Indian Strategic Studies: 12/09/19

9 December 2019

Experts dwell on use of artificial intelligence in war

With artificial intelligence set to dictate the nature of future battlefields, experts discussed its importance and implications in the Indian context at a seminar on ‘War in the Artificial Intelligence Age’ here today.

Experts said artificial intelligence was an emerging technology affecting military and civilian domains alike across the globe. They say some strides have been made to harness the power of artificial intelligence to boost the armed forces’ combat capabilities, a concerted and holistic effort is required to exploit its potential and meet the challenges thrown up by other countries in the field.

Former governor of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lt Gen AK Singh (retd), author and educationist, Maj Gen Raj Mehta (retd), Consultant at the Vivekananda Internation Foundation, Maj Gen PK Mallick (retd) and former MP Col Manvendra Singh (retd) spoke on the occasion.

The event was organised by the Indian Ex-servicemen Movement, Panchkula, to commemorate Remembrance Day, which is observed in Commonwealth member states since the end of the World War I to pay homage to soldiers who died in the line of duty.

A large number of retired defence officers as well as residents attended the seminar.

PORTS AND PARTNERSHIPS: DELHI INVESTS IN INDIAN OCEAN LEADERSHIP

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India has begun to invest heavily, albeit quietly, in expanding its naval and air power across the Indian Ocean. The effort is driven by two factors: a desire to improve maritime domain awareness and maritime security throughout the vast region, and New Delhi’s growing anxieties about Chinese inroads in its strategic backyard. As Chinese naval forces operate more frequently in the Indian Ocean, military planners in New Delhi increasingly worry about a day when China could present a security threat not only on its Himalayan frontier but also from the sea. Meanwhile piracy, illegal fishing, and other maritime crimes remain serious concerns and potential sources of instability around the entire Indian Ocean rim. India is tackling these concerns along four tracks.

The Indian military is upgrading its naval, coast guard, and air capabilities in order to better monitor and project power farther from shore. Much of this work has been focused on the Lakshadweep archipelago off India’s west coast and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the east. India has also constructed a listening post in Madagascar to monitor traffic in the southwest Indian Ocean. Explore the map below for more details on these facilities along with India’s other efforts to expand its capabilities in the region.

A second line of effort is focused on boosting regional maritime domain awareness and creating a common operating picture through the work of the Indian Navy’s Information Fusion Centre for the Indian Ocean Region, or IFC-IOR. The center, which was launched in 2018, processes radar and sensor data from participating countries and offers the data to partners, including all members of the Indian Ocean Rim Association. India is helping smaller neighbors upgrade their radar arrays and feed them into the IFC-IOR. France recently became the first partner nation to post a liaison officer to the center.

India’s New Attack Subs to Be Fitted With Imported Air Independent Propulsion System

By Franz-Stefan Gady

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The Indian Navy’s second batch of six diesel-electric attack submarines (SSK) under the Ministry of Defense’s (MoD) Project-75 India (Project-75 I) program will not be fitted with an indigenous air-independent propulsion (AIP) system, according to local media reports. Instead, the service will import ready-made AIP technology from a foreign vendor.

India’s Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) has been working on the development of an indigenous AIP system at its Naval Materials Research Laboratory at Ambernath with its partners Larsen & Toubro (as lead system integrator), Thermax, and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing for a number of years.

This system, envisioned to be full developed and ready by 2024, will be installed on the Navy’s fleet of six Scorpene-class (Kalvari-class) SSKs, built under a $4.16 billion contract by French submarine maker Naval Group in cooperation with Indian shipbuilder Mazagon Dock Limited (MDL).

Why Donald Trump Can't Pull U.S. Forces Out of Afghanistan

by Peter Harris
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Ten years ago, Barack Obama gave one of the most important foreign policy speeches of his presidency. In a commencement address to cadets at West Point, the President announced a surge of 30,000 additional troops into the Afghan warzone, coupled with a commitment to begin withdrawing U.S. forces after 18 months. It was a bold policy announcement, meant to accomplish two things: (1) satisfy foreign and domestic audiences that the new president was serious about tackling threats to U.S. national security, and (2) give Americans confidence that the Afghan conflict (and the wider Global War on Terrorism) would not drag on indefinitely.

