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Preparing for the Future of War · What's Your Problem?

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. If you go to the front line of the
0:22
Speaker 1: war in Ukraine and you look up, there's a very
0:26
Speaker 1: good chance you'll see a drone. Could be a friendly drone,
0:30
Speaker 1: could be an enemy drone, could be a reconnaissance drone,
0:34
Speaker 1: or it could be a drone that is trying to
0:36
Speaker 1: kill you. The war in Ukraine is the first war
0:39
Speaker 1: in history where huge numbers of cheap drones powered largely
0:44
Speaker 1: by commercial grade hardware and open source software, are playing
0:48
Speaker 1: a central role. This technological change has profound implications. It
0:53
Speaker 1: gives smaller countries like Ukraine new ways to fight, and
0:57
Speaker 1: it means the militaries of big traditional powers military is
1:00
Speaker 1: built on twentieth century technologies like tanks and aircraft carriers,
1:05
Speaker 1: need to radically change just to keep up. I'm Jacob Goldstein,
1:14
Speaker 1: and this is what's your problem. My guest today is
1:17
Speaker 1: Christopher Kirkoff. Nine years ago, Christopher helped to start the
1:20
Speaker 1: Defense Innovation Unit, a Defense Department office in Silicon Valley.
1:25
Speaker 1: He currently works as an advisor there. Christopher says, in
1:28
Speaker 1: many ways, the US military has failed to keep up
1:31
Speaker 1: with the way military technology has changed. That fundamentally is
1:35
Speaker 1: the problem. DIU is trying to solve how can the
1:38
Speaker 1: giant bureaucracy that is the US military catch up with
1:42
Speaker 1: the latest military technology. Christopher is a civilian. He had
1:48
Speaker 1: a bunch of national security related jobs in the Obama administration,
1:52
Speaker 1: and he recently co wrote a book about his work
1:55
Speaker 1: at the Defense Innovation Unit, the DIIU. Christopher and I
1:59
Speaker 1: talk about the book and the DIIU later in the interview,
2:02
Speaker 1: but to start, we talked about the weapons and tech
2:05
Speaker 1: being used in the war in Ukraine. So, I mean,
2:08
Speaker 1: it's in some ways like the war in Ukraine. It
2:12
Speaker 1: is some version of the war or the kind of
2:16
Speaker 1: war you've been thinking about for a long time, years
2:20
Speaker 1: and years.
2:21
Speaker 2: Well, I've always looked at Ukraine, you know, at sort
2:24
Speaker 2: of two levels. The first, of course, is that it's
2:27
Speaker 2: just a very tragic and frankly needless war. You know,
2:32
Speaker 2: there's there's very few reasons right ever to go to war,
2:38
Speaker 2: and this is a particularly stupid war that's just going
2:41
Speaker 2: to cost a lot of young men and women their lives.
2:45
Speaker 2: So it's tragic, and I'm terribly sorry for the suffering
2:47
Speaker 2: of the Ukrainian people, and frankly the suffering of the
2:50
Speaker 2: young conscripted Russian soldiers as well, So let me just
2:53
Speaker 2: say that to start. But the second way that I
2:56
Speaker 2: look at Ukraine as you know, essentially a laboratory of war.
3:02
Speaker 2: We saw in you know, a decade ago already the
3:06
Speaker 2: rise of commercial technologies that it was it was obvious
3:10
Speaker 2: could be weaponized and weaponized at scale. And I mean
3:14
Speaker 2: I remember sitting on the e ring of the Pentagon
3:16
Speaker 2: watching YouTube videos of drones, you know, first of all,
3:21
Speaker 2: quad copters flying around, you know, first sinkly, then in pairs,
3:24
Speaker 2: then doing dances, and it was really easy to imagine
3:29
Speaker 2: that at some point in the future those drones could
3:31
Speaker 2: themselves also be carrying payloads of various kinds. And not
3:35
Speaker 2: only that, but I mean these are drones that you know,
3:38
Speaker 2: you could order on Amazon, right, they were a few
3:41
Speaker 2: hundred dollars, so they were incredibly inexpensive to begin experimenting with.
3:46
Speaker 2: So all the ingredients were there for a complete revolution
3:52
Speaker 2: in the tools with which which war could be fought,
3:57
Speaker 2: and they came together kind of all at once in
4:00
Speaker 2: a way when Russian armored columns began and advancing in Ukraine. Right.
4:08
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's kind of easy to forget now,
4:10
Speaker 1: but it at the time when Russia invaded Ukraine, seems
4:15
Speaker 1: like the basic conventional wisdom was, oh, giant country with
4:19
Speaker 1: a huge army invading, They're going to win in a week.
4:24
Speaker 1: And that didn't happen. I mean, what what role did
4:28
Speaker 1: this sort of new set of technologies play in allowing
4:32
Speaker 1: Ukraine to defend itself.
4:34
Speaker 2: Well, you know that the technologies actually came into play
4:37
Speaker 2: even before the invasion commenced. And one of the most
4:42
Speaker 2: visible ways that came into play is I mean, this
4:45
Speaker 2: is the first war in a way where there's so
4:47
Speaker 2: many private imagery companies that have their own satellite constellations
4:53
Speaker 2: that are beaming back to Earth high resolution imagery, resolution
4:56
Speaker 2: of the order of what would have been, you know,
4:59
Speaker 2: a Cold War spy satellite just a few years ago. Uh.
5:03
Speaker 2: And this this importantly, this, these images weren't just going
5:07
Speaker 2: to you know, the US government or to other militaries.
5:10
Speaker 2: They were available to anybody that wanted to see them.
5:13
Speaker 2: And so when Putin and the Kremlin was issuing statements
5:18
Speaker 2: to the effect that no, they weren't going to invade Ukraine,
5:21
Speaker 2: in fact, they were demobilizing the Russian military and preparing
5:24
Speaker 2: to ship material back to Russia. By rail. The Biden
5:29
Speaker 2: administration was able to release commercial imagery that showed no,
5:34
Speaker 2: in fact, there's armored columns lining up on the border
5:38
Speaker 2: ready to go.
5:40
Speaker 1: Uh huh. I mean the fact that it was commercial
5:42
Speaker 1: means you didn't even need the Biden administration, right like
5:45
Speaker 1: anybody who paid for a subscription could see that the
5:49
Speaker 1: Russian tanks were there.
5:50
Speaker 2: Right exactly, and so and this carried on. Then so
5:55
Speaker 2: the invasion begins and the Ukrainians not only have eyes
6:01
Speaker 2: and ears from this commercial data fees, not just imagery,
6:06
Speaker 2: but also radio frequency intelligence, and that gets paired quickly
6:11
Speaker 2: with starlink at a moment when you know, the Russians
6:15
Speaker 2: are using very advanced cyber attacks to attempt to take
6:18
Speaker 2: down not only the Internet in Ukraine, but also the
6:21
Speaker 2: command and control structure of the Ukrainian military. And what
6:26
Speaker 2: then happened next was really quite unique and amazing. The
6:29
Speaker 2: Ukrainian government had become quite adept at offering digital services
6:36
Speaker 2: to its citizens, both through online websites and through a
6:39
Speaker 2: smartphone app that the government built. In fact, Zelensky actually
6:43
Speaker 2: campaigned as a somebody who would bring in a new
6:47
Speaker 2: generation of digital services, whether it was taxes or you know,
6:51
Speaker 2: the ability to incorporate online. So the Ukrainian government very
6:56
Speaker 2: quickly reconfigure a smartphone app that Ukrainians used every day
7:01
Speaker 2: in their ordinary lives to allow Ukrainians to be able
7:04
Speaker 2: to send in spot reports of you know, I just
7:07
Speaker 2: saw a tank column moving past my town.
