“There is a natural opposition among men to anything they have not
thought of themselves”.
Sir Barnes Wallis
Alphen,
Netherlands. 6 September. Last Thursday in Rotterdam I had the very distinct
honour for an Englishman of chairing the annual Johan de Witt conference on
future war in the maritime amphibious domain. Apparently Johan de Witt was some
Dutch bloke who was instrumental in the 1667 ‘nicking’ of the Royal Navy’s
flagship, the “Royal Charles”, from Chatham Naval Yard. Although I have long ascribed the aforesaid
Dutch ‘borrowing’ of the fleet flagship to a dose of chain rust, it was de Witt
who made the Medway Raid possible through reform of the Royal Netherlands Navy…and
innovation.
To start the
conference I had prepared a scenario script, which was brilliantly put together
into a film by my friends at Scenarios4Summits
in The Hague, with me doing the voice-over in a manner which, to my mind,
combined the very best of Burton and Olivier. The film portrayed the 2025 start
of a new European War in which an under-funded and under-equipped NATO force,
commanded by the British heavy aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, was destroyed by a Russian force which forged
submarines, robotics, and advanced artificial intelligence (AI) into a deadly
trinity.
My scenario
was inspired by the famous 1955 film, “The Dambusters”. The film portrays real-life
and brilliant innovation by engineering genius Sir Barnes Wallis, and brilliant
military execution by RAF 617 (Dambusters) Squadron, to destroy two of
Germany’s main dams in May 1943. To succeed six separate developments had to
come together; a new strategy (attacks of infrastructure vital to German
industrial infrastructure), a new technological idea (Barnes Wallis’s vision of
a bouncing bomb), a new bomb (the Upkeep mine), a new way of casting steel, a
new explosive (RDX), and a new aircraft (the Avro Lancaster bomber).
Today? Much is
being made of the possible civilian applications of AI for the common good.
However, like all technologies, it will also have military applications, and military
applications by less than wholesome regimes. NATO and its nations cannot afford
to be squeamish about this coming reality.
There are two
types of innovation; applied thinking that leads to new technologies and
applications, new thinking that corrals existing thinking and technologies into
new capabilities. A 2007 paper by John McCarthy
of Stanford University put AI and
the coming strategic reality into context when he wrote that, “Intelligence is the computational part of the ability to
achieve goals in the world”. AI is “….the
science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent
computer programs. It is related to the similar task of using computers to
understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to
methods that are biologically observable”. It does not. A lot has happened over
the decade since McCarthy wrote that paper. Crucially, the pace of development
is accelerating to the extent that my fearsome vision for 2025 is entirely plausible.
The problem for
the Allies is that, in spite of the sterling efforts of Allied Command
Transformation (ACT), the words ‘NATO’ and ‘innovation’ are not ones that sit
together comfortably, either in a blog sentence or in reality. The challenge AI
and associated technologies and strategies (technology is now driving a lot of
strategy) poses to NATO is daunting. Use
of it, and defence against it will require deep innovation.
A close US
friend of mine last week put the scope of the challenge in its strategic context.
He said that the Alliance suffers from a mismatch between the nature of
conflict and war (the human component) and the character of conflict and war
(technological advances in the waging of war). In history it is the side that
creates an equilibrium between the two prevails in conflict and war. Too many
of the Allies simply do not want to even consider the very real possibility of
future war, and in so not-doing make such war more, not less likely.
NATO needs
access to a kind of defence Silicon Valley (Silicon Trench?). Specifically, the
Alliance should create a new NATO Defence Campus that brings together strategic
thinkers, technology thinkers and defence innovators to consider the shape of
legitimate deterrence and defence in the twenty-first century, how best to
maintain comparative advantage in twenty-first century warfare, and the impact
of such technologies on future war. The ‘Campus’, would operate in much the
same ways as similar Google and Microsoft institutions. It could also form part
of the evolving NATO-EU Strategic Partnership.
It could also be called the NATO Sir Barnes Wallis Campus, and,
naturally, I would be the first Rector!
If the Alliance
does not act then NATO faces a ‘Dreadnought’ moment, or worse, a new Pearl
Harbor. In December 1941 Japanese aircraft sank much of the US Pacific Fleet at
anchor by applying a series of deadly innovations they had copied from the successful
November 1940 attack by carrier-based (HMS
Illustrious) Royal Navy Swordfish, under the command of Lt. Cdr M.W.
Williamson RN, on the Italian fleet at Taranto.
It is time
NATO woke up properly to future war! Even showing the Alliance is thinking in
such terms would be an act of deterrence. Why? Beijing, Moscow, and indeed
others, are not only thinking about how best to exploit the West’s many defence
vulnerabilities, they are actively seeking to engage in a war at our many seams
across the hybrid, cyber, hyper war spectrum. They are also pouring a lot of
money and research into realising such a capability.
The
Rambusters? My name for a new NATO force designed specifically to disrupt the
AI capabilities of adversaries before they are used to devastating effect
against the peoples and forces of the Alliance.
As for Johan
de Witt we English had our revenge. In
1688 we invited the Dutch William of Orange to become King William III of
England. It is a fate we English only impose on our worst enemies.
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