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January 10, 2019January 8, 2019

111. AI Enhancing EI in War

[Editor’s Note: Mad Scientist Laboratory is pleased to publish today’s guest blog post by MAJ Vincent Dueñas, addressing how AI can mitigate a human commander’s cognitive biases and enhance his/her (and their staff’s) decision-making, freeing them to do what they do best — command, fight, and win on future battlefields!]

Humans are susceptible to cognitive biases and these biases sometimes result in catastrophic outcomes, particularly in the high stress environment of war-time decision-making. Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers the possibility of mitigating the susceptibility of negative outcomes in the commander’s decision-making process by enhancing the collective Emotional Intelligence (EI) of the commander and his/her staff. AI will continue to become more prevalent in combat and as such, should be integrated in a way that advances the EI capacity of our commanders. An interactive AI that feels like one is communicating with a staff officer, which has human-compatible principles, can support decision-making in high-stakes, time-critical situations with ambiguous or incomplete information.

Mission Command in the Army is the exercise of authority and direction by the commander using mission orders to enable disciplined initiative within the commander’s intent.ⁱ It requires an environment of mutual trust and shared understanding between the commander and his subordinates in order to understand, visualize, describe, and direct throughout the decision-making Operations Process and mass the effects of combat power.ⁱⁱ

The mission command philosophy necessitates improved EI. EI is defined as the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically, at much quicker speeds in order seize the initiative in war.ⁱⁱⁱ The more effective our commanders are at EI, the better they lead, fight, and win using all the tools available.

AI Staff Officer

To conceptualize how AI can enhance decision-making on the battlefields of the future, we must understand that AI today is advancing more quickly in narrow problem solving domains than in those that require broad understanding.^iv This means that, for now, humans continue to retain the advantage in broad information assimilation. The advent of machine-learning algorithms that could be applied to autonomous lethal weapons systems has so far resulted in a general predilection towards ensuring humans remain in the decision-making loop with respect to all aspects of warfare.^v, ^vi AI’s near-term niche will continue to advance rapidly in narrow domains and become a more useful interactive assistant capable of analyzing not only the systems it manages, but the very users themselves. AI could be used to provide detailed analysis and aggregated assessments for the commander at the key decision points that require a human-in-the-loop interface.

The Battalion is a good example organization to visualize this framework. A machine-learning software system could be connected into different staff systems to analyze data produced by the section as they execute their warfighting functions. This machine-learning software system would also assess the human-in-the-loop decisions against statistical outcomes and aggregate important data to support the commander’s assessments. Over time, this EI-based machine-learning software system could rank the quality of the staff officers’ judgements. The commander can then consider the value of the staff officers’ assessments against the officers’ track-record of reliability and the raw data provided by the staff sections’ systems. The Bridgewater financial firm employs this very type of human decision-making assessment algorithm in order to assess the “believability” of their employees’ judgements before making high-stakes, and sometimes time-critical, international financial decisions.^vii Included in such a multi-layered machine-learning system applied to the battalion, there would also be an assessment made of the commander’s own reliability, to maximize objectivity.

Observations by the AI of multiple iterations of human behavioral patterns during simulations and real-world operations would improve its accuracy and enhance the trust between this type of AI system and its users. Commanders’ EI skills would be put front and center for scrutiny and could improve drastically by virtue of the weight of the responsibility of consciously knowing the cognitive bias shortcomings of the staff with quantifiable evidence, at any given time. This assisted decision-making AI framework would also consequently reinforce the commander’s intuition and decisions as it elevates the level of objectivity in decision-making.

Human-Compatibility

The capacity to understand information broadly and conduct unsupervised learning remains the virtue of humans for the foreseeable future.^viii The integration of AI into the battlefield should work towards enhancing the EI of the commander since it supports mission command and complements the human advantage in decision-making. Giving the AI the feel of a staff officer implies also providing it with a framework for how it might begin to understand the information it is receiving and the decisions being made by the commander.