7:10
Speaker 1: You basically just pull out your phone and open your
7:12
Speaker 1: app and instead of whatever, calling an uber, you say,
7:16
Speaker 1: I just saw a tank.
7:17
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, so the nickname for this became Uber for artillery.
7:21
Speaker 2: It literally was possible for citizens to file a spot
7:25
Speaker 2: report that went right away to a command center in
7:29
Speaker 2: the Ministry of Defense, and artillery and other weapons were
7:33
Speaker 2: literally dispatched on that information.
7:36
Speaker 1: So, okay, So that's the sort of initial state of play.
7:41
Speaker 1: And then there's this evolution, right it seems like it's
7:44
Speaker 1: three years from now, a long time. There has been
7:47
Speaker 1: this really intense yeah, evolution, innovation right on both sides.
7:54
Speaker 1: Talk to me about that. How has how has technology
7:57
Speaker 1: driven this sort of rapid evolution of war fighting over
8:00
Speaker 1: the last few years.
8:02
Speaker 2: Well, Ukraine has been described the Ukrainian military has been described,
8:06
Speaker 2: you know, as a as a military that already came
8:09
Speaker 2: with a silicon valley wing attached to it because Ukraine
8:14
Speaker 2: over the last two decades has redefined itself as a
8:18
Speaker 2: country of programmers. It has a large endemic IT industry
8:23
Speaker 2: that was there before the war, and the Ukrainian government
8:27
Speaker 2: was really smart in that it mobilized, of course, military
8:31
Speaker 2: age males to serve It really is a citizen army
8:34
Speaker 2: in that respect, but it took anybody that had engineering
8:37
Speaker 2: or programming skills and it allowed them either to work
8:42
Speaker 2: for a private company developing technology or to work for
8:45
Speaker 2: the military developing technology. And so from the first weeks
8:49
Speaker 2: of the war you had an incredible number of engineers
8:55
Speaker 2: spitballing on how to develop indigenous technology that could take
9:01
Speaker 2: on the Russians. And this mattered because as soon as
9:04
Speaker 2: the Russians got their advanced electronic warfare systems to the
9:08
Speaker 2: front and move them forward and turn them on even
9:12
Speaker 2: advanced Western drones that either Ukraine already had in this
9:16
Speaker 2: inventory or rushed in and the opening weeks of the
9:18
Speaker 2: war became essentially ineffective because they were not programmed nor
9:23
Speaker 2: did they have the sensors on them to be able
9:26
Speaker 2: to defeat the extremely advanced Russian countermeasures that were immediately
9:31
Speaker 2: rolled out.
9:32
Speaker 1: So the Russians were essentially jamming the drones in some way.
9:34
Speaker 1: They had some kind of technology that rendered sort of
9:38
Speaker 1: off the shelf or even military grade drones ineffective.
9:43
Speaker 2: The jamming was so powerful that if you were in
9:46
Speaker 2: Kiev and you say you were on the third or
9:49
Speaker 2: fourth form of a hotel and you tried to order
9:51
Speaker 2: an uber your location on the map in the Uber app,
9:57
Speaker 2: which show up in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
10:00
Speaker 2: Because the GPS jamming was so effective that even in cities,
10:04
Speaker 2: it wasn't possible to pick up a reliable signal that
10:07
Speaker 2: you know, cities that were hundred miles from the front.
10:10
Speaker 2: So at the front, the electromagnetic spectrum was just flooded
10:16
Speaker 2: with energy and that caused right away, it touched off
10:21
Speaker 2: this technology race to invent drones that could essentially fly
10:28
Speaker 2: on their own, even through incredibly intense jamming. And so
10:33
Speaker 2: the Ukrainians and it was remarkable to go see when
10:36
Speaker 2: my co author Radshaw and I got a chance to
10:38
Speaker 2: visit Ukraine a year and a half ago, we went
10:43
Speaker 2: to a number of drone companies and they have essentially
10:47
Speaker 2: the Ukrainians in a matter of months, recreated the entire
10:51
Speaker 2: American Cold War precision strike complex that we first got
10:56
Speaker 2: to know so well in the original Gulf War, where
11:00
Speaker 2: we all of a sudden were dropping bombs down chimneys.
11:03
Speaker 2: So the Ukrainians have an essence, used a combination of
11:09
Speaker 2: open source software and low cost hardware to recreate everything
11:15
Speaker 2: from the function of our a wax planes. These are
11:19
Speaker 2: the airline looking airplanes with the giant raidardomes on top
11:24
Speaker 2: that provide a kind of God's eye view of the battlefield.
11:28
Speaker 2: So they literally have drones whose sole purpose is to
11:31
Speaker 2: keep track of large parts of the battlefield to other
11:36
Speaker 2: smaller surveillance drones that will go take pictures of a
11:41
Speaker 2: specific area that the Ukrainians want to target. They'll relay
11:46
Speaker 2: that imagery back kind of almost like miniature YouTube spy
11:49
Speaker 2: planes flying and dropping film canisters and whatnot, and they'll
11:54
Speaker 2: quickly be able to then load the images of Russian
11:57
Speaker 2: targets that they want to hit up onto killer drones
12:02
Speaker 2: that will then use image recognition and terrain following software
12:06
Speaker 2: to go hunt and find the target. It's with fully
12:11
Speaker 2: you know autonomy on fully autonomous routes right that don't
12:14
Speaker 2: require phoning home for them either to navigate or have
12:18
Speaker 2: permission to engage. On top of that, you actually have
12:22
Speaker 2: the Ukrainians using open source software to fuse different sensor streams,
12:26
Speaker 2: so you can have a Ukrainian commander that on a
12:29
Speaker 2: tablet computer in front of them has data feeds from
12:33
Speaker 2: surveillance drones that that are relaying video in real time
12:37
Speaker 2: to maps of the electronic warfare spectrum. You know. So
12:45
Speaker 2: it's really incredible what they've been able to do for
12:49
Speaker 2: essentially pennies on the dollar of what the American military
12:53
Speaker 2: is spent to recreate the same technological stack.
12:56
Speaker 1: So you went to Ukraine a year and a half
12:59
Speaker 1: ago or so. You mentioned a couple of the places
13:02
Speaker 1: you visited. One of them is sort of a had
13:04
Speaker 1: been the Ukrainian version of like best Buy right and
13:08
Speaker 1: had been transfer warmed. Tell me about that.
13:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was wild running around the city of Kiev
13:15
Speaker 2: visiting a number of the places that the government had
13:19
Speaker 2: commandeered for the war effort. And so one of these
13:23
Speaker 2: places was an all literal you know, Ukraine's version of
13:26
Speaker 2: Best Buy, a big box store essentially on the wall
13:29
Speaker 2: were still signed saying you know, televisions, appliances, you know,
13:34
Speaker 2: there were ads for washing machines, you know, on the walls,
13:37
Speaker 2: like walking to the Best Buy, but instead of there
13:39
Speaker 2: being a whole bunch of electronics for you to buy,
13:42
Speaker 2: there were benches, work benches laid out in an assembly
13:45
Speaker 2: a line style rows and this particular electronics store was
13:50
Speaker 2: being used to mass produce quad copter Kamakazi drones. So
13:55
Speaker 2: at one end of the assembly line you would start
13:58
Speaker 2: with the frame of the drone and by the time
14:01
Speaker 2: he got to the other end, you would have a
14:03
Speaker 2: completely working drone with communications software ready to be mated
14:08
Speaker 2: with either an anti personnel charge or a shaped charge
14:13
Speaker 2: to go through armor, you know, a couple of kilogram
14:16
Speaker 2: charge that would create these inexpensive mass produced quad copters
14:20
Speaker 2: into quite potent weapons.
