James O'Donnell
One afternoon in late November, I visited a weapons test site in the foothills east of San Clemente, California, operated by Anduril, a maker of AI-powered drones and missiles that recently announced a partnership with OpenAI. I went there to witness a new system it’s expanding today, which allows external parties to tap into its software and share data in order to speed up decision-making on the battlefield. If it works as planned over the course of a new three-year contract with the Pentagon, it could embed AI more deeply into the theater of war than ever before.
Near the site’s command center, which looked out over desert scrubs and sage, sat pieces of Anduril’s hardware suite that have helped the company earn its $14 billion valuation. There was Sentry, a security tower of cameras and sensors currently deployed at both US military bases and the US-Mexico border, and advanced radars. Multiple drones, including an eerily quiet model called Ghost, sat ready to be deployed. What I was there to watch, though, was a different kind of weapon, displayed on two large television screens positioned at the test site’s command station.
I was here to examine the pitch being made by Anduril, other companies in defense tech, and growing numbers of people within the Pentagon itself: A future “great power” conflict—military jargon for a global war involving competition between multiple countries—will not be won by the entity with the most advanced drones or firepower, or even the cheapest firepower. It will be won by whoever can sort through and share information the fastest. And that will have to be done “at the edge” where threats arise, not necessarily at a command post in Washington.
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