Air University Press has published Strategic Multilayer Assessment’s (SMA) latest book, Human, Machine, War: How the Mind-Tech Nexus Will Win Future Wars.

Strategic surprise, the realization that one’s knowledge and assumptions are wrong and the adversary has an upper hand, is a national security nightmare (Amidon, 2005; Defense Science Board, 2015; Handel, 1984). Classic examples include Pearl Harbor, Sputnik, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

The 12th Annual SMA Conference, entitled “The Evolving Anatomy of Conflict in a Dynamically Changing World,” was held 21-22 May 2019 at the General Jacob E. Smart Conference Center at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. The conference theme was defined as:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and big data promise to help reshape the global order. For decades, most political observers believed that liberal democracy offered the only plausible future pathways for big, industrially sophisticated countries to make their citizens rich. Now, by allowing governments to monitor, understand, and control their citizens far more effectively than ever before, AI offers a plausible way for big, economically advanced countries to make their citizens rich while maintaining control over them—the first since the end of the Cold War. That may help fuel and shape renewed international competition between types of political regimes that are all becoming more “digital.” Just as competition between liberal democratic, fascist, and communist social systems defined much of the twentieth century, how may the struggle between digital liberal democracy and digital authoritarianism define and shape the twenty-first?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is proliferating throughout society and has implications for many careers and jobs, including military intelligence. More specifically, AI tools have the potential to enhance the analysis conducted by analysts within the intelligence community (IC). Dr. Flores emphasized the need for the United States to compete with China and Russia for AI dominance, as the stakes and implications of allowing these countries to surpass the United States in AI development continue to rise. These stakes include threats to democratic institutions and the spread of authoritarianism.

SMA hosted a speaker session with Jim Mitre (RAND Global and Emerging Risks) as part of its SMA General Speaker Series.

SMA hosted a panel discussion as a part of its SMA UK MoD Speaker Series. The panelists included Dr. David Bray, Dr. Matthew Burrows, Dr. Divya Chander, and Dr. Jason Matheny (All from The Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center, Strategic Foresight Initiative, and Center for Security and Emerging Technology).

The proliferation of small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS), commonly referred to as drones, in modern combat is accelerating the evolution of techniques, tactics, and procedures (TTPs) being adopted by the military.

The field of biomedical research is rapidly expanding and evolving, providing numerous opportunities for technological advancements in synthetic biology, genome editing, and bioengineered devices.

The race to achieve quantum computing has significant implications for the future security landscape. Dr. Williams highlighted the current progress, challenges, and opportunities for growth in the quantum computing field.

One of the GDELT Project’s goals is to use artificial intelligence (AI) to better understand our world.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are still a relatively new technology and an even newer commercial product; however, the growth of the UAV market has been immense. During the last 13 years, there have been 1.7 million UAVs registered in 100 countries. Of these, 75% are for consumer or commercial use, increasing their prevalence in modern civil society. However, commercial UAVs have the capability to be used by the state militaries and to carry out attacks by violent non-governmental organizations. Because of these capabilities, many states have concerns over the growing commonality of commercial UAVs. Some of these concerns come from past assassination attempts on state leaders using UAVs. Col (Ret) Edwards emphasized that the war in Ukraine has given combatants a wealth of new case studies for both the development and employment of UAVs in combat. Ukraine itself has become an epicenter for UAV development.

Human-machine learning and technology that cognitively connects operators to technology has strong implications for the future of warfare. Dr. Wright stated that new technologies will not replace workers or warfighters; however, those without the skill sets required to operate the technology will be replaced by those who can. Much of this technology will incorporate artificial intelligence (AI). The capability of AI has grown significantly during the last decade. Twelve years ago, AI was able to successfully to discern dogs from cats, while today it can generate its own images of dogs, cats, and dog-cat hybrids. Artificial intelligence has also demonstrated the ability to answer complex problems in recent years. For example, a professor asked ChatGPT a scientific question and received a correct and highly sophisticated answer that received an A grade. Ultimately, the interface between AI and the user will be imperative to its success in the field. Dr. Wright reminded the audience that poor interface in fighter jets during WWII lead to the death of several pilots because they pressed the incorrect switch instead of the correct switch next to it while landing.

SMA hosted a speaker session with Sir David Omand (Kings College London; Former Director, GCHQ; First UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator), Dr. Jonathan Moreno (University of Pennsylvania), and Dr. Jim Giordano (Georgetown University Medical Center) as part of its SMA Mind-Tech Nexus Speaker Series. The Panel was moderated by Dr. Nicholas Wright (Intelligent Biology, Georgetown University Medical Center, University College London, and Center for Strategic and International Studies).

The advancement of technology—including artificial intelligence (AI)—is unavoidable. New technology will inevitably change how military campaigns are conducted and how individual military units engage in combat.

Military leaders have long sought to understand what enables soldiers to willingly engage in combat and other dangerous activities. New technologies relating to the mind-tech nexus may allow scholars and leaders to understand why soldiers decide to place themselves in harm’s way, and even encourage it.

The use of autonomous weapons systems is frequently debated by countries’ leadership, military personnel, and scholars because of its potentially destructive capabilities.