14:23
Speaker 1: When you say a charge, should I think bomb? It's
14:26
Speaker 1: basically a little.
14:27
Speaker 2: Bomb, right, yeah, larger than a grenade.
14:29
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then it would so go out to the
14:32
Speaker 1: front and they'd put the bomb on it and they'd
14:35
Speaker 1: go crash it into a Russian tank or something like that.
14:38
Speaker 2: They sure would. And this goes back to the incredibly
14:44
Speaker 2: novel hybrid warfare that we're seeing in Ukraine, where yes,
14:48
Speaker 2: there are you know, in many respects, the war in
14:52
Speaker 2: Ukraine is a. There is a lot of continuities with
14:55
Speaker 2: the First and the Second World War. There are trench lines,
14:57
Speaker 2: there is artillery, there are tanks and mechanize differenttry that
15:01
Speaker 2: are moving around. But at the same time in the
15:04
Speaker 2: trenches are drone pilots and they are launching armed drones
15:08
Speaker 2: and sense drones that are watching enemy movements behind enemy lines.
15:14
Speaker 2: And so the battle you know in World War One
15:18
Speaker 2: or World War Two typically happened at the front where
15:21
Speaker 2: forces actually came into contact with one another. Today, Joan
15:25
Speaker 2: Wolfire is pushing the battle behind the front.
15:28
Speaker 1: It makes the front sort of more porous exactly.
15:31
Speaker 2: So if you were, example, you know, a Russian armor unit,
15:35
Speaker 2: and you're trying to advance into Ukrainian territory, you have
15:39
Speaker 2: to bring your tanks and your armored personal carriers with
15:43
Speaker 2: your infantry towards the front. Well, the Ukrainian has gone
15:47
Speaker 2: in the habit of using their inexpensive kamikaze drones to
15:51
Speaker 2: loiter and track armored personal carriers, and at the moment
15:54
Speaker 2: at which troops would disembark the armored personal carrier to
15:58
Speaker 2: move towards the front, they would strike. So this you know,
16:03
Speaker 2: lawn range or sort of short range precisions. Strike has
16:07
Speaker 2: completely changed how the war is being fought. It's being
16:11
Speaker 2: fought unlike any other war in modern times.
16:14
Speaker 1: So the war has been going on for a few years.
16:16
Speaker 1: Both Russia and Ukraine have clearly been learning and you know,
16:20
Speaker 1: developing new technology at this incredibly rapid pace. How does
16:24
Speaker 1: the war in Ukraine look different now than it did
16:27
Speaker 1: three years ago or two years ago shortly after it started.
16:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we're you know, back to a place that's
16:35
Speaker 2: a well known place to historians, to military historians, where
16:40
Speaker 2: you know, there was an initial explosion of conflict in
16:46
Speaker 2: the in the confused invasion, where massive Russian armored columns
16:52
Speaker 2: rushed in at multiple points in the country. They were
16:54
Speaker 2: ultimately beaten back to a certain point. Those lines, you know,
16:59
Speaker 2: over time came to freeze. Because each side has very
17:04
Speaker 2: potent precision strike weapons, it's very hard to change those lines.
17:10
Speaker 2: In other words, the defense in a way has an advantage.
17:14
Speaker 2: It's very very hard to use offensive mass to gain territory,
17:18
Speaker 2: which is why we've seen the battle lines not shift
17:22
Speaker 2: all that much after they settled in the initial months
17:25
Speaker 2: of the year. But what's going on behind them has
17:27
Speaker 2: been this incredible combat through cycles of innovation, who can
17:35
Speaker 2: come up with better electronic countermeasures, who can come up
17:38
Speaker 2: with the next generation of drones that will defeat them?
17:41
Speaker 2: And so both the Russians and the Ukrainians have been
17:43
Speaker 2: innovating behind the front lines and then bringing that technology forward.
17:48
Speaker 1: Does the world look different in some way now than
17:51
Speaker 1: it did a couple of years ago? Or is it
17:52
Speaker 1: different on such a subtle level, like the gpsgmming is
17:56
Speaker 1: better and the countermeasures are better, and so the net
17:58
Speaker 1: effect is the same.
18:02
Speaker 2: I say, it's different in pretty dramatic ways. So today
18:06
Speaker 2: there are such effect of small scale Kamakazi drones that
18:12
Speaker 2: they can effectively hunt individuals. So we are truly today
18:18
Speaker 2: in a black Mere episode where if you're a civilian
18:22
Speaker 2: at a border city near the front, or a soldier
18:27
Speaker 2: at the front, you are in danger of every time
18:30
Speaker 2: you leave the bunker or leave your house literally being
18:34
Speaker 2: pursued by a drone that's trying to kill you.
18:37
Speaker 1: I mean, how do you survive a kamakazi drone attack?
18:40
Speaker 2: You essentially have to take cover and so oftentimes you
18:44
Speaker 2: know the sound of a drone buzzing, you know, And
18:48
Speaker 2: this is a challenge, right because on every square mile
18:51
Speaker 2: of the front, they're probably a dozen or more drones
18:54
Speaker 2: in the air at any given time.
18:56
Speaker 1: So if you're fighting this where there's basically always a
18:59
Speaker 1: drone flying over your head and maybe it's coming to
19:01
Speaker 1: kill you personally, and maybe it's not.
19:04
Speaker 2: The airspace on both sides of the lines incredibly overrun
19:09
Speaker 2: with drones. I mean they are literally smacking it to
19:12
Speaker 2: each other in the air. It's like flocks of birds
19:16
Speaker 2: at this point. So so no, the changes we're seeing, frankly,
19:19
Speaker 2: are not subtle at all. They're quite dramatic.
19:22
Speaker 1: So what does the US learn from the war in Ukraine.
19:27
Speaker 2: It's woken the United States and our allies up in
19:29
Speaker 2: two very profound ways. The first is that, you know,
19:33
Speaker 2: it turns out we had not been stockpiling adequate material
19:38
Speaker 2: for war, whether it was howards to shells or anti
19:41
Speaker 2: tank missiles or sophisticated rockets we had basically you know,
19:48
Speaker 2: ran to the storage cupboard and found it to be
19:50
Speaker 2: almost bare. And that's very alarming. You know, it happened
19:54
Speaker 2: because of course munitions, when the budget gets tired, it's
19:57
Speaker 2: easy to say, oh, we'll buy more next year. So
19:59
Speaker 2: that's how we ended up in that situation. So we
20:02
Speaker 2: discovered a crisis actually of military readiness on our side,
20:05
Speaker 2: and we discovered a manufacturing base more than that that
20:09
Speaker 2: was not easily able to be mobilized because many factories
20:13
Speaker 2: that produce these weapons had been idle for years or
20:16
Speaker 2: even shuttered. And in a world in which supply chains
20:19
Speaker 2: are threatened globally, if you can't assume the seas are
20:23
Speaker 2: going to be saved for transit, you have to be
20:25
Speaker 2: able to manufacture this weaponry within your borders. But there
20:30
Speaker 2: was an even more profound wake up call, and let's
20:33
Speaker 2: just go back to the use of Kamakazi drones. We
20:35
Speaker 2: gave the Ukrainians very early in the war and one
20:39
Speaker 2: A one Abraham's battle tanks. These are the most sophisticated
20:43
Speaker 2: battle tank in the world. We've all seen pictures of them.
20:48
Speaker 2: You can be driving down the highway in an Abram's
20:50
Speaker 2: battle tank at seventy miles an hour and you can
20:52
Speaker 2: decide which window of a skyscraper to put around through them.
