Peter W. Singer

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“‘Transformative’ Means You Get Amazing New Capabilities, But Also Amazing New Questions And Dilemmas And Problems”

September 16, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Peter W. Singer, who wrote Wired for War and coauthored (with August Cole) Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War, just did a really interesting Ask Me Anything at Reddit about the fire next time. In addition to the exchanges below, Singer’s long answer to a question about the U.S. response to Chinese cyberattacks is definitely worth reading.

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Question:

Do you think that having high-tech weapons and capabilities lowers the threshold for taking military actions? Thinking of drones as an immediate example and cyberwarfare as a coming one.

Peter W. Singer:

Yes, I think that is a risk. The new generation of tech lowers the bar to entry in 2 ways: 1) Unlike Atomic bombs or aircraft carriers, they are much easier for nations and even non state actors to individuals to gain and use. Indeed, over 100 nations already have cyber military units and 80 have drones, while less than 10 have nukes and only one has supercarriers, but 2) The new generation of technology also moves the human role sometimes geographically off the battlefield and sometimes chronologically from the point in time of its use. So it creates distance and among many a percerption of less risk. Leaders and their public don’t look at the decision to use force in the same way. So that also lowers the barrier of entry to conflict. Think how we’ve carried out more than 400 drone strikes into Pakistan, but no one thinks of it as a “war.” To be clear, this perception of less risk doesn’t mean the actual costs are removed. The costs hit in everything from casualties in that target area to blowback over the longterm. I did a piece a few years back on this.

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Question:

As I understand it, a large part of U.S. defense and security policy has been built around having a technological superiority over any potential adversary and so I would like to ask you if you believe that this strategy will continue to be viable in the foreseeable future and what potential trends or developments are/might impact it?

Peter W. Singer:

That is exactly one of the key questions the book plays with.

In every fight since 1945 (when Germany had jets and we had prop planes), US forces have been a generation-ahead in technology. It has not always translated to decisive victories, but it has been an edge every other nation wants and its baked into our assumptions. Yet US forces can’t count on that “overmatch” in the future. Some of our trusted major platforms are now vulnerable to new classes of weapons, but also we face a new tech race. China, for example, just overtook the EU in R& D spending and is on pace to match the US in five years, with new projects ranging from the world’s fastest supercomputers to three different long range drone strike programs. And now off-the-shelf technologies can be bought to rival even the most advanced tools in the US arsenal. The winner of a recent robotics test, for instance, was not a US defense contractor but a group of South Korea student engineers.

There is another interesting aspect of this that comes from cyber attacks. We’re planning to spend over a Trillion (no typo, a T) dollars on a new stealth fighter jet, the F35, that was planned to be a generation ahead of any potential foe. And yet that program has been hacked on at least 3 occasions. The result is that F35 has a near twin, the J31, before its even operational for us. It is hard to win an arms race, when you are paying the R&D for the other side.

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Question:

I’m not sure if this is outside your field, but a few weeks ago I asked Defense Secretary Carter what technological developments interested him the most, and although he didn’t say that it directly interested him the most, he indicated that biotechnology has the potential to be very transformative for modern warfare. Do you have any thoughts about this? Any important systems, companies, personalities etc to keep an eye out in regards to this?

 

Peter W. Singer:

Yes, the pace of breakthrough in that field is actually moving much faster than even Moore’s Law for IT. Some amazing things happening in genomics etc. We played a bit with human performance modification tech in Ghost Fleet and another scene on Brain-Machine interface, but genomics is one we didn’t tap, which could be transformative. And to be clear, “transformative” means you get amazing new capabilities, but also amazing new questions and dilemmas and problems.

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Question:

Do you think U.S. political leaders have a good handle on emerging high technology (and the benefits/risks thereof) or should the general population be concerned?

For example: drones, cybersecurity/cyber warfare, internet policy in general, etc.

Peter Singer:

No, sadly not. Just way behind in their understanding of not merely where we are headed, but where we already are. The result is that they often make simple errors with major consequences and are taken advantage of by “hucksters” who are invested in some particular tech or role, and spin a little amount of knowledge to their own advantage. We see it in everything from defense issues to the “cyber walls” discussion in presidential debates, where all the candidates nodded in seeming agreement, as someone used a term that is literally made up and makes no sense.•

 

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“These Robots, Though, Are Just The Start”

February 25, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I seldom refer to articles from CNN, Jeff Zucker’s golden shower of sorta news, but I will in the case of a new piece, “The Future of War Will Be Robotic,” published on the cable channel’s site by Peter W. Singer, whose work I greatly admire. Singer–not the famed ethicist but the author of Wired for War—points out one of the most important and overlooked stories of the calamity of the Iraq War: the technologizing of the American military machine, which has ramifications overseas and on the homefront. And the U.S. isn’t alone in this arms race in which the limbs are bionic. Singer’s opening:

The rise of the robot on the modern battlefield has happened so fast, it is almost breathtaking — that is, if you are not a robot yourself.

When the U.S. military invaded Iraq just over a decade ago, it only had a handful of unmanned systems, aka drones, in the air, and zero deployed into the ground forces. Today, its inventory in the air numbers well over 7,000, ranging from the now famous Predator and Reaper to the Navy’s new MQ-8 Fire Scout, a helicopter drone that just completed a series of autonomous takeoffs and landing tests from the back of a guided-missile destroyer.

On the ground, the inventory numbers some 12,000, ranging from iRobot’s PackBots, used to search for roadside bombs in Afghanistan, to the U.S. Marine Corps Warfighting Lab’s tests with Qinetiq’s Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System, a tracked robot that mounts cameras and a machine gun.