Obama’s surge produced some significant triumphs on the battlefield but ultimately failed to presage the beginning of the end for America’s longest war. Now in its nineteenth year, the war in Afghanistan has claimed the lives of around 2,400 U.S. service members and stubbornly refuses to yield an American victory. In a cruel twist, the United States has now lost more troops in Afghanistan since Obama laid out his timetable for withdrawal than were killed in the eight years of fighting that preceded his announcement of an exit strategy.

629 Pakistani Girls Were Sold as Brides to Chinese Men

By Kathy Gannon

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Page after page, the names stack up: 629 girls and women from across Pakistan who were sold as brides to Chinese men and taken to China. The list, obtained by The Associated Press, was compiled by Pakistani investigators determined to break up trafficking networks exploiting the country’s poor and vulnerable.

The list gives the most concrete figure yet for the number of women caught up in the trafficking schemes since 2018.

But since the time it was put together in June, investigators’ aggressive drive against the networks has largely ground to a halt. Officials with knowledge of the investigations say that is because of pressure from government officials fearful of hurting Pakistan’s lucrative ties to Beijing.

The biggest case against traffickers has fallen apart. In October, a court in Faisalabad acquitted 31 Chinese nationals charged in connection with trafficking. Several of the women who had initially been interviewed by police refused to testify because they were either threatened or bribed into silence, according to a court official and a police investigator familiar with the case. The two spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retribution for speaking out.

Can China’s ‘New Idea’ Work in the Middle East?

By Wang Jin

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Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, left, shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping after speaking during the opening session of the 8th Ministerial Meeting of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum in Beijing, July 10, 2018.

The Middle East Security Forum, held in Beijing on November 27 and 28, saw more than 200 representatives from both the Middle East and China come to share their views on the region’s political circumstances, major challenges and risks, as well as China’s ties with the Middle East. A majority of the attendees criticized the U.S. unilateral and and hegemonic policy in the Middle East, and argued that it is highly necessary to end the unjust regional order that has resulted from U.S. intervention and pressure. China maintains that it has put forward a “new idea” for the Middle East to preserve stability in the region and set up trust between different states in the future: that is, to uphold the philosophy of “development” rather than “divisions and confrontations.”

Four points of common understanding were shared among the attendees, including goals to set up a new security concept that is collective, comprehensive, cooperative, and sustainable; to realize the final peace between Palestine and Israel (among other regional issues) in a just and equal manner; to highlight and implement the role of “development” in the Middle East management; and to encourage and facilitate mutual dialogue and understanding between different civilizations over counterterrorism and counterextremism, and thereby eliminate double standards in international and regional affairs.

Bad Idea: China-Driven U.S. Strategy

Samuel Brannen
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U.S. national security strategy is overly consumed with China to the detriment of broad global interests. A strategic overcorrection has put China at the center of virtually every U.S. national security conversation and consideration. That positioning is at once distracting the United States from appropriately responding to growing trans-regional geopolitical volatility while also failing to achieve outcomes in U.S. China policy.

In the day-to-day execution of U.S. statecraft, China mania has contributed to a distracted approach to overseeing active U.S. combat operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan, punctuated by episodes of triage as relative neglect leads to crisis. Rather than taking the time to conduct a strategic review of what it would take to responsibly redirect resources from focusing on global counterterrorism to managing great power , the United States is trying to jump from one speeding train onto another.

A single-minded, non-consultative focus on China has imperiled U.S. alliances—arguably the greatest tool with which to confront China. U.S. Asian allies and partners feel that the United States is forcing them by dictate to immediately choose sides. They are unready and unwilling to do so in light of questions surrounding the United States’ enduring commitment to the region. Many European allies fear that the United States has moved on in its global commitments, discounting the transatlantic alliance and pushing them to self-reliance, as reflected in the now infamous Macron interview.