SMA hosted a speaker session with CAPT George Galdorisi, USN (Ret) (Director of Strategic Assessments and Technical Futures, Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific (NIWC Pacific)) as a part of its SMA General Speaker Series. CAPT Samuel Tangredi, PhD, USN (Ret) (Leidos Chair of Future Warfare Studies & Professor of National, Naval, and Maritime Strategy, U.S. Naval War College) participated in the Q&A session, along with CAPT Galdorisi, after the conclusion of the brief.

SMA hosted speaker session presented by Mr. Samuel Bendett (CNA) as a part of its SMA EUCOM Speaker Series.Mr. Bendett began his presentation by recognizing that new threats require new approaches to technological, intellectual, and human potential. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MOD), particularly over the last decade, has made major strides in developing new research and development, testing, and evaluation (RDT&E) initiatives. According to Mr. Bendett, Russian MOD leadership helped ensure that the Russian army made a technological breakthrough related to the adoption of “robotic complexes” and intensified artificial intelligence research, for instance.

SMA hosted a speaker session presented by Mr. Dustin Homer (Fraym) as part of its SMA General Speaker Series. Mr. Homer began by introducing the mission of Fraym, which is to understand local human populations around the world by mapping local communities and determining the socioeconomic breakdown of the people that live there. Fraym uses machine learning to collect data and map behaviors, ethnolinguistic characteristics, economic situations, and demographics of a population to the accuracy of 1 sq km. Mr. Homer stated that it is critically important to understand the people in these local communities, not only to determine how to engage with them from a security perspective, but also to anticipate and predict specific risks in these areas. This localized population insight is critical for strategic planning, anticipatory intelligence analysis, operational preparation, and information operations. Mr. Homer then discussed Fraym’s methodology. He explained how they collect and acquire data, harmonize the data so it is workable, and then use machine learning to geotag and sort the data. The final product provides geospatial insight to what would normally just be graphs and charts. For the second half of his presentation, Mr. Homer provided specific examples of Fraym’s work that, in practice, could be applicable to the defense and national security communities. The first example he used related to anticipating Boko Haram activity in Nigeria. Fraym’s map charted the economy, land/transportation use, water supply, and communication and media access, among other things. Using this information, Fraym was able to determine the risk of Boko Haram violence with 90% accuracy. Mr. Homer emphasized that this is not just a population density map; the data used to produce the map can help one identify the main drivers and influence factors for these activities, such as economic inequality or access to public services. He added that looking at youth unemployment at a local level, as Fraym did with Boko Haram in Nigeria, can help predict influences for extremist group recruitment. Another example Mr. Homer provided was the economic drivers of unrest in Mali, which contains an epicenter for foreign military involvement and has a risk of increased jihadist attacks. By charting how economic inequality changed over time, Fraym was able to compare the decline in upper/middle class wealth with the corresponding decline in civilians’ satisfaction with their government. Mr. Homer stated that displaying data in this way helps align economic and social perspectives and defense and national security practitioners understand why instability increases in specific areas. Finally, Mr. Homer stated that Fraym’s reach can assist defense and national security practitioners by adding context to situations in strategic regions and explaining the behavior of geopolitical competitors.

SMA hosted speaker session presented by Dr. P. W. Singer (New America) as a part of its SMA General Speaker Series. Dr. Singer first stated that the advancement of robotics and AI technology has been rapid over the past 10+ years.

SMA hosted a speaker session presented by Dr. Stuart Shulman (Texifter) as a part of its SMA General Speaker Series. Dr. Shulman’s brief focused on the ways in which one identify Internet bots and trolls by using text classification programs. He stated that though machines enable one to classify large bodies of text, it remains difficult for machines to be consistently accurate; therefore, a human must remain in the loop. Dr. Shulman then spoke about CoderRank, a program that ranks humans based on trust and knowledge vectors. The idea behind the program is, when training machines for text analysis, greater reliance should be placed on the specific inputs of those humans most likely to create a valid observation. CoderRank, therefore, is designed to identify those who are most qualified to code and classify text. Dr. Shulman proceeded to discuss lessons learned from tracking down fake accounts in the Trudeau and Biden campaigns. In the Trudeau campaign, Dr. Shulman and his team looked for biographical indicators that were not Canadian, conducted searches based on keywords, and analyzed abnormal text. In the Biden campaign, Dr. Shulman and his team looked for accounts with significant followings that had, in reality, purchased social media followers. He stated that as we move into this next technological landscape, it is only going to become more difficult to discern who is real and who is not online. Moreover, if one immerses oneself in social media profile data and looks for specific indicators, one can see a mixture of real, authentic people; human-assisted bots; bot-assisted humans; and pure bots. Dr. Shulman then spoke about bot detection based on the frequency of tweets. He and his team of coders create filters, labels, and other features in order to determine where the tweets are coming from. They also examine Twitter accounts’ networks to decipher whether or not the accounts of interest are operated by humans. Dr. Shulman expressed, however, that gaining access to data is becoming increasingly difficult due to increased regulations and data privacy restrictions, which makes it harder for him and his team to identify bots. To conclude, Dr. Shulman spoke about how his text classification and bot detecting techniques can be applied to a gaming environment, specifically with regards to veteran suicide prevention and school shooters prevention.