This revolution is by no means just an American one. At least 87 other countries have used military robotics of some sort, ranging from the UK to China, which has an especially fast-growing drone fleet, as shown off at its recent arms trade show.

A number of nonstate actors have added robots to their wares as well, including most recently both sides of the Syrian civil war, as well as ISIS. Both sides in the Ukraine conflict are also using them.

These robots, though, are just the start. If this was 100 years ago, they would be the equivalent of the Bristol TB 8, the first bomber plane, or the Mark I, the first tank used in battle. A host of changes awaits us. Their size, shape and form will move in wild and, for many, quite scary new directions.•

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“The Ability To Steal Gossipy Emails From A Computer Network Is Not The Same As Being Able To Carry Out 9/11-Style Attacks”

December 18, 2014 in Excerpts, Film, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In addition to wealth inequality in America, there also seems to be haves and have-nots in terms of courage. Ever since 9/11, we’ve wanted to be swaddled and protected, and sure, we should be vigilant, but how about those of us who are civilians show some degree of the bravery we ask of members of our military? Our fears led us into wrong-minded war in Iraq, horrid torture and a surveillance state. How has that made us any better?

Sony’s capitulation to cyberterrorists is the latest confounding example of our state of panic. From Jason Koebler’s Vice interview with security expert Peter W. Singer:

“Question: 

Let’s just cut to the chase—Are these hackers terrorists? Are they cyberterrorists?

Peter W. Singer: ​

There’s two layers to it now. There’s the definition of terrorism and the reaction to it, which has been a combination of being both insipid and encouraging to future acts.

The first is what has already happened. Sony has labeled what happened to it as cyberterrorism and various media ​have also described it as cyber terrorism. The reality is having your scripts posted online does not constitute a terrorist act. The FBI describes it as an ‘act that results in violence.’ Losing your next James Bond movie script that talks about violence is not the same thing as an act of violence.

What has happened to Sony already does not meet the definition. They’re saying ‘This is an act of war.’ We’re not going to war with North Korea over this act just because Angelina Jolie is now mad at a Sony executive. Acts of war have a different standard.

Literally, we are in the realm of beyond stupid with this.

Question:

And then we have the actual threats of violence.

Peter W. Singer: ​

​This same group threatened yesterday 9/11-style incidents at any movie theatre that chose to show the movie. Here, we need to distinguish between threat and capability—the ability to steal gossipy emails from a not-so-great protected computer network is not the same thing as being able to carry out physical, 9/11-style attacks in 18,000 locations simultaneously. I can’t believe I’m saying this. I can’t believe I have to say this.

This group has not shown the capability to do that. Sony is rueing any association it has with the movie right now. We are not in the realm of 9/11. Did movie chains look at the reality of the threat? Or did the movie theater chains utterly cave in? This is beyond the wildest dreams of these attackers.”

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“The American Public Was Encouraged To See War As A Technological Process And A Media Event”

March 25, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Shaun Randol of the L.A. Review of Books writing about the numbing intersection of warfare and software:

“As Paul Virilio has noted, with the filming of the 1990-91 Gulf War, most notably by CNN, the American public was encouraged to see war as a technological process and a media event. The ubiquitous green and grainy images of anti-aircraft fire over Baghdad, or black-and-white videos of missiles slamming into boxy structures from projectile-mounted cameras were so bereft of the realities of warfare — blood, guts, screams, and mangled bodies — that they were shown in prime-time news broadcasts. Much of the public enthusiastically embraced this antiseptic projection of war. Now, many soldiers and their civilian leaders see war through the same technological lens. 

American military training and planning increasingly uses video games and virtual reality (for pre-deployment and decompressing) and autonomous robots (for actual fighting). Peter Finn surmises that ‘the successful exercise in autonomous robotics could presage the future of the American way of war: a day when drones hunt, identify and kill the enemy based on calculations made by software, not decisions made by humans.’ Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution has written extensively on how the increase in military research into robots, be it nanotechnology or outsized pilotless aircraft that can — theoretically — stay adrift indefinitely, indicates the direction of the U.S.’s fighting strategy.”

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“We Possess A Technology That Removes The Last Political Barriers To War”

January 23, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

What if war were painless, at least for one side? And what if the American President could fight overseas without getting approval from Congress because what’s being waged isn’t precisely war as we know it, but something beyond the traditional definition? In the brave new world of drones and robots, that’s exactly where the United States is. From Peter W. Singer’s excellent New York Times Opinion piece, “Do Drones Undermine Democracy?“

“Just 10 years ago, the idea of using armed robots in war was the stuff of Hollywood fantasy. Today, the United States military has more than 7,000 unmanned aerial systems, popularly called drones. There are 12,000 more on the ground. Last year, they carried out hundreds of strikes — both covert and overt — in six countries, transforming the way our democracy deliberates and engages in what we used to think of as war.

We don’t have a draft anymore; less than 0.5 percent of Americans over 18 serve in the active-duty military. We do not declare war anymore; the last time Congress actually did so was in 1942 — against Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. We don’t buy war bonds or pay war taxes anymore. During World War II, 85 million Americans purchased war bonds that brought the government $185 billion; in the last decade, we bought none and instead gave the richest 5 percent of Americans a tax break.

And now we possess a technology that removes the last political barriers to war. The strongest appeal of unmanned systems is that we don’t have to send someone’s son or daughter into harm’s way. But when politicians can avoid the political consequences of the condolence letter — and the impact that military casualties have on voters and on the news media — they no longer treat the previously weighty matters of war and peace the same way.”

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BigDog, by the good people at Boston Dynamics:

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