Stuart Russell offers a construct of limitations that should be coded into AI in order to make it most useful to humanity and prevent conclusions that result in an AI turning on humanity. These three concepts are: 1) principle of altruism towards the human race (and not itself), 2) maximizing uncertainty by making it follow only human objectives, but not explaining what those are, and 3) making it learn by exposing it to everything and all types of humans.^ix

Russell’s principles offer a human-compatible guide for AI to be useful within the human decision-making process, protecting humans from unintended consequences of the AI making decisions on its own. The integration of these principles in battlefield AI systems would provide the best chance of ensuring the AI serves as an assistant to the commander, enhancing his/her EI to make better decisions.

Making AI Work

The potential opportunities and pitfalls are abundant for the employment of AI in decision-making. Apart from the obvious danger of this type of system being hacked, the possibility of the AI machine-learning algorithms harboring biased coding inconsistent with the values of the unit employing it are real.

The commander’s primary goal is to achieve the mission. The future includes AI, and commanders will need to trust and integrate AI assessments into their natural decision-making process and make it part of their intuitive calculus. In this way, they will have ready access to objective analyses of their units’ potential biases, enhancing their own EI, and be able overcome them to accomplish their mission.

If you enjoyed this post, please also read:

An Appropriate Level of Trust…

Takeaways Learned about the Future of the AI Battlefield

Bias and Machine Learning

Man-Machine Rules

MAJ Vincent Dueñas is an Army Foreign Area Officer and has deployed as a cavalry and communications officer. His writing on national security issues, decision-making, and international affairs has been featured in Divergent Options, Small Wars Journal, and The Strategy Bridge. MAJ Dueñas is a member of the Military Writers Guild and a Term Member with the Council on Foreign Relations. The views reflected are his own and do not represent the opinion of the United States Government or any of its agencies.

ⁱ United States, Army, States, United. “ADRP 5-0 2012: The Operations Process.” ADRP 5-0 2012: The Operations Process, Headquarters, Dept. of the Army., 2012, pp. 1–1.

ⁱⁱ Ibid. pp. 1-1 – 1-3.

ⁱⁱⁱ “Emotional Intelligence | Definition of Emotional Intelligence in English by Oxford Dictionaries.” Oxford Dictionaries | English, Oxford Dictionaries, 2018, en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/emotional_intelligence.

^ivTrent, Stoney, and Scott Lathrop. “A Primer on Artificial Intelligence for Military Leaders.” Small Wars Journal, 2018, smallwarsjournal.com/index.php/jrnl/art/primer-artificial-intelligence-military-leaders.

^v Scharre, Paul. ARMY OF NONE: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War. W W NORTON, 2019.

^vi Evans, Hayley. “Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems at the First and Second U.N. CGE Meetings.” Lawfare, 2018, https://www.lawfareblog.com/lethal-autonomous-weapons-systems-first-and-second-un-gge-meetings.

^vii Dalio, Ray. Principles. Simon and Schuster, 2017.

^viiiTrent and Lathrop.

^ix Russell, Stuart, director. Three Principles for Creating Safer AI. TED: Ideas Worth Spreading, 2017, www.ted.com/talks/stuart_russell_3_principles_for_creating_safer_ai.

January 7, 2019January 7, 2019

110. Future Jobs and Skillsets

[Editor’s Note: On 8-9 August 2018, the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) co-hosted the Mad Scientist Learning in 2050 Conference with Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies in Washington, DC. Leading scientists, innovators, and scholars from academia, industry, and the government gathered to address future learning techniques and technologies that are critical in preparing for Army operations in the mid-21^st century against adversaries in rapidly evolving battlespaces. Today’s post is extracted from this conference’s final report (more of which is addressed at the bottom of this post).]

The U.S. Army currently has more than 150 Military Occupational Specialties (MOSs), each requiring a Soldier to learn unique tasks, skills, and knowledges. The emergence of a number of new technologies – drones, Artificial Intelligence (AI), autonomy, immersive mixed reality, big data storage and analytics, etc. – coupled with the changing character of future warfare means that many of these MOSs will need to change, while others will need to be created. This already has been seen in the wider U.S. and global economy, where the growth of internet services, smartphones, social media, and cloud technology over the last ten years has introduced a host of new occupations that previously did not exist. The future will further define and compel the creation of new jobs and skillsets that have not yet been articulated or even imagined. Today’s hobbies (e.g., drones) and recreational activities (e.g., Minecraft/Fortnite) that potential recruits engage in every day could become MOSs or Additional Skill Identifiers (ASIs) of the future.

