This article explores three major challenges actors face when defining and carrying out their policies and answers in terms of high performance computing power (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI), considering the political and geopolitical consequences of the feedback relationship linking AI in its Deep Learning component and computing power – hardware – or rather HPC. It builds on the first part, where we explained and detailed the connection between AI and HPC, and on the second part, where we looked at the related political and geopolitical impacts: what could happen to actors with insufficient HPC in an AI-world, a world where the distribution of power now also results from AI while a threat to the Westphalian order emerges.
Artificial Intelligence, Computing Power and Geopolitics (2): what could happen to actors with insufficient HPC in an AI-world, a world where the distribution of power now also results from AI, while a threat to the Westphalian order emerges.
Faced with the hurdles and threats stemming from inadequate HPC for the creation of AI-systems for AI-governance and AI-management, and, in a lesser way, for the training of these AI-systems, actors must devise responses. As they decide upon objectives and then ways to practically carry out responses, actors will face three supplementary challenges.First, objectives, planning and implementation regarding HPC must be thought in relative terms. Second, they must be envisioned dynamically. Third, the actors must consider that the very HPC field and thus the capabilities that need to be acquired are profoundly evolving because of the very feedback relationship between hardware and deep-learning we identified in the first part of our series “Artificial Intelligence, Computing Power and Geopolitics”.
Below we explain further each of these elements, while giving concrete examples for each. Using latest available data, the cases of Russia, with possible consequences for its intelligent android robot FEDOR, and of Saudi Arabia, illustrate the significance of understanding relative HPC for AI. The importance of the dynamic element involved in the relationship between HPC and AI leads us to take a deep dive, including in terms of cost, into the race for HPC, which involves notably the U.S. and China. We underline how this very race is a strong instrument of influence, wealth and power for those at the very top of the competition: the U.S. and its companies, with China trying to catch up. Yet, as a result, the contest also works hand in hand with the AI quest for optimisation to create an overall very fluid and revolutionary HPC environment.
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We are thus faced with a series of feedback loops or rather spirals involving HPC and AI-systems and their developments, foreign policy, national interest and balance for power, defence, trade, ideology, business strategy and quest for profit, which, permanently, impact the field. The easy and apparently neat categorisation of the past are being erased. Similarly, possible responses, including one’s own, must increasingly be included within the foresight and warning, risk management or anticipation process when the main issue is AI and not separated from it. This is necessary to be able to properly consider how one’s strategy and action will impact reality and thus change the very range of future possibilities the initial foresight analysis considered. If we think about this two-fold evolution, there is nothing new, actually, but the speed at which events and dynamics unfold question the tidy distinction and especially the slow processes that were once presiding to polities and companies’ organisation. This is also one way AI fundamentally impacts AI-governance and Ai-management.
Now we have defined the complex framework within which actors must design their HPC policy, we shall look with the next article at the possible responses they may devise.
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About the author: Dr Helene Lavoix, PhD Lond (International Relations), is the Director of The Red (Team) Analysis Society. She is specialised in strategic foresight and warning for national and international security issues.
Featured image: U.S. Army Acquisition Center – Nongkran Ch, Public Domain.
This article looks at the way the warming ocean exerts a growing pressure on food security and the economy. It is a follow-up to “The U.S. Navy vs Climate Change Insecurity” (Jean-Michel Valantin, June 15, 2018), where we focused on the current climate and ocean change becoming a major strategic threat, because of the rapid rise of the ocean level. However, as we shall detail here, the ocean change threat has also other dimensions.
As a matter of fact, the quickly heightening levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases, among them CO2, which have triggered climate change, are also acidifying the seawater (“Climate change indicators: Ocean Acidity“, U.S Environmental Protection Agency, 2016). This process combines with the chemical and biological impacts of land industrial and agricultural pollution, which endanger the fisheries, essential components of the food resources of entire maritime facades. These changes have direct geopolitical consequences, because they impact the most basic geophysical equilibrium upon which human societies and international relations are built (Lincoln Paine, The Sea and Civilization, a Maritime History of the World, 2013).
This threat can only be understood through the scale of the current planetary change. The massive strategic problem linked to this new era is that the planetary present and future are now dominated by complex dynamics of global change, signals of the new and current geological epoch named the “Anthropocene”, i.e the geological epoch defined by the consequences of human development, which creates its own stratigraphic signal (Jean-Michel Valantin, “The Planetary Crisis Rules, Part.1 and Part. 2”, The Red (Team) Analysis Society, January 25, 2016 and February 15, 2016). In this regard, the planetary crisis has become a major generator of friction, i.e., according to Clausewitz, a system of pressure and constraint. This “planetary friction” exerts itself upon every kind of activity related to the ocean.
These global changes must be understood for what they are, i.e. a strange bonding between the current state of societies and globalization with an emerging new state of permanent change of the planetary environment. In other words, the ocean upon which our globalized world depends is becoming a strategic threat matrix.
First, we shall look at how ocean change has started threatening food resources in the Western Indian Ocean. In a second part, we shall focus upon the economic dimension of the ocean, through the consequences of the intensification of extreme weather and ocean related events. Then, we shall wonder about the strategic consequences of the dangerous evolution of the relationship between human development and the world ocean.
The warming ocean as a massive resource threat
The rise of the ocean level, the heightening rhythm and intensity of ocean related climate weather events, the acidification of seawater, and the reactions to agricultural and industrial land pollution are composing a planetary nexus. This nexus threatens both the extraction of food resources and the social, economic and political stability of the littorals. The nature of the threat of this process is particularly alarming considering the gigantic scale of some of these crises.
As we saw in The Planetary Crisis Rules (2) (The Red (Team) Analysis, February 15, 2016), a mammoth crisis may well be currently unfolding in the western Indian Ocean rim. A study shows that an alarming loss of more than 30% of the phytoplankton in the western Indian Ocean took place over the last 16 years (Koll Roxy and al., “A reduction in marine primary productivity driven by rapid warming over the tropical Indian Ocean”, AGU Publications, 19 January 2016). This loss is most certainly due to the accelerated warming of the surface water, where the phytoplankton lives. This warming is blocking the mixing of the surface water with deeper and cooler subsurface waters, where the nutrients of the plankton – nitrates, phosphates and silicates – come from and remain blocked (K. S. Rajgopal, “Western Indian Ocean phytoplankton hit by warming”, The Hindu, 29 December 2015).
The problem is that plankton is the foundation for the whole ocean feed chain (Callum Roberts, The Ocean of life, the fate of Man and the Sea, 2012). For example, the researchers unveiled that there is a massive decline in the shoals of fish near the Kenyan and Somali coast. These declines are not solely the result of overfishing, but also the consequences of the combination of this practice with the loss of plankton (David Michel and Russel Sticklor, “Plenty of fish in the sea? Food security in the Indian Ocean”, The Diplomat, 24 August 2012). This trend is very likely to prolong itself in the foreseeable future, because of the ocean warming due to climate change, and is going to alter the whole Indian Ocean, with the risk of turning this biologically rich ocean into an “ecological desert” (Amantha Perera, “Warmer Indian Ocean could be “ecological desert” scientists warn”, Reuters, 19 January 2016).
