New Weapons for New Wars – ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE goes to war

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1:00Starting a business can seem like a daunting task. Unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website to marketing to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Hines, and all birds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your site, turn your big business idea into... Sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash special offer. Hello and welcome to the fourth and final episode of New Weapons for New Wars. Amid all the uncertainties about modern warfare, new technologies widening the battlefield and the speed of change in developing new military hardware. In this episode, you want to focus on the software. Artificial intelligence is changing our way of life and in warfare, AI may also change our way of death.

2:03It could make everywhere an earth the potential battlefield from the trenches of the front lines to electricity grids, fuel refineries and transport networks back home. Every military attack or retaliation could become unimaginably faster and much more dangerous than anything so far in human history. And in some ways, that's already here and now. McRion is a retired Australian Army major general and author of Futura Drina on Substak. I think we've seen that already over the last couple of decades. We've seen media cycles first with the internet and then with social media. Media cycles spun up, which then spun up political cycles because they have to respond to it. So we already have insights with fast decision making cycles. AI is going to magnify that to a degree that we still probably don't understand. But we've seen the impact of AI in the war against Iran and also Israel has used to speed up the tempo of operations.

3:04Now, it doesn't always mean you're making better decisions. You certainly can make quicker decisions. And the thing we need to be concerned about is if the military is using AI to generate a very rapid tempo, we need to make sure they don't lose touch with the political decision makers. So I mean, that's just one risk of using AI among many others. I'm Gavin Eslow and this is Not a Drill. Epic theory. The war has had a completely new time. A time of growth, a time of AI.

4:10The Peace Research Institute Oslo, report on wars and conflicts around the world. In their conflict trends, a global overview, they examined all those conflicts recorded around the world from 1946. By 2025, they found a record number eight interstate conflicts. That's twice as many as in the previous year and the highest number since World War II. One conclusion from the Oslo report is that new technology has already changed and will continue to change the nature of war, and that the threat of interstate war is most definitely not going away. For an insight into what all this means, I spoke with Dr. Nadah Budhuchi from the Eurasia Group's Institute for Global Affairs. Nadah is a specialist in Iran and the Middle East, and I spoke to her for a recent episode to discuss her insights on just what leaders and strategists will have learned from the past. The implications for the future of their power. Her first lesson was that air superiority remains vital in conflict with the US and Israeli forces demonstrating powerful capabilities in the early strikes on Iranian targets.

5:16However, that has clearly not been the whole story of the war. The second lesson, however, is that air superiority does not automatically eliminate an adversaries ability to continue imposing costs. Iran demonstrated that the state doesn't have to control the air in order to remain strategically relevant or to be strategically in control. Iran's own adaptability, apparently largely unaffected by the targeting and killing of many among the Iranian civil and military leadership, seemed to shock Donald Trump in particular. After all, he had spent the early weeks of the conflict promising a devastating Iranian defeat, perhaps he should have paid more attention to the lessons of history. Air power has repeatedly demonstrated an extraordinary ability to destroy targets. It has generally been less successful at destroying political will, strategic endurance, or an adversaries capacity to continue adapting.

6:23And we've seen versions of this from the Second World War through Vietnam, Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now, poignantly, Ukraine. Despite the warnings, the strikes and counter-strikes continued over Iran and its neighbors, resulting in US stoppiles of missiles being significantly degraded, with worldwide consequences. The surreal strategic question is sustainability. Can states continue intercepting large numbers of missiles over weeks or months, and we really saw this poignantly with Iran? Can industries replenish interceptor inventories rapidly enough? Can governments sustain the financial costs of prolonged defensive operations? In other words, magazine depths and industrial production increasingly become strategic variables. Finally and most importantly, comes NATO's warning to strategists about the realities of Air power right now, from sophisticated satellite and AI-powered systems to the numbers of cheap drones.

