Degrading Adversaries’ Military Effectiveness: Uses of Generative AI

Panelists:  Lt Gen Jack Shanahan (USAF, Ret, Former Director Joint Artificial Intelligence Center), Tim Hwang (Author & Researcher), and Jon Bateman (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace); Moderator: Dr. Nicholas Wright (Georgetown University)

Date: 30 November 2023

Speaker Session Summary

SMA hosted a speaker session with Lt Gen Jack Shanahan (USAF, Ret, Former Director Joint Artificial Intelligence Center), Mr. Tim Hwang (Author & Researcher), Mr. Jon Bateman (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), with moderator Dr. Nicholas Wright (Georgetown University) as part of its SMA Mind-Tech Nexus Speaker Series.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is impacting the current threat environment and showing that it can erode the fighting ability of states’ militaries. While well-designed information operations (IO) that support AI can strengthen militaries’ and governments’ security apparatus, it must be used carefully and thoughtfully. To this end, Lt Gen Shannahan emphasized that bad information operations are worse than no information operations at all. The large language models (LLMs) that provide the data for training AI will require constant upkeep and reinforcement to ensure the AI’s decision-making quality over the long term. A multi-disciplinary effort to understand an opponent’s OODA (observe, orient, decide, act) loop will also be necessary to effectively wage cognitive warfare and disorient an adversary.

The current notion among many is that the US should use AI to fight AI, stated Mr. Hwang. However, there will always be the need for a human moderator to clean datasets that make up AI’s supporting LLMs. Threats, including bad actors flooding the information environment with bad information, will impede AI’s ability to tell what is real and what is fake. Mr. Hwang said that a current goal of the scientific community is to create an AI companion that allows human analysts to quickly identify what is fake and what is not. Mr. Bateman mentioned that deepfakes and ‘cheap fakes’ are another significant concern. Deepfakes that create a completely new image do not even need to be high quality if they reinforce individual’s beliefs to gain traction. Also, even changing the caption of images to change the location or context of an image has gone viral and proven to be effective disinformation tools. As these kinds of disinformation campaigns continue to show effectiveness, we will likely see adversaries conducting research targeting small communities. While this type of research is a concern, it has already been put into practice by US politicians and US marketing agencies. 

Speaker Session Recording

Briefing Materials

Biographies:

Lieutenant General (Ret) Jack Shanahan retired in 2020 after a 36-year military career in the US Air Force. In his final assignment he served as the inaugural Director of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Joint Artificial Center (JAIC). Jack served in a variety of operational and staff positions in various fields including flying, intelligence, policy, and command and control. He commanded at the squadron, group, wing, Agency, and Numbered Air Force levels. As the first Director of the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team (Project Maven), Jack established and led DoD’s pathfinder AI fielding program charged with bringing AI capabilities to intelligence collection and analysis. Jack is a 2022 graduate of the North Carolina State University (NCSU) Master of International Studies program and serves on the NCSU School of Public and International Affairs Advisory Council. He is Adjunct Senior Fellow with the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) Technology and National Security Program, and a member of the CNAS Defense Technology Task Force. He is also an advisor to the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP) Defense Panel. Jack serves on a variety of AI-related committees, boards, and advisory groups, and as a consultant on the use of AI-enabled technologies for national security.

Tim Hwang is a writer and researcher, most recently a Fellow at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University. He previously served as General Counsel and VP of Operations at Substack, and was also the global public policy lead for Google on artificial intelligence and machine learning. He is also the author of Subprime Attention Crisis, a book about the financial bubble of digital advertising. Dubbed “The Busiest Man on the Internet” by Forbes Magazine, his current research focuses on the geopolitical aspects of computational power and machine learning hardware, and evaluation frameworks for generative AI. 

Jon Bateman is a senior fellow in the Technology and International Affairs Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  He is the co-author of the forthcoming report “Countering Disinformation Effectively: An Evidence-Based Policy Guide.”  Bateman’s other research areas include techno-nationalism, cyber operations, artificial intelligence, and alternative proteins. Bateman previous served as special assistant to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph F. Dunford, Jr., as director for cyber strategy implementation in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and as a senior intelligence analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Bateman’s commentary has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Politico, MSNBC, Foreign Policy, Harvard Business Review, Slate, the Hill, and elsewhere.  Bateman is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Nicholas Wright is affiliated with Georgetown University, University College London (UCL), Intelligent Biology and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He combines neuroscientific, behavioral and technological insights to understand decision-making in politics and international conflict, in ways practically useful for policy. He works with Governments. He has academic (e.g. Neuron) and general publications (e.g. Foreign Affairs). He edited a book on Artificial Intelligence, China, Russia and Global Order (2019, Air University Press). He has a medical degree from UCL, a BSc in Health Policy from Imperial College London, Membership of the Royal College of Physicians (UK), and an MSc and PhD in Neuroscience from UCL.

The SMA Mind-Tech Nexus Speaker Series description and list of the other sessions in this series can be downloaded here.