This means that the decline of marine life due to anthropogenic climate change is a direct threat to the food security of the whole Western Indian Ocean ecosystem, thus to the lives of the populations of eastern African societies – i.e South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, as well as archipelagos, such as Comoros, Maldives, Seychelles, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mayotte – and to their economies (Johan Groeneveld, “The Western Indian Ocean as a source of food”, in The Regional State of the Coast Report: Western Indian Ocean, Chapter: Chapter 20, Publisher: UNEP-Nairobi Convention and WIOMSA, 1 May 2015). This is most likely to happen despite the rapid development of fish farming, which induces its own cascade of issues (Michel and Sticklor, ibid).
The plankton and sea food crisis is particularly worrisome given the profound economic and social inequalities known by the region, and the political, confessional and military tensions that arise, for example in Kenya and Somalia (Jean-Michel Valantin, “Somali Piracy: a model for tomorrow’s life in the Anthropocene?”, The Red Team Analysis Society, 28 October, 2013 ). This means that, nowadays, a giant biodiversity and geophysical crisis is unfolding on such a scale that it concerns numerous countries and dozens of millions of people at the same time. Moreover it combines itself with political and strategic current crises.
Since the discovery of this giant dead zone, and as was foreseen in The Planetary Crisis Rules (2), the chemical and biological situation of the Indian Ocean has continued to deteriorate, because of the multiplication of two other giant dead zones in the Indian Ocean (Harry Pettit, ‘The ocean is suffocating’: Fish-killing dead zone is found growing in the Arabian Sea – and it is already bigger than SCOTLAND”, Mail on Line, 27 April 2017. One has been identified in the Gulf of Oman and threatens marine life and fisheries in this part of the Arabian Sea. Another giant one, that spans at last 60 000 square km has been discovered in the Bay of Bengal, and threatens the food resources of the 200 million people installed on the littoral of the eight countries that surround the Bay (Amitav Gosh and Aaron Savion Lobo, “Bay of Bengal: depleted fish stocks and huge dead zone signal tipping point”, The Guardian, 31 January 2017) . In other terms, climate and ocean change is directly threatening the food security of hundred of millions of people in Africa, in the Arabian Sea area and in South Asia.
As a matter of fact, it must be remembered that the rise of Somali piracy at the start of this century has been largely triggered by the depletion of the Somali fisheries and that turning fishermen into pirates has proven it was an efficient way for littoral endangered communities to adapt to their dangerous new socio-environmental conditions of life (and death) (Andrew Palmer, The New Pirates: Modern Global Piracy from Somalia to the South China Sea, 2014).
Littorals and economy under siege
Another dimension of the ocean change threat is the way it literally puts under “economic siege” the littorals. As a matter of fact, the littorals are at once the most attractive space because of their economic development and the interface between countries separated by the ocean. Those regions are heavily impacted by the rise of the ocean and by the rising power and violence of climate-related extreme weather events.
For example, let us look at the U.S. and the mammoth disasters wrought by hurricane Harvey in Texas between the 25 August and 2 September 2017. “Harvey” killed 68 people and wrought immense damages, which costs amount to 125 billion dollars, making it the costliest hurricane after “Katrina” that destroyed New Orleans in 2005 and did cost 161 billion dollars (“Fast facts Hurricane Costs”, The Office for Coastal management-National Ocean and Atmospheric Agency and Insurance Information Institute, 2018). These damages alone put a massive pressure on economic activities and on the insurance sector, because of the direct destructions wrought to the infrastructures, cities, homes, fields and industries.
To these costs have to be added those of repairs, of business interruption, and of detoxification made necessary because of the massive industrial chemicals and sewage spillage (Erin Brodwin and Jake Canter, “A chemical plant exploded twice after getting flooded by Harvey – but it’s not over yet”, Business Insider, 30 August, 2017). These human and economic costs are multiplied to consider those incurred by Houston and the whole state of Texas, as well as by Louisiana during the same week. It must also be remembered that a lot of oil extraction and transaction operations were suspended, and thus impact the companies involved in these activities (Matt Egan and Chris Isidore, “Tropical storm Harvey threatens vital Texas energy hub”, CNN Money, August 26, 2017).
If we take a look at just the littoral counties of Harris and Galveston in Texas, for example, we see that “Hurricane Harvey has damaged at least 23 billion dollars of property…” (Reuters, Fortune, 30 August 2017). 26% of this sum is land value, the remaining part is being constituted by dozens of thousands of houses, buildings and infrastructures. Some of those were insured but a lot more were not, which means that, potentially, millions of people found themselves brutally projected in very precarious situations. (“Tallying Massive Costs of Harvey to Victims, Insurers, Taxpayers and Economy“, Insurance Journal, 31 August, 2017).
All in all, the 2017 hurricane season did cost more than a staggering USD 220 billion in economic damages. Out of these, 80 billion were supported by the re-insurance industry (Matt Sheehan, “Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria cost re/insurers $80bn: Impact Forecasting », Reinsurance News, 5 April 2018). In other terms, the ocean-related extreme weather events of the end of the summer 2017 were a massive economic, social, infrastructural and human blow to the US.
Bonding with Chaos: opening a window on the future
The Western Indian Ocean case and the Harvey and Irma cases are a few examples among many of the emerging reality defined by the installation of contemporary societies on the “Defiant Earth” of the Anthropocene Era (Clive Hamilton, Defiant Earth, The fate of the Humans in the Anthropocene, 2017). Ocean change is defined by the way its thermal, chemical, biological and volumetric parameters are changing and are becoming hostile to current forms of infrastructural, economic, social and human development. In other words, all the countries in the world, not only those that are directly linked to the ocean, but also those in the hinterlands of neighbouring countries with a mesa facade, are literally bonding with the growing climate-ocean rising chaos.
In strategic terms, this means that the ocean is becoming a potential planetary factor and driver of violence. It deprives immense populations of a large quantity of food through its own complex biological collapse. It repeatedly and endlessly directly impacts infrastructures. It is thus a social threat for littoral communities and all the stakes vested in them. We are faced with issues ranging from the sustainability of the littoral development, to the very survival of entire populations. Studying the current development of dead zones in the Indian Ocean and their consequences on food security, as well as the infrastructural and financial costs of hurricanes such as Harvey opens up a window on a short and middle term future when the forces of the climate ocean change will besiege and endanger the different forms of human development as well as social, economic and political cohesion.
This article focuses on the political and geopolitical consequences of the feedback relationship linking Artificial Intelligence (AI) in its Deep Learning component and computing power – hardware – or rather high performance computing power (HPC). It builds on a first part where we explained and detailed this connection.