Training eighty thousand new Recruits a year on existing MOSs is a colossal undertaking. A great expansion in the jobs and skillsets needed to field a highly capable future Army, replete with modified or new MOSs, adds a considerable burden to the Army’s learning systems and institutions. These new requirements, however, will almost certainly present an opportunity for the Army to capitalize on intelligent tutors, personalized learning, and immersive learning to lessen costs and save time in Soldier and Leader development.

The recruit of 2050 will be born in 2032 and will be fundamentally different from the generations born before them. Marc Prensky, educational writer and speaker who coined the term digital native, asserts this “New Human” will stand in stark contrast to the “Old Human” in the ways they learn and approach learning..¹ Where humans today are born into a world with ubiquitous internet, hyper-connectivity, and the Internet of Things, each of these elements are generally external to the human. By 2032, these technologies likely will have converged and will be embedded or integrated into the individual with connectivity literally on the tips of their fingers.

Some of the newly required skills may be inherent within the next generation(s) of these Recruits. Many of the games, drones, and other everyday technologies that are already or soon to be very common – narrow AI, app development and general programming, and smart devices – will yield a variety of intrinsic skills that Recruits will have prior to entering the Army. Just like we no longer train Soldiers on how to use a computer, games like Fortnite, with no formal relationship with the military, will provide players with militarily-useful skills such as communications, resource management, foraging, force structure management, and fortification and structure building, all while attempting to survive against persistent attack. Due to these trends, Recruits may come into the Army with fundamental technical skills and baseline military thinking attributes that flatten the learning curve for Initial Entry Training (IET).²

While these new Recruits may have a set of some required skills, there will still be a premium placed on premier skillsets in fields such as AI and machine learning, robotics, big data management, and quantum information sciences. Due to the high demand for these skillsets, the Army will have to compete for talent with private industry, battling them on compensation, benefits, perks, and a less restrictive work environment – limited to no dress code, flexible schedule, and freedom of action. In light of this, the Army may have to consider adjusting or relaxing its current recruitment processes, business practices, and force structuring to ensure it is able to attract and retain expertise. It also may have to reconsider how it adapts and utilizes its civilian workforce to undertake these types of tasks in new and creative ways.

The Recruit of 2050 will need to be engaged much differently than today. Potential Recruits may not want to be contacted by traditional methods³ – phone calls, in person, job fairs – but instead likely will prefer to “meet” digitally first. Recruiters already are seeing this today. In order to improve recruiting efforts, the Army may need to look for Recruits in non-traditional areas such as competitive online gaming. There is an opportunity for the Army to use AI to identify Recruit commonalities and improve its targeted advertisements in the digital realm to entice specific groups who have otherwise been overlooked. The Army is already exploring this avenue of approach through the formation of an eSports team that will engage young potential Recruits and attempt to normalize their view of Soldiers and the Army, making them both more relatable and enticing.⁴ This presents a broader opportunity to close the chasm that exists between civilians and the military.

The overall dynamic landscape of the future economy, the evolving labor market, and the changing character of future warfare will create an inflection point for the Army to re-evaluate longstanding recruitment strategies, workplace standards, and learning institutions and programs. This will bring about an opportunity for the Army to expand, refine, and realign its collection of skillsets and MOSs, making Soldiers more adapted for future battles, while at the same time challenging the Army to remain prominent in attracting premier talent in a highly competitive environment.

If you enjoyed this extract, please read the comprehensive Learning in 2050 Conference Final Report…

… and see our TRADOC 2028 blog post.

¹ Prensky, Mark, Mad Scientist Conference: Learning in 2050, Georgetown University, 9 August 2018.

² Schatz, Sarah, Mad Scientist Conference: Learning in 2050, Georgetown University, 8 August 2018.

³ Davies, Hans, Mad Scientist Conference: Learning in 2050, Georgetown University, 9 August 2018.