Eye on China: LAC Transgressions – CPEC Quarrel – Military Education – Risky Banks – Aussie Scandal

BY MANOJ KEWALRAMANI

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Eye on China is a weekly bulletin offering news and analysis related to the Middle Kingdom from an Indian interests perspective. This week we focus on the developments in the Sino-Indian relationship; Xi’s focus on military education; nearly 13% of Chinese banks being highly risky; protests in Hong Kong; new leaks from Xinjiang and much more.

I. Transgressions, Celebrations & Trade

It’s been a relatively quiet week when it comes to the Sino-Indian news cycle. The Indian Ministry of Defence did share data about transgressions along the LAC in Parliament. There were a total of 1025 transgressions by the PLA between 2016-2018. The breakdown for the three years is 273, 426 and 326. Much of this is down to differing perceptions about the LAC. One wonders how informal summitry will help delineate claim lines to reduce these.

But, until that happens, there’s at least clarity that India and China will commemorate the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations next year with 70 celebratory activities, including cultural, religious and trade promotion events besides military exchanges. The Indian embassy in Beijing put out a list of the 70 activities. There’s a whole bunch there, ranging from drug regulation talks, media engagement, trade and investment talks, business delegations, film events and so on. Not all civilisational, cultural and historical bits are uncontroversial. For instance, both sides are reportedly sparing over the legacy of Sowa-Rigpa, which is a traditional Tibetan system of medicine practised in India’s Himalayan belt. India has apparently approached UNESCO seeking enlisting of Sowa Rigpa as its intangible cultural heritage. China has raised objection to it. Here’s how Hu Zhiyong, from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, responded to the controversy in Global Times: “India set the Tibetan medicine institute in Ladakh on purpose, so that India could assimilate the region in order to merge Ladakh into India. India has been hyping its work on Tibetan medicine” as it wants to transfer its people’s attention away from economic decline by worsening China-India relations.

Can China’s ‘New Idea’ Work in the Middle East?

By Wang Jin

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China’s Data/AI Economy and the Global Order

By Mercy A. Kuo

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Diplomat author Mercy Kuo regularly engages subject-matter experts, policy practitioners, and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into U.S. Asia policy. This conversation with Winston Ma, CFA & Esq. – tech investor and adjunct professor at NYU School of Law and author of China’s Data Economy (Hayakawa 2019, Japanese title China’s AI Big Bang) and China’s Mobile Economy (Wiley 2016) – is the 215th in “The Trans-Pacific View Insight Series.”

Explain the core components of China’s data/AI economy.

The keyword is iABCD. All Chinese companies are rushing to learn how new digital technologies — including the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, cloud computing, and data analytics (iABCD) — can be integrated into their businesses to unlock value from nontraditional angles. The companies will become “smarter” by fusing institutional human knowledge with machine learning, and their increased efficiencies, faster decision making, and cost savings will all lead to better customer experiences.

In the context of the worldwide fourth industry revolution, the corresponding “creative destruction” of traditional industry sectors is happening in all markets. However, it is likely to happen more quickly and on a larger scale in China, given the existing “mobile infrastructure” and the inefficiencies in traditional sectors (for example, the finance industry, healthcare, retail, and so on). The market has already seen immature industries such as retail and logistics leapfrog straight from the early industrial age to the data/AI economy.

Explain the correlation between China’s mobile and data economy.

ASEAN fights to stay neutral in the US–China contest

Authors: Simon Tay and Jessica Wau, SIIA
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Rising US–China tensions go beyond trade and involve a broad range of issues including strategy, security and values. It’s pertinent to also look at the choices that ASEAN and others are facing in the context of this great power contest, including decisions on economic development and technology.

