“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and
catastrophe”.
H.G. Wells
Brussels,
Belgium. 17 October. Yesterday, I took part in a small but great meeting with
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. The purpose of the meeting was to
report to the ‘Sec-Gen’ on progress towards completion of a series of reports
for the GLOBSEC NATO Adaptation Initiative.
The main report will be published in a month or so, and will be entitled
The Future Tasks of the Adapted Alliance.
Watch this, and many other spaces. For obvious
reasons I will not disclose too much of what was discussed. However, I was deeply
impressed by Secretary-General Stoltenberg’s understanding of the rapidly-growing
defence-strategic importance of artificial intelligence (AI). Over lunch at the
Atlantic Treaty Association the brilliant Amir Husain, Founder and CEO of sparkcognition, an American company at
the cutting edge (my cliché of the day?) of AI, gave a masterclass on the
importance of AI and intelligent machines across multiple domains of human
endeavour. Now, I would not go as far as
to suggest it was AI for dummies, but this dummy sure did learn a lot.
NATO
maintains defence by keeping the threshold of deterrence high. NATO is a defensive
alliance the principal purpose of which is to cast a credible deterrence and
defence posture by striking a balance between military capability, military
capacity, and affordability. This is NATO’s iron triangle. However, Europe’s under-invested
and under-capitalised military forces are dangerously weak and fast losing
their deterrent value. Yes, the European Allies are spending more money on
defence, but in the all-important battle of relative conventional military power
NATO Europe continues to decline.
Right now
there is a gap, a vector, between NATO’s conventional deterrent and its nuclear
deterrent, which is – to employ Yorkshire strategic language – bloody dangerous. Worse, Europeans can no longer expect the Americans
to offset European weakness indefinitely.
It is unlikely, given the shifting balance of military power in the
world, that the Americans will be defence-strong everywhere, all of the time.
Thus, NATO Europe’s military power is vital to the enduring defence-credibility
of the Alliance. Yes, enshrined in NATO collective
defence is nuclear deterrence. However,
if NATO’s conventional forces fail early in a future war some European allies
could be faced with that most unpalatable of choices; surrender or nuke. NATO must
assure and ensure no Ally ever faces that choice.
AI could help
close NATO’s deterrence gap by assisting NATO European forces to increase their
defence effectiveness through enhanced defence efficiency by exploiting such technologies
without increasing the size of the peacetime force. AI would also ensure
European and US forces will be able to work together safely and efficiently
into the future. This is because NATO’s
deterrence gap is not simply a function of the exaggerated legacy weakness of
too much of Europe’s military metal (and too many of Europe’s military people). It is also a function of a growing ‘technology-interoperability’
gap between US forces and their European counterparts. Indeed, such is the revolutionary
nature of AI that the very strategies and structures of the forces that employ it
will themselves be changed radically by them. AI will also create winners and
losers.
There is,
however, a major impediment to N.A.T.O.A.I: NATO does not understand the new AI
defence sector, and the new defence sector does not understand NATO. Critically, NATO does not understand the companies
driving AI, and with which it will need to work to fashion an affordable
twenty-first century defence. Nor, at present, is NATO (or many of its nations)
ready to countenance the radical change in its own approach to procurement and acquisition
if vital new relationships with such industries are to be forged via a new NATO
defence-industrial partnership. NATO is simply too clunky, an analogue alliance
in a digital age.
What must
NATO do? First, NATO must gain a far better
understanding of the nature of AI and associated technologies, and their
potential application to credible and affordable defence. Second, NATO must
become far more acquisition nimble. The companies driving AI are not defence
giants who can afford to wait for five years or more to be paid. They need to be sure that if they invest limited
people and resources on NATO projects their existence will not be threatened by
sclerotic acquisition practices with fielding times so long that the defence of
Europe is also put at risk. Third, defence
planners and technology-drivers like Mr Husain need to better understand each other. Too many defence planners in Europe do not
really understand AI (even if they talk about it), too many technology-drivers
do not understand either Europe or defence.
Why N.A.T.O.A.I?
AI is not simply another civilian
technology with military applications. It is an enabling architecture. Indeed, NATO IS architecture and thus the natural
locus for the development of collective AI-empowered defence. AI, robotics, intelligent drone-swarms, big
data, and a host of new technologies are now being applied to that most basic
of human endeavours – war. NATO needs to
grasp this new reality and grip AI. This is because AI can a) act as an
affordable defence-multiplier; and b) China, Russia, and the US are far AI-advanced
of NATO Europeans.
If you don’t believe
me then let President Putin educate you. Last month he said; “Artificial
intelligence is the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind. It
comes with colossal opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to
predict. Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the
world.” Need I say more?
Julian Lindley-French