There we underlined notably three typical phases where computation is required: creation of the AI program, training, and inference or production (usage). We showed that a quest for improvement across phases, and the overwhelming and determining importance of architecture design – which takes place during the creation phase – generates a crucial need for ever more powerful computing power. Meanwhile, we identified a feedback spiral between AI-DL and computing power, where more computing power allows for advances in terms of AI and where new AI and the need to optimize it demand more computing power. Building upon these findings we envision here how the feedback spiral between computing power and AI-DL systems is increasingly likely to impact politics and geopolitics.
Considering thus the crucial and rising importance of computing power, with the next article we shall address how the resulting race for computing power could play out and has already most probably started. There we shall notably consider a supplementary uncertainty we identified previously, the evolution and even mutation of the field of computing power and hardware as it is impacted by AI-DL.
Here we first imagine the political and geopolitical impacts faced by actors with insufficient computing power. We examine these potential consequences according to the choices the actors have. We focus on the very creation of the AI-systems and speak more briefly of the training phase. Then we look at the distribution of power in the emerging AI-world according to computing power and underline a possible threat to our current modern international order.
Living without high performance computing power in the age of Artificial Intelligence: dependency and loss of sovereignty
Understanding and imagining for the future the political and geopolitical impacts of the feedback relationship between computing power and Artificial Intelligence-Deep Learning may be more easily grasped when looking first at what the absence of computing power or rather high performance computing could entail.
As we started pointing out in the previous article, not having the computing power necessary for the phase of the creation of AI systems (phase 0 in our previous article) will de facto make various actors dependent upon those who have computing power.
What we are facing is a situation comparable to a brain drain of a new age, or rather an initial brain deficiency, which forbids or, to the least, makes very difficult evolution. As shown in the detailed example of Google’s AutoML (see When AI started creating AI), if AI-created Deep Neural Networks are always or most of the time more efficient than those created by humans, then those actors who cannot perform best during this initial phase, when AIs are designed, will have less efficient AIs, no AIs, will depend upon external computing power to create their AIs or, worse, upon others for the very core programme of the AI-DL they will use. If these AI-systems are crucial for their governance or AI-management, then potential negative impacts may ripple throughout the whole system. As a result their AI-power status in the international relative distribution of power will be impacted thrice: once because of potentially sub-efficient AI-governance or AI-management, once because they cannot wield influence thanks to their optimal AI-systems and once because they do not have useful and necessary computing power. Impact on general international influence and international power status will follow and stem from all the areas where AI-governance and AI-management are increasingly used positively, when this will only be fully realised by those who have computing power. We shall look more in detail to each of the choices available to those actors who do not have sufficient computing power.
Here we assume – and this is indeed a very strong assumption – that potential negative effects and unintended consequence of the use of AI-systems for governance and management are mitigated. Note that detailed scenarios would be necessary to move from assumption to a better understanding of the future across the whole range of possibilities.
For example, we may think about a completely opposite possibility, according to which actors using AI-systems abundantly have completely underestimated and mismanaged adverse impacts and where, finally, those actors who had no computer power and decided for not using AI in governance or in management end up faring much better that their AI-friendly counterparts.
Choice 1: No AI-systems and Non-AI actors
Notably if we consider the still emerging and highly changing field of AI, as well as the cost entailed notably in terms of computing power, we may imagine a scenario in terms of international interactions where, out of a conscious political decision or out of sheer necessity and duress, some AI-free actors finally develop strategic, operational, and tactical advantages across governance or management, which allow them to fare better than AI-endowed actors. We should here remember the famous war simulation Millenium Challenge 2002 – a war simulation exercise sponsored by the defunct U.S. Joint Forces Command – where an a-doctrinal Red Team (playing ‘the enemy’) initially won over the Blue Team (the U.S.), including by not using the expected technology (Micah Zenko, “Millennium Challenge: The Real Story of a Corrupted Military Exercise and Its Legacy“, War On The Rocks, 5 Nov 2015; Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, 2005: pp. 47-68).
If political authorities faced with a large deficit in computing power make the conscious and willed choice to decide to exclude AI, then, on top of the possibility to develop unexpected advantages – which is however, in no way a given – evoked above, they may be able to try capitalising on this strategy. As an analogy, everything being equal, we may think about what Bhutan decided in terms of national policy. The country – true enough, so far, largely “guided” by India in terms of external relations, with a revision of the Indo-Bhutan Friendship Treaty in 2007, and by an international system where peace has rather prevailed as a norm since the end of World War 2, despite a grimmer reality – chose a specific cultural “official stress on Bhutanese distinctiveness” for development, foregoing a mad quest for modernity, and erecting this specificity as national pride, policy and asset (Syed Aziz-al Ahsan and Bhumitra Chakma, “Bhutan’s Foreign Policy: Cautious Self-Assertion?“, Asian Survey, Vol. 33, No. 11 (Nov., 1993), pp. 1043-1054.
Short of this thoughtful and planned approach, which furthermore may neither remain viable in the medium-term and even shorter term future in a changing international order, nor be adaptable to each and every actor, governing without AI may soon become complex. Indeed, if many areas of governance increasingly involve AI-systems in most countries, then, a “non-AI country”, when interacting internationally on a host of issues with others, may rapidly face challenges, ranging from speed of reaction and capability to handle data, to inability to communicate and misunderstanding because of different ways to handle problems (with or without AI). Non-AI companies would most probably face similar difficulties, even more so if they are located in countries where AI is promoted by the political authorities. In that case, these non-AI businesses would most probably have to move towards AI, assuming they can, or disappear.
Choice 2: Suboptimal AI-systems
Similar problems, with even worse hurdles, may arise if the absence or inadequacy of computing power leads to the use of suboptimal AI.
All areas of governance or management where a less efficient AI is used can be impacted.
By less efficient, we cover a very large scope of problems from energy inefficiency to accuracy decrease through speed, i.e. all those elements for which a quest for optimisation and improvement is ongoing, as we saw previously (see “Artificial Intelligence, Computing Power and Geopolitics (1)“, part 3).
Imagine, for example, that drones, enabled with carrying weapons and firing, use AI-systems for object detection (for an example with open source Google-created NASNet, see “When AI Started Creating AI”). If your AI-system for Object Detection is less efficient than the system used by the adversary, then your drone may be destroyed even before it started doing anything. It may also be tricked with a whole range of decoys.
“To achieve the upper hand on a battlefield that’s expected to be complex and multidimensional”, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, ” ARL is developing interconnected weapons that will incorporate advances in shared sensing, computing and navigating.” Image by Evan Jensen, ARL – from Dr. Frank Fresconi, Dr. Scott Schoenfeld and Dan Rusin, Lt. Col., USA (Ret.), “On Target”, January – March 2018 issue of Army AL&T magazine, Public Domain.
We could even imagine that the enemy’s superior computing power having allowed for creating better and more numerous AI-systems, could have the capability to feed fake or slightly skewed information into the sub-optimal drone, leading the latter to target exclusively its own army’s troops and material. Here, even with the best will in the world, the actor deficient in computing power cannot – it truly does not have the capability – protect itself nor preempt what superior computing power and thus, de facto, AIs can create and do. Furthermore, because AIs create strategies that are AI specific and are not usually imagined by humans, as shown by Google’s series of AI programs devoted to the game of Go (see “Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning – The New AI-World in the Making“), it is likely that, as in the offensive example imagined above, only efficient and optimal AIs will be able to counter AIs.