SMA hosted a speaker session presented by CPT Joseph Littell (Duke University) as a part of its SMA General Speaker Series. CPT Littell’s brief focused on deepfakes, visual and audio manipulation, forgery, and data poisoning. To begin, he stated that machine learning (ML) is a process that works through the probability of a new event happening. ML technologies can be supervised, requiring human input into the raw data collected, or unsupervised, requiring no input into the data. CPT Littell explained that deepfakes—falsified images, audio, or video that are created using artificial neural networks—are examples of systems that utilize supervised ML. He discussed several programs that utilize deepfakes for visual manipulation, including Faceswap (a program that utilizes auto-encoders to remove the face of an individual in a video and replace it with another in the same position and expression), StyleGan (a program used to create highly accurate portraits of humans in natural positions based off of baseline images), YouTube videos, and social media filters. CPT Littell explained that, to his knowledge, visual deepfakes are not being used heavily outside of the open source realm. Moreover, despite the consistent increase in sophistication and accuracy of visual deepfakes, he does not believe that they will ever be used to successfully fool a nation like the US to the extent of causing a national or international crisis. Next, CPT Littell discussed programs that utilize deepfakes for audio manipulation, including Adobe Voco (a program that requires only 20 minutes of conversation before it can produce an individual’s voice using text inputs) and WaveNext (a similar program created by DeepMind). He then highlighted that, although much focus of late with regards to deepfakes is on images, video, and audio, creating highly accurate and realistic administrative documents is also a realistic threat. He explained that while the US has numerous safeguards to prevent forgeries, many countries in which US personnel have operated in do not have the same level of sophistication. Moreover, data poisoning can present potential security concerns, as false data can be fed into a ML model for nefarious purposes. To conclude, CPT Littell stressed the need for methodology and best practices regarding ML technologies to be shared across the defense enterprise (i.e., across the DOD, international community, and private national laboratories).

SMA hosted speaker session presented by LTC Thomas Pike (National Intelligence University) as a part of its Future of Global Competition & Conflict Speaker Series. During part two of his two-part brief, LTC Pike focused on a primary argument made in his dissertation: Computation is a critical tool necessary to analyze complex systems, and its use must be expanded across the Joint Force. He stated that artificial intelligence (AI) is a discipline that consists of a suite of different computational approaches. There is no universal algorithm, and every situation is different. Furthermore, each approach and sub-approach has its strengths and weaknesses. LTC Pike then explained that what allows AI to flourish is the ecosystem of computational tools and code that surround it. Each tool or code can be used for different purposes, and code stores knowledge that others can employ in a wide variety of situations. Moreover, in order to strengthen AI, the ecosystem of tools and code must become vast, which can be done by individual users providing open source data and building up public libraries. LTC Pike then provided a critical overview of how the open source/AI community works and how it allows individuals with even basic skills to perform advanced computational and AI-related tasks. He stated that open source code is often incredibly easy to use, and simply with a knowledge of what certain algorithms can do, any practitioner can utilize it. LTC Pike then spoke about how the Joint Force cannot just integrate current AI tools into the Joint Intelligence Process (JIP) and the Joint Planning Process (JPP) but set the conditions to lead the way for leveraging emerging tools and encoding the workforce’s current knowledge. To conclude, LTC Pike provided a series of recommendations. He advocated for the increased use of computation and explained that the Joint Force can improve the Joint Intelligence Preparation of the Operational Environment (JIPOE) process in two ways: 1) by managing the analysis of relevant actor interdependencies to better understand links between behavioral trends and outcomes and 2) by expanding the use of AI and its collection of computational tools in order to do so more rapidly.

Dr. Sutherlin began by stating the purpose of the panel discussion: to “look at the next decade of opportunity in advanced/emerging technology development to improve risk analysis for health, food security, governance, migration, and humanitarian crises in African countries.” Mr. Arias proceeded to discuss the science and technologies upon which AFRICOM has invested in order to help the UN conduct operations in Africa and to improve AFRICOM’s understanding of the operating environment.

SMA hosted a speaker session presented by Ms. Amy Webb (Future Today Institute) as a part of its SMA General Speaker Series. Ms. Webb first stated that the US’s free market economy rewards short-term solutions with long-term risk, which can sometimes be problematic. She then spoke about her model, which uses data to listen for weak signals at the fringe, to see patterns, to identify trends, to calculate the ETA of a particular trend, to write scenarios, and to backcast preferred outcomes. Ms. Webb also stressed that there is no way to predict the future when there are so many variables at hand, nor is there a way to determine what geopolitical risks there truly are or what the impact of a technology may be.

SMA hosted a speaker session presented by Dr. Lydia Kostopoulos (LK Cyber) as a part of its SMA DHS Speaker Series. To begin, Dr. Kostopoulos spoke about humans’ overconfidence in the validity of technology. She stated that the data that we provide artificial intelligence (AI) devices reflects our personal biases.