⁴ Garland, Chad, Uncle Sam wants you — to play video games for the US Army, Stars and Stripes, 9 November 2018, https://www.stripes.com/news/uncle-sam-wants-you-to-play-video-games-for-the-us-army-1.555885.

January 3, 2019January 2, 2019

109. Classic Planning Holism as a Basis for Megacity Strategy

[Editor’s Note: Recent operations against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to liberate Mosul illustrate the challenges of warfighting in urban environments. In The Army Vision, GEN Mark A. Milley, Chief of Staff of the Army, and Dr. Mark T. Esper, Secretary of the Army, state that the U.S. Army must “Focus training on high-intensity conflict, with emphasis on operating in dense urban terrain…” Returning Mad Scientist Laboratory guest blogger Dr. Nir Buras leverages his expertise as an urban planner to propose a holistic approach to military operations in Megacities — Enjoy!]

A recent study identified 34 megacities, defined as having populations of over 10 million inhabitants.¹ The scale, complexity, and dense populations of megacities, and their need for security, energy, water conservation, resource distribution, waste management, disaster management, construction, and transportation make them a challenging security environment.²

With urban warfare experience from Stalingrad to Gaza, it is clear that a doctrinal shift must take place.

Urban terrain, the “great equalizer,” diminishes an attacker’s advantages in firepower and mobility.”³ Recent experiences in Baghdad, Mosul, and Aleppo, as well as historically in Aachen, Seoul, Hue, and Ramadi, shift the perspective from problem solving to critical holistic thinking skills and decision-making required in ambiguous environments.⁴ For an Army, rule number one is to stay out of cities. If that is not possible, the second rule of warfare is to manipulate the environment.

The Strategic Studies Group finds that a megacity is the most challenging environment for a land force to operate in.⁵ But currently, the U.S. Army is incapable of operating within the megacity.⁶ The intellectual center of gravity is open to those who choose to seize it, because it does not exist.⁷

Cities are holistic entities, but holism is not about brown food and Birkenstocks. Holism is a discipline managing whole systems which are more than a sum of their parts. Where problem-solving methodology drags the problem with it, resulting in negative synergies (new problems); the holistic methodology works from aspiration and results in positive synergies, many of which are unforeseen. The aspiration for megacity operations is control, not conquest. The cure must not be worse than the disease.

The holistic approach to combat, to fight the urban context, not the enemy, means reconfiguring the environment for operational purposes. Its goal of reforming antagonism to U.S. interests by controlling and reforming the city to become self-ruling and long-term sustainable, would facilitate urban, political, and economical homeostasis in alignment with U.S. interests and bequeath a homeostatic urban balance legacy — “Pax Americana.”⁸ Paradoxically, it may be the most cost-effective approach.

Megacities are inherently unsustainable and need to be fixed, war or not. Classic planning for megacities would break them down into environmentally controllable chunks of human scaled, walkable areas of 30,000, 120,000, and 500,000 persons by means of swathes of countryside. A continuous network of rural, agricultural, and natural areas, it would be at least 1-mile deep, and be the place where transport, major infrastructure, highways, campuses, large-scale sports venues, waste dumps, and even mines, might be located.

This is naturally ongoing in Detroit, is historically documented to have happened in Rome, and can be witnessed in Angkor Wat. While the greatest beneficiaries of this long-term would be the populace, its military benefits are obvious. The Army would simply accelerate the process.

The idea is to radically change the fighting environment while bolstering the population and its institutions to sympathize with U.S. goals. “Divide and conquer” followed by a sustainable legacy. Notably, operations within a megacity requires an understanding of a city’s normal procedures and daily operations beforehand.⁹ The proposed framework for this is the long-term classic planning of cities.

The application of classic planning to megacity operations follows four steps: Disrupt, Control, Stabilize, and Transfer.

1. DISRUPT urban fabric with swathes of country at least a mile wide containing a continuous network of rural, agricultural, natural, and water areas at least 1-mile deep, where transport, major infrastructure, highways, campuses, large-scale sports venues, etc., are located. In urban fabric, structures would be removed to virgin ground, and agriculture and nature reinstated there. Solutions for the debris will need to be developed, as well as for buried infrastructure. The block layout may remain in whole or part for agricultural and forest access. Soil bacteria may be used to rapidly consume toxic and hazardous materials. This has to be thoroughly planned in advance of a conflict.