Given the advanced technology it offers and its relatively low cost, the Shenzhen-based company Huawei is a competitive option for any country looking to adopt 5G technology. Yet the US government has accused the company of violating US laws and of being a ‘persistent national security and foreign policy threat’. These accusations manifested in December 2018 with the arrest of Huawei’s Chief Financial Officer, Meng Wanzhou.

When the US Commerce Department forbade US firms from selling equipment to Huawei — already the world’s second-largest smartphone maker — the industry’s entire supply chain was rattled. Now there is US pressure to convince other governments to ban Huawei from telecom infrastructure.

Is US Deterrence Against Iran Doomed to Fail?

BY KATIE BO WILLIAMS

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Pentagon officials are warning that Iran continues to pose a threat to U.S. forces in the region, despite the additional 14,000 troops deployed there in the last six months.

“We also continue to see indications, and for obvious reasons I won’t go into the details, that potential Iranian aggression could occur,” John Rood, the Pentagon’s number-three official, told reporters on Wednesday morning.

Rood spoke in the wake of a recent report from the Defense Intelligence Agency that warned that Tehran is producing “increasingly capable ballistic and cruise missiles” with better accuracy, lethality and range.

Those warnings come just days after Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the leader of U.S. Central Command, told reporters traveling with him that even if the additional troops, jets, and defensive missiles were enough to deter Iran from attacking American targets, he did not expect them to stop Iran from attacking allied Gulf nations.

“My judgment is that it is very possible they will attack again,” McKenzie said.

All this has revived a question raised by a series of Iranian attacks over the summer: Is U.S. deterrence against Iranian aggression in the region “working”?

“I’m not disagreeing with Gen. McKenzie, but I think there’s more to the response than saying they are deterred or they are not deterred,” Rood said Wednesday.

The Arab World Needs a Brexit Debate

SAMI MAHROUM

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BARCELONA – For the last three years, a bewildered world has watched the countdown to the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union, better known as Brexit. Leaving the EU will likely affect the British economy severely. Yet, from an Arab perspective, the UK’s prolonged Brexit debate is not a sign of political breakdown. On the contrary, only a country with the UK’s deeply embedded political maturity could even hope to withstand such a vast rupture in legal, commercial, and even social relationships that have been built up over the last half-century.

The Arab world, by contrast, has witnessed at least one big Brexit-like event every decade since 1948 – and these political, economic, and social ruptures never seem to heal. The first such episode was the establishment of Israel and the resulting Palestinian “Brexit” from the territory that became the Jewish State. Much of historic Palestine was abandoned, and its people were destined to live in refugee camps for decades to come. An entire Arab economy disappeared, and Israel was boycotted by its Arab neighbors.

Then, from 1952 until 1970, Egypt under President Gamal Abdel Nasser embarked on an economic nationalization experiment that championed import substitution and greatly weakened the country’s commercial ties to the rest of the region. And when Nasser’s successor Anwar Sadat signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, Arab countries punished Egypt with an economic and political boycott.

Your Air Force Is Dead: Why Russia's S-400 Air Defense System Is One of the Best

by Charlie Gao
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The S-400 is one of the most controversial missiles in the world currently. The United States has imposed economic sanctions on countries simply for buying the system, but many of the world’s powers are interested in it, with India signing deals in September 2018 and China in April 2018. But what exactly makes the S-400 such a hot ticket item in the world today? How did it evolve from the earlier S-300?

The S-300 began development in the 1960s as a follow-up to a multitude of prior surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems. The primary missile it planned to replace is the S-75 (SA-2) missile system, which was famously used against the U-2 spy plane and deployed in Cuba and Vietnam. The missile underwent testing in the 1970s and entered service in 1978.

The primary improvement of the S-300 compared to earlier systems would be the ability to be multichannel—to utilize multiple guidance beams to guide missiles to different targets simultaneously. The earlier S-25 system was also multichannel, but it was extremely heavy and only deployed in stationary mounts. The American SAM-D (which would become the MIM-104 Patriot) was the first American land-based SAM with multichannel technology; it entered service three years later in 1981.

