Girish Linganna
Source Link
India and the United States are in advanced talks to jointly produce the latest generation of Stryker armoured infantry combat vehicles. This effort is part of a larger plan for defence-industrial cooperation. Recently, the US offered to show the mobility and firepower of the Stryker in high-altitude areas of India. First Post quotes The Times of India as saying that the Indian defence ministry is looking into a three-phase plan for this project.
The project will, initially, purchase a limited, off-the-shelf consignment of Strykers through the US Foreign Military Sales (FMS) programme. After that, there will be joint production in India and, eventually, they will co-develop advanced versions of the vehicle, the First Post report adds.
The entire plan depends on the Stryker meeting the operational needs of the Indian Army’s mechanized infantry units and achieving a high level of local production. This includes transfering important technologies to the Indian co-production partner, which could be a defence public sector undertaking (PSU), or a private company.
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21 June 2024
Afghanistan: Intensifying Persecution Of Hazaras – Analysis
Sanchita Bhattacharya
As reported on June 11, the Taliban instructed the Hazara residents of Nowabad, located in the 6th Security District of Ghazni city, the provincial capital of Ghazni, to submit their land ownership documents to the group. The Taliban issued eviction orders, claiming the area had been “usurped” by the residents.
On March 6, 2023, the Taliban forced the Hazara residents of Pusht-e Asmidan village in Al Badr District, Sar-e Pul Province, to leave their homes and evacuate the village. They also imposed a fine of AFN 36 million on the residents of this village, as most of them are from the Hazara community.
Taliban established a “Commission for Prevention of Usurpation and Recovery of Government Lands” in 2023. This Commission, in various provinces, registers government lands under the name of “Emirate Lands”. Earlier, in October 2021, the Taliban forcibly expelled hundreds of Hazara families from provinces of Helmand, Balkh, Daikundi, Uruzgan, and Kandahar.
Will Taiwan’s Future Be Settled in Washington?
Brian Hioe
Urgent Steps to Defend Taiwan, edited by former Trump administration Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger, aims to exhort the United States and like-minded allies to proactively take steps to protect Taiwan. It’s a double-sided book—one part making the case that there’s an imminent threat, the other part actual proposals for Taiwan’s defense.
With recommendations from no less than former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a quote from the doyen of U.S.-China studies Orville Schell comparing Pottinger to Paul Revere, the book clearly aims to sound a clarion call over Chinese threats to Taiwan. It’s an agenda largely focused on raising the alarm in Washington—and which tends to overlook issues in Taiwan itself.
Pottinger’s background shapes his approach. He served as deputy national security advisor from September 2019 to January 2021 under the Trump administration, playing a key role in shaping hawkish policies. His career before that was an unusual one, spending seven years in China as a journalist before joining the U.S. Marine Corps as a military intelligence officer in 2005 and serving three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time, Pottinger has since broken ties with his former boss, testifying against him over the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot.
China Unveils World’s 1st Virtual Military Commander; Participates In Computer Wargames To Prepare For Future
Ritu Sharma
The AI commander is already learning and mimicking the thought patterns of a real military commander. It has been granted “unprecedented supreme command authority” in the large-scale computer wargames at the University in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province.
In the US Army the AI serves as a “commander’s virtual staff” providing decision support, the ultimate decision rests with the Human commander. The AI-piloted fighter jets the US is developing will participate in the wars or training missions; they will not be calling shots in the war room whether to wage war or a particular battle.
Chinese-language journal Common Control & Simulation unraveled the Virtual Commander in May 2024. The peer-reviewed research paper contends that in China, the Party is supreme, and “The Party Commands the Gun.” In the absence of an adequate number of commanders to participate in simulated wargames, the AI commander can stand in for human commanders. Within the confines of the laboratory, it can freely exercise this power without any interference from humans.
The President Needs to Lead the Cold War on China
Randy Schriver, Dan Blumenthal, and Josh Young
The United States is in a cold war with the People’s Republic of China, and it urgently needs a strategy led and directed by the president himself if it is going to win. Absent such leadership, Washington’s approach to China will remain fragmented, contradictory, and unfocused. The absence of leadership is in stark contrast to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Secretary-General Xi Jinping and the approach that he laid out in the country’s 20th National Congress in 2022, which directs all instruments of China’s power to wage a “protracted struggle”—in other words, a cold war—against the United States.