2. CONTAIN urban fabric to a 1 hour walk (2 hours max), 2-4 miles from edge to edge, both in existing fabric and in new settlements for relocated persons.

3. STABILIZE neighborhoods, quarters, and city centers hierarchically, and densify them, up to 6-8 floors tall, according to the classic planning model of standard fabric buildings. Buildings taller than 6 or 8 stories may be placed on the periphery, if they are necessary at all. Blocks, streets, plazas, and parks are laid out in appropriate dimensions. Proven, traditional designs are used for buildings at least 85% of the time. Stabilize communities through leadership, mentoring, the establishment of markets, industry, sources of income, and community institutions.

4. TRANSFER displaced communities to new urban fabric built on classic planning principles as developed after the Haiti Earthquake; and transfer air rights from land reclaimed for country to urban fabric centers (midrise densification) and peripheries (taller buildings as necessary). Transfer community management back to residents as soon as possible (1 year). Transfer loyalty; build community; develop education, mentoring, and training; and use civilian commercial work according to specifically developed management models for construction, economic, and urban management.¹⁰

To adopt a holistic approach to the megacity, the U.S. Army must engage in a comprehensive understanding of the environment prior to the arrival of forces, and plan the shaping of the environment, focusing on its physical attributes for both the benefit of the city and the Army. This holistic approach may generate outcomes similar to the type of synergies stimulated by the Marshall Plan after World War II.

If you enjoyed this post, please listen to:

– Tomorrow’s Urban Battlefield podcast with Dr. Russell Glenn, hosted by our colleagues at the Modern War Institute.

… and also read the following:

– Mad Scientist Megacities and Dense Urban Areas Initiative in 2025 and Beyond Conference Final Report

– Where none have gone before: Operational and Strategic Perspectives on Multi-Domain Operations in Mega Cities Conference Proceedings

– My City is Smarter than Yours!

Nir Buras is a PhD architect and planner with over 30 years of in-depth experience in strategic planning, architecture, and transportation design, as well as teaching and lecturing. His planning, design and construction experience includes East Side Access at Grand Central Terminal, New York; International Terminal D, Dallas-Fort-Worth; the Washington DC Dulles Metro line; work on the US Capitol and the Senate and House Office Buildings in Washington. Projects he has worked on have been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, local newspapers, and trade magazines. Buras, whose original degree was Architect and Town planner, learned his first lesson in urbanism while planning military bases in the Negev Desert in Israel. Engaged in numerous projects since then, Buras has watched first-hand how urban planning impacted architecture. After the last decade of applying in practice the classical method that Buras learned in post-doctoral studies, his book, *The Art of Classic Planning* (Harvard University Press, 2019), presents the urban design and planning method of Classic Planning as a path forward for homeostatic, durable urbanism.

¹ Demographia World Urban Areas 11th Annual Edition 2015,” Demographia, 2-20, September 18, 2015, accessed December 16, 2015, http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf. 67% of large urban areas (500,000 and higher) located in Asia and Africa.

² Jack A. Goldstone, “The New Population Bomb: The Four Megatrends That Will Change the World,” Foreign Affairs, (January/February 2010) 38-39; National Intelligence Council, Global trends 2030 Report: Alternative Worlds (Washington, DC: National Intelligence Council, 2012), 1. Quoted in Kaune.

³ ARCIC, Unified Quest Executive Report 2014 (Fort Eustis, VA: US Army Capabilities Integration Center, 2014), 1. Quoted in Kaune.

⁴ Harris et al., Megacities and the US Army, 22. Louis A. Dimarco, Concrete Hell Urban Warfare from Stalingrad to Iraq (Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2012) 214-215. Quoted in Kaune.

⁵ Harris et al., Megacities and the US Army, 21.

⁶ Kaune.

⁷ David Betz, “Peering into the Past and Future of Urban Warfare in Israel,” War on the Rocks, December 17, 2015, accessed December 17, 2015, http://warontherocks.com/2015/12/peering-into-the-past-and-future-of-urban-warfare-in-israel/. Quoted in Kaune.

