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21. A candle in the dark: US national security strategy for artificial intelligence

Author:
Tate Nurkin and Stephen Rodriguez
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
AI is expected to have a transformational impact on the future of geopolitics, defense, and security. The emerging geopolitical and security context influencing the future of AI technology development has been driven by the erosion of traditional geopolitical frameworks, increased conflict between liberalism and authoritarianism, the pervasiveness of social media use and 4IR-driven digitization of industries, as well as the ability of more actors to affect strategic and operational environments. However, the future of AI will depend on the decisions of great power competitors—the US, China and Russia—global trends development, and the management of uncertainties associated with emerging technologies. In this fluctuating environment, where the US is engaged in a high-stakes competition with is near-peer adversaries, and AI is enabling paradigm-shifting changes in public and private sector operations, how should the US respond? In this new Atlantic Council Strategy Paper, A Candle in the Dark: US National Security Strategy for Artificial Intelligence, Tate Nurkin and Stephen Rodriguez provide an integrated strategy to respond to this key issue. According to Former US Secretary of Defense Dr. Ashton B. Carter, author of the foreword, this paper “effectively articulates the current technological landscape and offers a coherent strategic framework for the United States and its allies to harness AI’s upside potential, while mitigating downside risks and defending against emerging threats.” In a world full of uncertainties, this paper provides a holistic way forward for the US to leverage the full potential of AI while maintaining America’s technological competitiveness.
Topic:
Defense Policy, NATO, Intelligence, National Security, Science and Technology, Cybersecurity, Entrepreneurship, Drones, Conflict, and Disinformation
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Eurasia, Asia, North America, and United States of America

22. US-China collaboration on the Internet of Things safety: What next?

Author:
Karl Frederick Rauscher
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
The Internet of Things describes a future world with pervasive connectivity. While IoT offers a range of humanitarian, commercial, and national security benefits, its pervasive nature has many concerned over its impacts on safety and security in society. A great disservice is done when national security, commercial, and humanitarian interests are conflated. In a new report by the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, Karl Rauscher notes that the world’s two largest powers are at a crossroads with regard to their level and scope of cooperation in continued IoT advances. United States–China Collaboration on the Internet of Things Safety: What’s Next? analyzes possibilities for the United States and China to work together to establish consensus policies and standards to make their societies safer and provide a model for the world.
Topic:
National Security, Power Politics, Cybersecurity, and Internet of Things
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

23. The value of the US nuclear power complex to US national security

Author:
Robert F. Ichford and Bart Oosterveld
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
In this analysis, the Atlantic Council has set out to estimate the value that the civilian nuclear power sector contributes to the United States’ national security apparatus. Based on a series of inputs, this analysis and conservative estimation found that the nuclear power complex contributes an equivalent of more than $42.4 billion to US national security, as broadly defined. In other words, the lack of a civilian nuclear sector would present an immediate and significant economic shock (and impact on the labor force)—which, in turn, would have immediate and longer-term budgetary implications for the US government. The definition of national security can be viewed narrowly or more broadly, in terms of both the scope of the institutional assets and providers of national security services and the types of functions or services they undertake. This analysis includes both nuclear utilities and nuclear generators, as well as US military and defense facilities, as providing critical national security functions. The utilities and generators provide secure and reliable electricity, accounting for 19.3 percent of total US electricity generation in 2018, and they contribute significantly to the diversified energy-generation mix that the United States enjoys. There are three main reasons for public support of the civilian nuclear industry for national security purposes, which are identified in the analysis that follows. The reasons are 1. the civilian nuclear industry generates a vast investment in human capital, which is a necessary condition for all applications of nuclear energy in the national security apparatus; 2. the civilian nuclear industry and its associated supply chain provide critical risk mitigation and procurement safety to the national security apparatus; and 3. the civilian nuclear industry’s value to national security priorities related to climate change.
Topic:
Energy Policy, National Security, Nuclear Power, Economy, and Business
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

24. Nuclear strategy in a changing world

Author:
Rod Lyon
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute
Abstract:
The immense destructive power of nuclear weapons continues to shape the international strategic balance, not least Australia’s place as a close ally of the United States in an increasingly risky Indo-Pacific region. What is the continuing utility to America’s allies of extended nuclear deterrence? Where is the risk of nuclear proliferation greatest? How should the world deal with the growing nuclear capabilities of North Korea? Is the nuclear order as sturdy and stable and it needs to be? These and other pressing issues are addressed in this volume by one of Australia’s leading thinkers on nuclear weapons and the global strategic balance, Rod Lyon. Rod’s career spans academic research and teaching at the University of Queensland, and strategic analysis for Australia’s peak intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments (now the Office of National Intelligence). Since 2006 he has been a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and a frequent contributor on nuclear issues to The Strategist, Australia’s best online source of analysis on defence and strategic issues. The 36 pithy articles in this volume offer Rod Lyon’s distilled wisdom on critical nuclear issues, which are increasingly occupying the minds of Australia’s best policy and intelligence thinkers.
Topic:
Defense Policy, National Security, Nuclear Weapons, and Armed Forces
Political Geography:
Australia, Australia/Pacific, North America, and United States of America

