“There is only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time.” — Desmond Tutu
The following is a coffee-fuelled rambling that aims to address several points linked to the rise of emerging and disruptive technologies (EDTs) as they are defined by the security and defence communities.
This has weighed on my mind a bit, and I felt it was only a matter of time before writing on the subject anyway. I wanted to use NATO’s innovation accelerator as a starting point for these discussions as it is arguably the most visible defence organisation outside of the Pentagon.
NATO’s emerging technology position has been one of many I have reviewed since writing as a geopolitical analyst in my freelance work from 2014. Mind you, NATO is simply getting ahead of the curve, as all institutions are attempting to do at the moment, so my observations are more general and are not meant to be taken as a dig at their work.
On the contrary, they provide an amazing case study for the application of EDTs that must be studied, both inside and outside the organisation, in the context of security, defence, and the evolution of technology.
What is NATO’s Emerging Technology Position?
According to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), it has begun collaborating with the public, private, and academic sectors to build its technological capacity.
Citing the need to develop and adopt new technologies, while protecting allies itself and allies from EDT use from “potential adversaries and competitors,” the bloc has focused its policy on several key technologies:
- artificial intelligence
- autonomous systems
- quantum technologies
- biotechnology and human enhancement
- space-based technologies
- hypersonic systems
- novel materials and manufacturing
- energy and propulsion
- next-generation communications networks
NATO’s Strategic Concept 2022 has outlined the challenges the bloc faces and how to address them, including both risks and opportunities, the changing nature of military conflicts, and their growing strategic significance amid global competition.
Allies have agreed “to promote innovation and increase investments in EDT’s to retain NATO’s interoperability and military edge,” it said.
The organisation explained its position further,
These strategies are laying the groundwork for NATO to accelerate responsible innovation and the rapid adoption of modern technologies, in order to improve decision-making and steer transatlantic innovation for defence and security in accordance with Allied values, norms and international law.
In response, NATO has launched several initiatives, including the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA).
It also includes a €1bn NATO Innovation Fund — the world’s first-ever “multi-sovereign venture capital fund” — to advance their efforts, while working with organisations like the European Union and United Nations.
NATO-DIANA is set to become fully operational in 2025.
According to the bloc, leaders formed a consensus on the Innovation Fund during the 2021 Brussels Summit, leading to “strategic investments in start-ups developing dual-use emerging and disruptive technologies in arease that are critical to Allied security.”
Due to concerns over a lack of startup funding caused by “lengthy time-to-market timelines” and capital-intensive research and development (R&D) demands, the Innovation Fund has extended its timelines to 15 years, allowing startups to facilitate their solutions, it explained.
Headquartered in Amsterdam, with offices in Warsaw and London, the Fund aims to procure “cutting edge technological solutions” to solve the Bloc’s “defence and security challenges,” support the development and expansion of “deep-tech innovation ecosystems,” and back the “commercial success of its deep-tech start-up portfolio.”
The group has formed much of its positioning on EDTs via an Advisory Group, which in 2020, helped shape much of the defence organisation’s stance on the strategic use of emerging tech in its Annual Report.
A further AI Review Board aims to facilitate “responsible development and use of AI” amongst its members as well as standardising a Responsible AI certification for its innovations.
Nikos Loutas, Head of Data and AI Policy Unit, NATO, leads this branch of the security alliance and is tasked with developing its policy and strategy.
Let’s Talk about (the Arms) Race
Now, onwards with our waffling.
One of the first policies I have encountered in my geopolitical analysis stints was the UK Ministry of Defence’s Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) 2015, which echoed similar measures from NATO by stating it would “create a new, cross-government Emerging Technology and Innovation Analysis Cell.”
One of the core tenets for the UK working with the private sector come from its UK’s 2011 National Cyber Security Strategy, which the nation funded £860m for “new technology and capabilities” to combat against cyber attacks from state and non-state actors.
The 2015 SDSR explains further,
“We established the Centre for Cyber Assessment and the UK’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UK). We have built a close partnership between government, the private sector and academia, sharing research, driving innovation and supporting our growing digital economy. We share our specialist knowledge with allies, and cyber defence is part of NATO’s core task of collective defence, which could lead to an Article 5 response to a cyber attack threatening national security, stability and prosperity.”
However, I wanted to ramble a bit about the subject on a more visceral level. Whether with NATO, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), or the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), etc, the procurement and deployment of EDTs across defence, aerospace, military equipment, and others will trigger the greatest stress test for standardisation, ethics, and deployment of such tools to their limits.
As military powers aim to streamline their operations with leaner, cheaper, and more focused technologies, they will increasingly turn to EDTs to reduce the need for human staff and personnel.