⁸ Tom R. Przybelski, “Hybrid War: The Gap in the Range of Military Operations” (Newport, RI: Naval War College, Joint Military Operations Department), iii.

⁹ Kaune.

¹⁰ Michael Evans, “The Case Against Megacities,” Parameters 45, no. 1, (Spring 2015): 36. Quoted in Kaune.

December 24, 2018December 19, 2018

108. The Ghost of Mad Scientist Past!

Editor’s Note: Mad Scientist Laboratory is pleased to provide for your holiday reading pleasure our Anthology of the “best of” blog posts from 2018! This Anthology enables you to re-visit our futures oriented assessments, including ideas about the Operational Environment, technology trends, innovation, and our conference findings. Each article includes a wealth of links to interesting content, including Mad Scientist videos, podcasts, conference proceedings, and presentations.

And if you have not already done so, please consider subscribing to our blog site to stay abreast of upcoming Mad Scientist Conferences, on-line events, and writing exercises in 2019 by receiving it automatically in your email inbox twice weekly — go to “SUBSCRIBE” on the right-hand side of your screen (or scroll down to the bottom if viewing the site on your PED), enter your commercial email address (i.e., non-DoD) in the “Email Address” text box, then select the “Confirm Follow” blue button in the subsequent email you receive. In doing so, you’ll stay connected with all things Mad Scientist!

Mad Scientist Laboratory wishes all of our readers the Happiest of Holiday Seasons!

December 20, 2018December 19, 2018

107. “The Queue”

[Editor’s Note: Mad Scientist Laboratory is pleased to present our November edition of “The Queue” – a monthly post listing the most compelling articles, books, podcasts, videos, and/or movies that the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) Mad Scientist Initiative has come across during the previous month. In this anthology, we address how each of these works either informs or challenges our understanding of the Future Operational Environment (OE). We hope that you will add “The Queue” to your essential reading, listening, or watching each month!]

1. Is China a global leader in research and development? China Power Project, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), 2018.

The United States Army’s concept of Multi-Domain Operations 2028 describes Russia and China as strategic competitors working to synthesize emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, hypersonics, machine learning, nanotechnology, and robotics, with their analysis of military doctrine and operations. The Future OE’s Era of Contested Equality (i.e., 2035 through 2050) describes China’s ascent to a peer competitor and our primary pacing threat. The fuel for these innovations is research and development funding from the Chinese Government and businesses.

CSIS’s China Power Project recently published an assessment of the rise in China’s research and development funding. There are three key facts that demonstrate the remarkable increase in funding and planning that will continue to drive Chinese innovation. First, “China’s R&D expenditure witnessed an almost 30-fold increase from 1991 to 2015 – from $13 billion to $376 billion. Presently, China spends more on R&D than Japan, Germany, and South Korea combined, and only trails the United States in terms of gross expenditure. According to some estimates, China will overtake the US as the top R&D spender by 2020.”

Second, globally businesses are funding the majority of the research and development activities. China is now following this trend with its “businesses financing 74.7 percent ($282 billion) of the country’s gross expenditure on R&D in 2015.” Tracking the origin of this funding is difficult with the Chinese government also operating a number of State Owned Entities. This could prove to be a strength for the Chinese Army’s access to commercial innovation.

China’s Micius quantum satellite, part of their Quantum Experiments at Space Scale (QUESS) program

Third, the Chinese government is funding cutting edge technologies where they are seeking to be global leaders. “Expenditures by the Chinese government stood at 16.2 percent of total R&D usage in 2015. This ratio is similar to that of advanced economies, such as the United States (11.2 percent). Government-driven expenditure has contributed to the development of the China National Space Administration. The Tiangong-2 space station and the “Micius’ quantum satellite – the first of its kind – are just two such examples.”

2. Microsoft will give the U.S. military access to ‘all the technology we create’, by Samantha Masunaga, Los Angeles Times (on-line), 1 December 2018.

Success in the future OE relies on many key assumptions. One such assumption is that the innovation cycle has flipped. Where the DoD used to drive technological innovation in this country, we now see private industry (namely Silicon Valley) as the driving force with the Army consuming products and transitioning technology for military use. If this system is to work, as the assumption implies, the Army must be able to work easily with the country’s leading technology companies. Microsoft’s President Brad Smith stated recently that his company will “provide the U.S. military with access to the best technology … all the technology we create. Full stop.”