The End Of The Petrodollar Is The End Of America’s Global Dominance
DANIEL TURNER
The petrodollar agreement with Saudi Arabia began in 1974, two years into Joe Biden’s first term as a United States senator. It ended this week, a half-century later, during Biden’s first term as U.S. president.
Among all the news stories that matter, few rank higher than this. It’s bigger than President Trump and Hunter Biden’s convictions, bigger than jobs reports and inflation numbers, and perhaps even bigger than the southern border crisis. The end of the petrodollar is the end of the United States as the world’s lone superpower.
Yet it is barely mentioned.
Until last week, the petrodollar was America’s dominance of the global economy. It solidified the oil industry as a thoroughly American industry in which other nations merely partook. In the way Henry Ford didn’t invent the car but rather invented the automobile industry, which brought cars to the masses, American titans like Charles Pratt and Henry Flagler and the great John D. Rockefeller didn’t invent oil refining. They invented the oil industry, which brought petrochemical products to the masses. The oil industry is American, and as much as it exists around the world in places like Venezuela and the Middle East, it is because Americans led the way.
G7 Compromise is Great — But It’s Still Not Enough
Paul Jones
G7 leaders are set to agree about $50bn for Ukraine by front-loading earnings from $300bn in frozen Russian sovereign assets, most located in Belgium.
Details of the complex financial arrangement still need to be worked out. The agreement effectively replaces a less generous European Union (EU) decision in May to send smaller amounts of the earnings on frozen assets, which currently amount to about $3bn per year. The $50bn would get Ukraine well past the upcoming US and EU political transitions, obviating the need for another US congressional supplemental until well into 2025.
There is a deal, but the arguments have not ended. The US will continue to seek a transfer of the entire $300bn-plus in frozen Russian assets — not just the windfall earnings — which would make a much greater contribution to what has become a war of attrition. It is not cheap to fund an intensive 21st-century war along a 600-mile front for a country of around 40 million people.
Joe Biden’s Ukraine Policy is Marching Toward Catastrophe
Robert Clarke & Jason Beardsley
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance is facing a significant turning point in its support for Ukraine’s defense against Russia. The Biden administration, in lockstep with several of the United States’ European allies, has approved the use of American weapons to strike targets on Russian soil around the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
The decision arrived months after French president Emmanuel Macron openly floated the idea of NATO troops joining the fight in Ukraine. While the White House has denied this possibility, General Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged the inevitability of eventually sending military trainers to expedite the preparation of freshly drafted Ukrainian troops for the front lines. Both his and Macron’s statements catapult the war into unknown territory, creating opportunities for significant escalation while contributing little to Ukraine’s ability to change realities on the battlefield.
Hamas hostages and mass slaughter mean Israelis must pursue and destroy
Kevin Myers
Wassem Mahmoud is dead. He was killed in action at the age of twenty in Rafa in Gaza on June 24th. Wassem is Arabic for “blessed” or “handsome” and Mahmoud means “praiseworthy” and is an informal cognate of Mohammed. He shared his name with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian hardliner who seeks the extermination of Israel, and with Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority.
Wassem, an Arab, was the 311th Israeli soldier killed in action in Gaza since the October 7th genocidal attack by Hamas.
Perhaps the most significant part of Wassem’s life is that he had been wounded on October 7th, had recovered and then sought a return to action alongside his fellow Israelis. His period on frontline duty had already ended when he was killed, but again, he had sought an extension rather than abandon his fellow soldiers, and in that final deed of comradeship, forfeited his life.
You may probably look in vain for any account of this gallant young man’s sense of duty to his homeland, for which, as a Druse and a loyal citizen of Israel, he gave his life, because Hamas insisted that the war must go on.
Army assumes support agent role for US Cyber Command
MARK POMERLEAU
The Army subsumed around 350 civilians as it became the combatant command support agent for U.S. Cyber Command effective June 2, according to a release.
That role was previously undertaken by the Air Force, but under the congressionally mandated change, those 350 or so Air Force civilians will now be Army civilians working on behalf of Cybercom.