7:30These all operate in a complex world of alliances and lead to what NATO calls an expanded battlefield. Modern air campaigns increasingly depend on intelligence, cyber capabilities, satellites, electronic warfare, logistics, industrial capacity, alliance coordination, and commercial resilience. This is the broadened expanded battlefield. Air power remains one of the most powerful instruments available to modern militaries, but it increasingly operates within this much larger strategic ecosystem. So ultimately, I don't think that this war diminished the importance of air power, quite the opposite. It demonstrated both its extraordinary effectiveness and its limitations. Air power can create remarkable military opportunities. It cannot, however, by itself guarantee strategic outcomes. It cannot and does not equal political transformation.

8:38As we hear daily on the evening news, even supposedly great powers can be humbled by smaller, weaker, and yet determined, and resilient adversaries. America's repeated attempts to defeat Iran, Russia's long drawn out stalemate in Ukraine, both point to tactical victories and strategic failure. Moreover, military and defense experts worldwide are trying to come to terms with a new and extremely dangerous high-tech arms race. Michael Horowitz is Senior Fellow for Technology and Innovation, and Director of the Defense and National Security Program at the Council on Foreign Relations. So what do you reckon are the biggest challenges facing militaries across the world and governments in the modern era given those developing technologies? Because I mean, if we spend six billion on some kind of ship, a flat top, an aircraft carrier, that could be taken out by something much cheaper. That is a pause for thought, isn't it, for any government? I think it depends what we mean by challenges here. If you want me to put on my hat as somebody that worked in the Pentagon for several years, it's not clear to me how much more military should be investing in those six billion dollar flat tops, precisely because they're now so vulnerable to masses of people.

9:54So, if you look at the vast masses of strikes, and to me, when we think about the future of naval warfare, for example, that's an argument for a larger, more distributed navy rather than putting all of your eggs in the basket of a couple of really big capital ships. That's from like a force planning perspective. If we shift to thinking about risks surrounding the future of war, I think the way that advances in artificial intelligence are going to reshape warfare is something even though we've now been thinking about it for several years that we don't totally have our minds around. So there's three buckets I would use to think about the way that AI is going to reshape warfare. The first is, or uses of AI by militaries that look actually like any other company like in the world, like AI for logistics, AI for human resources, etc. What are militaries? Big organizations, big bureaucracies. They need AI for those purposes the same way the company should do. Second bucket is more intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. How militaries make sense of the world. And in that bucket, there's already been use of artificial intelligence by advanced militaries for a decade.

11:04And with large language models and other frontier AI, there's now the opportunity to use that even more to try to get the signal from the noise much faster. The third are then things closer to the battlefield. So thinking about actual targeting at the operational level, sort of like the use of something like Maven Smart System by the United States and the context of Operation Epic Fury against Iran. And when we get into that, and then it felt like very pointy edge of the spear, something like autonomous weapon systems, which I think get so much more attention than they should. Since in some ways, like to me, when we think about the impact of AI and the future of war that we should really be focused on so much of the attention is focused on what is the guidance chip in the missile look like, which is the autonomous weapon system question and not what is the operational targeting process look like and what is the role of AI in that targeting process, which I think is a much more impactful question that gets to the way that AI could shape management of the battlefield.

12:07In a way that's really profound. I think that's a very, very interesting and very important point and I wondered as you were speaking there, I was wondering actually whether a future president of the United States could in some way, I'm going to put it in simple layman's terms, ask AI, you know our capabilities, you know Iran's capabilities, if we take them on, what is the upside, what is the downside, what's likely to go wrong, what could go right, I mean, is that's not completely nonsense, is it? Well, that's not completely nonsense, that kind of thing you've been able to do for a while, what that's an example of is AI in some ways, either supplementing or replacing what has been a actually a pretty large modeling and simulation enterprise that militaries have used kind of since like around the Vietnam War era, if not before. Well, again, with varying degrees of accuracy, given how much things change on the battlefield, and I actually want to, I think that's worth sitting on for a moment here. Often when we think about the way that emerging technologies are reshaping warfare, there's the notion that the nature of warfare somehow is going to change.

