An open letter recently signed by Elon Musk, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, and more than a thousand other prominent people set off alarm bells on advances in artificial intelligence (AI). The letter urged the world’s leading labs to hit the brakes on this powerful technology for six months because of the "profound risks to society and humanity."
A pause to consider the ramifications of this unpredictable new technology may have benefits. But our enemies will not wait while the U.S. engages in teleological discourse.
"By combining our wealth of research capacity and industrial capabilities, Russia and China can become world leaders in information technology, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence (AI)," declared Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 21 during his meeting in Moscow with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The two authoritarian leaders vowed to usher in a new, anti-U.S. world order, and as their joint statement noted a "Deepening the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership of Coordination in the New Era," highlighted cooperation between Russia and China on AI.
AI is regarded as part of the fourth industrial revolution, which also includes the Internet of Things, genetic engineering, and quantum computing. Here is how America’s top adversaries, China and Russia, plan to weaponize this powerful tool against America.
CHINA WILL REQUIRE AI TO REFLECT SOCIALIST VALUES, NOT CHALLENGE SOCIAL ORDER
China codified its AI ambitions in the New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan, which it adopted in July 2017. China had its AI awakening moment a year prior, according to Kaifu Li, ex-director of Google China. On March 19, 2016, Google DeepMind’s artificial intelligence program AlphaGo defeated South Korea’s Lee Sedol, the world champion in Go, the ancient Chinese game, in a highly anticipated match at the Four Seasons Hotel in Seoul’s Gwanghwamun district. Most South Korean TV networks were covering the event as 60 million Chinese tuned in and 100,000 English-speaking viewers watched YouTube’s livestream. That a computer could beat the world champion shocked the Chinese. Sixteen months later, the Chinese Communist Party vowed that Beijing will lead the world of AI by 2030.
China’s AI strategy centers on three primary goals: domestic surveillance, economic advancement and future warfare. The Chinese government is already using AI-driven software dubbed "one person, one file," that collects and stores vast amounts of data on its residents, in order to evaluate loyalty and risk to the regime. A giant network of surveillance cameras the Chinese authorities call "sharp eyes" tracks everyone continuously. Americans who travel to China, especially business executives and government officials, need to be aware of the risks associated with this blanket 24/7 monitoring.
When it comes to military applications, China’s strategic ambitions for AI are what the CCP calls "intelligentized" and "informatized" warfare. China’s Ministry of National Defense has established two research centers to execute this mission – the Artificial Intelligence Research Center and the Unmanned Systems Research Center. The People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) tasked its Academy of Military Science with ensuring that the PLA’s warfighting doctrine is fully capitalized on disruptive technologies like AI and autonomous systems.
AFTER XI-PUTIN MEETING, TEAM BIDEN STILL DOESN'T GET WHAT'S JUST HAPPENED TO THE UNITED STATES
The United States is the primary target of China’s AI-enabled warfare doctrine, as it is the only country that stands in the way of China’s long-held policy goal of securing control over Taiwan. The CCP has decided that instead of following the track of U.S. military modernization, something Chinese military theorists view as linear trajectory, China will pursue "leapfrog development" of AI and autonomous technologies.
The PLA views AI technology as a "trump card" weapon that could be used in multiple ways to target perceived U.S. vulnerabilities, including U.S. battle networks and America’s way of war in general. An AI-enabled "swarming" tactic, for example is one of the approaches China could use to target and saturate the defenses of U.S. aircraft carriers.
AI swarming is a high-tech version of flooding U.S. airspace, in the run-up to an invasion of Taiwan, with hundreds of weaponized air balloons, of the kind that it recently flew across America. This would overwhelm the detection and defense capabilities of the U.S. North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD.) How many F-22s and $400,000 AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles would be needed to down them all?
The speed of China’s progress in AI is of grave concern to the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence. In March, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency warned that China is "investing heavily in its AI and ML [machine learning] capabilities."
The 2023 Annual Threat Assessment by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence characterized China’s AI and big data analytics capabilities as "rapidly expanding and improving," saying China is on track to "expand beyond domestic use." China is already an "AI peer in many areas and an AI leader in some applications," according to the 2021 Final Report by the U.S. National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. The report warned that "China’s plans, resources, and progress should concern all Americans" and highlighted the importance of winning the "intensifying strategic competition" with China, which is determined to surpass the United States in the next few years.
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Russia is lagging behind China and the U.S. in AI, but Moscow also seeks to become one of the world leaders in this novel technology. In 2017, Putin famously proclaimed "whichever country becomes the leader in artificial intelligence will become the ruler of the world."
In October 2019, Vladmir Putin approved Russia's "National Strategy for the Development of Artificial Intelligence to 2030" and directed his Cabinet to report annually about the progress of its implementation. Last year, Putin escalated his prioritization of AI. "Artificial intelligence technologies should be massively implemented in all industries in Russia this decade," he stated at the AI Journal Conference in Moscow in November 2022, urging Russia's researchers to "create breakthrough technologies of a new era." Russia's "place in the world, sovereignty, and security" depend on the results it achieves in AI, he said.
Russia’s AI strategy is primarily focused on robotics, robot-human interaction and counter-drone warfare. Russian military strategists believe that the expanding role of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in modern warfare necessitates the development of "UAV-killing UAV" systems. AI is also viewed by Russian strategists as a perfect technology to enable Moscow’s doctrine of "controlled chaos" as a way of deterring Washington from intervening in a conflict, such as the one in Ukraine. The doctrine envisions the targeting of the U.S. homeland with AI-enabled crippling cyber-attacks and spreading false information that could cause panic and disrupt the normal functioning of the society.
Russian doctrinal writings talk about "inspiring crisis" in an adversary’s state by deploying AI-enabled cyber weapons and information operations in the run-up to a conflict. Using an "artificially maintained" crisis to trigger "aggravating factors such as dissatisfaction with existing government," would create a destabilizing effect on the opponent, pointing their focus inward and away from what Russia is doing, hypothesize Russian strategists.
As U.S. leaders make decisions regarding America’s pace of development in AI, they must remember that Russia and China are not only accelerating the speed of their AI research, they also plan to join forces to make critical gains in it. The goal is to create a new anti-U.S. world order, destabilize the U.S. from within, and defeat America on the battlefield if necessary. Now is not the time to cede our competitive advantage in AI to our top adversaries.
