The new AI technologies will also weaken accountability by distancing policy makers and even the military itself from the consequences of American decisions and actions abroad. Military officials continue to tout AI's ability to make lethal force ever more precise and efficient, but such blind faith in a flashy new technology, still in the early stages of development, is guaranteed to lead in ever more harmful directions. And when the mistakes begin to happen, when the nightmares commence, don't hold the computers responsible.
Tech companies, for their part, have made it clear that they will accept no responsibility for how their AI systems are used by the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies. At the 2018 Aspen Security Forum, Teresa Carlson, an Amazon Web Services vice president, told the audience that the company hasn't "drawn any red lines" regarding the government's use of its technology and that they are "unwavering" in their support for the U.S. law enforcement, defense, and intelligence community. Carlson went on to admit that Amazon often doesn't "know everything they're actually utilizing the tool for," but insisted that the government should have the most "innovative and cutting-edge tools" available so that it isn't bested by its adversaries.
In a letter written to protest their company's contract to provide AI augmented-reality headsets to the Army, Microsoft employees distilled the essence of this accountability problem: "It will be deployed on the battlefield, and works by turning warfare into a simulated 'video game,' further distancing soldiers from the grim stakes of war and the reality of bloodshed."
In the end, placing AI systems between military commanders and the battlefield may actually make violence more, not less, prevalent, as has been the case with the drone program. The more Washington relies on technology to make combat decisions for military officials, while keeping American soldiers away from its far-flung combat zones (and so American casualties low), the more it is likely to reduce the traditional costs of war in terms of both (non-American) lives and accountability -- in other words, the more it may reduce the restraints, political and otherwise, on the country's actions abroad. Lack of political accountability, after all, is a major reason that American wars are now, to use a recent Pentagon term, "infinite."
Politicians and experts are increasingly focused on the pivot to great-power competition, as well as on the best plans for winding down American war-on-terror conflicts and bringing the troops home. It's an admirable goal, but in an increasingly AI-powered world, what if it actually means a future ramping-up of those very wars? After all, as long as bombs are still falling and people are still dying in other countries, our wars aren't "over" -- they're just easier for Americans to ignore.
In the pursuit of technologies that theoretically are meant to keep the country safer, it's important to ensure that the national security state is not simply making it easier to wage endless wars by hiding them ever more from public view and transferring the responsibility for fighting them to unaccountable machines. What President Trump is actually proposing simply removes the most visible aspect -- the troops -- while continuing the bombing of eight countries and secret counterterrorism operations across almost half the globe.
Allegra Harpootlian is a media associate at ReThink Media, where she works with leading experts and organizations at the intersection of national security, politics, and the media. She principally focuses on U.S. drone policies and related use-of-force issues. She is also a political partner with the Truman National Security Project. Find her on Twitter @ally_harp.
Emily Manna is a policy analyst at Open the Government, where she focuses on transparency and accountability for U.S. military and national security programs. She recently coauthored a new report, "Government Inc.: Amazon, Government Security & Secrecy." Find her on Twitter @emilymanna .
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer's new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky's novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt's A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy's In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower's The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.
Copyright 2019 Allegra Harpootlian and Emily Manna
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