20:55
Speaker 2: It's an incredible piece of hardware. And almost all thirty
20:58
Speaker 2: one of those tanks have been destroyed or disabled by
21:02
Speaker 2: Russian Kamakazi drones that each cost no more than a
21:05
Speaker 2: few thousand dollars a piece.
21:07
Speaker 1: And what's the tank cost the tankst.
21:09
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, I don't know, twelve or fifteen million dollars
21:11
Speaker 2: or maybe more. So that tells me another military strategist,
21:17
Speaker 2: that if you're an army who bought a lot of tanks,
21:22
Speaker 2: and you presume that your military strength comes from those tanks,
21:26
Speaker 2: you could easily be surprised by an adversary using really
21:29
Speaker 2: an expensive Kama Coze drones. In other words, the era
21:34
Speaker 2: of manned mechanized warfare is over. In the same way
21:37
Speaker 2: that during the First World War, tanks showed us that
21:41
Speaker 2: the cavalry age was coming to a close, we are
21:43
Speaker 2: now at the end of the era of the battle tank.
21:47
Speaker 1: So you're sayings, tanks now are about as useful as
21:51
Speaker 1: horses were in nineteen fifteen. Yes, what do we do
21:59
Speaker 1: about that? What does that mean for the United States?
22:04
Speaker 2: Well, the reason why my cousin I wrote a book
22:11
Speaker 2: all about just how far behind the US military finds
22:14
Speaker 2: itself is that this phenomena of less expensive technology overcoming
22:22
Speaker 2: legacy weapons systems, you know, the sort of building blocks
22:25
Speaker 2: of the Cold War American military isn't true just for tanks,
22:29
Speaker 2: And in fact we're already seeing this in Ukraine, where
22:32
Speaker 2: the Russian black sea fleet is today being kept in
22:36
Speaker 2: port by Ukrainians ingenious use of autonomous boats that are
22:45
Speaker 2: carrying payloads of high explosives that have rammed in and
22:50
Speaker 2: sunk the largest Russian ship, the Moskova on the black seat.
22:55
Speaker 2: So the naval strategists called the Russian fleet now being
22:58
Speaker 2: a fleet in being, it's a fleet kept in port
23:01
Speaker 2: because of cheap autonomous technology. So, in other words, many
23:05
Speaker 2: of the Americans most powerful militaries systems, aircraft carriers, battle tanks,
23:12
Speaker 2: battleships may now no longer be as effective as they
23:16
Speaker 2: were just a few years ago.
23:19
Speaker 1: I mean so in terms of changing the equilibrium. Is
23:22
Speaker 1: the effect of essentially autonomous technology drones and then ship
23:26
Speaker 1: drones to give more power to countries with less money.
23:31
Speaker 1: Is that one effect?
23:33
Speaker 2: Well, there's two effects. So the first and most obvious
23:36
Speaker 2: effect is that a country with fewer financial resources can
23:41
Speaker 2: amass larger degrees of military power. But there's a second
23:46
Speaker 2: and more insidious effect, which is that militaries are inherently
23:51
Speaker 2: conservative institutions for a couple of reasons. One, war is
23:55
Speaker 2: a very unforgiving teacher. And it's almost impossible through just
24:00
Speaker 2: simulations alone to actually replicate combat conditions. And so you
24:04
Speaker 2: can test, you can test new systems all you want,
24:07
Speaker 2: but you won't actually have the com evident. So they're
24:09
Speaker 2: going to work in the way you suspect them to
24:11
Speaker 2: work or want them to work until you go to war.
24:14
Speaker 2: So this is what leads militaries to almost always perpetually
24:18
Speaker 2: be overfocused on winning the last war rather than winning
24:21
Speaker 2: the war. That's the cop.
24:26
Speaker 1: Still to come on the show. Why the US military
24:28
Speaker 1: is not ready to fight a war right now according
24:31
Speaker 1: to Chris, and what it might take to change that. So, okay,
24:45
Speaker 1: there is this problem right the US military is not
24:48
Speaker 1: really keeping up with technological change. And this is a
24:51
Speaker 1: problem that Christopher has been working on for a while now.
24:54
Speaker 1: It's a key part of the reason he was tapped
24:56
Speaker 1: to help launch the Defense Innovation Unit back in twenty sixteen,
25:01
Speaker 1: and to kind of set the scene here right to
25:03
Speaker 1: give a sense of what he and his colleagues were
25:05
Speaker 1: up against, what they were trying to change when they
25:08
Speaker 1: launched the Defense Inovation Unit. I asked Christopher about this
25:11
Speaker 1: story that he and his co author tell in their book,
25:15
Speaker 1: it's the story of something they saw at the US
25:18
Speaker 1: military's Combined Air Operations Center in Katar.
25:22
Speaker 2: So the Combined Air Operations Center is this nerve center
25:28
Speaker 2: that is in charge of running all air operations in
25:32
Speaker 2: the Middle East in an area that's actually larger than
25:35
Speaker 2: the lower forty eight States. And so any plane, any missile,
25:40
Speaker 2: any air strike that goes on in this extraordinary piece
25:45
Speaker 2: of geography is the responsibility of a set of airmen
25:51
Speaker 2: and women that operate in a base in Qatar. And
25:55
Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen, you'll remember, there was a crisis in
25:59
Speaker 2: the Middle East. Isis was storming through countries, was encircling
26:05
Speaker 2: the Iraqi population in Mosul, was trying to prosecut the
26:09
Speaker 2: largest genocide of the twenty first century against the Ziti
26:13
Speaker 2: people who were trapped on Mountain Jar. And these civilians
26:17
Speaker 2: were kept alive only by an extraordinary campaign of US
26:22
Speaker 2: air strikes. We were striking ISIS forces every few minutes
26:28
Speaker 2: twenty four to seven for weeks on end, in a
26:31
Speaker 2: bombing campaign that's the highest intensity in history. And to
26:36
Speaker 2: sustain a bombing campaign of this you have to have,
26:39
Speaker 2: of course fighter aircraft and surveillance, but you also have
26:42
Speaker 2: to have refueling tankers. These fighter jets are gas guzzlers.
26:46
Speaker 2: They need to refill their gas tanks every forty minutes
26:49
Speaker 2: or so, and to do that they have to mate
26:53
Speaker 2: up with air refueling tankers. And this is actually a
26:56
Speaker 2: very complex thing to figure out because fighters come in
27:00
Speaker 2: different types, they refuel at different altitudes, they have different
27:03
Speaker 2: nozzles on them, and if you have hundreds of aircraft
27:07
Speaker 2: a day aloft operating in combat support roles, you need
27:12
Speaker 2: dozens of tankers to refuel them. So how did the
27:17
Speaker 2: Air Force men and women in uniform and guitar orchestrate
27:23
Speaker 2: the complex planning of tanker routes. Well, they used a whiteboard.
27:29
Speaker 2: We showed up in twenty sixteen and found people essentially
27:34
Speaker 2: operating like we did in World War Two, except instead
27:37
Speaker 2: of having a chalkboard and magnets, we had a whiteboard.
27:43
Speaker 2: And they were having to do all these calculations by hand,
27:46
Speaker 2: which took an enormous number of hours. Why by hand
27:50
Speaker 2: because the computer program that was supposed to do this
27:53
Speaker 2: had broken and they were waiting for an upgrade. But
27:55
Speaker 2: they had been waiting seven years for an upgrade that
27:59
Speaker 2: one of the large defense companies was in charge of
28:01
Speaker 2: developing that was way of rebudget and way behind schedule.