This is only one example but it may be declined across the whole spectrum of AI-powered objects such as the Internet of Things (IoT).
Choice 3: Optimal AI but created on external computing power
Let us turn now to an actor with insufficient computing power available, yet having a willingness to develop and optimize its own AI systems – assuming this actor also has the other necessary ingredients to do so, such as scientists for example.
This actor may have no other choice than using others’ computing power. This actor will have to pay for this usage, be it in monetary terms, if it uses commercial facilities, or in terms of independence if, for example, specific cooperation agreements are imagined. This may, or not, involve security liabilities according to the actors, to the providers of computing power, and to the specific goal of the AI-systems being developed.
In terms of national security, for example, can we really imagine a ministry of Defence or a Home ministry developing highly sensitive AI-systems on a commercial computing facility?
Actually, yes, it can be imagined as, already, the U.S. army is moving “to the cloud with the help of industry”, with, for example, the “Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI)”, to be finally awarded in Autumn 2018 (e.g. “Army modernizes, migrates to cloud computing“, Military and Aerospace Electronic, 20 March 2018; Frank Konkel,, “Pentagon’s Commercial Cloud Will Be a Single Award—And Industry Isn’t Happy“, NextGov, 7 March 2018; LTC Steven Howard, U.S. Army (Ret.), “DoD to Award Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure Cloud Contract in Fall 2018“, Cyberdefense, 23 May 2018). This cloud should be used for war and “a commercial company” – probably Amazon – will be “in charge of hosting and distributing mission-critical workloads and classified military secrets to warfighters around the globe” (Howard, Ibid; Frank Konkel “How a Pentagon Contract Sparked a Cloud War“, NextGov, 26 April 2018). JEDI could be awarded to Amazon during Autumn 2018 (Ibid.). True enough, we do not know if this cloud will be used as distributed architecture also to create AI-systems, but it may be. Using commercial companies for governance, even more so if the purpose is related to defence, demands that commercial companies assume a security mission that was, until recently, a prerogative of the state. The power thus given to a commercial company makes even more the American political dynamics. Notably, Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex could well be changing (e.g.”Military-Industrial Complex Speech“, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961, Avalon Project, Yale).
Now, this is about American security, privatised to American companies. However, would the Pentagon award such contracts to Chinese companies or European ones?
Similarly, we may wonder if the creation of AI-systems may be done on commercial super computers belonging to foreign companies, and/or localized abroad. This is even more so if the foreign company is already contracted by a foreign Army or Defence ministry, as, in that case, the foreign Army has a larger power of coercion on the commercial companies: it may threaten to withhold the contract, or delay payment if the commercial company does not do its bidding, whatever the bidding.
The possibility to face hacks and other security vulnerabilities rapidly increases.
A similar phenomenon may also occur for elements constituting computing power, such as foreign manufactured chips, as recently shown by two researchers of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of U.S. Clemson University, pointing out computing power supply chain vulnerabilities for machine learning (Joseph Clements and Yingjie Lao, “Hardware Trojan Attacks on Neural Networks“, arXiv:1806.05768v1 [cs.LG] 14 Jun 2018).
The use of distributed architecture, i.e. computing power distributed over various machines, as in the example of JEDI above, which may be envisioned to a point to offset the absence of super computers, not only multiplies the power needed (see Artificial Intelligence, Computing Power and Geopolitics (1)), but also opens the door to new dangers, as data travel and as each computer of the network must be secured. It may thus not be such an easy way out of super computing power deficiency.
Outside the field of cybersecurity, using others’ computing power also opens the door to very simple vulnerabilities: a round of sanctions of the type favoured by the U.S., for example, may suddenly forbid any actor, public or private, access to the needed computing power, even if the provider is a commercial entity. The dependent actor may be actually so dependent upon the country host to computing power that it has lost much of its sovereignty and independence.
Finally, using AI-systems designed and created by others may also lead to similar vulnerabilities and dependency, which may be acceptable for companies when using mass-market products but not for actors such as countries when national interest and national security is at stake, nor by companies when competitively sensitive areas are at stake (especially when faced with predatory practice, see “Beyond the end of globalisation – from the Brexit to U.S. President Trump“, The Red (Team) Analysis, 27 February 2017).
Let us take another example with the future smart cities. We may imagine that a country, not endowed with sufficient computing power, has to rely on either computing power or directly on foreign AI-systems for their cities. The video below, although not focused on AI, gives an idea of the trend towards connected and “smart cities”.
Now, knowing that, in war, urban operations are considered as being a major component of the future (e.g. UK DCDC Strategic Trends Programme: Future Operating Environment 2035: 2-3, 25), it is highly likely that urban operations will increasingly take place in smart and AI-powered cities. To better envision what is likely to happen in the future, we should thus mentally juxtapose the video and the urban combat images below created by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. In other words, instead of a devastated “modern world” traditional background for the Army pictures, we should have a smart, AI-powered city as background.
Images from the U.S. ARL – Used in the article by Dr. Alexander Kott, “The ARTIFICIAL Becomes REAL”, pp. 90-95, Army-ALT January-March2018.
Now, if a foreign actor has created the AI-systems that manage the AI-powered city, what stops that actor to potentially include “elements” that would play in its favour should its troops have to carry out offensive operations in the future within this very city?
Or, as another example, if strategically wise political authorities wanted to endow their cities with AI-powered defence, able to counter both traditional and AI-endowed attacks, but if these very political authorities did not have any computing power to develop such systems, would foreign commercial companies be allowed by their own political authorities to develop such systems?
In an AI-powered world, sovereignty and independence become dependent upon computing power.
The absence of computing power for the training phase of the AI-system somehow corresponds to a country that would have no education system and would have to completely rely on external and foreign sources to deliver this education. This is true for supervised learning when training on big data set has to be done and only heightens the hurdles already identified previously in Big Data, Driver for Artificial Intelligence… This is also true, as we saw previously (part 1), for reinforcement learning as computing power is even more important for this type of deep learning, even though it does not need external big data. Could this also be true with the latest Google Deep Mind’s approach, Transfer Learning? This will need to be examined later, with a deep dive into this latest AI-DL approach.
Distribution of Power in the AI-World, High Performance Computing Power and Threat to the Westphalian System?
As a result, the Top500 list of supercomputers, which is produced biannually, and thus ranks every 6 months supercomputers throughout the world, becomes a precious indication and tool to evaluate present and future AI-power of actors, be they companies or states. It also gives us a quite precise picture of power on the international scene.
