 The next panel is What Technologies Will Shape the Future of Warfare? For those of you that don't know me, I'm Peter Singer. We're here at both organizations represented in Arizona State and New America. And we've got online major general. I can't see them, but I hopefully can. Give me a thumbs up if you can see them there. We're going to ask them to run and go tell the books in the back that we don't have. Can you give them a heads up? Thank you. So for those of you in the room, I'm going to go ahead and introduce you to is Phenomenal, Ph.D., Chief Technology Forecasting Office for DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory. As I was explaining to folks in the back, he's basically the point man for thinking through Army futures and some of the key technologies that it needs for the organization. And so, Troy, we're going to use this time for folks in here before we go with our full audience. I'm going to instead of having them stare at us, ask an unexpected question for you. Certainly. One lesson you've learned in your career. I think the biggest lesson that I've learned through my career is to embrace flexibility. I'd say that starting my career, I was at the bench for about 10 years. I did research and a range of things from detection of biological threat agents to nanomaterials to the development of novel sensors and high performance data processing techniques. And about halfway through my career, I made the transition to go more into science and technology advisory roles where I at one point served as the Acting Basic Research Portfolio Director for the entire Army in leading the direction of science and technology and also served in some roles in terms of technology strategy development for not only the Army Research Laboratory, but also the whole Department of the Army. So I think you have to really kind of embrace this ability to reinvent yourself. And some of my scientific heroes, I think of folks like Linus Pauling or perhaps less or no, but equally deep folks like Twan Vodan had the ability to be able to reinvent themselves to pivot into a new technical area as it presented itself to master that technical area and push that technical area to the envelope and then do it two or three times throughout their career. I used to have sort of a saying early in my career that if you're working on the same thing the day you retire, that you worked on the day you started, then you probably haven't really moved the technological stakes for your fall. That's awesome. And I love you. One, providing great advice to both the policy audience, but we've also got some students because this is a joint academic and that's pure gold in terms of life advice, but also for how you helped us fill a moment as we get our own technology set. So now I see our other guests joining, hopefully they're hearing us. We've got Major General Mick Ryan, a close friend who has had a distinguished career in a variety of roles within the Australian military, including leading their defense college. He's now an adjunct fellow at Center for Strategic International Studies and also a author of a variety of nonfiction as well as a new fiction book, the most recent War Transformed and White Sun War. And then we've got Laura Grego, who is Senior Scientist and Research Director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, as well as a distinguished researcher in her own career. So thank you both for joining us. So I'm going to begin with a first question and why don't we start off with Laura first, which is what technology do you see as the most important but simultaneously least understood and its significance for the future? Well, thanks for the invitation, Peter. I think probably many of us are going to include artificial intelligence as the most importantly least understood. And I think what we see now are the fruits of the previous generation of AI, which can do really good pattern recognition, make inferences, absorb large amounts of data. And that can really be a boon, of course, it can aid in verification, it can provide pathways for controlling technologies. But some of the concerns though I have about it, I think one of the, I worry that decision makers will use AI as a decision making tool. And this may not necessarily always be better. Would AI have been better at predicting whether Putin was actually going to invade Ukraine when it did. I'm not sure. Are there things especially in the realm of human behavior where AI might just reproduce our own biases and cause us not to question our information sources not to have enough skepticism. And the other place I'm concerned about with respect to decision making is that AI will enable and reinforce our desire to move quickly and respond rapidly. I spend most of my time thinking about nuclear issues and that is one place I worry, you know, nuclear weapons are currently postured to be launched at a moment's notice and many of the strategic technologies increase the tempo. I worry that AI will only further increase the tempo. We're starting to include maneuvering glide missiles, anti satellite weapons and novel long range nuclear delivery systems and many of them are ready to be used at a moment's notice. So I do worry that AI can increase confidence and compress time scales. And then of course the part that we don't understand is that we're kind of looking at the current version of AI. But what can it do in the future and we already see how well it can do shaping and manipulating the information environment when coupled with social media. What what what will that look like in the future. I mean, even currently we had it amplifies our expressions of racism sexism other kinds of bigotry and can even social media