28:05
Speaker 1: They'd been waiting seven years for an upgrade, and they
28:07
Speaker 1: were in the middle of this like multi multi million
28:10
Speaker 1: dollar command center the US had built, coordinating hundreds of
28:15
Speaker 1: flights all the time.
28:16
Speaker 2: It gets worse. So the minute that there's a deviation
28:20
Speaker 2: from the plan, whether that's bad weather or you know,
28:24
Speaker 2: unexpected combat operations in a different area than you'd plan
28:28
Speaker 2: for now you have to redo the calculations on the fly.
28:31
Speaker 2: So this is actually introducing a lot of unneeded risk
28:34
Speaker 2: in our combat operations that that only puts it risk
28:38
Speaker 2: the men and women of the US military, but also
28:40
Speaker 2: puts it risk the forces on the ground that we're
28:43
Speaker 2: trying to protect, where the civilians were trying to defend.
28:46
Speaker 1: You describe like somewhere in the process, there'd be like
28:50
Speaker 1: somebody with one spreadsheet and then there was another spreadsheet,
28:53
Speaker 1: but like the two spreadsheets couldn't like talk to each other, right,
28:56
Speaker 1: so somebody had to read out the numbers to get
28:58
Speaker 1: it from one spreadsheet to the other. You describe extra
29:02
Speaker 1: refueling flights all the time because they couldn't, you know,
29:07
Speaker 1: process the data fast enough essentially by hand.
29:10
Speaker 2: There, they had multiple different databases they had to manually
29:14
Speaker 2: fuel fuse together. Somebody would literally stand behind the computer
29:17
Speaker 2: operator to make sure they were typing in the numbers right,
29:20
Speaker 2: and it would take fifty person hours to put together
29:24
Speaker 2: the refueling plan for the next day. So we realized
29:28
Speaker 2: this was an opportunity to show what Silicon Valley does best,
29:32
Speaker 2: which is rapid iteration using software to create an optimization
29:37
Speaker 2: algorithm that could solve this in seconds.
29:39
Speaker 1: Why hadn't they just fixed it? Let me ask the
29:41
Speaker 1: naive question, like, it's not as a technical matter, it's
29:45
Speaker 1: not a hard problem. What was the actual problem.
29:47
Speaker 2: So the problem is that the way the military bias
29:50
Speaker 2: technology and the way Silicon Valley makes it, it's like
29:56
Speaker 2: Mars and Venus, they're on two different planets. So the
30:00
Speaker 2: military way, it's called a requirements based system of developing technology.
30:05
Speaker 2: So a bunch of people sit in a windowless room
30:07
Speaker 2: and they imagine, if I were to need a piece
30:10
Speaker 2: of technology to help with air refueling, what should it
30:13
Speaker 2: look like. And they write a bunch of specifications down
30:16
Speaker 2: that they think would be great. So it's drawn up
30:19
Speaker 2: in the abstract and then because contracting takes a lot
30:22
Speaker 2: in the military. Oftentimes multiple generations of technology come along
30:27
Speaker 2: before that system ever gets built, but of course it
30:30
Speaker 2: has to be built through the original specifications.
30:32
Speaker 1: So the thing you get is basically a thing somebody
30:35
Speaker 1: designed ten years ago or more, which is so obviously
30:41
Speaker 1: a bad idea, right, And I mean certainly you make
30:44
Speaker 1: a compelling case in the book that it's obviously a
30:46
Speaker 1: bad idea. Is there any counter argument? Is there any
30:50
Speaker 1: case for the way they do it?
30:52
Speaker 2: There is, And we have to be very sympathetic to
30:55
Speaker 2: the people that are a part of the system because
30:57
Speaker 2: the system actually was built to do something a little
30:59
Speaker 2: bit different, and that is, you know, there aren't too
31:02
Speaker 2: many companies that can build a nuclear powered aircraft carrier
31:07
Speaker 2: or a submarine or a fifth generation stuff fighter, and
31:10
Speaker 2: so you can't exactly go on Amazon and comparison price
31:13
Speaker 2: shop if the're you're the US govern.
31:15
Speaker 1: There is no market. There is no market for a
31:18
Speaker 1: nuclear sub in a conventional sense. Yeah.
31:20
Speaker 2: So the Defense Procurement system and the associated auditing system
31:25
Speaker 2: that governs it is designed to save taxpayer dollar by
31:31
Speaker 2: coming up with exceptionally precise specifications through which things must
31:36
Speaker 2: be built and then a cost accounting system that is
31:39
Speaker 2: meant to make sure that the taxpayer is never overcharged
31:42
Speaker 2: from the one or two companies that can supply this technology.
31:46
Speaker 2: So it was built for a different era, and in
31:48
Speaker 2: terms of building aircraft carriers it actually does a reasonable job.
31:52
Speaker 2: But commercial technology, there is a market. You don't have
31:56
Speaker 2: to do it that way, and in fact, doing it
31:57
Speaker 2: that way only slows you down.
32:00
Speaker 1: So okay, so you go, you see this terrible, inefficient, dangerous,
32:06
Speaker 1: expensive technology failure that is happening at this base and cutter,
32:13
Speaker 1: what do you do?
32:16
Speaker 2: Phone home? So my Cothur Raj got on the phone
32:20
Speaker 2: that night and we immediately fedexed Imax and deployed a
32:29
Speaker 2: few Air Force courders and a few coders from the
32:32
Speaker 2: Silicon Valley out with the Pivotal to Qatar to sit
32:36
Speaker 2: side by side with the airmen and women doing the
32:39
Speaker 2: tanker planning and to build an automated app that they
32:44
Speaker 2: could use eventually to push a button and have this done.
32:47
Speaker 2: And it took just over a million dollars and just
32:50
Speaker 2: over one hundred days to do it.
32:55
Speaker 1: And you said it saved a million dollars in excess
32:58
Speaker 1: flights in like a couple of days.
33:00
Speaker 2: Right, So before the Air Force had to actually keep
33:04
Speaker 2: a couple refueling tankers on standby to scramble because because
33:09
Speaker 2: they weren't able to pivot the plan fast enough. And
33:12
Speaker 2: of course, each time you scramble an enormous seven sixty
33:15
Speaker 2: seven sized aircraft full of kerosene, it's energetically expensive. So
33:20
Speaker 2: the tool that we use to optimize air tanker refueling
33:24
Speaker 2: actually has saved the Air Force today something like I
33:28
Speaker 2: think twenty four million gallons of kerosene a year. So
33:31
Speaker 2: we're talking, you know, a lot of money of savings, right,
33:33
Speaker 2: So this is this is a no brainer. Spend the money,
33:36
Speaker 2: automate it. You get better mission outcomes for lower cost.
33:40
Speaker 2: It's the Silicon Valley way of co developing technology with
33:43
Speaker 2: the users, of iterating on a minimum, minimum viral product
33:47
Speaker 2: and then adding features to that product as you go along.
33:51
Speaker 1: So this is like an early win in a fairly
33:55
Speaker 1: straightforward way. I mean also worth noting that having the
33:58
Speaker 1: coders go sit with the people who are using the
34:01
Speaker 1: thing is like classic Silicon Valley, right, get close to
34:04
Speaker 1: the user, see what they need, as opposed to like
34:08
Speaker 1: have a guy in Washington ten years ago drop a
34:11
Speaker 1: list of things he thinks people are going to need
34:13
Speaker 1: ten years from now. Right, there are a couple of
34:17
Speaker 1: new companies selling weapons and technology to the government that
34:21
Speaker 1: seem worth talking about, that seem quite different than the
34:24
Speaker 1: sort of twentieth century giant military contractors, Right, Pallanteer and Anderil.
34:32
Speaker 1: Tell me about those two companies and how they fit
34:34
Speaker 1: with this broader story.