For example, according to the November 2017 Top500 list (the next issue was presented on 25 June 2018, and made public after the publication of this article – watch out for a signal on the June 2018 list), and assuming all supercomputers have been submitted to the benchmark of the list, in the whole Middle East, only Saudi Arabia possesses supercomputers among the top 500 most powerful computers of the world. It has four of them, ranked 20, 60, 288 and 386. The last three belong to oil company Aramco. Saudi Arabia’s most powerful supercomputer delivers a performance of 5,5 Petaflops, i.e almost 17 times less than China’s most powerful computer and 36 times less than the U.S. new Summit (see for more details on Summit, When AI started creating AI). If Saudi Arabia wants to be independent in terms of AI, then it will need to construct a strategy allowing it to overcome a possible lack of capacity in terms of computing power. The situation is even more challenging for a country such as the U.A.E, which, despite a willingness to develop A.I., does not have any supercomputer (U.A.E. AI Strategy 2031 – video).
Meanwhile, as another example, NVIDIA put online in 2016 supercomputer DGX Saturn V, which ranked 36 in November 2017 and delivers a performance of 3,3 Petaflops, but is built with DL in mind. Added to its other supercomputer, DGX SaturnV Volta, this means that NVIDIA has a computing power equal to 4,37 Petaflops thus superior to Russia, with its three supercomputers ranked 63, 227, 412 and exhibiting respectively performances of 2,1; 0,9 and 0,7 petaflops. Note that NVIDIA latest GPU accelerator, NVIDIA DGX-2 and its 2-petaFLOPS may only reinforce the company’s power (see part 1). In terms of international power, of course, Russia benefits from the attributes and capabilities of a state, notably its monopoly of violence, which NVIDIA does not have. Yet, imagining as seems to be the case, that the new emerging AI-world in construction increasingly integrates AI throughout state’s functions and governance, then Russia would face new dependency as well as new security challenges stemming from its relatively lower computing power. For its part, NVIDIA – or other companies – could progressively take over state functions, as shown in the example above of the U.S. defense JEDI. If we recall the British East India Company, that would not be the first time in history that a company behaves as a ruling actor.
Here these are the very principles of our modern Westphalian world that may potentially change.
However, things are even more complex than the picture just described, because the very hardware field is also being impacted by the AI-revolution, as identified in the first part. If we consider these hardware evolutions and changes, where is the necessary computing power, and, more difficult, where will it be?
Furthermore, if High Performance Computing power is so important, then, what can actors decide to do about it? They can build and reinforce their computing power, deny others’ computing power or find alternative strategies? This is what we shall see next, alongside changes in the hardware field.
Featured image: U.S. Army illustration, “Army research explores individualized, adaptive technologies focused on enhancing teamwork within heterogeneous human-intelligent agent teams.” in U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL), “Army researchers advance human-intelligent agent teaming“, Public Domain.
With this article we shall look more in detail at the relationship between Artificial Intelligence (AI) in its Deep Learning component, and computing power or hardware, a connection we started exploring with our previous article, “When AI Started Creating AI“. The foundations for understanding the link between AI-Deep Leaning and computing power being laid, the next article will focus on political and geopolitical consequences of this relationship, while considering a critical uncertainty uncovered here and according to which the evolution towards co-designing AI-Deep Learning architecture and hardware could alter the whole field.
Related
Artificial Intelligence, Computing Power and Geopolitics (2): what could happen to actors with insufficient HPC in an AI-world, a world where the distribution of power now also results from AI, while a threat to the Westphalian order emerges
Our aim is to understand better how computing power can be at once driver, stake and force for AI expansion and the related emerging AI-world. Computing power is one of the six drivers we identified that not only act as forces behind the expansion of AI but also, as such, become stakes in the competition among actors in the race for AI-power (Helene Lavoix, “Artificial Intelligence – Forces, Drivers and Stakes” The Red Team Analysis Society, 26 March 2018).
In this article we show that AI-Deep Learning indeed needs large computing power, although varying across the different phases of computation and evolving with improvements. Even though advance of AI systems leads to a decreasing demand for computing power across the process of an AI-system’s creation, the very search for optimisation not only demands more computing power, but also leads to changes in the hardware field (which we shall see more in detail in the next article), and even, potentially, in terms of algorithms. Meanwhile, more computing power also means the capability to go further in terms of Deep Learning and AI, indeed confirming that computing power is a driver of AI expansion. Feedback loops or rather spirals are thus starting to appear between AI and its expansion and at least two of its drivers, computing power and “algorithms”.
We explain first the methodology used to uncover the link between AI-Deep Learning (DL) and computing power in a rapidly evolving ecosystem, and point out two likely new frontiers in the field of Deep Learning, namely Evolutionary Algorithms applied to Deep Learning in general and Reinforcement Learning. We also briefly present the three phases of computation of an AI-DL system. Then, we deep dive into each of the phases: creation, training or development, and inference or production. We explain each of the phase and the needs in terms of computing power for each of them. We then move beyond categorisation and explain the constant quest for improvement across the three phases, pointing out the balance that is sought between key elements. We notably emphasise there the latest evolution towards codesign of Deep Neural Network architecture and hardware.
The life of an AI-DL system and computing power in a rapidly evolving ecosystem – methodology
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The U.S. Navy is under higher and growing pressure from climate and ocean change. This situation is emphasized in The Impact of Sea-Level Rise and Climate Change on Department of Defense Installations on Atolls in the Pacific Ocean (Curt D. Storlazzi, Stephen B. Gingerich et al., February 2018, full pdf report), funded among others by the Department of Defense Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP). This research shows that numerous Pacific atolls and islands are impacted by repeated floods and slat water infiltration, and could be submersed during the next decades because of the rising ocean, and as a result the U.S. Navy could be directly impacted because some of these islands are used as bases between America and the Asia-Pacific region. In other words, climate change-led rising ocean is putting at extreme risks the fulcrum needed by the U.S. Navy to project itself in the Asia-Pacific region (Charles Edel, “Small dots, Large strategic areas: US Interests in the South Pacific”, Real Clear Defense, 03 April 2018).
Meanwhile, climate change is also affecting the U.S. Navy on continental America, because of the ever-faster rise of the ocean, which interacts with the littoral where the U.S. Navy bases are installed (Jim Morrison, “Flooding Hot Spots: Why Seas are Rising Faster on the Eastern Sea Coast”, Yale Environment e360, April 24, 2018). Beside a rising ocean, climate change also means a present and future multiplication and reinforcement of extreme weather events. Those events are having a disrupting potential on the sea lanes navigated by the six US fleets (Bob Berwyn, “Hurricane Season 2018: Experts Warn of Super Storms, Call For New Category 6”, Inside Climate News, June 2, 2012). In other words, one should wonder if climate change, and the new emerging geophysical conditions that are currently emerging, are not jeopardizing the very infrastructures and missions of the U.S. Navy, thus imposing a perfectly unexpected but growing constraint on its global reach.
In a first part, we shall look at how climate change is literally “besieging” the U.S. Navy. In a second part, we shall look at the way this planetary challenge is imposing an ever-growing amount of “friction” on the infrastructures and missions of the U.S. Navy. Then, we shall wonder about the strategic consequences of the interactions between a changing climate and ocean and the U.S. Navy. Could we see these dynamics as a signal of a planetary assault on U.S. sea power over the coming years?