This is significant to the DoD for two reasons: It gives the DoD, and thus the Army, access to one of the leading technology developers in the world (with cloud computing and AI solutions), and it highlights that the assumptions we operate under are never guaranteed. Most recently, Google made the decision not to renew its contract with the DoD to provide AI support to Project Maven – a decision motivated, in part, by employee backlash.

Our near-peer competitors do not appear to be experiencing similar tensions or friction between their respective governments and private industry. China’s President Xi is leveraging private sector advances for military applications via a “whole of nation” strategy, leading China’s Central Military-Civil Fusion Development Commission to address priorities including intelligent unmanned systems, biology and cross-disciplinary technologies, and quantum technologies. Russia seeks to generate innovation by harnessing its defense industries with the nation’s military, civilian, and academic expertise at their Era Military Innovation Technopark to concentrate on advances in “information and telecommunication systems, artificial intelligence, robotic complexes, supercomputers, technical vision and pattern recognition, information security, nanotechnology and nanomaterials, energy tech and technology life support cycle, as well as bioengineering, biosynthetic, and biosensor technologies.”

Microsoft openly declaring its willingness to work seamlessly with the DoD is a substantial step forward toward success in the new innovation cycle and success in the future OE.

3. The Truth About Killer Robots, directed by Maxim Pozdorovkin, Third Party Films, premiered on HBO on 26 November 2018.

This documentary film could have been a highly informative piece on the disruptive potential posed by robotics and autonomous systems in future warfare. While it presents a jumble of interesting anecdotes addressing the societal changes wrought by the increased prevalence of autonomous systems, it fails to deliver on its title. Indeed, robot lethality is only tangentially addressed in a few of the documentary’s storylines: the accidental death of a Volkswagen factory worker crushed by autonomous machinery; the first vehicular death of a driver engrossed by a Harry Potter movie while sitting behind the wheel of an autonomous-driving Tesla in Florida, and the use of a tele-operated device by the Dallas police to neutralize a mass shooter barricaded inside a building.

Russian unmanned, tele-operated BMP-3 shooting its 30mm cannon on a test range / Zvezda Broadcasting via YouTube

Given his choice of title, Mr. Pozdorovkin would have been better served in interviewing activists from the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots and participants at the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) who are negotiating in good faith to restrict the proliferation of lethal autonomy. A casual search of the Internet reveals a number of relevant video topics, ranging from the latest Russian advances in unmanned Ground Combat Vehicles (GCV) to a truly dystopian vision of swarming killer robots.

Instead, Mr. Pozdorovkin misleads his viewers by presenting a number creepy autonomy outliers (including a sad Chinese engineer who designed and then married his sexbot because of his inability to attract a living female mate given China’s disproportionately male population due to their former One-Child Policy); employing a sinister soundtrack and facial recognition special effects; and using a number of vapid androids (e.g., Japan’s Kodomoroid) to deliver contrived narration hyping a future where the distinction between humanity and machines is blurred. Where are Siskel and Ebert when you need ’em?

4. “Walmart will soon use hundreds of AI robot janitors to scrub the floors of U.S. stores,” by Tom Huddleston Jr., CNBC, 5 December 2018.

The retail superpower Walmart is employing hundreds of robots in stores across the country, starting next month. These floor-scrubbing janitor robots will keep the stores’ floors immaculate using autonomous navigation that will be able to sense both people and obstacles.

The introduction of these autonomous cleaners will not be wholly disruptive to Walmart’s workforce operations, as they are only supplanting a task that is onerous for humans. But is this just the beginning? As humans’ comfort levels grow with the robots, will there then be an introduction of robot stocking, not unlike what is happening with Amazon? Will robots soon handle routine exchanges? And what of the displaced or under-employed workers resulting from this proliferation of autonomy, the widening economic gap between the haves and the have-nots, and the potential for social instability from neo-luddite movements in the Future OE? Additionally, as these robots become increasingly conspicuous throughout our everyday lives in retail, food service, and many other areas, nefarious actors could hijack them or subvert them for terroristic, criminal, or generally malevolent uses.