The Day After NATO

JOSCHKA FISCHER
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BERLIN – Despite having been written off numerous times, NATO survives. But another fox has entered the hen house, and it has met with the typical European response to danger: furious cackling and an explosion of feathers.

The fox in question is French President Emmanuel Macron, who recently described NATO as experiencing a kind of “brain death.” One need not approve of that choice of words – or of Macron’s new passion for dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin (I, for one, do not) – to recognize the thrust of his argument. A profound change in US strategic priorities under President Donald Trump demands that Europeans revisit long-held assumptions about their collective defense.

This is not the first time that NATO has seemed to be on its last legs. Many had arrived at the same conclusion before 2014, when the alliance had little to focus on beyond the mission in Afghanistan. When Russia annexed Crimea and brought war to Eastern Ukraine, it breathed new life into NATO.

Then came Trump, whose administration has pulled the rug out from under Europe’s feet, abandoned American leadership within the rules-based international system, and pursued a nationalist, protectionist, and unilateralist foreign policy. Trump has declared NATO “obsolete.”

Bad Idea: Integrating Artificial Intelligence with Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications

Bryce Farabaugh

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The plotline is a tired trope by now: machines wrest control of a nuclear arsenal from their human creators and either initiate apocalypse (à la Terminator’s Skynet) or avert disaster (à la WarGame’s War Operation Plan Response). The scenarios are potent and their relevance lasting because they serve as a parable for people’s hopes and fears about technology: in combining the terrible destructive potential of nuclear weapons with human suspicion about artificial intelligence (AI), we hope the outcome is less promethean and more deus ex machina. Although this anxiety has existed for decades, one would be hard pressed to have predicted the debate around AI and nuclear weapons would continue to this day.

Most recently, a piece published in War on the Rocks in August 2019, titled “America Needs a ‘Dead Hand’” resurrected the debate. The authors argued that due to advancements in emerging technologies like hypersonic weapons and nuclear cruise missiles, attack-time compression will put an unacceptable amount of stress on the ability of American leadership to adequately make decisions during a nuclear crisis. The article made such waves that even senior military leaders, including the director of the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, expressed their skepticism of the authors’ argument. Ultimately, while the authors’ diagnosis may be correct, their prescription is wrong: their proposal of a nuclear “dead hand” that integrates AI with nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) to create an automated strategic response system underestimates AI’s potential to inadvertently precipitate a catastrophic mistake.

In order to understand AI’s possible impact on nuclear weapons policy, it’s important to have a solid foundation of what AI is, what it isn’t, and what is meant by NC3.

What’s Next on Impeachment

By Molly E. Reynolds, Margaret Taylor

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As the House Judiciary Committee holds its first hearing under procedures adopted in October guiding the ongoing impeachment inquiry, it is worth assessing how this stage of the impeachment process will differ from the last portion, which took place under the direction of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff. The Intelligence Committee is finishing up its impeachment investigation and passing the baton to the Judiciary Committee, which is now tasked with deciding whether to write articles of impeachment against the president. The latter committee is holding a hearing today, Wednesday, Dec. 4, to hear from four constitutional scholars. But other than that, much remains in flux.

Schiff’s promised report on L’Affaire Ukrainienne has only just been released. (Lawfare issued its version of a report on the matter last week.) Even then, Schiff has said that after he submits his report to the Judiciary Committee, he may need to submit addendums based on new facts and documents that the Intelligence Committee is still receiving. For their part, Republican ranking members for three of the House committees tasked with managing the impeachment inquiry have already released a Republican staff report that forcefully argues against any wrongdoing by the president.

In Colombia, Protests Build on a Wave of Demonstrations Across South America

Frida Ghitis

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For the third time in two weeks, Colombians turned out Wednesday for a national strike, demanding the government of President Ivan Duque accept a wide-ranging list of popular demands. With hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets in protest, Duque faces a political challenge that is magnified by the wider context in which it is unfolding: a proliferation of demonstrations across the region and the world, as far away as the Middle East and Hong Kong, some of which have already succeeded in toppling governments, including one in South America.