All combatant commands require a combatant command support agent since they are joint organizations that encompass rotating uniformed staff from all services. These entities are responsible for administrative and logistical support of the headquarters and any subordinate unified commands, which includes professional, technical, administrative, logistical and/or base operating support that is performed in or provided directly to the headquarters of a combatant command to perform the headquarters assigned mission effectively, according to Department of Defense Directive 5100.03.
Thinking The Unthinkable: Israeli Occupation Instead Of A Ceasefire – Analysis
James M. Dorsey
A former Israeli hostage negotiator suggests Hamas may be willing to shift the paradigm in Gaza ceasefire negotiations.
The problem is that Israel is not interested, while Hamas’ commitment to the idea is unclear.
Moreover, negotiations mediated by the United States, Qatar, and Egypt have for months failed to bridge the gap between Hamas’s demand that a ceasefire be permanent and entail a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and Israel’s insistence that the war will continue after a temporary pause that would allow for a prisoner exchange.
Even so, the suggestion has intriguing implications.
Gershon Baskin, who negotiated the exchange in 2011 of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit after five years in Hamas captivity for 1,027 Palestinians incarcerated in Israel, including Hamas’ Gaza leader, Yahya Sinwar, disclosed the Hamas proposal.
We Can And Must Adjust To Climate Change – And Not Kill Billions – OpEd
Paul Driessen and Ronald Stein
We’ve always done so and have no right to tell others they can’t have modern living standards
Earth’s climate has changed many times over four billion years, and 99.999% of those changes occurred before humans were on this planet. During that short time, humans adjusted their housing, clothing and agriculture in response to climate changes. Can we now control the climate?
Except for decades-long droughts or massive volcanic explosions that ended some civilizations, humanity generally adjusted successfully – through a Pleistocene Ice Age, a Little Ice Age, a Dust Bowl and other natural crises. Numerous state high temperature records were set in Dust Bowl years.
After putting our current “microsecond” on Earth into its proper perspective, we might therefore ask:
* With today’s vastly superior technologies, why would humanity possibly be unable to adjust to even a few-degrees temperature increase, especially with more atmospheric carbon dioxide helping plants grow faster and better, providing more food for animals and people?
The World of Balance
George Friedman
The international system is always changing. It usually shifts one piece at a time, each one constrained by the system to dampen its impact – and thus maintain balance and stability. Many years ago, for example, when China entered a period of breakneck economic growth, it did so without the U.S. investment and trade needed to stabilize the global impact of its rise. Yet the international system as a whole remained balanced. The world is designed to manage singular and limited shifts, as evidenced by the decades it took to create something as intricate as the European Union. It is much less comfortable managing relatively sudden and widespread shifts – which is exactly what is happening now.
On the borders of Russia, President Vladimir Putin has submitted a peace proposal, which is essentially an acceptance of the fact that Russia does not have the power to retake all of Ukraine and would settle for minor concessions. This is, in itself, notable. Before the war, Russia was widely thought to have reclaimed much of the military and political power it lost in the fall of the Soviet Union. Putin’s proposal confirms that Russia’s recovery was an illusion and, in doing so, tacitly informs other nations that they ought to reconsider their Russia strategies accordingly.
Meanwhile, the European Union is in disarray. The EU helped stabilize a region given to war by embracing common liberal ideologies while discarding its imperial power and aligning with the United States. This system has been compromised by national interests, some of which run counter to the liberal ideals on which the bloc was founded. Recent elections in Europe, which resulted in the success of many right-wing candidates, call into question the ideals of the past and threaten to give way to a new Europe. How this process plays out will change Europe’s relationship with both the United States and Russia.
A Foreign Policy for the World as It Is
Ben Rhodes
“America is back.” In the early days of his presidency, Joe Biden repeated those words as a starting point for his foreign policy. The phrase offered a bumper-sticker slogan to pivot away from Donald Trump’s chaotic leadership. It also suggested that the United States could reclaim its self-conception as a virtuous hegemon, that it could make the rules-based international order great again. Yet even though a return to competent normalcy was in order, the Biden administration’s mindset of restoration has occasionally struggled against the currents of our disordered times. An updated conception of U.S. leadership—one tailored to a world that has moved on from American primacy and the eccentricities of American politics—is necessary to minimize enormous risks and pursue new opportunities.