The US Navy and the climate-ocean Hyper siege
The rising ocean has started besieging the U.S. Navy. The rate of the sea-rise is rapidly accelerating, especially on the U.S. eastern coast: for example, in Florida, since 2006 the rise’s rate went from 3 to 9 millimetres a year (Erika Bolstad, “High ground is becoming hot property as sea level rises”, Scientific American, 1 May 2017). This accelerating rate is accompanied by a multiplication of high tide floods events (Jim Morrison, “Flooding Hot Spots: Why Seas are Rising Faster on the Eastern Sea Coast”, Yale Environment e360, April 24, 2018). For example, the Norfolk station, headquarter of the Atlantic fleet, and part of the gigantic Hampton roads complex, home to the nuclear aircraft carriers fleet, is flooded ten times a year nowadays (Laura Parker, “Who’s Still Fighting Climate Change? The U.S. Military”, National Geographic, February 7, 2017).
This situation is already exerting a growing pressure on the military readiness of the station and of all those installed around the Chesapeake Bay, because of the cascade of disruptions and costs triggered by the floods, including cleaning up and repairs. According to an estimate by the Union of Concerned Scientist, the sea level in this area has already risen by a staggering 14.5 inch (35,5 cm) since 1914. Given this trend, the region will be flooded more than 280 times a year in 2100 (The US Military on the Front Lines of Rising Seas, 2016, Rising seas will increasingly flood many of our coastal military bases, Union of Concerned Scientists, 2016). It appears extremely dubious that the Norfolk station and the Hamptons Road complex could remain functional in their current form, while being assaulted by hundreds of flooding events every year.
As showed by the 2018 Department of Defense “Climate-Related Risk to DoD Infrastructure Initial Vulnerability Assessment Survey (SLVAS) Report”, the climate change-led ocean rise that besieges the Norfolk station is shared, with variable degrees of intensity, by the other U.S. naval bases of the East and West Coast (including Hawaii), while many of the U.S. bases located abroad will most often meet the same fate. In other terms, the U.S. Navy, as a mammoth and global organization, is under climate-ocean change siege.
U.S. Navy area of responsibility -U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa / U.S. 6th Fleet – map [Public Domain]
Indeed, the very global scale of the U.S. Navy’s deployment reinforces the climate-ocean siege situation. The U.S. Navy is composed of 6 operating fleets, each of them assigned to an area of responsibility (AOR) covering a part of the Atlantic, of the Indian Ocean or of the Pacific ocean and thus, as a whole, able to reach each and every littoral on Earth (US Navy). This extensive capability of force projection confers de facto a global reach to the American sea power. However, these fleets are dependent on the multiple ports of anchorages, bases and other facilities on the American mainland, as well as in other countries such as, among others, Japan, Italy, Spain, Greece, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Djibouti, El Salvador, Egypt, Cuba, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, and the Philippines (US Navy Bases, Wikipedia, and Commander Navy Installations Command Map).
Click to access interactive map of the website of Commander, Navy Installations Command (CNIC)
The littoral of these countries are also affected by the rising ocean and by the multiplication of climate change-related extreme weather events, as is tragically shown, for example, by the growing series of giant hurricanes battering the Philippines (Andrea Thompson, “Land Falling Typhoons have Become More Intense”, Climate Central, September 5, 2016). In Japan, the Yokosuka naval base in Tokyo is severely assaulted by storm surges and ever-more powerful tempests, which accompany the warming and rising ocean (Forrest L. Reinhardt and Michael W. Toffel, “Managing Climate change: Lessons From the US Navy”, Harvard Business review, July-August 2017 issue). In Alaska, the thawing permafrost necessitates the relocation and rebuilding of existing bases (Reinhardt and Toffel ibid). Similarly, the home of the Pacific fleet in Hawaii must face a growing number of mudslides and flash floods (Reinhardt and Toffel, ibid).
The same can be said of the bases located in the Pacific such as Guam and the Marshall Islands, which are under growing pressure from the rising ocean, to the point that some of their composing atolls could be submersed within 12 years (Curt D. Storlazzi, et al., Ibid.). In the meantime, there is a high and growing risk of a multiplication of floods on these islands, already battered by the ocean. Consequently, the salt water of the sea is infiltrating the water sources of the atolls. This situation could soon trigger a potable water crisis for the islands and the Navy bases (John Conger, “Study: Atolls Hosting Critical Military Sites May Be Uninhabitable in 12 Years”, The Centre for Climate and Security, April 27, 2018). As shown by these examples, the planetary change currently occurring is imposing a global pressure on the network of Navy bases. In other words, the very worldwide fulcrum of the U.S. sea power meets what we call here “planetary friction”.
“Planetary friction” and U.S. sea power
Beyond the immediately catastrophic impact of the extreme weather events and their human, social and economic toll, these events and the rising of the ocean are signals of a new planetary and geopolitical reality (Jean-Michel Valantin, “Climate Blowback and US National Security”, The Red (Team) Analysis Society, March 31, 2014). As a matter of fact, the rise of the ocean is due to the convergence of the warming and dilatation of the surface waters, and of the ever-increasing warming and melting of the terrestrial ice caps of Greenland, Antarctica and of the continental mountain ranges.
This convergence of the warming ocean and melting ice sheets leads to a global process of accelerated and heightening rise of the ocean at a planetary scale, while the warming atmosphere-ocean interface is becoming the emergence system of a growing number of extreme weather events (Chris Mooney, “Greenland and Antarctica isn’t just raising seas- it’s changing the Earth’s rotation”, The Washington Post, April 8, 2016). In other terms, the warming and rising of the ocean will be more and more important and powerful. According to the most conservative studies, the ocean will rise by almost one meter between today and 2100 (IPCC Report, 2018). However, numerous studies point out the risk of a much higher rise: between 2 and 5 meters (Robert de Conto and Robert Pollard, “Contribution of Antarctica to past and future sea level rise“, Nature, 31 March 2016, Eric Holtaus, “James Hansen Bombshell’s climate warning is now part of the Scientific canon”, Slate.com, March 22, 2016 and Chris Mooney, “One of the most Worrysome Prediction About Climate Change Maybe Coming True”, The Washington Post, April 23, 2018). That would be a civilization-changing event.
The massive strategic problem linked to this new epoch is that the planetary present and future are now dominated by complex dynamics of global change, also qualified as being the signals of the new and current geological epoch named the “Anthropocene”, i.e the geological epoch defined by the consequences of human development, which creates its own stratigraphic signal (Jean-Michel Valantin, “The Planetary Crisis Rules, Part. 1 and Part. 2”, The Red (Team) Analysis Society, January 25, 2016 and February 15, 2016). In this regard, the planetary crisis has become a major generator of friction, i.e., according to Clausewitz, a system of pressure and constraint. This “planetary friction” exerts itself upon the American sea power, i.e. upon the way the U.S. extends its military power onto the sea, and through the sea, towards other nations, because the U.S. sea power is the Naval form of the U.S. (geo)political will (David Gompert, US Sea Power and American Interests in the western Pacific, 2013).