This protest effect is a new phenomenon in the region. Protests in one South American country are fortifying demonstrators in another—first by highlighting grievances, then by inspiring people to take action, and finally by proving that individuals who might have felt powerless may just have a chance to effect drastic change. Just as crucially, when demonstrators manage to achieve their goals—as they did in Bolivia, Ecuador and, perhaps soon, Chile—it sends a message to leaders that they cannot afford to ignore protests and hope they simply run out of steam. ...

Restoring Central Banks’ Credibility

LARRY HATHEWAY

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ZURICH – Recent jumps in equity prices and bond yields suggest that recession fears are receding. But the global economic expansion cannot last forever, and when the next recession comes, central banks may not be adequately prepared to respond. Enhancing central-bank credibility to bolster the effectiveness of monetary policy is thus an urgent priority.

Before the 2008 financial crisis, central bankers could rely on slashing interest rates to spur consumption, investment, and employment. But that playbook no longer works as well as it once did. One reason is elevated uncertainty, owing to globalization, societal aging, changing consumer preferences, growing income and wealth inequality, rising health-care costs, rapid technological change, and other factors. Even in the absence of recession, for many households and businesses, the future seems daunting and unpredictable.

This uncertainty will exacerbate the downturn when it comes. When uncertainty spikes, low or even negative real (inflation-adjusted) interest rates may not induce higher spending. Rather, savings may rise and investment may falter even as interest rates plunge. If governments are unwilling or unable to boost demand with fiscal policy, the result will be a prolonged and deep economic slump.

The Day After NATO

JOSCHKA FISCHER

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French President Emmanuel Macron has drawn criticism for describing NATO as brain dead and pursuing a rapprochement with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But now that a wayward America could abandon the continent at any moment, Macron's argument for European defense autonomy is difficult to refute.

A Manifesto For Restrainers

Stephen M. Walt
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After 25 years of repeated failures, Americans want a foreign policy that preserves the security of the United States, enhances prosperity, and maintains the core U.S. commitment to individual liberty. They recognize that U.S. power can be a force for good, but only if it is employed judiciously and for realistic objectives. In short, a large and growing number of Americans want a foreign policy of restraint.

But what does that mean in practice? In a sense, it’s easier to understand what restrainers don’t want. They don’t want endless wars, bloated military budgets, and security commitments that keep expanding, but are never seriously debated or approved by the public. If restrainers were suddenly put in charge of U.S. foreign and national security policy, however, what would they do differently? What do restrainers really want?

Without presuming to speak for other members of the Quincy Institute, here’s how I would answer that critical question:

Garry Kasparov: I lived in the post-truth Soviet world and I hear its echoes in Trump's America

by Garry Kasparov

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(CNN)The totalitarian Soviet Union where I grew up tried to dominate the truth, to distort it and control it. Reality was whatever the Party put out on the nightly news, or in the official newspapers, Pravda, which means "Truth" and Izvestia, which means "News."

It was increasingly obvious back then, even to communist true believers, that what we were being told didn't match the world we saw around us. As the joke went, "there is no news in the truth and no truth in the news." Eventually the disparity between truth and lies became too great; life wasn't improving and more and more information was making it through the Iron Curtain. Denying reality became too grave an insult to our dignity, an underestimated ingredient in the spirit of revolution.

I have lived through several world-changing upheavals. I'm a post-Soviet citizen; the country of my birth ceased to exist in 1991. We enjoyed less than a decade of tenuous freedom in Russia before Vladimir Putin launched its post-democratic phase. My ongoing attempts to fight that tragedy led to my exile in the United States. Now my new home finds itself locked in its own perilous battle -- a battle to avoid becoming the latest member of the post-truth world.