13:16It is true that the way that humans relate to the battlefield will change, I mean that's been true ever since we shifted from hitting each other with rocks to spears to bows and arrow to missiles, etc. The role of the human on the battlefield is always changing, but what is inherent is the notion that there is fog and friction on the battlefield, which means it's almost impossible to predict what's going to happen with perfect accuracy, and that wars the continuation of politics by other means. Like the reason why we are fighting is to achieve some objective that humans have decided that they wish to achieve, whether advised by an AI to do so or not. And that's important in this context because regardless of the technological advances that we see, it is going to be humans that are still responsible for all of that devastation that happens.

14:16Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile with your Summer Price forecast. Now, unfortunately we're seeing rising costs across the country with possibility that big wireless hates you 100%. Now over here at Mint Mobile, we're seeing sunny skies and dropping prices every plan to just $15 a month. Give it a try at MintMobile.com slash Switch. In the US, there's a break in every 26 seconds, but when intruders step near, simply safe home security steps up. Stop, this is simply safe. Police are on the way. Using AI alerts, US-based live agents help deter break ins, simply safe no long-term contracts, say 50% on your new system with professional monitoring, at simplysafe.com slash Spotify or with promo code Spotify.

15:18Starting a business can seem like a daunting task, unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website, to marketing, to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Hines and Allbirds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your site, turn your big business idea into... Sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash Special Offer. ... Despite all the uncertainties about new destructive weapons technology, what we know for sure is that artificial intelligence will play an even bigger role in future wars than it does now. In some ways, that future is already with us. AI can make targeting much faster, but it can also go wildly wrong. We saw this in the US strike on the Iranian school in Minab, killing at least 150 people including about 120 children.

16:19Donald Trump said, nobody purposefully attacked the school. But is that really the point? Deliberate or not, the school was hit by an American strike on the first day of the war. Dr. Jessica Dorsi is assistant professor of international law at Utrecht University, and co-director of the Realities of Algorithmic Law Research Project. A project aimed at better understanding the implications of using AI on the battlefield. When we're talking about the military use of these technologies, what my main concerns are as how these systems are being developed to be integrated into decision-making processes, in the most high-risk kind of decisions that are being made. So to make it very concrete, I'm looking at how AI-enabled decision support systems are being developed to assist humans in making decisions in the joint targeting cycle. So when commanders, operators are making decisions on who or what to kill on a battlefield, we're seeing increasing numbers of AI systems being integrated to help with doing those things. But my main concern is that they are actually displacing the humans from doing those things.

17:30What do we know about how AI is already being used on the battlefield with Iran, for example? Well, in the Iran conflict, there's a lot we don't know. There are ongoing investigations about particular incidents that have arisen, and I'll return to that in a moment. But what we do know is that the US Department of Defense has been very forward in integrating AI across the entire department. What we know from Operation Epic Fury is that on the very first, I think it was in the first 96 hours to get quite concrete about numbers that I've seen, the US has claimed that they were able to strike 5,000 targets in the first 96 hours. And that was made possible by Maven Smart System from Palantir being integrated with large language models like Claude and Groc. These large language models were used for target generation and perhaps even nomination. So ranking targets, the priority of those targets. But we know this from official statements from Cameron Stanley, the head of the AI office in the US Department of Defense.

18:37Recently, he was on record saying Groc by itself generated 2,000 targets in those first 96 hours. So of the 5,000, 2,000 came from Groc. So these are being generated by large language models. It's very difficult to ascertain what kind of information they're using to identify the targets. And more importantly, and I think one of the biggest concerns that I have is at this kind of speed and scale that we're seeing. My legal mind goes to the question of how on earth are you able to verify and validate the targets that you've selected for kinetic action. Because that is the concern that we're seeing certainly in the city Minab where the elementary school was struck not once, but twice with a couple hours in between the strikes. We know now that of course something like 10 years ago satellite imagery showed that it was no longer part of the military compound. It had separated off. It was being used as a school. This is something that analysts flagged up several years ago.