can do that even when it's not being manipulated by AI but as that becomes more useful and powerful. I'm not sure we have a great way to deal with that. So those are some of the concerns and the things I think we don't understand about AI. So what technology do you see as in that space of most important, but simultaneously least understood. Peter was that a question for me. That was a question for you. I'm going to ask it again. Because we are having tech issues. Very appropriate to the topic. What, what technology do you see as most important, but least understood. For me, I would have to say it's democratised access to battlefield command and control systems. I think there's been a lot of focus during the Ukraine war on things like autonomous systems and even the meshing of civil and military sensor frameworks and analytical capability but I think one of the transformative elements of this war is that at least on the Ukrainian side they've democratised access to systems that were previously secret kept in unit command posts. We now have individuals that now have access to input and receive location data targeting data in a way that we just haven't seen in previous conflicts before. It kind of replicates what we've seen go on in society with the Internet in the last 30 years. Now it's on the battlefield. And I think what that's doing is having a couple of impacts. Firstly, it's kind of enhancing the survivability of people on one side of things, but it's also closing the detection to destruction gap that is continuing to close on the battlefield. But it also closes the gap between when things happen and when people find out about them. Not just on the battlefield, but in these things such as the strategic strike we saw in Sevastopol in the last 24 hours already seeing battle damage assessment from multiple open sources. So, you know, I think that democratisation of access to data to people at the edge on the battlefield is something very new. And we're really at the very start of, I think. I'd really like to echo what Laura and Mick said. I think they covered those topics pretty well. But I'd like to add probably the one that I think of most often is synthetic biology. It holds the greatest promise. It's a sort of emerging science. But it holds significant promise to be able to do things like fuel point of need manufacturing to address logistics challenges that go along with any sort of tactical operation. It has the ability to cover so many, going so many different directions from materials to sensing modalities to even into computer processing realm. And I think we're just at the beginning of the area where we can really just starting to understand this. How do we really manage and engineer the genome to really realize downstream processes and downstream materials that are going to be can be used for myriad of things that really kind of. I often think of it as sort of the third leg of the synthetic molecular synthetic triad. Whether you do your classical stepwise synthetic approaches or you do things like combinatorial chemistry to get to those materials and thirdly leveraging biological systems to be able to produce things for you. And again, those things could be electronic in nature. They can be optical in nature. They can be even energetic in nature. And I think it really starts to change the way we think about national security warfare in the sense that you can start to do some of those things where you need them, which is significantly different than the way that we've done them traditionally where you produce the materials in the rear and then have to move them forward. So that really gets you into the point of need manufacturing and advanced manufacturing, which is really important. So wars are contests of arms and political will. But they're also learning laboratories of a kind, both for the forces within as they move as they back and forth. But also everyone else watching and thinking about the lessons and how they might apply to their own plans for the future. So I'd like to look at the Ukraine war and through that lens. What are the lessons that you have taken from Ukraine and why don't we go in the same order again. So, Laura, what are some of the lessons that you've taken from Ukraine. That's an interesting question. I know we're talking about future technology, but I think to the big ones that that came to mind are more human lessons and one is just a reiteration that leadership is so important and that strong institutions matter. Probably President Putin has ruined Russia's future with this decision and you know I'm, I'm very glad that in the United States we have an experienced president with a good temperament and a really solid team behind him that's been able to navigate a lot of these dangers and a lot of the brinksmanship in this conflict and and I think the administration has done a pretty good job of managing that while continuing to help Ukraine. I mean, you can imagine though a different personality could have led us in really different and dangerous directions. So, just I think a reiteration that strong democratic institutions are so important and strong civil society institutions are so important. The ability of citizens to dissent productively when you have these, if you have a personalist or narcissistic leader, you end up with an information bubble. Yes, yes and no man they personalize conflict. I think that increases the existential threat. And the other thing that I thought is was interesting was, you know, the news in the last few weeks about the role commercial interests have played, you know, specifically providing communications broadband internet by by the Starlink system. I hope that as we go forward we make