To be sure, Biden’s initial pledge was a balm to many after Trump’s presidency ended in the dual catastrophes of COVID-19 and the January 6 insurrection. Yet two challenges largely beyond the Biden administration’s control shadowed the message of superpower restoration. First was the specter of Trump’s return. Allies watched nervously as the former president maintained his grip on the Republican Party and Washington remained mired in dysfunction. Autocratic adversaries, most notably Russian President Vladimir Putin, bet on Washington’s lack of staying power. New multilateral agreements akin to the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris agreement on climate change, or the Trans-Pacific Partnership were impossible, given the vertiginous swings in U.S. foreign policy.
Role of nuclear weapons grows as geopolitical relations deteriorate—new SIPRI Yearbook out now
Nuclear arsenals being strengthened around the world
The nine nuclear-armed states—the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and Israel—continued to modernize their nuclear arsenals and several deployed new nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable weapon systems in 2023.
Of the total global inventory of an estimated 12 121 warheads in January 2024, about 9585 were in military stockpiles for potential use (see the table below). An estimated 3904 of those warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft—60 more than in January 2023—and the rest were in central storage. Around 2100 of the deployed warheads were kept in a state of high operational alert on ballistic missiles. Nearly all of these warheads belonged to Russia or the USA, but for the first time China is believed to have some warheads on high operational alert.
‘While the global total of nuclear warheads continues to fall as cold war-era weapons are gradually dismantled, regrettably we continue to see year-on-year increases in the number of operational nuclear warheads,’ said SIPRI Director Dan Smith. ‘This trend seems likely to continue and probably accelerate in the coming years and is extremely concerning.’
Ukraine’s naval drone success holds a huge lesson for the U.S. Navy - Opinion
Max Boot
It hasn’t received the attention it deserves, but Ukraine’s unexpected victory in the battle of the Black Sea could be a landmark achievement in the annals of naval warfare. Without a standing navy of its own, Ukraine has disabled at least one-third of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, broken the Russian naval blockade and reopened the Black Sea to its grain exports. Ukraine’s export volumes are now approaching prewar levels, providing a huge boon to its wartime economy.
How did Ukraine pull off this improbable feat? Part of the explanation can be found in its use of potent anti-ship cruise missiles, including the domestically produced Neptune, which in 2022 sank the Moskva, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. But Ukraine has also innovated brilliantly by developing its own unmanned surface vessels, which can hunt Russian warships in wolf packs.
Both the Magura V5 and the Sea Baby are essentially unmanned speedboats that can be packed with explosives or even fire their own missiles. They are equipped with cameras and satellite links that allow distant controllers to steer them toward their targets, they travel fast (up to 50 mph), and they are made of materials difficult to detect on radar. Best of all, they are cheap to produce and don’t put any Ukrainian personnel at risk. Drones costing only a few hundred thousand dollars are sinking multimillion-dollar warships that can take years to manufacture.
D-Day and the Threat of Total War
ROBERT SKIDELSKY
The ceremonies marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day on June 6 commemorated the thousands of young lives lost on the beaches of Normandy in 1944. While the media eagerly criticized British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for skipping some commemorative events, it is worth asking: What was being honored? Was it the courage of “our” soldiers – as opposed to their German counterparts – or the freedoms they were fighting for?
Before World War I, few people questioned the grounds for sending soldiers into battle. In the pre-modern world, people fought for God. In modern times, they fought for “King and Country.” Both religious faith and patriotism were viewed as inherently noble causes that justified enormous sacrifices.
It was only in the nineteenth century that people began questioning the causes for which young men were asked to fight, giving rise to the first modern peace movements. While these groups were influenced by various strands of thought, including Christian pacifism, they were primarily driven by the emergence of humanitarianism and the economics of capitalism.
NATO and friends: a tale of two exercises
Callum Fraser
As NATO prepares to mark its 75th anniversary against the dark backdrop of the Ukraine conflict, it has just completed its largest and perhaps most significant post-Cold War exercise, Steadfast Defender. On the other side of the world, where strategic clouds are gathering, Australia and the United States are laying plans for the largest and most important edition yet of their main biennial joint training exercise, Talisman Sabre. This will likely also involve the most significant contributions yet by other partner nations, including from Europe.
