Land Power Library - Four Battlegrounds

Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

by Paul Scharre

W.W. Norton, 2023, 473 pp

Hardcover ISBN 9780393866865

Paperback ISBN: 9781324074779

REVIEWED BY: John Nash

There are few hotter topic in military and strategic studies (and economics, technology, and more) than artificial intelligence (AI). Like with all new technology, commentary runs from the hyperbolic to the scornful. Finding the true promise is often difficult, and perhaps especially so with as polarising a technology as AI, not least when the military applications are added to the discussion. In his book Four Battlegrounds, Paul Scharre does a very fine job of navigating the issues that surround the current state and near future of AI in the national security and military realms. His first book, Army of None,[1] dealt with autonomous weapons systems, and along with his military background means that he is well placed to talk about AI and warfare.

The book is organised into 35 short chapters that are easily digestible. They cover a range of topics, moving through technical, economic, geopolitical, ethical, and military issues. While this may seem like a daunting task, Scharre is able to cover them with sufficient detail, using good examples to highlight important points. The core of this work is putting AI into perspective:

The dangers from AI aren’t the dangers science fiction warned us about. We needn’t fear robots rising up to throw off their human overlords, or at least not anytime soon. The dangers from AI today come from people using the technology maliciously or carelessly, causing harm to others.[2]

This sets the tone nicely for the rest of the book, where Scharre explores these risks and dangers. As he says, danger stems from the risk of a ‘race to the bottom’ on AI safety, whereby competition entices companies and countries to deploy AI systems before they are properly tested.[3] It is this view, rather than the fanciful one of ‘killer robots’ unleashed by a ruthless military industrial complex, that requires consideration and examination. Moreover, Scharre reminds us that while AI has many military uses, it is not an arms race because AI is not a weapon: it is a technology with wide-ranging applications inside and outside of conflict.[4]

After a good introduction and scene setting first chapter, the next four chapters each deal with a key enabling are for AI research: data, compute, talent, and institutions. These are the four battlegrounds of AI, and they reappear throughout the book as different aspects of AI’s current and future states are explored in more detail. These topics cover everything from AI use in civil surveillance systems through to robotics and even the issues that have come out of Tik Tok and other Chinese technology proliferation in the Western world. Scharre is balanced and realistic in his assessment of these issues, pointing out the potential threats from such proliferation, but without taking an alarmist stance.

It is important for any book dealing with technology to ground it in the real world. Too many works are speculative to an almost fictitious level. This is not one of those books, and Scharre does an excellent job of exploring how AI might actually be used in current and future conflicts. For instance, Chapter 7 deals with Project Maven, a US Department of Defense (DoD) project that developed AI for video analysis, processing the vast amounts of visual surveillance data collected in operational theatres that needed to be processed for useful and actionable information. The follow-on chapter then looks at the backlash in Silicon Valley by certain companies, unhappy with working on military projects. It highlights the ways in which tech companies and the military might misunderstand one another and their respective intentions. Scharre’s discussion of military projects such as Maven underscores that there is the social license aspect of AI and military usage that is critical to any exploration of the future of technology.

Chapter 23 examines the DoD’s efforts to use AI in order to streamline aircraft and equipment maintenance. Focused on predictive maintenance, AI was developed to drastically reduced unscheduled maintenance for, initially, the US Air Force aircraft before expanding to encompass the other services’ aircraft, ships, and ground vehicles. Such use of AI could not only ensure higher mission readiness for aircraft, ships, and vehicles, it also has the potential to save the department billions of dollars in maintenance savings. These are the applications of AI that are making a real difference in militaries right now, with great potential into the future.

Exploring the current and future state of AI systems is all well and good, but it requires a ‘so what’ for the reader. Thankfully, Four Battlegrounds delivers on this. The final section of the book looks at what emerging AI technologies might mean for warfare. Scharre points out that ‘similar to other technologies, the militaries that learn how to employ AI most effectively will have significant advantages on the battlefield.’[5] As he says, the introduction of AI will ‘change the cognitive aspects of warfare’ much like how the industrial age changed the physical aspects of warfare.[6] A key feature of AI is that it is, as the chapter title calls it, an ‘Alien Intelligence’, and that: ‘AI systems don’t think like humans. They think differently. And this difference in cognitive processes has potentially significant consequences for warfare.’[7] This is not just a profound insight, but also illustrates how, throughout the book, Scharre does not seek to predict future AI-enabled warfare, as so many try (and often fail) to do. Instead he lays down broader trends and mulls on how things might turn out. This is a refreshing change from so many books, articles, blogs, podcasts and other works that seek to predict future warfare to a level of granularity that is no better than guessing.

Scharre explores the idea that AI may change the very nature of war – an incredibly fraught topic. He raises excellent points about how this might indeed happen, quoting luminaries such as former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who pondered whether his long held view that the nature of war never changes might not hold up in the age of AI.[8] Mattis comes to the eminently sensible conclusion that we just don’t know because the future of AI itself is unknown.[9] Considering the wild promises of technological advancement from not so long ago, one suffering through an age where that promise has manifested into endless advertisements, threats of identity theft, and more convenient fast food deliveries, it seems prudent to be cautious of predicting what AI might entail for the future, especially when it comes to warfare. This observation is not meant to sound flippant, and lest the reader of this review is tempted to level accusations of luddite thinking, this commentary is intended to highlight the very clear fact that few people have ever correctly divined the true potential of a technology in its infancy. Moreover, it’s also worth highlighting that technology rarely benefits everyone equally or even at the same time, and plenty of marginalised people around the globe rarely benefit from technology quickly or to the fullest. As Scharre does in his book, we might look at current and near term trends, but actually predicting what the future of AI will look like in a decade or two is really in the realm of science fiction.

Four Battlegrounds is an excellent book: accessible, thoughtful, and it is highly recommended. It will be of great interest to anyone who has a stake in the future of war and conflict, which is to say, everyone.

Endnotes

[1] Scharre, Paul, Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019).

[2] Scharre, Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2023), p. 4.

[3] Scharre, Four Battlegrounds, pp. 7-8.

[4] Scharre, Four Battlegrounds, p. 72.

[5] Scharre, Four Battlegrounds, p. 265.

[6] Scharre, Four Battlegrounds, p. 265.

[7] Scharre, Four Battlegrounds, p. 266.

[8] Scharre, Four Battlegrounds, pp. 280-1.

[9] Scharre, Four Battlegrounds, pp. 2801-5.