19:41But for whatever reason, that information did not make it into the integrated database. It was not prioritized to verify and validate the targets prior to Operation Epic Fury. And this is how we're seeing such an increase in the potential force of billion harm. Project Maven isn't the first time AI has been used in targeting. Could you talk us a bit through Israel's use of comparable systems in Gaza? So as early as December 2023, we started hearing reports of these same kinds of systems that were lavender and the gospel that were generating and ranking or nominating targets both people and objects. And the people would end up on a database that was something like 37,000 names long beside each of the names would come up with a score between one and a hundred. It's very difficult to ascertain again what elements went into the scoring of these individuals, what kind of criteria were being used if they complied at all with international law to even get people on a targeting list or buildings or objects.

20:50But what we do know is through that kind of reporting again centralizing the speed of operations rather than being careful about the operations that left operators in that particular case with something like 20 seconds to review each target. And in cases that they were able to review in those 20 seconds often they were only able to check whether the individual was a male or a female. None of this comports with the obligations that are required by international law. So much about what we know or think we know about artificial intelligence and conflict is either conjecture or classified. What we do know because the United States Department of Defense both about it is that the attack on Iran known as Operation Epic Fury used Palantir's Maven smart system to conduct strike missions that quote hit 13,000 targets in 38 days.

22:02That's according to the Pentagon's chief digital and AI officer Cameron Stanley. American troops have also shown what Cameron Stanley calls an insatiable appetite for AI that quote allow us to take all of this data, synthesize the data and make better decisions faster on the battlefield. There are therefore two obvious dangers first we need to understand that we are already in some kind of AI arms race risking the possibility that armies in combat will reach for the next generation of AI tools before they are truly tested accurate and ready. Second artificial intelligence depends upon reliable information. Everyone knows reliable information on a battlefield is never easy to come by. Mike Horowitz again. Bad data is going to lead to bad outcomes whether it's getting inaccurate information from somebody on horseback telling you where your adversaries army is or in the case of an incident in the Iran war.

23:06It's a bad map that leads to a tragic incident targeting a school in Iran. I think that it's important when we think about the role of AI and battle management and especially the role of AI at the operational level in targeting to really be clear in thinking through what is it that the AI is doing. I think the best way to think about the role of artificial intelligence on the battlefield today for a military like the United States is kind of like a paralegal. Parallegal essentially is a force multiplier for a lawyer. It's doing research. It's writing briefs. It's helping them prepare at the end of the day. The lawyer is still responsible for the outcome. What a system like Maven smart system is doing for the United States right now is serving as a paralegal for the combatant commander. It's helping aggregate enormous quantities of information something previously done by staffs of hundreds of people in that took hundreds of hours in compressing that timeline to deliver information to the combatant commander.

24:16The upside of this is that a process that used to take essentially forever and really limited the ability of militaries to operate now happens much faster and is much more transparent. So if you're a commander trying to decide what kind of target to strike an AI enabled system gives you the ability to see all these different sources of information where they came from and then to make an in theory more informed decision. What's let you operate faster. There's a risk to that though. The risk to that is what I call automation bias automation bias is when people trust algorithms more than they should. So based on how accurate the algorithm is. So imagine an algorithm that's accurate 75% of the time so you should trust it three out of every four times. But instead you're like well this is pretty good and so you kind of turn your brain off and listen to it all the time. It's not a big deal if the fourth time if you're talking about like using cloud to write a paper.

25:16But if we're talking about a military operating there's a potential tragedy there. There are a number of design choices that go into building these systems where some data is available and other sorts of data are obscured either by design or because of the speed of the operations. So to say that well data will fix this is a very techno solution is sort of approach to this that we can data fight everything and I wrote about this recently about the McNamara fallacy in the Vietnam war is that general McNamara thought that the only thing that mattered for his operational success was what could be quantified on a battlefield what could be turned into data. But as we know in the fog of war listening close to it as well you can't quantify everything you don't know how to plan where you know if you're observing humans humans are innately unpredictable in a way.