As such, the U.S. sea power is a major and essential component of the U.S. global power. The U.S. Navy is crucial to project forces and to, potentially or actually, exert coercion on a global scale, on the sea, as well as from the sea to littoral and hinterlands, through the use of planes, drones, missiles and cyber capabilities. Its global network of bases ensures a global refuelling capability. Being composed of complex and technologically updated platforms, the U.S. Navy is also a core part of the U.S. land, air, space, nuclear and cyber power, notably through the complex networks of interactions with satellite constellations, and its 11 nuclear aircraft carriers groups (e.g. Chief of Naval Operations, Future Navy, May 2017; Technology for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035 Becoming a 21st-Century Force: Volume 6: Platforms(1997), Chapter: 2 Surface Platform Technology). The U.S. navy is also a major actor for troops transportations.
Taken together, those different capabilities are essential components of the global U.S. military power, which thus appears as profoundly dependent on its maritime dimension. However, nowadays, it has started meeting the growing resistance of the “living and reactive force” (Clausewitz, On War, 1832), in our case the warming ocean. As Edward Luttwak (Strategy, the Logic of War and Peace, 2002), following Carl von Clausewitz (On War, 1832), points out about friction, there is strategy when will is applied against a resisting and reacting object, for example during a war, or, in our case, when ocean change imposes resistance and constraint to the political will embedded into and dependent upon naval infrastructures and fleets.
A signal of the things to come: friction in an age of planetary crisis?
As a result, the different U.S. Navy operations are meeting a growing level of friction, and thus of potential disruption. For example, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force are collaborating in order to manage the Air Force station of the Kwajalein Island, part of the Marshall Islands. The mission of this base is to monitor the “space fence”, i.e. the planetary wide debris belt around the Earth, in order to optimize the trajectory of U.S. civil and military space missions. The multiplication of flood events and of salt-water infiltration, as well as the coming submersion of the Island are exerting a complex “friction” upon the base, and thus upon the space mission, which will no longer be viable when the Island will be submersed (Conger, ibid). This example shows how the interactions between the U.S. Navy and the ocean, i.e. the medium that defines and determines the Navy very existence, are becoming factors of growing and immense friction with cascading effects: in this case, the pressure exerted by the rising ocean upon sea power is transferred to an infrastructure of space power (Timothy Mc Geehan, “A War Plan Orange for Climate Change”, Proceedings Magazine, U.S. Naval Institute, October 2017).
It means that the very environmental medium of the U.S. sea power is becoming a planetary-wide system of constraints on this very power, while the constraints will only become stronger. This implies that, in a very unexpected, strange and disturbing way, the Anthropocene epoch is thus emerging as a new kind of strategically disruptive force that, in the U.S. Navy case, exerts itself on the very capabilities upon which the US military might is built.
Knowing the importance of the U.S. sea power for the global U.S. force projection capabilities, this raises the question of the future of the U.S. sea power in a time of rapidly worsening planetary crisis. As a result, the U.S. Navy now navigates an ocean of strategic uncertainty, as well as other historic and new maritime powers, such as Russia and China.
About the author: Jean-Michel Valantin(PhD Paris) leads the Environment and Geopolitics Department of The Red (Team) Analysis Society. He is specialised in strategic studies and defence sociology with a focus on environmental geostrategy.
Each week our scan collects weak – and less weak – signals…
Editorial
Although the G7 summit is drawing near (starting 8 June 2018), it does not generate an overwhelming interest in terms of crowdsourced signals. Yet, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for Europe to “Step Up in `World Being Reorganized’“, while the “EU College of Commissioners decided on Wednesday to adopt a tit-for-tat duties strategy” to answer the U.S. tariffs imposed on steel and aluminium, as some wonder if we could not be heading towards a G6 (see Economic diplomacy brief).
Could these, including the lack of interest, be indeed strong signals that the world is obviously being reorganised and that older institutions such as the G7 are increasingly becoming obsolete? In such an emerging new world, the place of Europe and the EU remains a critical uncertainty.
As for the “tit for tat” answer to American tariffs, the 6 June 2018 official EU press release states that
“The EU will therefore exercise its rights immediately on US products valued at up to €2.8 billion of trade. The remaining rebalancing on trade valued at €3.6 billion will take place at a later stage – in three years’ time or after a positive finding in WTO dispute settlement if that should come sooner.”
Thus, the EU – and consequently Europe – answers on 43,75% of the blow it received from the U.S…. well, not sure this is a very strong answer that may be taken as retaliation, not sure it can be preemptive of another blow.
Meanwhile, so far, it would seem that Chancellor Merkel “called for joint action on security and migration”. Considering deep divisions on migration, while NATO and willingness to pay for security and defence may continue standing in the way of a true European defence, the road ahead could be long.
Thus, behind the uncertainty regarding the place of Europe in the world and thus its power, we could have two fundamental questions that Europeans need to ponder – and solve – sooner rather than later: is there the will power and is there the capabilities to rise to the challenge? At the end of the day, could Europe be also fighting not to be forgotten or being made obsolete ?
For other weak (and strong) signals, read below our latest complimentary Weekly horizon scanning…
Each section of the scan focuses on signals related to a specific theme: world (international politics and geopolitics); economy; science; analysis, strategy and futures; AI, technology and weapons; energy and environment. However, in a complex world, categories are merely a convenient way to present information, when facts and events interact across boundaries.
As polarisation rises, not only internationally but also domestically within many countries, weak signals are not only “direct”, describing facts, but also, increasingly, “indirect”, i.e. perspectives on reality providing more indications about the positioning of actors, the rising tension(s) and uncertainty, than about facts. The Weekly also aims at monitoring this rising tension to evaluate the possibility for future overt crises, and the underlying corresponding dynamics.
The Weekly is the complimentary scan of The Red (Team) Analysis Society. It focuses on political and geopolitical uncertainty, on national and international security issues.
The information collected (crowdsourced) does not mean endorsement but points to new, emerging, escalating or stabilising problems and issues.
If you wish to consult the scan after the end of the week period, use the “archives” directly on The Weekly.
Featured image: Antennas of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), on the Chajnantor Plateau in the Chilean Andes. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two companion galaxies to our own Milky Way galaxy, can be seen as bright smudges in the night sky, in the centre of the photograph. This photograph was produced by European Southern Observatory (ESO), ESO/C. Malin [CC BY 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons.
➚➚ Escalating AI-power race notably between the U.S. on the one hand, China and in a lesser way Russia on the other.
➚➚ Redrawing of the power map of the world along AI-power status lines
➚➚ Rising uncertainty regarding the emerging AI-world
➚ Possible widening of the range of response, including non lethal one to nuclear threat ➚ Need to revise and rethink nuclear deterrence, nuclear preemptive strikes
➚ Rebalance of nuclear power according to presence or not of efficient nuclear missile launch detection AI-systems
➚ U.S. influence and capability in terms of A.I. ➚➚U.S. influence becoming possibly unchecked ➚ U.S. capability to stem a possible decline and as a result ➘ U.S. feeling threatened, which is possibly a factor of global stabilisation
➚ Potential for escalating tension U.S. – China
Facts and Analysis
According to Phil Stewart for Reuters, the U.S. Pentagon would be carrying out an array of research in various artificial intelligence (AI) systems aiming at anticipating nuclear missile launches and thus better protecting the U.S.