25. Modernizing the Land-Based Leg of the Nuclear Triad: Myths and Facts

Author:
Rebeccah L. Heinrichs and Brandi Jackson
Publication Date:
07-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
Across Democratic and Republican administrations over the past sixty years, U.S. strategists have determined that for the United States, a nuclear triad is the most strategically sound means to credibly deter adversaries. In an increasingly complex threat environment—facing nuclear adversaries and nuclear aspirants with different national objectives, military capabilities, and strategies—a nuclear triad provides the President of the United States with necessary flexibility while accounting for possible changes in adversaries’ capabilities and the geopolitical environment. To remain effective, the U.S. must modernize its Cold War legacy nuclear forces. This booklet is intended to dispel myths surrounding the land-based leg of the nuclear triad and explore the advantages of adopting the ground-based strategic deterrent missile system (GBSD) rather than continuing to recapitalize the aging Minuteman III system.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, National Security, Nuclear Weapons, Science and Technology, Military Spending, and Missile Defense
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

26. If You Can’t See ’em, You Can’t Shoot ’em: Improving US Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and Targeting

Author:
Seth Cropsey
Publication Date:
11-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
This report tracks the development of naval and maritime intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting (ISR/T) from the Cold War to the present day. It reveals the fluctuating relationship between ISR/T and weapons ranges that have adversely impacted the US Navy’s combat capabilities. While the United States developed longer-range weapons throughout the Cold War and revised tactics and fleet composition to better employ those weapons offensively, the gap that remained between weapons range and targeting information had a negative effect on US Navy combat power. Following the Cold War, while weapons and delivery-system range decreased, ISR/T capacity and capability rose, allowing for precision strikes against ground targets at short and medium range. Finally, the contemporary fleet, facing renewed great power competition, is increasingly receiving long-range strike weapons. However, it lacks the ISR/T complex to identify and hit targets at those ranges in most over-the-horizon combat situations. Second, this report reviews the current ISR/T capabilities to which the US Navy has access, primarily in the Pacific theater, and performs first-order sufficiency analysis to gain an understanding of the impact the current program of record has on operational requirements. Finally, the report concludes with several key recommendations to naval policymakers, civilian and military.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, National Security, Science and Technology, Military Affairs, and Surveillance
Political Geography:
Asia, North America, and United States of America

27. China’s Economic Slowdown: Root Causes, Beijing’s Response and Strategic Implications for the US and Allies

Author:
John Lee
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
This monograph attempts to argue and/or demonstrate three main points. First, it looks at why there were credible fears about the stability and viability of the Chinese economy — especially the financial and banking system — leading up to the end of the Twelfth Five Year Plan (2011–15), and what these were. To understand why Beijing was so concerned, the monograph draws out the serious structural problems that were leading inevitably to a permanent slowdown from the double-digit growth rates of the first three decades of reform. Second, the monograph looks at what occurred from 2015 to the present, and how China apparently overcame its economic difficulties. In fact, it has not overcome its problems, but deferred them to a future time in ways that only its unique authoritarian political economy is able to do.Third, it is clear the Communist Party is not passively awaiting an unhappy economic fate in connection with its mounting imbalances and domestic economic dysfunction. In many respects, its leaders have been highly creative in seeking solutions that do not entail a weakening of the party’s hold on economic power. On the contrary, the party has been busily shaping and pursuing grand strategic policies such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Made in China 2025 (MIC 2025) to solve or alleviate many of its domestic political-economic problems. This monograph argues that these and other outward-focused initiatives stem most fundamentally from Chinese weaknesses and vulnerabilities but are being remade and recast into initiatives that will strengthen the position of the CCP domestically, ensure greater resilience for its political economy, and advance its ambitious strategic and international objectives at the same time. In summary, it is about the Communist Party cleverly transforming domestic vulnerability into grand strategy and using economic approaches to gain pre-eminence and “win without fighting.”
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, National Security, Geopolitics, Economy, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and Strategic Competition
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