26:23So I think what I like in that McNamara fallacy to is like if we think we can quantify everything and we can put it all into data and those quantification logics is kind of like looking at the world through a straw you see stuff and you see things that are based on that data that you've chosen to. See but that's not the entire picture of what the world looks like or what the battlefield looks like so I think that's sort of the danger in relying too heavily on these promises of what the data might be able to tell us. I think that there is a lot to win I think there are a lot of potential avenues for documentation these systems actually record who made this decision at what point and which button was pushed by whom who was logged in what kind of information did they have. That can all be folded into documentation and accountability mechanisms but I don't see that as a central focus of these systems and that's why when we talk about the realities of algorithmic warfare is that we're not focusing on that use of data but rather what kind of speed and scale can we get through to get to 5000 in the first 96 hours or 37,000 names on a list as sort of a way if that is some sort of metric for success.

27:35And I find that ethically problematic morally problematic but also from a legal perspective it there's just no way that comports with states obligations. During the Cold War rival big powers understood the dangers of nuclear conflict and mutually assured destruction that made them careful the USSR and the United States with their allies. Broadly came together an arms control treaties on nuclear chemical and biological weapons. An obvious way forward now would involve new arms control treaties to cover AI and ever more dangerous weapons I asked Mike Horowitz if any of this was on the horizon. As a general purpose technology I think if we are looking for regulations on AI use in the military domain we are mostly going to be disappointed. The reason is that there was no arms control treaty for the combustion engine there was no arms control treaty for electricity when arms control is effective and when even norms for responsible use are effective they involve specific use cases when we think about what this could look like from say international cooperation or arms control perspective I think the opportunity space is going to be in specific use cases where countries can agree this is something human should do.

28:56For example every country that has said something internationally about the intersection of AI and nuclear weapons has agreed let's not let the killer robots once the nuclear weapons even the US and try to could agree on that when they can agree on very little else and that shows to me the kinds of agreements that we are likely to see in this context. Jessica Dorsey however does see some ways potentially to limit AI's use on the battlefield. So when we're talking about the potential to put guardrails up around this or legislative processes we have seen and I'm ever the optimist here but we've been in discussions at the UN level for over 10 years on autonomous weapon systems though we don't yet have a new treaty or a legally binding instrument and it's not sure whether we're going to get there by the end of this year. We do have a robust amount of countries who are working through these issues so that that can inform legislative processes at the international level but actually something I've been really quite happy about in the last several months is seeing different kinds of proposals coming through at the domestic level.

30:07So in the United States for example several senators have proposed legislative bills tying them into a funding proposal for the National Defense Authorization Act tying guardrails and limits around autonomous weapons systems use as well as AI enabled decision support systems use so getting quite granular level requirements that are tied directly to funding and I think that is something that we often forget about is like national legislation. So what I've actually been doing here in the Netherlands is taking some of those proposals that the US senators have made and saying what what might be fit for purpose here in the Netherlands and other European context are there ways that we can formulate some of these legislative processes so that the building the acquisition the procurement of these systems here in Europe falls in line with that sort of responsible by design approach. Making sure that it's allowing enough time for that qualitative human judgment that's required and making sure that then it's all in line with norms and values.

31:12It's hardly a new development to remember that weapons nuclear bombs or even AI don't start wars humans do the core problem is perhaps not so much new weapons and AI but all thinking from selfish leaders in rival countries thinking a high tech war could be an easy win. That complacency comes at a time when international institutions the United Nations for example seem weak and even irrelevant. I put this argument to my corowitz and Jessica Dorsey. If what we want to see is responsible behavior in warfare we shouldn't be looking to the technology to guarantee that we should be looking to the law of war because the law of war is what defines internationally in treaties that every country in the world basically has ratified what we want to do. So we want to identify what ethical and responsible behavior looks like and so countries following the law of war is the pathway to responsible behavior on the battlefield whether we are talking about machine guns or AI enabled weapons systems.