The introduction of floor-cleaning robots at Walmart has larger implications than one might think. Robots are being considered for all the dull, dirty, and dangerous tasks assigned to the Army and the larger Department of Defense. The autonomous technology behind robots in Walmart today could have implications for our Soldiers at their home stations or on the battlefield of the future, conducting refueling and resupply runs, battlefield recovery, medevac, and other logistical and sustainment tasks.

5. What our science fiction says about us, by Tom Cassauwers, BBC News, 3 December 2018.

“Right now the most interesting science fiction is produced in all sorts of non-traditional places,” says Anindita Banerjee, Associate Professor at Cornell University, whose research focuses on global sci-fi. Sci-Fi and story telling enable us to break through our contemporary, mainstream echo chamber of parochialism to depict future technological possibilities and imagined worlds, political situations, and conflict. Unsurprisingly, different visions of the future imagining alternative realities are being written around the world – in China, Russia, and Africa. This rise of global science fiction challenges how we think about the evolution of the genre. Historically, our occidental bias led us to believe that sci-fi was spreading from Western centers out to the rest of the world, blinding us to the fact that other regions also have rich histories of sci-fi depicting future possibilities from their cultural perspectives. Chinese science fiction has boomed in recent years, with standout books like Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem. Afrofuturism is also on the rise since the release of the blockbuster Black Panther.

The Mad Scientist Initiative uses Crowdsourcing and Story Telling as two innovative tools to help us envision future possibilities and inform the OE through 2050. Strategic lessons learned from looking at the Future OE show us that the world of tomorrow will be far more challenging and dynamic. In our FY17 Science Fiction Writing Contest, we asked our community of action to describe Warfare in 2030-2050. The stories submitted showed virtually every new technology is connected to and intersecting with other new technologies and advances. The future OE presents us with a combination of new technologies and societal changes that will intensify long-standing international rivalries, create new security dynamics, and foster instability as well as opportunities. Sci-fi transcends beyond a global reflection on resistance; non-Western science fiction also taps into a worldwide consciousness – helping it conquer audiences beyond their respective home markets.

6. NVIDIA Invents AI Interactive Graphics, Nvidia.com, 3 December 2018.

A significant barrier to the modeling and simulation of dense urban environments has been the complexity of these areas in terms of building, vehicle, pedestrian, and foliage density. Megacities and their surrounding environments have such a massive concentration of entities that it has been a daunting task to re-create them digitally. Nvidia has recently developed a first-step solution to this ongoing problem. Using neural networks and generative models, the developers are able to train AI to create realistic urban environments based off of real-world video.

As Nvidia admits, “One of the main obstacles developers face when creating virtual worlds, whether for game development, telepresence, or other applications is that creating the content is expensive. This method allows artists and developers to create at a much lower cost, by using AI that learns from the real world.” This process could significantly compress the development timeline, and while it wouldn’t address the other dimensions of urban operations — those entities that are underground or inside buildings (multi-floor and multi-room) — it would allow the Army to divert and focus more resources in those areas. The Chief of Staff of the Army has made readiness his #1 priority and stated, “In the future, I can say with very high degrees of confidence, the American Army is probably going to be fighting in urban areas,” and the Army “need[s] to man, organize, train and equip the force for operations in urban areas, highly dense urban areas.” ¹ Nvidia’s solution could enable and empower the force to meet that goal.

If you read, watch, or listen to something this month that you think has the potential to inform or challenge our understanding of the Future OE, please forward it (along with a brief description of why its potential ramifications are noteworthy to the greater Mad Scientist Community of Action) to our attention at: usarmy.jble.tradoc.mbx.army-mad-scientist@mail.mil — we may select it for inclusion in our next edition of “The Queue”!

¹ “Commentary: The missing link to preparing for military operations in megacities and dense urban areas,” by Claudia ElDib and John Spencer, Army Times, 20 July 2018, https://www.armytimes.com/opinion/commentary/2018/07/20/commentary-the-missing-link-to-preparing-for-military-operations-in-megacities-and-dense-urban-areas/.