Why Trump vs. Warren in 2020 Would Prove America Is in Decline

by Robert D. Kaplan
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If a moderate cannot somehow prevail in the Democratic primaries, and President Donald Trump faces Senator Elizabeth Warren in the November election, it will punctuate a process of slow and gradual American decline that began in the middle Cold War years. For the first time in modern memory, there would not be a candidate from the political center on any ticket.

If a moderate cannot somehow prevail in the Democratic primaries, and President Donald Trump faces Senator Elizabeth Warren in the November election, then it will punctuate a process of slow and gradual American decline that began in the middle Cold War years. For the first time in modern memory, there would not be a candidate from the political center on any ticket. But it is possible that we will face a choice between the vulgar, populist right and the radical, populist left.

The fact that the center is having difficulty in the presidential race represents the culmination of a tragic story with several facets.

The steady adoption of a primary system to select party nominees in the 1970s and 1980s was something that weakened the leverage of party bosses in so-called smoke-filled rooms and played to the most partisan emotions of each major party. For decades the bosses had selected safe, moderate candidates: not always inspiring but usually responsible. It was the bosses who essentially gave us Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and so on. Eisenhower was scouted by the bosses of the Republican party while he was still in uniform. The system we have today might never have selected him. Though an exceptional analyst, organization man, and war hero, Ike wasn’t especially charismatic. Neither was he an especially compelling speaker or photogenic.

Why Did Google's Cofounders Step Down?

by Shelby Talcott
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The announcement came in a letter on Google’s blog, where the two added that Google CEO Sundar Pichai will take over as CEO of both Google and Alphabet, which owns Google.

Page was the CEO of Alphabet. Brin was president of Alphabet.

“With Alphabet now well-established, and Google and the Other Bets operating effectively as independent companies, it’s the natural time to simplify our management structure,” Page and Brin wrote in the letter. “And Alphabet and Google no longer need two CEOs and a President. Going forward, Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet.

“He will be the executive responsible and accountable for leading Google, and managing Alphabet’s investment in our portfolio of Other Bets,” they said.

Can a $10M Pentagon project enhance AI cyber operations?

By: Andrew Eversden

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A new agreement between a civilian government agency and the private sector will assist the Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center in “further enhancing cyber operations,” according to a new release.

The company, Excella, entered into a joint venture partner letter agreement with the National Technical Information Service, a subagency on the Department of Commerce, to work on a 10-month project worth $10 million. The project is centered on enhancing cyber operations by accelerating AI adoption.

The JAIC is tasked with developing and delivering enterprise AI capabilities to the Pentagon. There are “several" other companies involved in the agreement.

Excella will help develop a common AI framework and increase the DoD’s access to smart data. It will also build a sharing platform, a “highly sophisticated” infrastructure for defense missions and build an AI model to give the DoD actionable intelligence, taking “DoD’s decision making to the next level.”

Here’s what senators learned about the ransomware threat

By: Andrew Eversden

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Members of the Senate’s bipartisan cybersecurity caucus received a classified briefing Dec. 4 on the ransomware threat and how Congress can help businesses, states and local governments mitigate it.

Senators heard from Chris Krebs, director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — an agency tasked with protecting the nation’s critical infrastructure from cyberattacks. Senators who attended said the briefing was productive.

“Today’s classified briefing was a helpful conversation to aid us in grappling with the complexities of the threats we face and what we can do to address them,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., who recently joined the caucus, in a statement.

Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said that senators learned the ransomware was “widespread and increasing." He also said that they learned that companies and state and local governments “have to take active measures” to protect themselves.

Eight Norms for Stability in Cyberspace

JOSEPH S. NYE, JR.

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CAMBRIDGE – In little more than a generation, the Internet has become a vital substrate for economic, social, and political interactions, and it has unlocked enormous gains. Along with greater interdependence, however, come vulnerability and conflict. Attacks by states and non-state actors have increased, threatening the stability of cyberspace.