sure that our decisions are made by people who are accountable to populations and not accountable to their companies. You know, not that elected officials always get things right but that by design they're accountable. So I do think that strategically we really need to think about making sure that that those things are in place. You know, it's it's not a good idea to have commercial entities have that much decision making power. So I think it's a good thing to keep an eye on in the future, especially as humans consider moving into space with more, with more resources we definitely need a strong governance system that's accountable to people. You've actually traveled multiple times to Ukraine. And so your observations are both as an analyst but also bringing in some first person side so what are some of the highlights of what you've learned from Ukraine. Thanks, Peter. I mean, there's a lot of observations we can take. I'm not sure anything yet is a lesson learned. I think there's some way to go yet and a lot of institutions are struggling with what they observe in Ukraine and whether it's relevant to them or not. Not every lesson might be, but a couple of things I think are important. Firstly, is this notion of the adaptation battle. It's, as you noted, wars are also a learning opportunity. And at every level, whether it's a tactical, operational, strategic or political, there's an adaptation battle going on as each side struggles to gain some kind of kind of advantage to learn what's going on to to learn how they're learning about the conflict and then constantly change, adapt and evolve. And we've seen both sides adapt and evolve their strategy, their tactics, their equipment, their external relationships throughout this war. So I think that's a really important thing. And, and what that says to me is what is the organizational learning culture of whatever institution you belong to, how do you nurture the foundations for adaptation before you go to war. So if you do find yourself in one and you're not able to deter it, how do you best learn and adapt? I think a second observation would be that there are very few, very few new things in this war. I mean, this most wars are an aggregation of every idea, every technology and every organization that's gone before it with a couple of new things added. So this, this war features, you know, mass warfare. It features the mobilization of people and industry. It features alliances. It features things like trench warfare and alien combat. But the couple of new things I think are pretending a change in the character of war, be they the mass influence and mass autonomous systems that are being deployed. The ability to gain and sustain awareness in the battlefield to a degree we haven't before. It's not transparency. And it's not always wisdom, but it's certainly visibility. And what I think that drives and I think the Ukrainian offensive in the South is a great case study of this is that many of the ideas, the doctrines and the organizations that we think work in modern warfare are actually half a century old. And we need to evolve them, expecting the Ukrainians to breach through minefields with technology that's 50 years old doctrine that's 70 years old and an environment where, you know, you can be seen and brought under fire in minutes was an intellectual failure on the part of NATO in the West, and we can't afford to have those kinds of intellectual failures in the future. So, so I mean the lesson is new ideas and new organizations need to be layered over the top of many of the old aspects of what we're seeing in this wall. And there's some pretty careful judgments that will need to be made about that. I think Laura and make again really hit this pretty, pretty well. I would probably reshape the question slightly different and bring in a couple other events that happened Nagorno-Karabakh and also date back to 2020 Libya. And what I take a take from those classrooms as it were is this idea of attributable systems. I think we are now in a new realm where attributable systems will become more and more important. Historically, if you look back the way that we typically have prosecuted or we had exquisite systems that we protected at all costs, whether you think about this as an aircraft carrier or a tank or what have you, those are certain systems that we really tried to protect. I think we're in a different realm now where we have systems that are to some degree have some disposability and are able to work collaboratively with other systems and the ensemble, the network continues to work even if you lose some. So this whole idea of attributable systems and graceful degradation I think are really big building blocks that we can leverage as we move forward. And I think as we, from the work that my office does, there are significant investments in science and technology, not only in the U.S. but around the globe that are starting to move in that direction to be able to realize attributable systems, whether they are aerial systems or ground systems or sea systems that you have many of them, none of them are as expensive as your exquisite system. And so you can lose some of them. And if they're designed in a proper way and integrated properly, then you can have the ability to still have collaboration scale or swarming or things like that and still prosecute the mission while losing a few of the elements that you would leverage to do that. These are all great points and I think in many ways it's important to think about the difference in the phrasing of in the U.S. context we say lessons learned, but in, for example, the British military and others and maybe Australia, there's the lessons observed, which means, you