America Wants To Strengthen Its AI To Avoid Losing Its Technological Superiority Over China

America must find a way to make better use of its enormous financial resources in the military field.

The world's leading military power will soon have a “Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer” (CDAO). On December 8, 2021, Kathleen Hicks, Joe Biden's deputy secretary of defense, announced the creation of this position, which goes hand in hand with a major overhaul of all Pentagon services dealing with digital technologies.

Beginning February 1, 2022, the CDAO, who will report directly to the Secretary of Defense, “will be responsible for strengthening and integrating data, artificial intelligence, and digital solutions.” It will succeed the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, created in 2018 by the Trump administration, and will oversee two other Pentagon services, responsible for data and software development.

America's goal is clear: limit bureaucracy and competition among three services charged with accelerating the U.S. military's technological innovation. For many observers, this is urgent, as the U.S. military is losing its technological supremacy to the Chinese military. “The Pentagon needs a new AI strategy to catch up with China,” warned Nicolas Chaillan, former director of software for the US Army, in an article published by the Financial Times.

At the beginning of December 2021, Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, and Graham Allison, professor of political science at Harvard University, made the same point in the Wall Street Journal:

“China will soon surpass the United States in terms of technology.”

Artificial intelligence is a new battleground between these two giants

A former adviser to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, Graham Allison is the author of a much-praised essay, “Destined For War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?”. In this essay, he explained that Washington and Beijing are in danger of falling into what he calls “Thucydides' trap”: like Sparta against Athens when one established power is threatened by the rise of another, the two are almost inexorably drawn into war.

For him, artificial intelligence is one of the new battlegrounds of this great economic and military rivalry. According to him, the United States has been too slow to realize this and to react:

“The Pentagon is a huge organization, which is unfortunately governed by standardized procedures that are too old. The military-industrial complex is very slow to adopt disruptive technologies. On the other hand, in many areas, China has had the advantage of starting from a blank sheet of paper, and this has enabled it to make enormous progress in a very short time.”

Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, is one of the most visible advocates of a radical transformation of the Pentagon. After leaving Alphabet, Google's parent company, he chaired the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI), charged by Congress with defining America's AI strategy for security and defense, starting in 2019. Composed of military experts, American high-tech leaders, and researchers, this commission stopped its work in October 2021, after delivering a 750-page report.

Among its recommendations: organize a massive integration of AI by 2025, by building a common digital infrastructure for the different services. The creation of the “Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer” is the first step in this direction. The NSCAI report states:

“There is also a need to divest military systems that are ill-equipped for AI-based warfare, and invest in next-generation capabilities.”

The document also points to the shortage of personnel trained in artificial intelligence and data science within the military and calls for the creation of a National Digital Reserve Corps to recruit civilians with the necessary skills, and a Digital Corps to organize the technology specialists present within the government.

Private sector input will be essential for the US military to catch up with China

Finally, the authors of the report indicate that the Pentagon's rise to power will not happen without the private sector, whether through start-up acquisitions or defense contracts. In this regard, the last few years have been fraught with incidents and delays. The $10 billion contracts to build and implement the Pentagon's cloud, Jedi (for “Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure”) was suspended in July 2021, against the backdrop of the battle between Microsoft and Amazon Web Services. A new contract, renamed “JWCC” (for “Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability”) should be awarded before spring 2022.

At the same time, several tech giants are reluctant to offer their services to the military under pressure from their employees: in June 2018, a petition had forced Google executives not to participate in the military program Maven, aimed at using image recognition to fly drones.

In an attempt to address these fears, the Defense Innovation Unit, which depends on the Pentagon, published a list of ethical rules to frame the use of AI in late November 2021. But getting private groups and the military to collaborate is much more difficult than in the Cold War era, laments Graham Allison :

“After World War II, defense and intelligence contracts accounted for 80 to 90 percent of orders from new technology companies. Today, at best, it's only 10% to 15%. Too many people in Silicon Valley have what I call 'silicon patriotism': they don't realize that the reason they are free to pursue their business is because there is a defense and intelligence system that keeps them safe.”

With a 2022 budget of 768 billion dollars for the Pentagon, against 209 billion dollars for the Chinese army, America does not suffer from a problem of means, but rather from a problem of efficient use of its colossal means in the right fields. Artificial intelligence is one of them, and Washington wants significant progress to be made in this field in the coming months.