In November, at the Paris Peace Forum, the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace issued its report on how to provide an overarching cyber stability framework. Originally convened by the Dutch government three years ago, the multi-stakeholder GCSC (of which I was a member) had co-chairs from Estonia, India, and the United States, and comprised former government officials, experts from civil society, and academics from 16 countries.

Over the years, there have been numerous calls for laws and norms to manage the new international insecurity created by information technology, starting with Russian proposals at the United Nations two decades ago calling for a binding treaty. Unfortunately, given the nature of cyber weapons and the volatility of the technology, such a treaty would not be verifiable and would quickly become obsolete.

It’s the end of the World Trade Organisation as we know it

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“Winter is coming,” warned a Norwegian representative on November 22nd, at a meeting of the World Trade Organisation (wto). The multilateral trading system that the wto has overseen since 1995 is about to freeze up. On December 10th two of the judges on its appellate body, which hears appeals in trade disputes and authorises sanctions against rule-breakers, will retire—and an American block on new appointments means they will not be replaced. With just one judge remaining, it will no longer be able to hear new cases.

The wto underpins 96% of global trade. By one recent estimate, membership of the wto or General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (gatt), its predecessor, has boosted trade among members by 171%. When iPhones move from China to America, or bottles of Scotch whisky from the European Union to India, it is the wto’s rules that keep tariff and non-tariff barriers low and give companies the certainty they need to plan and invest.

Artificial Intelligence and the Adversary

Samantha Ravich

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The potential benefits of artificial intelligence are proclaimed loudly, for all to hear. The dangers, however, are discussed quietly among national-security experts. The time has come to bring the general population into the discussion.

The benefits are enticing. With AI, the future promises longer life expectancy, increased productivity, and better preservation of precious resources. You will be able to take a picture of a mole on your leg and send it electronically to a dermatologist, who will use deep neural networks to determine whether it is skin cancer. Data-driven sensors and drones will determine the perfect amount of pesticide and water to promote agricultural diversity and counter monocropping. The AI revolution in transportation will herald autonomous planes, trains and automobiles. Music will be created to improve not only mood but heart rate and brain activity.

But we should know by now that advanced technology can also be used for ill. The whispered worst-case scenarios stem from malign actors gaining control of the massive data sets that will train machines to compute faster, better and perhaps with more-penetrating insight.

Scolese: NRO advancing space technology, developing tactics to defend satellites

by Sandra Erwin

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McLEAN, Va. — In his first meeting with reporters as director of the National Reconnaissance Office, Christopher Scolese said the agency is focused on staying ahead of China and on forging closer ties with U.S. Space Command to ensure the nation’s satellites can be defended during a conflict.

Scolese, a longtime NASA executive who was tapped in February to lead the NRO, is the first Senate confirmed director of the organization. Five months into the job, one of his key messages to the workforce is “how important it is for us to move quickly with technology,” Scolese said Dec. 3.

After meeting with a small group of reporters, Scolese addressed a dinner event hosted by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. That speech was closed to media.

China’s advances in space are a major concern, Scolese said. “They are putting spacecraft up very quickly and we have to stay ahead. We are still the world leader but we have challenges.”

Lifting the Veil: What Is Google's Little-Known Project X?

by Cason Schmit
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The nation’s second-largest health system, Ascension, has agreed to allow the software behemoth Google access to tens of millions of patient records. The partnership, called Project Nightingale, aims to improve how information is used for patient care. Specifically, Ascension and Google are trying to build tools, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, “to make health records more useful, more accessible and more searchable” for doctors.

Patients and doctors have raised privacy concerns about the plan. Lack of notice to doctors and consent from patients are the primary concerns.

As a public health lawyer, I study the legal and ethical basis for using data to promote public health. Information can be used to identify health threats, understand how diseases spread and decide how to spend resources. But it’s more complicated than that.

The law deals with what can be done with data; this piece focuses on ethics, which asks what should be done.

Beyond Hippocrates

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9 December 2019