know, I didn't actually, a lot of these the question really is will we implement them in our systems and actually we were having a conversation out on the hallway related to your last point Troy of you know you've got an example of the launch of the replicator initiative, but what would it look like does it get funded what's its scale, you know so we've we've observed lessons but will we actually implement is open ended right now. So with that, I'm someone, I'm a worrywart. So make my life worse. What worries you the most when you peer into the future. So Laura and you have a responsibility. I mean, look, you literally it's the concern scientists so that's not just what concerns the scientists but what worries you personally, the most about the future of technology and conflict. Okay. Yeah, a professional concerned person. Well, I am definitely concerned about the future. And it sometimes it feels like the future is coming faster than you imagine I mean looking, looking out at the storms that have just happened this past week that the climate emergency is upon us, and we're seeing enormous disruption. It's going to be free for our most vulnerable and it's going to come for everyone. If we don't really do a better job of grappling with this and that is going to create incredible pressures with mass migrations economic systems are going to be more fragile so just the context for conflict, I think will be. You know the pressure is ratcheted up as you know pandemics and wars. Of course, I spend most of my time thinking about nuclear weapons issues and in that is a central concern for me of course because we have such a hard time grappling with low risk and high consequence events. And at times in our history we've, our guiding principle has been trying to how do we de center these weapons which can not only kill hundreds of millions of people, almost immediately but could threaten billions with climate and economic disruption. Again being centered. We have the fraying of arms control agreements and the destruction of that whole edifice that has been our been guy rails for decades. We are all almost all of the nuclear weapons powers are refurbishing and expanding their nuclear arsenals and creating new delivery systems bespoke delivery systems, trying to finesse deterrence and increasing the different types of weapons that can be used, we're building more and more ships with missiles now we can do intermediate range missiles and anti missile systems and they're going to be moving in the same spaces, increasing the, the, the supporting technologies like using space, more, more in depth with all of these technologies proliferating them and, you know, inviting anti satellite weapon development, again providing another short tempo use it or lose it type of pressure so I, I, I think I guess the question is, what are the things we should be doing right now that we wish we had the in 10 years we wish we had the guts to do and some of those things I like that part to be part of the question which how should we be thinking about the future and what are we supposed to be doing right now to to ensure that that looks as good as possible. So, Mick, you've actually played in both these realms of thinking about the future how do we adjust to it, but you've also in a recent book whites on war painted one of those scenarios that's quite scary what would a war in the Pacific look like so for you personally. What do you worry the most and then that's, let's take insight from Laura, what's something we can do to keep your worry from coming true. My main one is we don't take seriously the, the idea that a major war could, could emerge in the 21st century I think in the lead up to the war in Ukraine there were a lot of countries and a lot of politicians who didn't take seriously the fact that there are still people out there who think that large wars are a valid option in the 21st century to achieve their national priorities. And I think that if we just assume that she or people like him are rational actors and would never go to war. It makes our life more difficult in deterring them so we need to take it seriously, which means you need to take seriously your, your deterrence framework because no one wants this to happen. The kind of catastrophe I painted in white sub war is what I'm trying to prevent. And it's what we should all be trying to prevent so in some respects it's an anti war novel, and if it's read that way that that's wonderful so we need to take seriously the fact that large scale war it's still possible. This series just don't true humans for 5000 years of fought and probably going to fought fight again in the future. And therefore we need to invest in deterrence but we also need to invest in the kind of dialogues that we're seeing the PLA issue at the moment to ensure that there are guide rails and things don't escalate unnecessarily between potential belligerence. I'd like to say that my colleagues here have hit a lot of the points I would have hit but there's a weapon system that is emergent, specifically hypersonic weapons give me pause. And I think of them that there are three levels of threat. First speed, we're talking about systems that go at a minimum Mach five, that's 3800 miles an hour, or faster, combined with the ability to maneuver, which sets them apart from intercontinental ballistic missiles which also go about that fast but they really ICBMs travel in a parabolic trajectory whereas hypersonic systems are maneuverable and can change direction. And thirdly, one when they get above about Mach seven in an oxygen atmosphere you have ionization of oxygen, which, concamely goes along, applies to them this cloak that makes it difficult to be able to sense