According to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, AI technology is transforming war, and the US military needs an overhaul to keep up.
In a lengthy article in Foreign Affairs, Schmidt and former US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark A. Milley, outlined the future of global warfare — which is already playing out on several battlefields worldwide.
With AI technology, soldiers in Ukraine are “taking out tanks and downing planes with devastating effectiveness,” they wrote. In Myanmar and Sudan, insurgents and the government are relying on algorithms to fight. And in Gaza, Israel is fielding drones using AI.
“Future wars will no longer be about who can mass the most people or field the best jets, ships, and tanks,” they wrote. “Instead, they will be dominated by increasingly autonomous weapons systems and powerful algorithms.”
However, the United States, which remains the world’s most powerful military, hasn’t kept up with the pace of innovation, Schmidt and Milley wrote. It hasn’t “embraced artificial intelligence,” and the Pentagon doesn’t seem to be moving fast enough to change. In short, the military needs a “systemic overhaul” because “robots and AI are here to stay.”
Schmidt is already leading that charge with a new company called White Stork. The company is working to mass-produce drones that could use AI to identify targets to lower the human cost of global warfare.
Schmidt previously chaired the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence for several years and was Google’s CEO from 2001 to 2011.
During a recent talk at Stanford University, Schmidt said the Ukraine War inspired him to enter the defense industry, adding that he is now a “licensed arms dealer.”
“Because of the way the system works, I am now a licensed arms dealer,” Schmidt said. “A computer scientist, businessman, arms dealer.”