32:21So I think we are seeing worrying developments around international law how it's being instrumentalized or otherwise maybe even ignored by certain actors. I always use the quote by Hanken in my course when I teach this most states follow most international law most of the time right we're talking about exceptions here so I think we shouldn't be too quick to say and I have seen it too often in headlines recently international law is dead or dying or no it's not international law. International law is a robust framework built on the backs of the two most horrific world wars that we have ever seen in modern times and it was a chance for states to agree never again never again meant that the UN Charter is built on this fundamental idea to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war. It has a battery of different elements that states can use in order to not have to shoot one another in order to solve and mediate disputes.

33:22So I think we should be very careful to say oh international law isn't working well political actors have to work with it and I think they have a lot of tools in the toolbox the UN Charter the Geneva Conventions a robust framework of human rights in order to actually affect some kind of leverage. Against those powerful actors who are violating international law. Starting or growing your own business can be intimidating and lonely at times your to do list may feel endless with new tasks and lists can easily begin to overrun your life. So finding the right tool that not only helps you out but simplifies everything as a built in business partner can be a game changer for millions of businesses that tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the US from household names like Jim shark rare beauty and hines to brands just getting started.

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35:29Every plan including unlimited is $15 a month and unlike ice cream it won't trip down your wrist or look nothing like the picture does anyone have any cash. Give it a try at midmobile.com slash switch. A front payment of $45 for three months $90 for six months or $180 for 12 month plan required $15 a month equivalent to taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes me slow when network is busy see terms. In the US there's a break in every 26 seconds but when intruders step near simply safe home security steps up. Stop this is simply safe police are on the way. Using AI alerts US based live agents helped deter break ends simply safe no long term contracts. Say 50% on your new system with professional monitoring at simply safe.com slash Spotify or with promo code Spotify. As we grapple with the ethics and the risks of AI we also need to ask which select group of nations is right now most capable of using AI for military purposes.

36:33Is it only the biggest and most advanced powers Jessica Dorsey. Look I think a short answer to the question of who's doing what in this space is that I think every state is trying to get their hands on this technology in some way shape or form. Some are of course much more advanced in developing and procuring and integrating this so China and the US the big players but we see all kinds of innovation happening we see not just states but also non state actors trying to acquire it again. And general purpose technology can be integrated in a very cost effective way in a number of different military uses. So I think when we see the US and China there's sort of the tension the geopolitical tension between the two great powers so that's more great power competition. And I think what we're starting to see is within the NATO context also a number of states because they have committed to a huge increase in spending and the idea is that that will breed innovation that will breed new startups within the European context or broader NATO allies.

37:40We're seeing a shift away from reliance on US tech so countries and companies here in Europe are also popping up to try to build similar command and control interfaces. So again I think everybody sees the strategic value in this technology and is trying to get a piece of the development procurement acquisition pie. There are other implications of the future AI dominated battlefield do we have the resources energy computing power money to compete and defender cells in the age. Peter abs is a British author global defense commentator and correspondent for writers. So I mean a lot we haven't really talked about this but a lot of it comes down to data processing power and the ability to hit one thing with a lot of thing. It really comes down to the ability to locate something in real time and then strike it and that takes a very large amount of computer processing power. And so for example epic fury used Palantir's Maven smart targeting system.

38:42It consumed pretty much all the available data processing power in the US military just to conduct those 30,000 strikes. So you're talking about large amounts of processing power that means things like data centers become more important and electric power you still got the physical energy required to blast a bullet or a rocket or a drone against gravity from a to B and all that becomes quite expensive. You still got the you know the issue that you can only hold ground with humans and probably humans with quite large metal boxes around them. You know the dynamics of the first world will have particularly changed you just found new ways of doing things human beings explosives metal steel industrial capability fuel. You know all of those things still exist. Space warfare is again about connectivity. It's about the ability to see things but it's also about the ability to burn fuel to get up into orbit. It's still very expensive to launch things into orbit and you know some people can do it more cheaply and others Elon Musk does quite cheaply. Space X is looking at a data centers in orbit so there'll be space called and some powered and so we'll see more of that.