These will also innovate their defence capabilities at quantum computing rates, and not solely limited to human neurocognitive capabilities.
Rather than scrambling expensive human pilots, people can send drones and UAVs. Teams can launch cyberattacks from thousands of miles away on critical infrastructure, and with AI, even non-state actors can use generative AI to create STUXNET-level code that leverages machine learning to evade the authorities at every step of their pursuit.
Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are foundational to innovating these solutions and offsetting their costs to private firms, freeing up national budgetary constraints while forming risk-sharing agreements along with return on investment (ROI) revenue schemes.
Firms like Varjo have already collaborated with Saab for next-generation fighter jet training. Microsoft is still working with the United States Army to fine-tune and deploy its Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) — a derivative of the HoloLens 2 — for soldiers.
Red 6 is also saving defence firms and military divisions millions on training materials by using augmented reality (AR)-based targets, boosting fighter pilot capabilities exponentially.
Mixed reality (MR) defence training is increasingly leading to greater rates of learner retention, quicker response times, and more engagement than traditional training techniques, sparking a boom in XR adoption rates.
Tools in the technology stack like hand and eye tracking, low and no-code content creation, haptics, and others used in the consumer and enterprise space over the last few years will become both intrinsically linked and even more disruptive over the course of their military incarnations.
Military EDTs and the Red Queen Hypothesis
Military-focused EDTs have sparked an emerging technology race that will invoke the spirit of the Red Queen Hypothesis (RQH).
Whether through biology, technology, business, or astrophysics, the Hypothesis has been used to explain the developments of competitor factions in the race for supremacy and dominance.
Taken from Lewis Carol’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ novel, the Red Queen explains to Alice in their race,
“Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
EDTs and their capital financiers have inextricably become the next frontier of this theory.
When we consider NATO, or the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), or Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), we need to apply the Hypothesis to understand how these technologies will develop over time.
The Red Queen’s statement echoes what is expected for the applications of military and defence. As one faction gains an advantage through an EDT, rivals may also gain advantages either with similar tools, or asymmetrical responses to them, increasing risk levels in their procurement.
This can take place in several forms:
- hacking repositories to change source code on AI-based weapons, turning them on their creators or reducing their efficacy
- paralysing critical 5G infrastructure and testbeds with cyberattacks
- state or non-state actors leaking soure code of projects to proliferate them for rivals (intellectual property theft)
- AI-based solutions producing unintended effects with poorly-written (or too-well written) ML algorithms, or what futurist Nick Bostrom cited as instrumental convergence, or the “Paper Clip Maximizer” problem.
Failure to address such critical discussions now will lead to unforseen and unintended consequences in the near and distant future. So, I commend NATO for creating its Advisory Group and Advisory AI Board to tackle this issue. This is what I mean by ‘eating the elephant.’ Where do we begin to approach such mammoth concerns and challenges?
One step, one issue, one solution at a time.
Conclusions
While security alliances can cover most of their bases, they may have trouble covering all of them, leading to critical long-term problems. This was noted in Max Tegemark’s hypothetical ‘Prometheus’ scenario where the AI learns at such a rate that it evades its captors and replicates among the city outside its walls, gaining vast control over global infrastructure.
This is not to invoke a Terminator-esque doomsday scenario (although it is plausible, given the physical medium AI could use to embody itself), but rather to ask the £1m question: how prepared are we, not just as a collection of security blocs, but a species, to deal with the rise of EDTs?
After all, these are disruptive technologies, even for their creators, and as I have noted in my Scottish excursion the phrase, “Man plans and God laughs,” this applies succintly to the development of military-based EDTs.
Wrapping up my ramblings, the application of ethics, regulation, and standardisation can act as barriers to the adverse consequences of using EDTs, whether for business, consumer, or military applications.
This is no longer the domain of one particular vertical — all verticals must consider the consequences of exploiting such technologies, for better or worse. Even with extended reality (XR), one must consider the safety of data flows linked to a person’s biometrics, their responses to content, and their outcomes — all of which are recorded on the device or in the cloud.
How will companies use that data? Who will process it if parts of an organisation’s operations are outsourced to third parties? How will these organisations settle PPP legal disputes in the case of data breaches, poor performing, or low ROI? Watchdogs like the Future for Privacy Forum (FfPF) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are already deep within this realm of our Brave New World to make sense of it.
As noted amongst the futurist and transhumanist communities, the four pillars of emerging technologies — nanotech, biotech, infotech, and cognitech — will raise the stakes in the winners of the Red Queen’s Race, all of whom which may not be human by our definition.
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