34:36
Speaker 2: Well, it's important to recognize that the defense contracts we
34:41
Speaker 2: have today, particularly the large ones that we know about,
34:43
Speaker 2: the household names so Lockheed, Martin, Boeing, and so on
34:46
Speaker 2: and so forth, they are really best thought of kind
34:51
Speaker 2: of like utility companies, as highly regulated enterprises that are
34:57
Speaker 2: not like traditional product companies because they have to adhere
35:01
Speaker 2: to this massive system of cost accounting and auditing, this
35:07
Speaker 2: two thousand page re regulation that governs everything they do.
35:11
Speaker 2: And so in fact, the Pentagon has created these companies
35:16
Speaker 2: and the way they operate, which is extraordinarily inefficient in
35:19
Speaker 2: terms of how modern technology is produced by the commercial sector.
35:22
Speaker 2: So what's so interesting about companies like Anderole, like Palanteer,
35:27
Speaker 2: like shield Ai. They are traditional product companies in the
35:31
Speaker 2: sense that Google and Microsoft are. They are unburdened by
35:36
Speaker 2: having to erect this massive, separate accounting system to deal
35:41
Speaker 2: with the Department of Defense bureaucracy because they are primarily
35:45
Speaker 2: selling their technology through a completely different kind of contract
35:49
Speaker 2: that we pioneered at DIU that our twenty nine year
35:52
Speaker 2: old employee, Lauren Daily, came up with by seeing up
35:57
Speaker 2: late at night and reading congressional legalation.
35:59
Speaker 1: Basically a way that the Department of Defense can buy
36:02
Speaker 1: weapons without going through the traditional two thousand page process.
36:06
Speaker 2: Exactly.
36:07
Speaker 1: It's so amazing that that's what's driving the technological change
36:12
Speaker 1: right in a way, not surprising but quite interesting, right
36:15
Speaker 1: that this, this the process ends up driving the outcome
36:21
Speaker 1: in a backwards way.
36:23
Speaker 2: Well, political scientists and sociologists all, you know, are always
36:27
Speaker 2: keen to look at what you know, structures are operating,
36:29
Speaker 2: and there is of course a whole discipline looks at
36:31
Speaker 2: public institutions, which are constrained quite a bit more than
36:34
Speaker 2: public companies. So once it isn't surprised. But what is
36:38
Speaker 2: a surprise is the difference that one individual made in this.
36:42
Speaker 2: So Lauren Daly, you know, the daughter of a tank driver,
36:46
Speaker 2: somebody who entered the army as an acquisition specialist. As
36:50
Speaker 2: her way of serving the country, figures out that there's
36:54
Speaker 2: a loophole a Congress that a renegae Senate staffer is
36:57
Speaker 2: just inserted in the National Defense Authorization Act that that
37:01
Speaker 2: DAU can drive a truck through, and in a matter
37:04
Speaker 2: of weeks, through some hustling at the Pentagon and the
37:07
Speaker 2: support of thatsh, Carter codified this new method of procuring
37:11
Speaker 2: technology called the Commercial Solutions Offering that essentially all want
37:15
Speaker 2: us to negotiate with companies for a few weeks very openly,
37:18
Speaker 2: in a very conversational way on commercial terms, so the
37:21
Speaker 2: way they were used to negotiating and then to sign
37:24
Speaker 2: a contract. So this was a game changer. And I
37:27
Speaker 2: am so proud to report that since twenty sixteen to date,
37:31
Speaker 2: about eighty billion dollars of technology acquisition by the departed
37:35
Speaker 2: Defense has gone through this new mechanism. And in fact,
37:38
Speaker 2: last week Trump Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth signed out
37:42
Speaker 2: a memo mandating that all software bought by the Department
37:47
Speaker 2: of Defense be acquired using this means, not the old
37:51
Speaker 2: two thousand page, two thousand pageway.
37:55
Speaker 1: Huh So it's sort of the end of the old
38:00
Speaker 1: pretty clearly bad way of buying software for the military.
38:04
Speaker 2: Yes, And so you know, there's two things to keep
38:07
Speaker 2: in mind here. You know, one, it doesn't make sense
38:10
Speaker 2: to use a two thousand page rule book to buy
38:13
Speaker 2: things where you don't need it, where there's an actual market.
38:16
Speaker 2: But the second thing that's really important. We would never
38:19
Speaker 2: go to Microsoft or Amazon and ask them to build
38:22
Speaker 2: an aircraft carrier. So why were we going to Raytheon
38:26
Speaker 2: or Lockheed Martin and asking them or north remmen to
38:29
Speaker 2: build software. It's not their core expertise. So the Pentagon,
38:33
Speaker 2: in the last eight years, thanks in part to its
38:35
Speaker 2: Silicon Valley office, has gotten a lot smarter about how
38:39
Speaker 2: to procure advanced technology. And so fast forward to today.
38:43
Speaker 2: The most exciting contract the Air Force is letting to
38:47
Speaker 2: build up to potentially ten thousand supersonic autonomous drones that
38:52
Speaker 2: will fight alongside our fifth generation man fighters. That contract
38:58
Speaker 2: went to anderall In General Atomics, not de Boeing, not
39:02
Speaker 2: to Lockheed, not to one of the prime So we're
39:04
Speaker 2: seeing this complete sea change in who is being successful
39:09
Speaker 2: at pulling down the biggest contracts with the most advanced
39:13
Speaker 2: technology come out of the Department today.
39:16
Speaker 1: So do you think the US is ready to fight
39:25
Speaker 1: a war right now, No, go on.
39:31
Speaker 2: We are in the unfortunate position of having made major
39:37
Speaker 2: decatal investments in weapons systems that have essentially reached the
39:46
Speaker 2: end of their lifespan.
39:48
Speaker 1: You mean like tank and aircraft carrier. Yes, not a
39:52
Speaker 1: particular tank or aircraft carrier, but just any tank or
39:55
Speaker 1: aircraft carrier is now basically obsolete.
39:58
Speaker 2: And we have a three part challenge. We're not yet
40:03
Speaker 2: exactly sure because we haven't experimented enough what technology to
40:08
Speaker 2: buy to replace them. We're also not sure exactly how
40:12
Speaker 2: to use that new technology and what the military calls
40:16
Speaker 2: concepts of operation. So when we invented care aviation, that's
40:20
Speaker 2: a whole new way of using aircraft to fight naval.
40:25
Speaker 1: Battles, you have to figure out what to do with
40:28
Speaker 1: ten thousand supersonic drones.
40:30
Speaker 2: And the third problem we have is that once we
40:34
Speaker 2: do figure out what technology to buy and what operating
40:37
Speaker 2: concepts to insert them into, we have to scale that up.
40:41
Speaker 1: Is there not a fourth problem, which was we're still
40:43
Speaker 1: spending billions and billions of dollars on weapons that you're
40:47
Speaker 1: arguing aren't going to work, are obsolete.
40:51
Speaker 2: Yes, that is a fourth problem. The Biden administration shifted
40:55
Speaker 2: less than one percent of the Department of Defense's procurement
40:57
Speaker 2: budget towards autonomous.
41:01
Speaker 1: Weapons less than one percent, meaning basically.
41:03
Speaker 2: Zero, basically zero.
41:06
Speaker 1: Yes, I feel like that's a bigger problem than the
41:11
Speaker 1: other three. And I mean that comes through in the
41:13
Speaker 1: book in a way, right, like your antagonist in the book,
41:17
Speaker 1: in a narrative sense, is not Russia or China or
41:21
Speaker 1: isis right. It's bureaucrats. It's it's you know, you go
41:25
Speaker 1: to Capitol Hill and somebody's like, we're going to take
41:27
Speaker 1: your money away because you're not spending any money in Indiana,
41:30
Speaker 1: and that's where my congressman is from. And it seems
41:34
Speaker 1: like that is still a problem.