The aim would be to allow for very early detection, for example through tracking very weak signals, to permit developing appropriate response across government, including diplomatically.
“Some officials believe elements of the AI missile program could become viable in the early 2020s”.
Only one such research effort – among the host of those endeavoured – could be identified in next year budget as reaching $83 million, i.e. tripled compared with previous budgets.
Considering lingering or heightening fears to see the use of AI entering the nuclear weapons field, and precipitating nuclear havoc, final decision about action would remain vested in humans.
As a result, and as foreseen, the AI-power race takes shape and spreads. Furthermore, this is an example of how this AI-power race is increasingly likely to be played out, including in the conventional security field, indeed in terms of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Once these AI systems are operational, strategy and doctrine will have to be revised. AI-capabilities in terms of nuclear missile launch detection may deeply alter the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction, while revisiting preemptive strikes: those benefiting from AI-systems may have such a superior advantage in terms of preemption, that the very possibility of retaliation could be denied or greatly reduce. Balance of Power would then be fundamentally altered.
Source and Signal
Original article on Reuters: The Pentagon has a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. military is increasing spending on a secret research effort to use artificial intelligence to help anticipate the launch of a nuclear-capable missile, as well as track and target mobile launchers in North Korea and elsewhere.
Trump’s decision to pull out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, better known as the Iran Nuclear Deal) is a highly destabilizing element in an already unstable regional scenario characterized by wars in Syria and Yemen, the never-ending Israeli-Palestinian question, the rift between Qatar and the other Gulf countries (chiefly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates), political uncertainty in Lebanon and socio-political tensions continuously threatening to tear Iraq apart. Iran is the perceived common denominator to all these issues, at least to a certain degree.
The crucial geopolitical role Teheran plays, together with the domestic problems it faces, lead us to wonder about the future of the Islamic Republic’s regional stance in the medium-term future (e.g. 3 to 5 years). This question is of crucial importance to foresee the future of such a pivotal region as the Middle East. In order to think about the future, however, we have to consider the past carefully, notably to identify crucial and acting factors and dynamics.
➚➚ Uncertainty in the security and resource sectors for all actors, states and companies alike, involving a complete redrawing of the influence map, of the capabilities needed and relatedly of the strategies and policies to develop and implement.
➚ China’s influence ➚ China’s rise to top major power status ➘ Resource insecurity of China
➘ Tensions in the South-China Sea with the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam
➚ Escalating Tension U.S. – China on the South China Sea ➚ Escalating Tension U.S. – China
Facts and analysis
(see sources and references below in the third part)
In April and May 2018, China has carried out successful deep-sea missions which indicate China’s willingness to develop its influence and use also to this extreme environment, among the four we monitor: the extremely cold in the North – the Arctic – and in the South – Antarctica, space, and the deep-sea. As a result, China shows a resolve to implement a truly planetary strategy not only located at the surface of the planet, somehow conceptualising the world in two dimensions, as with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), but also considering height and depth, thus in 3 dimensions, with space on the one hand, the deep-sea on the other.
Between 4 April and 16 May 2018, China endeavoured a month-long deep-sea exploration in the South China Sea, using a Canadian unmanned submarine, more precisely a Remotely Operated Platform for Ocean Science (ROPOS). Not only could the expedition transfer data in real-time and allow scientists and students to discover in real-time the new world of the deep-sea, but also it identified the location and nature of precious future resources. The exploration thus found: “the biggest ferromanganese nodules”, which notably “contain nickel, chromium and manganese, minerals that are indispensable for military equipment, such as submarines, tanks and aerospace facilities,” as pointed out by a Chinese advisor to the Hainan Provincial Maritime Environment Protection Association. It also found “two ancient hydrothermal vents on the seafloor”, which fluids “provide[s] clues to the form of metals”.
Meanwhile, China is also developing its own manned and unmanned submersibles for the deep-sea, while developing and testing interoperability and communication.
For example, from 28 to 30 April 2018, “The manned deep-sea submersible Shenhai Yongshi, or Deep Sea Warrior, and unmanned submersible Haima, or Sea Horse, completed three joint deep-sea operations in the Haima cold springs in the South China Sea”. Here the resources targeted were natural gas hydrate, which could contribute to replace in the future oil and gas. Estimates give 2020 as target date for first small-scale output and 2030 for large-scale commercial exploitation (The Independent).
Real exploitation of this deep-sea resource has already started in China, as, in 2017 the country is reported to have “extracted more than 300,000 cubic meters of combustible ice, a type of natural gas hydrate (People’s Daily)”.
Considering the location of the so-far identified main sources of natural gas hydrate, China, in the meantime, also calls for cooperation with the countries in the disputed region, namely the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam. We may estimate that China will probably develop here a strategy and related policies akin to the BRI.
As another example, on 23 April, “China’s self-developed 4,500-meter-level unmanned submersible Qianglong 3” (diving dragon) “conducted its first dive in the South China Sea”. The Qianglong series is “developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Shenyang Institute of Automation”. Among a host of improvements compared with previous versions, it is also meant to be much more silent, which could have direct consequences in terms of military espionage and submarine warfare.
Finally, China is reported to plan a new base located in Sanya for deploying manned and unmanned submersible vehicles in the South China Sea, which should be completed by 2019.
If China is seen as having to catch up in terms of submarine warfare according to Jane’s Defence/IHS Markit (Sputnik), it is making much effort in this direction. Meanwhile, to evaluate China’s efforts in terms of manned and unmanned submarines only according to warfare could be a dangerous approach, as all silo-based understanding. It could indeed neglect diplomatic impacts and influence’s impacts, consequences in terms of resources security and, ironically, capability to develop next generation of weapon systems, if necessary components are seabed resources dependent.
The month-long deep-sea exploration of the South China Sea ended Wednesday with the discovery of polymetallic nodules and ancient hydrotherm which will help in exploiting metal resources and will provide the materials needed to manufacture military and aerospace equipment, observers said.
China’s two deep-sea submersibles have completed their first joint scientific research in the South China Sea, paving the way for future natural gas hydrate explorations in the region, an analyst said Wednesday.
Commercial development of the globe’s huge reserves of a frozen fossil fuel known as “combustible ice” has moved closer to reality after Japan and China successfully extracted the material from the seafloor off their coastlines. But experts said Friday that large-scale production remains many years away – and if not done properly could flood the atmosphere with climate-changing greenhouse gases.
Just after the likely next head of US Pacific Command told Congress China’s undersea warfare capability is one of the most pressing threats to the US, a new report says Beijing is establishing another base in the South China Sea for deploying manned and unmanned submersible vehicles.
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and reinforcement of extreme weather events. Those events are having a disrupting potential on the sea lanes navigated by the six US fleets (Bob Berwyn, “