28. Beating the Americans at Their Own Game: An Offset Strategy with Chinese Characteristics

Author:
Robert O. Work and Greg Grant
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security
Abstract:
During the Cold War, the U.S. military relied on technological superiority to “offset” the Soviet Union’s advantages in time, space, and force size. Our military-technical edge allowed the U.S. Joint Force to adopt force postures and operational concepts that largely compensated for the Soviet military’s numerical conventional advantage without needing to match it man-for-man or tank-for-tank. After the Cold War ended, this same military-technical advantage provided the U.S. military a decisive conventional overmatch against regional adversaries for over two decades. Now, however, the “rogue” regional powers that have preoccupied U.S. attention for so long have been replaced by two great powers with substantially greater capabilities. A resurgent and revanchist Russia and a rising, increasingly more powerful China are taking aggressive actions that threaten regional security and stability and challenge the existing international order. Without question, of these two great-power competitors, China poses the greater challenge over the long term. Since about 1885, the United States never has faced a competitor or even group of competitors with a combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP) larger than its own. China surpassed the United States in purchasing power parity in 2014 and is on track to have the world’s largest GDP in absolute terms by 2030. In comparison, our Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union, was hobbled by unsustainable economic contradictions that ultimately crumbled under pressure. At the height of its power, its GDP was roughly 40 percent the size of the United States’. If that is not concerning enough for U.S. strategic planners, Chinese technological capabilities are growing as rapidly as its economic power. The Soviets were never able to match, much less overcome, America’s technological superiority. The same may not be true for China—certainly not for lack of trying. Indeed, China is keenly focused on blunting the U.S. military’s technological superiority, even as it strives to achieve technological parity, and eventually technological dominance. Chinese strategists do not explicitly describe their aims in this manner. Nevertheless, after considering what the Chinese military has accomplished technologically in little more than two decades and what they plan to do in the decades to come, any objective assessment must at least consider the possibility that the U.S. Joint Force is close to becoming the victim of a deliberate, patient, and robustly resourced military-technical offset strategy. The purpose of this paper is to describe this strategy and outline its key lines of effort.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Cold War, National Security, Military Affairs, and Soviet Union
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

29. Maintaining America’s Coercive Economic Strength: Five Trends to Watch in U.S. Sanctions

Author:
Howard Berman, Paula J. Dobriansky, Sue E. Eckert, Kimberly Ann Elliott, David L. Goldwyn, Peter Harrell, Theodore Kassinger, George A. Lopez, Richard Nephew, Michel Rademaker, Frederick Reynolds, Elizabeth Rosenberg, Daleep Singh, Julianne Smith, Adam Szubin, and Rachel Ziemba
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security
Abstract:
U.S. foreign policy officials have embraced economic sanctions as a tool of choice for American foreign policy. Decisionmakers have deployed sanctions against strategic adversaries and national security threats ranging from Russia to non-state actors such as terrorist groups, drug cartels, and businesspeople who engage in corrupt activities. The appeal to both policy leaders and key constituent groups of the potent economic impacts of sanctions in several recent high-profile cases, particularly those of Iran, Russia, North Korea, and Venezuela, combined with broad bipartisan support for aggressive use of U.S. sanctions, suggests that the United States will favor this policy tool and be an active practitioner in the years ahead. This brief describes five of the most prominent and influential trends that could affect U.S. sanctions and other coercive economic measures in the future. The five trends are: (1) a shift toward more aggressive use of U.S. unilateral sanctions; (2) the growing role of Congress in enacting sanctions and managing their implementation; (3) an increased potential for unintended consequences as a result of growing complexity in sanctions; (4) accelerating efforts of foreign governments to insulate trade and payment channels from U.S. sanctions; and (5) new technological developments that may have the potential to both enhance and weaken the impact of U.S. sanctions in the years ahead.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, National Security, Sanctions, Elections, and Economy
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

30. Climate Change and National Security: How Can Public Policy Change the World?

Author:
Aspen Institute
Publication Date:
07-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Aspen Institute
Abstract:
The Aspen Institute partnered with the University of Chicago’s Inter-Policy School Summit on March 1-3, 2019, to host 40 graduate students from around the world to explore and consider the intersection between Climate Change and National Security, a topic that will come to play an increasingly important role in the policy realm for decades to come. The participants were asked to research various topics within the larger theme and write white papers proposing rigorous and tangible solutions for the quaternary effects of climate change, especially when they pertain to national security.
Topic:
Security, Agriculture, Climate Change, Energy Policy, Environment, Migration, National Security, and Labor Issues
Political Geography:
United States of America and North America