These two major sets of manoeuvres are a reminder of the importance of exercises in delivering defence, deterrence and strategic messaging – demonstrating both will and capability. They also point to the increasingly intertwined security concerns and connections between the Euro-Atlantic and Asia-Pacific theatres.
Happy anniversary?
NATO came into being on 4 April 1949 with twelve founding members. Its current 32 members will gather for a two-day anniversary summit in Washington from 9 July. In a sense, the Ukraine conflict has given the Alliance a new sense of purpose. Five years ago, French President Emmanuel Macron argued that NATO was ‘brain-dead’. Since then, it has sought to revitalise its strategic plans, culminating in a new NATO Force Model with greatly enhanced ambition for force generation and readiness.
Missile transfers to Ukraine and wider NATO targeting dilemmas
Zuzanna Gwadera & Timothy Wright
Tit-for-tat missile transfers In April 2024, Ukraine received a ‘significant number’ of a longer-range variant of the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) as part of a new United States military aid package. Washington provided Kyiv with a shorter-range ATACMS variant in October 2023 known as the M39 Block I. This has a range of 165 kilometres, which is insufficient to strike targets across occupied Crimea. It also uses a cluster-munition warhead and as such is not suited for use against hardened targets.
The transfer of the unspecified longer-range variant represents a shift in US policy. The Biden administration was previously hesitant to provide Ukraine with longer-range missiles due to unease over the potential for escalation and because of stockpile concerns. Russia’s use of Hwasong-11A (KN-23) and/or Hwasong-11B (KN-24) SRBMs – two missiles supplied by North Korea that have a greater range than any ATACMS variant – seems to have influenced Washington’s decision. The US assesses Russia launched over 40 North Korean-produced missiles against Ukraine between December 2023 and May 2024.
Longer-range ATACMS variants include those equipped with unitary or cluster warheads and all have ranges of up to 300 km. It is unclear which ATACMS variant (or variants) has been transferred. However, the limited area effects visible in imagery of Ukraine’s 30 May strike on ferries in the Kerch Strait, which allegedly used ATACMS, suggests that the transfer might have included a unitary warhead variant. The US may have transferred some of its remaining units of older ATACMS while it replenishes its stockpiles with the newly produced M57 variant, which has reduced stockpile concerns.
WTH The state of the war in Israel
DANIELLE PLETKA
The Hostages
What’s now clear to the world is that one reason it has been so difficult to find and rescue hostages is that they are living with “regular” Gazans, serving as slaves in their homes, suffering regular beatings, malnutrition, and psychological and physical torture at the hands of individuals not known to be members of Hamas.
Some have integrated this information with polls showing widespread support among Gazans for October 7th, to suggest that Gaza is irretrievably lost — that Gaza is Hamas. Haviv points out that it’s more complex than that: Gazans love and hate Hamas; they suffer at Hamas’s hands, yet appreciate their effectiveness against the Israeli enemy. What that suggests is that fatally disabling Hamas and replacing it with a technocratic government is critical. Who staffs that government? Excellent question, with no viable answers as yet. I wrote about this back in November, and not much has changed.
In the wake of the hostage rescue, Hamas put out the order that if Israeli troops are advancing, hostages are to be killed. Is this a death sentence for the remaining living hostages? Not necessarily. What’s evident is that the hostage rescue relied at least in part on human intelligence from Palestinians. Imagine there are hostages living next door; if you rat out their “hosts,” the odds of your being killed in the coming Israeli onslaught are lower. In other words, all is not lost.
The War
Israeli authorities have suggested the war with Hamas will continue until 2025. Meanwhile, the Biden administration has done its utmost to stymie the Israeli war effort, leaning so hard on the Jerusalem government that the assault on Rafah was, for all intents and purposes, paused for three months; alternately threatening and praising the Israeli government, but since early 2024, consistently providing Hamas with a reason to believe it can prevail if it hangs on long enough.
Why great powers fight, and why they cooperate
MICHAEL HOLMES
Why did Europe go to war in 1914? How did the Cold War end? Will the U.S. and China go to war over Taiwan? Imagine a grand chessboard stretching across the globe, where great powers with vast resources strategize and maneuver their pieces.
In this high-stakes game of survival, each move reflects a nation's pursuit of security, wealth, prestige and influence. Every nation must navigate the wide and intricate web of alliances and trade, rivalries, and war. The great powers must vigilantly track all the pieces on the board and anticipate many moves ahead.