41:37
Speaker 2: It is, And you know, this is one of these
41:39
Speaker 2: moments where the strategic environment is changing so fast and
41:43
Speaker 2: anybody watching or reading the news knows it from what's
41:46
Speaker 2: happening in Ukraine, what's happening in the Middleize, what's happening elsewhere.
41:51
Speaker 2: And so we're in this situation where the ordinary way
41:54
Speaker 2: we buy technology and manage the military won't work. If
41:58
Speaker 2: we keep doing it, we're going to walk the plank.
42:01
Speaker 2: So we're now in a fierce battle to outmaneuver our
42:05
Speaker 2: own system to transform it before there's another common.
42:10
Speaker 1: Frankly, it's hard for me to imagine the kind of
42:14
Speaker 1: change you're suggesting is needed. Like when I think of
42:17
Speaker 1: how whatever Congress works, and how the country works, and
42:20
Speaker 1: how the military works and how everything works, it's hard
42:24
Speaker 1: for him to imagine. I mean, unless there was a war,
42:26
Speaker 1: which I don't want to happen obviously, right, Like, I
42:28
Speaker 1: don't know, what do you think is going to happen?
42:31
Speaker 2: Well, you know, to make a more optimistic case, there
42:34
Speaker 2: are a lot of things that are now going in
42:36
Speaker 2: our favor. Most fundamentally, there is a new consensus in
42:40
Speaker 2: the Pentagon and in the Congress that we're in a
42:44
Speaker 2: crisis and the way to solve it is to pivot
42:47
Speaker 2: the way the Department of Defense buys technology and use
42:50
Speaker 2: this technology. And at the same time, there's a new
42:53
Speaker 2: commitment in industry. We have a very dynamic economy the
42:57
Speaker 2: United States of America, with venture backed investment creating small
43:02
Speaker 2: scale infusions of technology that scales up companies in incredible ways.
43:07
Speaker 2: So since Defense Innovation Unit figure it out this more
43:11
Speaker 2: seamless way to quickly buy technology and actually make the
43:13
Speaker 2: government a good customer. In Silicon Valley, there's been about
43:17
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty billion dollars of venture funds now
43:21
Speaker 2: in play to back defense tech startups like and Andro
43:25
Speaker 2: Al's am on the most successful, but there are hundreds more.
43:28
Speaker 2: So the market is already responding. And today there is
43:32
Speaker 2: more dynamic invention going on in the defense tech sector
43:36
Speaker 2: than I think anywhere else. And so if the consensus
43:41
Speaker 2: in the Pentagon in Congress can actually be changed into
43:46
Speaker 2: shifts in the budget, we will quickly beheaded in the
43:50
Speaker 2: right direction.
43:51
Speaker 1: I was with you until you said, if consensus in
43:54
Speaker 1: the Pentagon in Congress can be changed, right, that's like
43:59
Speaker 1: there's so much money there and so much inertia, and
44:01
Speaker 1: like the government seems quite bad in many domains at
44:07
Speaker 1: changing when change is needed. That it seems I don't know,
44:15
Speaker 1: you think that might happen. It seems unlikely to me.
44:18
Speaker 2: Well, you know, again to paint the optimist picture.
44:24
Speaker 1: Well, just for a sec what do you think? What
44:26
Speaker 1: do you think is going to happen?
44:28
Speaker 2: I am worried that people now understand the problem, but
44:33
Speaker 2: the pendulum of change is going to swing too slowly. Huh.
44:38
Speaker 1: So I read that you recently did a residence at Anthropic,
44:43
Speaker 1: which is one of the big frontier AI companies that
44:47
Speaker 1: may claude the large language model, And so I'm curious.
44:50
Speaker 1: This is very interesting to me, Like what did you
44:54
Speaker 1: learn there? Like, what do you know now that you
44:57
Speaker 1: didn't know before you you were there?
45:01
Speaker 2: The United States is unquestionably right now ahead at least
45:04
Speaker 2: by a little bit in artificial intelligence. So's it's a
45:08
Speaker 2: technology that we're better at than anybody else. And so
45:11
Speaker 2: I think that the sort of sixty four million dollar
45:15
Speaker 2: question in terms of military strategy for the United States
45:18
Speaker 2: is whether or not we can harness AI in designing
45:22
Speaker 2: a new military because right now that is the one
45:25
Speaker 2: thing that will give us an unquestioned advantage in the battlefield.
45:30
Speaker 1: I mean, more generally, how do you think about AI
45:33
Speaker 1: in the future of war? I mean, what does it
45:35
Speaker 1: mean for the equilibrium? And what does it mean for
45:39
Speaker 1: the sort of relative abilities of big countries and small
45:44
Speaker 1: countries and kind of you know, rogue actors, Like how
45:48
Speaker 1: does it change the power dynamics?
45:51
Speaker 2: Well, I'm really glad you used the word equilibrium because
45:55
Speaker 2: it's a it's a core concept in strategy. There's a
46:00
Speaker 2: whole literature on something called strategic stability, and it's a
46:05
Speaker 2: literature that comes out in part of the Cold War.
46:09
Speaker 2: It's a literature that has to reckon with the counterintuitive
46:13
Speaker 2: finding that the proliferation of nuclear weapons otherds, the more
46:17
Speaker 2: countries that became nuclear powers, the less incidents of conflict
46:22
Speaker 2: between them there were, so nuclear weapons, an incredibly dangerous technology,
46:27
Speaker 2: in a strange way, actually made the world safer.
46:30
Speaker 1: So far, so far.
46:32
Speaker 2: Now, with this whole true, if everybody had a nuclear weapon,
46:35
Speaker 2: probably not.
46:36
Speaker 1: Right, And there's also a tail risk where it's like,
46:39
Speaker 1: maybe this was just the lucky whatever eighty years, but
46:43
Speaker 1: go on, yeah, so far, so far.
46:45
Speaker 2: So I think that the question is what will AI
46:49
Speaker 2: do to strategic stability? Will it actually enhance it in
46:55
Speaker 2: the following sense of AI is clearly going to make
46:59
Speaker 2: warfare much more destructive than it is today, and more
47:04
Speaker 2: destructive systems will raise the cost of going to war.
47:07
Speaker 2: And so if multiple countries have really advanced AI, even
47:12
Speaker 2: if one country is a little bit ahead of the other,
47:14
Speaker 2: that won't change the fact that either one going to
47:17
Speaker 2: war starting a war will be massively costly. So it
47:22
Speaker 2: could be that AI, as a very diffuse technology, actually
47:27
Speaker 2: increases to deterrence, in effect creating a higher bar to
47:32
Speaker 2: starting a war. The optimistic scenario, the truly optimistic scenario,
47:37
Speaker 2: is that not only does AI the diffusion of AI
47:39
Speaker 2: technology make great power war less likely, but because there
47:45
Speaker 2: are going to be some bad actors that get a
47:47
Speaker 2: hold of this stuff and go cause a RUCKUS, that's
47:51
Speaker 2: actually going to increase the interest of nations like the
47:55
Speaker 2: US and China working together to ensure they retain their
47:59
Speaker 2: own sovereignty and moopolying the means of violence to keep
48:02
Speaker 2: their citizens safe. So it could actually not only decrease
48:05
Speaker 2: the likelihood of great power of war, it could increase
48:08
Speaker 2: international cop ration because we desperately need it if we're
48:11
Speaker 2: all going to stay safe. Now. There is, of course,
48:14
Speaker 2: a darker alternative. One flavor of that darker alternative is
48:18
Speaker 2: that there is a country that believes they have a
48:22
Speaker 2: breakout uh uh you know AI, and that that changes
48:27
Speaker 2: for them the calculus of wanting to go to war
48:30
Speaker 2: because they think that they'll just be able to eke
48:32
Speaker 2: out enough advantage that that they'll launch an attack. Also,
48:36
Speaker 2: I mean there's another danger too. We have to remember that,
48:38
Speaker 2: you know, Vietnam started because in part the US Navy
48:43
Speaker 2: thought its destroyers were attacked in the Gulf of Talking,
48:46
Speaker 2: leading the you know US Congress to pass the Golf
48:49
Speaker 2: of Tonkin Resolutions, which later led to the deployment of
48:53
Speaker 2: troops in Vietnam. Well, turns out the attack never happened.
