of nuclear weapons. Both changed the way we think of war radically. The Atomic bomb gave mankind the possibility to wipe ourselves off the planet. So far, we have been successful in avoiding that. But now we are approaching the third revolution - autonomous weapon systems. This third revolution will be even more fundamental than the first two. autonomous weapons could, if they ever get out of control, end mankind quite quickly. This is an invention where we should have a debate whether we want to really cross this line before we take the leap. Because if we don't, it could have fatal consequences for all of mankind.

So, while military strategists can't wait to finally send in the autonomous cavalry into conflicts, scientists are beginning to wonder whether this development is really going in the right direction. Recently, 3000 Google employees signed a letter protesting the company’s work with the Pentagon. Also, more than 50 leading Korean academics signed a letter calling for a boycott of Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), which is developing the highly advanced autonomous weapon systems.

So while there are signs that a dialogue is starting to develop, more people need to learn about the implications of autonomous weapon systems and the risks which accompany those technological advances.

In case you want to learn more about the implications of autonomous wepon systems on warfare, here is a short version of P. W. Singers book "Wired for War" which gives a good overview about the coming possibilities of those smart weapon systems.