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1. Preparing for “NATO-mation”: the Atlantic Alliance toward the age of artificial intelligence

Author:
Andrea Gilli
Publication Date:
02-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
NATO Defense College
Abstract:
The unprecedented pace of technological change brought about by the fourth Industrial Revolution offers enormous opportunities but also entails some risks. This is evident when looking at discussions about artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and big data (BD). Many analysts, scholars and policy- makers are in fact worried that, beside efficiency and new economic opportunities, these technologies may also promote international instability: for instance, by leading to a swift redistribution of wealth around the world; a rapid diffusion of military capabilities or by heightening the risks of military escalation and conflict. Such concerns are understandable. Throughout history, technological change has at times exerted similar effects. Additionally, human beings seem to have an innate fear that autonomous machines might, at some point, revolt and threaten humanity – as illustrated in popular culture, from Hebrew tradition’s Golem to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, from Karel Čapek’s Robot to Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot and the movie Terminator. This NDC Policy Brief contributes to the existing debate by assessing the logic behind some of these concerns and by looking at the historical record. While some worries are warranted, this brief provides a much more reassuring view. The implications are straightforward: NATO, its member states and partners should not be afraid of ongoing technological change, but embrace the opportunities offered by new technologies and address the related challenges. In other words, the Atlantic Alliance should start a new transformation process directed toward the age of intelligent machines: it should start with what I call “NATO-mation”. The goal is not only preserving and enhancing NATO’s military superiority and thus better contribute to global security in the decades ahead but also ensuring that its values, ethical stances as well as moral commitments will remain central in a rapidly- changing security environment.
Topic:
NATO, Regional Cooperation, Science and Technology, Military Strategy, and Artificial Intelligence
Political Geography:
Europe, North Atlantic, and North America

2. The Brain and the Processor: Unpacking the Challenges of Human-Machine Interaction

Author:
Andrea Gilli
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
NATO Defense College
Abstract:
This volume touches upon this and a set of related messages that ultimately put human beings at the very center of this transformation toward intelligent machines: one of the paradoxes of the second machine age – as Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee call it – is in fact that the more tasks computers take over, the more important becomes the role of people.4 Technology replaces tasks, not human beings, and human beings at each round of automation specialize in the tasks with higher added value.5 In other words, technological changes tend to complement human activities, enabling people to specialise in those areas where they have a comparative advantage. However, the transition is not bereft of problems: new skills and new organizational structures are needed to exploit the potentials of new technologies. The emergence of artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data – that in this volume will be interchangeably used alongside terms such as intelligent machines – can potentially represent a major turning point in human history. For the moment, we are dealing – and we will likely continue to do so – with weak or limited AI, namely single- purpose systems, i.e. machines that may reach an outstanding performance in one realm but cannot even fulfill the most basic task in a related field.6 Strong, or general, artificial intelligence – also referred as singularity – will occur when machines will, like human beings, be able to conduct a plurality of multidimensional activities, from driving a car to empatizing with peers, from playing video games to conducting different work activities.7 The contributions in this volume attempt to map the underlying causes, direct implications and broader consequences of the transformation at hand. Their main collective value is that they adopt different, but complementary approaches that ultimately corroborate the underlying theme of the entire volume, namely that as machines become more capable and easily available, the more important become human beings. The world of defense and security often looks with both amazement and concern at other fields. It rarely, however, truly engages with them, also intellectually. Building on a conference jointly organised in December 2018 between the NATO Defense College Research Division and the Paris-based Institut de Recherche Stratégique de l’Ecole Militaire, this volume has tried to address this shortfall by bringing together defense scholars and security practioners, economists and psychologists, historians and lawyers as well as business consultants and roboticists with the goal of looking from different angles at the domain of AI and reason, together, on its possible meanings and consequences.
Topic:
NATO, Regional Cooperation, Science and Technology, and Artificial Intelligence
Political Geography:
Europe, North Atlantic, and North America

3. Imitation, innovation, disruption: challenges to NATO's superiority in military technology

Author:
Andrea Gilli and Mauro Gilli
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
NATO Defense College
Abstract:
Analysts, academics and observers are worried that NATO countries may lose their industrial leadership in defence production. Globalization and advances in communications are widely believed to enable enemies and adversaries alike to copy NATO countries’ state- of-the-art weapon systems, and possibly even surpass them by developing next-generation weapon systems. Moreover, so-called disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence, quantum computing and additive manufac- turing are believed to offer cheaper and less technologi- cally demanding options to countries that do not possess the decades’ old defence industrial base of NATO coun- tries. These countries could then use such new technolo- gies for weakening NATO force structure. These concerns are real and deserve close scrutiny. However, adversaries and competitors still face signif- icant challenges which are more insidious than those NATO countries are facing. Because of the complexity of modern technology, imitation, innovation and disruption in armaments production have become increas- ingly demanding over the past decades – especially for naval and aerial platforms intended to operate in com- petitive environments. For NATO this implies more tar- geted defence investments and exploitation of industrial specialisation across the Alliance, as well as experimen- tation and innovation with new technologies to favour their future integration into the NATO force structure.
Topic:
Defense Policy, NATO, Globalization, Regional Cooperation, Science and Technology, and Military Strategy
Political Geography:
Europe, North Atlantic, and North America

4. Why China Has Not Caught Up Yet: Military-Technological Superiority and the Limits of Imitation, Reverse Engineering, and Cyber Espionage

Author:
Andrea Gilli and Mauro Gilli
Publication Date:
02-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Can countries easily imitate the United States' advanced weapon systems and thus erode its military-technological superiority? Scholarship in international relations theory generally assumes that rising states benefit from the “advantage of backwardness.” That is, by free riding on the research and technology of the most advanced countries, less developed states can allegedly close the military-technological gap with their rivals relatively easily and quickly. More recent works maintain that globalization, the emergence of dual-use components, and advances in communications have facilitated this process. This literature is built on shaky theoretical foundations, however, and its claims lack empirical support. In particular, it largely ignores one of the most important changes to have occurred in the realm of weapons development since the second industrial revolution: the exponential increase in the complexity of military technology. This increase in complexity has promoted a change in the system of production that has made the imitation and replication of the performance of state-of-the-art weapon systems harder—so much so as to offset the diffusing effects of globalization and advances in communications. An examination of the British-German naval rivalry (1890–1915) and China's efforts to imitate U.S. stealth fighters supports these findings.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Military Affairs, Cybersecurity, and Information Age
Political Geography:
Britain, United States, China, and Germany

5. Drones for Europe

Author:
Andrea Gilli
Publication Date:
09-2013
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
European Union Institute for Security Studies
Abstract:
The emergence of unmanned vehicles has dramatically reshaped intelligence and warfare over the past two decades. This is particularly clear in the air domain where the so-called drones have come to prominence as major force multipliers: at relatively affordable costs, they can deliver powerful surveillance capabilities, thus enhancing military planners' and political decision-makers' situation awareness and intelligence, as well as reducing troops' presence on the ground for both combat and non-combat missions. Moreover, over the next few decades, combat drones will reshape – if not completely revolutionise – air warfare thanks to superior aerodynamic, ground-attack and swarming capabilities, whatever one may think about their ethical implications.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Intelligence, Science and Technology, and War
Political Geography:
Europe