48:55
Speaker 2: It was just mass confusion. Uh, And so AI introduces
48:59
Speaker 2: a lot more uncertainty into the battlefield. That that is
49:02
Speaker 2: a risk, that is that is worth knowing. And then
49:05
Speaker 2: truly dark scenario is that AI allows small grop groups
49:10
Speaker 2: to project lethality in a way that's very hard to control.
49:13
Speaker 1: What do you what do you mean when you say that?
49:15
Speaker 2: What means that you could go by or make a
49:18
Speaker 2: weapon for low cost that there is no that there
49:21
Speaker 2: is no effective defense for, so that you could go
49:25
Speaker 2: toe to toe, you know, with with the most advanced
49:28
Speaker 2: police force or homeland security force in military and still
49:31
Speaker 2: cause a bunch of damage. So that is indeed a
49:34
Speaker 2: very legitimate worry. It always has been. AI would just
49:37
Speaker 2: be the latest technological innovation to land in the hands
49:41
Speaker 2: of bad actors that are looking to do bad things.
49:48
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round. Okay,
50:03
Speaker 1: let's finish with the lightning round, which is going to
50:05
Speaker 1: be a little lighter. It's going to be like then
50:11
Speaker 1: the rest of this conversation. I read in a bio
50:15
Speaker 1: of yours online that you have backpacked in over thirty countries,
50:19
Speaker 1: including a trek from Moscow to Singapore overland, and I'm
50:25
Speaker 1: curious about that trip in particular. What was one really
50:30
Speaker 1: bad moment on that trip.
50:34
Speaker 2: I'll go with food poisoning in eastern Siberia that caused
50:39
Speaker 2: me to hallucinate at a time. I was staying in
50:43
Speaker 2: a Russian farmhouse up a ladder in a loft, so
50:47
Speaker 2: I had to while I was hallucinating, climb down to
50:52
Speaker 2: use the bathroom every few minutes late late one night.
50:56
Speaker 2: But I will say it was an incredible trip.
50:59
Speaker 1: That wait, I want to get to the incredible trip part.
51:01
Speaker 1: But what was the nature of the hallucination.
51:07
Speaker 2: It was like profoundly lifelike dreams, and I recognized at
51:12
Speaker 2: the time for you know, what they were, and it
51:15
Speaker 2: was just bizarre to be, you know, on this rural
51:18
Speaker 2: farm in eastern Siberia hallucinating and trying to climb down
51:22
Speaker 2: a ladder. So don't you know crap where I'm sleeping?
51:27
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, okay, you were going to say how great
51:30
Speaker 1: the trip was, tell me that part.
51:31
Speaker 2: It was just absolutely astonishing to go from Moscow ultimately
51:36
Speaker 2: all the way to Singapore over a land because we
51:38
Speaker 2: got to watch out the window of a train moving
51:41
Speaker 2: into about twenty miles an hour Europe turned into Asia,
51:45
Speaker 2: and we brought history books along and read them and
51:49
Speaker 2: it was an incredible education and I'm so glad we
51:53
Speaker 2: took that trip. It certainly shaped how I see the
51:55
Speaker 2: world and I'll never forget it.
51:58
Speaker 1: And is it right that you have like some super
52:03
Speaker 1: top secret clearance.
52:05
Speaker 2: Well, they haven't told me where the aliens are, so
52:08
Speaker 2: I don't know how high have a clearance. I actually
52:10
Speaker 2: have it.
52:10
Speaker 1: Across that question off the list. I'm like, I'm curious, what, like,
52:16
Speaker 1: what do you have to do to get a you know,
52:17
Speaker 1: a really high level clearance.
52:20
Speaker 2: Well you just had to fill out a bunch of
52:21
Speaker 2: paperwork and and take take a drug test.
52:25
Speaker 1: Uh.
52:26
Speaker 2: But what I will say is that, you know, holding
52:28
Speaker 2: a security clearance, you know, is not all fun, right,
52:32
Speaker 2: because you you learn dings about the world, and you
52:34
Speaker 2: you see things that you you often can't can't forget.
52:39
Speaker 2: So although I was really thrilled when I first was
52:42
Speaker 2: granted a top secret clearance. There are days now that
52:45
Speaker 2: I wish I never had one.
52:47
Speaker 1: Huh, because the world is scarier or that than you
52:54
Speaker 1: than you would have thought.
52:58
Speaker 2: Uh, the world is is scarier and and and more
53:01
Speaker 2: dangerous and and uh people people sometimes do really really
53:06
Speaker 2: awful things.
53:07
Speaker 1: Yes, anything else you want to talking about, I would.
53:11
Speaker 2: I would just say to everybody that's listening that that
53:14
Speaker 2: now is an incredible time to be watching the world,
53:19
Speaker 2: because we really are seeing historic things happen almost every day.
53:24
Speaker 2: And anybody that pick us up a news story about
53:26
Speaker 2: Ukraine or about China or about the Middle East, it's
53:30
Speaker 2: sort of like reading the papers. I suppose you know,
53:33
Speaker 2: in the run up to the First World War the
53:35
Speaker 2: Second World War, you just see things that are so
53:38
Speaker 2: striking and that tell you so much about where the
53:42
Speaker 2: world is going. Uh, that that that it's worth it's
53:46
Speaker 2: worth paying attention.
53:48
Speaker 1: I got nervous when you said run up to the
53:50
Speaker 1: First World War or Second World War.
53:53
Speaker 2: Well, I say that quite quite specifically in the sense
53:58
Speaker 2: that you know, warfare is changing remarkably fast, and we've
54:03
Speaker 2: seen a succession of advanced militaries fail, the Russian military,
54:08
Speaker 2: the Israeli military demonstrably failed during the attacks that Moss
54:13
Speaker 2: waged on October seventh, and I think it would be
54:18
Speaker 2: humorous to imagine that our military, the American military, couldn't
54:21
Speaker 2: fail in a similar way. So that's why I think
54:25
Speaker 2: it's really important to pay attention to what's happening in
54:29
Speaker 2: conflict around the world and to realize that we as
54:32
Speaker 2: Americans now need to pay a lot more attention because
54:35
Speaker 2: we no longer have the margin of error that we're
54:38
Speaker 2: accustomed to in being able to project military power.
54:48
Speaker 1: Christopher Kierkoff is an advisor at the Defense Innovation Unit.
54:53
Speaker 1: Today's show was produced by Gabriel Hunter Cheng. It was
54:56
Speaker 1: edited by Lyddy Jane Kott and engineered by Sarah Brugier.
55:00
Speaker 1: You can email us at problem at Pushkin dot FM.
55:04
Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein and we'll be back next week with
55:06
Speaker 1: another episode of What's Your Problem? Doctor A sign instituted
55:12
Speaker 1: the fat FA