Vicky Karyoti
Today, nearly every single article or book discussing the possible impact of military AI, references that one famous quote by Vladimir Putin: “Whoever leads in AI will rule the world.”
Since the dawn of history, warfighting has gone hand-in-hand with technological innovation. With the risk of sounding technologically deterministic, one could hardly deny the importance and centrality of the available war technology at any battle, campaign, and war effort. Students of military history are bombarded with stories about how the stirrups or the gunpowder transformed not only the way wars were fought, but the extended socio-political structure of whole continents. Today, nearly every single article or book discussing the possible impact of military AI, references that one famous quote by Vladimir Putin: “Whoever leads in AI will rule the world.” An entire field of organizational studies, namely innovation studies, has been created to study exactly the circumstances under which innovation can foster, which actors can most suitably promote innovation, and how innovations might be militarily effective through proper implementation. But less attention has been drawn towards the relationship between technological innovation, and those who are most affected by it; in other words, the military professionals tasked with implementing, planning, and using it.
When a new technological innovation is introduced, the surrounding discussions focus on its applications, its possible effectiveness, and how to best make sure it predictably and consistently remains functional. How military professionals will use it becomes the purview of training experts, who painstakingly design appropriate training regimes for their use, how to adapt to cases of malfunction or complete system failure, and how to coordinate with colleagues around the new technology. Here, I argue that there is an overarching set of key competencies that professional military education (PME) programs should aim to develop in the officers, not only those whose tasks and expertise will be most closely tied to the any new technology, but all of them. This article is therefore trying to address the questions of what are the key technology and innovation-related competencies that program designers and owners should aim to develop, and what challenges might they encounter in their efforts? Through the examination of these questions, the article argues that, while each technology brings its own particular challenges, there is a set of organizational and sociologically informed points of pressure, that if appropriately and systematically addressed, will be beneficial in preparing officers for the wars to come. The answer suggested here is a separate, comprehensive education track within the PME programs that is created and tailored for preparing officers for working with and around new military technologies. Finally, I do not claim that this approach does not already exist in some capacity in PME programs, but that their systematization through the lens of the key competencies will provide officers with an across-the-board set of skills, which might otherwise be fragmented or ad hoc.
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