Every move — a trade agreement, military deployment, or diplomatic negotiation — can have far-reaching and unintended consequences. It can either strengthen bonds of cooperation or push nations closer to conflict.
AI In Robotics Reshaping The Industrial World
The history of robots in manufacturing goes back to 1962, when a 4,000-pound, one-armed robot named Unimate was installed at a GM plant in Trenton, New Jersey to lift and stack hot pieces of metal. It was a revolution in manufacturing, but only the first of many. Today, the integration of AI in manufacturing promises to transform the industrial sector just as much as Unimate did, provided organizations can overcome adoption challenges and embrace the necessary leadership and cultural changes.
AI is transforming robotics, although we are still in the early stages of developing use cases. Companies are now developing advanced robots (“cobots”, collaborative robots, or “AMRs”, autonomous mobile robots) equipped with AI that can learn and adapt to new tasks, functioning in real-world situations that pre-programmed systems frequently fail to operate autonomously in. Deep learning algorithms can analyze high-resolution images to detect and remove defective parts in real time. The overall goal is that by combining highly reliable but inflexible technology like robotics with a highly flexible but less reliable technology like AI algorithms, you will get the best of both worlds.
Google Gemini, explained
Barbara Krasnoff
Artificial intelligence has become this year’s wonder technology. But because it comes in a lot of different flavors from a lot of different companies, it can be really confusing. You’ve not only got the ChatGPT bot created by OpenAI, but you’ve got the big three — Google, Apple, and Microsoft — cooking up their own versions.
Google’s latest attempt is called Gemini, and it’s no less confusing than the others.
When I first started researching Gemini, I did a Google search for “versions of Google Gemini.” On top of the search, I got an AI-generated summary that started:
“Google Gemini has three versions: Ultra, Pro, and Nano. Ultra is the largest model and is designed for complex tasks, while Pro is the best model for scaling across a wide range of tasks, and Nano is the most efficient model for on-device tasks.”
Okay, good enough. But it’s not the complete story.
Future Wars Will Be Cyber—Here's How To Protect Your Organization
In 1999, I interviewed a futurist from a popular publication who told me that the wars of the future would not include missiles, bombs and bullets (kinetic), but would be fought computer versus computer. Since we are in the age of AI and quantum computing, what was then science fiction is now becoming science fact.
Today, quantum computers pose a huge threat to internet data security—and the internet is a way of life for most of us. While we are not yet at a point where nations will surrender based on losing a computer battle, let’s see where we are today and how we will soon reach a non-kinetic battlefront fought only in cyberspace.
The Role Of Cyberattacks In War
In addition to being cost-effective and stealthy, cyberattacks can be even more effective than bombs and missiles since cyberattacks can cripple critical infrastructure, such as weapons systems, GPS, energy grids and financial systems. Additionally, data can be stolen today and stored for nefarious use after it is decrypted in the future (by a quantum computer or other means).
Taking Further Agency Action on A
Will Dobbs-Allsopp, Reed Shaw, Anna Rodriguez, Todd Phillips, Rachael Klarman, Adam Conner, Nicole Alvarez & Ben Olinsky
In response to the surge of attention, excitement, and fear surrounding AI developments since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November 2022,1 governments worldwide2 have rushed to address the risks and opportunities of AI.3 In the United States, policymakers have sharply disagreed about the necessity and scope of potential new AI legislation.4 By contrast, stakeholders ranging from government officials and advocates to academics and companies seem to agree that it is essential for policymakers to utilize existing laws to address the risks and opportunities of AI where possible, especially in the absence of congressional action.5
What this means in practice, however, remains murky. What are the statutory authorities and policy levers available to the federal government in the context of AI? And how should policymakers use them? To date, there has been no comprehensive survey to map the federal government’s existing ability to impose guardrails on the use of AI across the economy. In 2019, the Trump administration issued Executive Order 13859,6 which directed agencies to “review their [regulatory] authorities relevant to applications of AI.”7 Subsequent 2020 OMB guidance further required: “The agency plan must identify any statutory authorities specifically governing agency regulation of AI applications, as well as collections of AI-related information from regulated entities.”8 Unfortunately, it appears the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was the only agency to respond in detail.9