39:42But fundamentally I mean we're still in very 19th century world. It's about power. It's about people. It's about you know visibility surveillance and terrain. And just finally then Peter what does all this add up to the AI race weapons systems proliferating what are the biggest risks for the future. You know I mean all of these dynamics been around for a very long time they're all accelerating. The question is how much money people have to spend on it. You also think this really quite abrupt adjustment isn't the world we thought we were getting. You know people who are now in their 30s or 40s grew up in the 90s were told this sort of world was over and now something near the end of this more 19th century world. Very hard to adapt to it. A whole bunch of common to distance going on you see it in the British debate in particular. And we'll see how that shakes out you know do wars become the norm was it more than 19th century where everyone has some iron clans that don't fight it till that often. You know what you're really seeing is again that also that long term battle between autocracies and democracies. You know there's a whole bunch of sort of dynamics that we'll kind of get to see.

40:52The big question then is not whether we can stop prevent or avoid future conflicts. Humans all across the world have failed that test for millennia. The big question is what future wars will look like and how fast humans can think our way out of some kind of predictable catastrophe. McRion who's substack, Futura doctriner is Latin for future learning offers guidance on what we can expect. We already have insights with fast decision making cycles. A.I. is going to magnify that so I mean that's just one risk among many others you know including what are the ethical challenges of using a I decisions about killing human beings. I know different countries have different policies on this. I suppose the problem then looking forward is how you keep human beings in the loop. You know we've already sci-fi and that is a very very scary thought isn't it? Yeah it makes for great sci-fi but the reality is if there's a human involved it's ultimately unpredictable.

41:53You cannot fully predict what a human's going to do regardless of what some of these I scientists will tell us. It is the presence of humans that make it war. I mean war is about humans visiting violence on each other to actually political ends if if all you're doing is machines interacting that's not war that's. It's something else that we might need to come up with a different terminology or different lexicon but if you only have machines involved fighting machines that's. That's a different thing to what humans have understood as warfare. You know all the way back to the Greeks and beyond. The one thing that strikes me in our conversation is that what has not really changed in warfare is that it is very very difficult to defeat a country on its homeland. If you are an external enemy for example Vietnam Afghanistan Iraq Iran perhaps today and so on these are all countries where the population aren't going to go anywhere so.

42:54So actually having to persuade people that a war continuing a war is necessary for an outside power however sophisticated like the United States can be very very difficult. No absolutely that's the experience of the post world war to era you know when a people sees itself at an existential threat that if it doesn't fight it won't exist. That is a very different imperative and you've seen that from the Ukrainian people I think studies and give you know say about 60% of Ukrainians want peace but they don't want peace at any price. The existential imperative for Ukrainian or the Vietnamese or many others not just since World War II but all the way back to when Alexander was fighting his way across Asia Minor. You know it's a very different imperative than if you're just engaging in a conquest for more land more people more resources more influence.

44:04One of the enduring lessons of military history is that every generation believes it has discovered the decisive weapon railroads battleships strategic bombing nuclear weapons precision guided munitions drones and artificial intelligence each of those transformed warfare. None of them eliminated the importance and the essential foundation of strategy what ultimately determines success is how military technology is integrated with political objectives industrial capacity alliance cohesion economic resilience and national strategy. That I think is the larger lesson of the Iran conflict and the future of air power this was ultimately less of a story about missiles than a story about how military power increasingly depends upon the systems that sustain it. Dr. Nadar Buluchi there bringing us back from technological change to the key human questions about war and peace.

45:12What's striking listening to all the military and conflict experts throughout our series is not so much that these dangerous times in the second quarter of the 21st century are unusual. Weapons systems change throughout the centuries but human rivalry ambitions and conflict are what makes war a constant danger. From 1945 fear of nuclear armageddon suggested a future war would be one in which everyone could lose. Perhaps a degree of fear may yet inspire a greater sense of caution. The challenge is not to pretend humans will ever see the end of wars. The realistic challenge is to ensure that future wars do not see the end of us. I'm Gavin Esler and this is not a drill. Thank you listeners for joining us on This Is Not a drill and a special thank you to everyone who helps us to make this podcast by supporting us on the crowdfunding platform Patreon.

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