them. So you can't get, say, an active radar being through because the plasma cloak that surrounds the system makes it invisible to radar. So you have a system that's traveling nearly 4000 miles, miles an hour can maneuver in his heart to detect. And if you could get that to operate in a collaborative way that is a very stark system to contend with. And to Laura's point that demonstrated these types of systems can not only carry conventional warheads but also nuclear warheads. So that is really a significant challenge. I'd say that after thinking about this a while, I think the thing that the biggest bang for the buck would probably be in sensing is there a way to be able to efficiently sense these systems. Because that's really the first step in the kill chain to be able to know where the system is in order to be able to counter it. So I think that's where the initially where most of the investment in focus on. So I think we've got time for a question from the audience. So if you've got a question, go ahead and raise your hand actually right there in the back and quickly introduce yourself as well. Hi, I'm Bridget. I'm the program manager for our cyber security fellowship here at New America. This is not my area of expertise, but this is something that I've been curious about since my graduate studies. So in the past few years, as kind of Laura touched on, we've seen private companies or the private sector kind of weighed its way into military operations via technology. So I'd just be interested to hear from you about how that would impact military planning operations innovation. Thanks. Great. So let's see. Actually, Laura, why don't you weigh in? I'm going to put you on point on that, but also as well, then we'll go in the same order. So you mentioned one, the problem of having a what action to be used mercurial would be a mercurial multi-billionaire have control over a communications network. What what else when we think about the role of the private sector and conflict via technology is a point of concern. So that's a really good question, Bridget, and I'm interested to hear it. My co-panelists say, I think, of course, the other place where the center of gravity is in the commercial space is in AI. And they have enormous resources there. And, you know, it's challenging to self regulate, and especially for technologies that are that are moving so quickly and are inherently sophisticated and difficult to understand. I think commercial space is a little bit easier because it's sort of more obvious what it does and how it does it. And it's a matter of investing and innovating and engineering really, but I feel like the AI is an edge. So what we use to produce as my as Dr. Alexander said, you know, their novel biological synthetics, it may be great at quickly creating new materials that that could transform industries such as room temperature superconductors. So I think, you know, when the center of gravity kind of moves in commercial space, those partnerships with government really have to be in place. You've taken in terms of the role of the private sector related to conflict. Well, I think it works both ways. It can work for us, but potentially can can work against us. And we've seen this meshing of civil and military sensors and analytical capability throughout the war in Ukraine. And whether it's using NASA firms or microphones on smartphones to track missiles, you know, we've seen this into deeper integration of military and civilian and government collection frameworks. Now, I think there might be some interesting interpretations in law about the participation of civilians in conflict at some point, we're probably not there yet. But just as we've used it to to find targets to do analysis to do battle damage assessment so might a future adversary use it better than what the Russians have done. I think we need to be prepared for that environment where all sources can be meshed and used by an adversary against us, not the traditional military and government sources of information and analysis. I think there's an area that that I always give me a little concern and that's electronic components. You know, when you think about electronic components that integrate circuits and things like that, we often acquire them and integrate them into systems. But understanding where they originated and who actually made it made them is has been a challenge because there really are no secure foundries that I'm aware of that have the ability to have the throughput to really kind of fuel the major militaries around the globe. And to pull that thread a little bit for you, is that when those components are made, they may be made by someone in the ferries intent that put components on board that can be engaged turn off through a backdoor through cyber connectivity that really could compromise the final systems that are based around them. So really, I guess a mitigate would be, could we really kind of envision the development of a secure foundry or an ecosystem of secure foundries that will allow us to make those components that we would then use to build the systems that we leverage. And so that's where I think there's this kind of interplay between the industry and really kind of national security that we have to navigate there. Really, you know, industry has been the real player there because we really just acquired those components and then integrate them and then we trust that they are not, that they're sort of clean and pristine, nothing hidden there. So like so many of the other discussions here, we go on and on, but we actually have to come to a closing point. So I want to thank all of you for sharing your insights and so please join me in a round of applause.