The artificial intelligence arms race is here.
Countries around the world are spending millions to introduce the latest artificial intelligence technology into their military operations.
Artificial intelligence can automate some operations in the military and save crucial time by speeding up certain aspects of strategic decision making under human supervision — like pinpointing targets and coming up with courses of action.
But for all of its merits, the technology is also equally worrisome to some experts.
“We all probably suffer from automation bias, which is this idea that we are tempted to and often will accept the recommendation, for example, that a large language model spits out, or prediction that one of these systems is making, because we feel as though the system must have more information than we do, and must be processing it and sequencing it and ordering it better than we could,” legal scholar and former associate White House counsel Ashley Deeks told Quartz earlier this month.
What exacerbates the problem even more is that AI systems are like “black boxes,” according to Deeks, in that it is tough for users to understand how or why it reaches certain conclusions. This could make it even tougher for officers to figure out who to trust when their gut and experience, and the AI system are saying opposite things.
The Department of Defense is majorly scaling up artificial intelligence in the military.
The potential value of all AI-related federal contracts increased by almost 1200% just from 2022 to 2023, according to a Brookings report, and so much of this spend was by the Pentagon that “all other agencies become a rounding error.”
The Department has been working to get AI capabilities into defense operations since 2021, including through the use of autonomous weapons and AI-powered computer vision to identify airstrike targets.
Recently, the Pentagon awarded artificial intelligence giant Scale AI a reportedly multi-million dollar prototype contract to integrate AI agents into military planning and decision making workflows under its flagship operation Thunderforge. Under the program, Pentagon and industry partners will use AI agents in everything from military campaign development and resource allocation to wargaming simulations, planning scenarios and proposed courses of action, and strategic assessments.
Artificial intelligence capabilities have long been integrated into Israeli military operations, and has increasingly been in the spotlight as Israel’s war on Gaza continues.
A long list of major big tech companies have provided AI services to the Israeli military to be used in wartime operations and decision making, prompting concern over the technology’s role in human rights violations against Palestinian civilians.
Palantir (PLTR) signed a strategic partnership with the Israeli Defense Ministry last year to increase the use of its AI technology to support the military’s “war-related missions,” Bloomberg reported.
Google (GOOGL) and Amazon (AMZN) have provided AI services to the Israeli military since 2021 under its controversial, $1.2 billion “Project Nimbus.” Alphabet made the decision despite some company officials warning that the technology could be used to facilitate human rights violations, according to a New York Times report.
A recent Associated Press investigation found that the Israeli military uses Microsoft (MSFT) and OpenAI artificial intelligence technology, including models made for commercial use. The investigation also said that the Israeli military uses AI to sift through intelligence and intercepted communications, pinpointing targets for drone strikes and for mass surveillance.
Beijing is perhaps United States’ number one rival in the AI arms race.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has made military artificial intelligence a top strategic priority. The People’s Liberation Army has invested heavily in scaling up AI to assist in situational awareness, unmanned weapons, decision making and more. Beijing’s focus on the matter has made U.S.-based innovators and politicians concerned, with Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang saying that the technology could help China “leapfrog” the military capacity of “Western powers.”
Late last year, the Chinese army reportedly used an early version of Meta’s (META) Llama as a base to develop a military-focused AI tool called ChatBIT. The military AI can gather and process intelligence, and offer information for operational decision making.
Last week, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported that the People’s Liberation Army started to use DeepSeek’s AI model for non-combat related support. The model is reportedly being used particularly in military hospitals for now.
Russia has been in a major overhaul of high technology weapons development, dubbed Putin’s superoruzhie (aka ‘super weapons’), since 2018, in an effort to counter the perceived military technology strength of Western powers.
Russia’s war with Ukraine was one of the first documented instances of military AI weapons being used in active combat, including electronic warfare systems capable of jamming communication systems. But perhaps Russia’s most notorious AI-enabled method of warfare is to use the technology in massively scaling up disinformation campaigns.
But Russia’s military AI capabilities have been developing rather slower than expected, and experts say the West is skeptical of Moscow’s ability to scale its development. Russia spends less on research and development than other superpowers like U.S. or China and faces a talent development and retention problem, causing it to lag behind the U.S. and China in developing and scaling these technologies. But recently, reports say Russia has asked for China’s help in developing its artificial intelligence capabilities.
Much like its enemy Russia, Ukraine is also focusing on building out and scaling its military AI capabilities.
While the current deployment of Ukrainian military AI in the field is only partial and employs a human-centric approach with officers making final decisions, the country is increasingly investing in the technology to achieve its main objective of replacing humans in direct combat with autonomous unmanned systems. In achieving this objective, Ukraine has sought help from many major American big tech companies like Anduril, Palantir, Microsoft, Amazon and Google.
Ukraine is using the technology to develop autonomous drones, AI-powered tools that provide real-time intelligence to support wartime strategic decision making and find targets, to clear landmines, and to train soldiers with AI simulations. The country has also partnered with Scale AI to aid recovery planning by conducting post-strike damage analysis of buildings targeted by Russia’s drone strikes.
South Korea is working around the clock to develop military AI capabilities to counter threats by a Russia-backed North Korea, and aid its military power in the context of a shrinking population.
The East Asian country reportedly tested its first self-developed artificial intelligence models during joint military exercises with the U.S. earlier this month. The system, called Generative Defense AI, was tested in the military exercise to see if it can be applied to actual command and control systems, according to the South Korean defense ministry.
On Thursday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un supervised a test of brand new AI-equipped suicide and reconnaissance drones.
“The field of unmanned equipment and artificial intelligence should be top-prioritized and developed in modernizing the armed forces,” Kim said, according to state media agency KCNA.
Experts say North Korea is getting technical help from Russia to expand its military technology capabilities, including the use of artificial intelligence.
While North Korea’s military AI efforts unsurprisingly lack transparency, KCNA reported that Kim was also briefed on new technological advancements in intelligence-gathering capabilities, electronic jamming and attack systems at the test site on Thursday.
The United Kingdom government established the Defense Artificial Intelligence Center in 2021 in order to transform its defense department “into an AI-ready organization.” The center aims to develop AI that would speed up defense operations and decision-making and automate the “dull, dirty, and dangerous” tasks, according to the center’s web page.
To achieve this goal, the UK has been putting its resources into research in how AI can pose threats but also be used to develop weapons both on the field and in cyber-warfare.
In a 20-page strategy report published in 2023, the UK military laid out its plans to be “AI-ready by April 2024.” But in a defense committee hearing in late March 2024, British defense procurement minister James Cartlidge said that the military is not yet at that stage, despite having counted significant progress in incorporating AI in “some important areas.”
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