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The U.S. military was able to strike a blistering 1,000 targets in the first 24 hours of its attack on Iran thanks in part to its use of artificial intelligence, according to The Washington Post. The military has used Claude, the AI tool from Anthropic, combined with Palantirs Maven system, for real-time targeting and target prioritization in support of combat operations in Iran and Venezuela. While Claude is only a few years old, the U.S. militarys ability to use it, or any other AI, did not emerge overnight. The effective use of automated systems depends on extensive infrastructure and skilled personnel. It is only thanks to many decades of investment and experience that the U.S. can use AI in war today. In my experience as an international relations scholar studying strategic technology at Georgia Tech, and previously as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy, I find that digital systems are only as good as the organizations that use them. Some organizations squander the potential of advanced technologies, while others can compensate for technological weaknesses. Myth and reality in military AI Science fiction tales of military AI are often misleading. Popular ideas of killer robots and drone swarms tend to overstate the autonomy of AI systems and understate the role of human beings. Success, or failure, in war usually depends not on machines but the people who use them. In the real world, military AI refers to a huge collection of different systems and tasks. The two main categories are automated weapons and decision support systems. Automated weapon systems have some ability to select or engage targets by themselves. These weapons are more often the subject of science fiction and the focus of considerable debate. Decision support systems, in contrast, are now at the heart of most modern militaries. These are software applications that provide intelligence and planning information to human personnel. Many military applications of AI, including in current and recent wars in the Middle East, are for decision support systems rather than weapons. Modern combat organizations rely on countless digital applications for intelligence analysis, campaign planning, battle management, communications, logistics, administration, and cybersecurity. Claude is an example of a decision support system, not a weapon. Claude is embedded in the Maven Smart System, used widely by military, intelligence, and law enforcement organizations. Maven uses AI algorithms to identify potential targets from satellite and other intelligence data, and Claude helps military planners sort the information and decide on targets and priorities. The Israeli Lavender and Gospel systems used in the Gaza war and elsewhere are also decision support systems. These AI applications provide analytical and planning support, but human beings ultimately make the decisions. Researcher Craig Jones explains how the U.S. military is using artificial intelligence in its attack on Iran, and some of the issues that arise from its use. The long history of military AI Weapons with some degree of autonomy have been used in war for well over a century. Nineteenth-century naval mines exploded on contact. German buzz bombs in World War II were gyroscopically guided. Homing torpedoes and heat-seeking missiles alter their trajectory to intercept maneuvering targets. Many air defense systems, such as Israels Iron Dome and the U.S. Patriot system, have long offered fully automatic modes. Robotic drones became prevalent in the wars of the 21st century. Uncrewed systems now perform a variety of dull, dirty, and dangerous tasks on land, at sea, in the air and in orbit. Remotely piloted vehicles like the U.S. MQ-9 Reaper or Israeli Hermes 900, which can loiter autonomously for many hours, provide a platform for reconnaissance and strikes. Combatants in the Russia-Ukraine war have pioneered the use of first-person view drones as kamikaze munitions. Some drones rely on AI to acquire targets because electronic jamming precludes remote control by human operators. But systems that automate reconnaissance and strikes are merely the most visible parts of the automation revolution. The ability to see farther and hit faster dramatically increases the information processing burden on military organizations. This is where decision support systems come in. If automated weapons improve the eyes and arms of a military, decision support systems augment the brain. Cold War-era command-and-control systems anticipated modern decision support systems such as Israels AI-enabled Tzayad for battle management. Automation research projects like the U.S.s Semi-Automatic Ground Environment, or SAGE, in the 1950s produced important innovations in computer memory and interfaces. In the U.S. war in Vietnam, Igloo White gathered intelligence data into a centralized computer for coordinating U.S. airstrikes on North Vietnamese supply lines. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agencys strategic computing program in the 1980s spurred advances in semiconductors and expert systems. Indeed, defense funding originally enabled the rise of AI. Organizations enable automated warfare Automated weapons and decision support systems rely on complementary organizational innovation. From the Electronic Battlefield of Vietnam to the AirLand Battle doctrine of the late Cold War and later concepts of network-centric warfare, the U.S. military has developed new ideas and organizational concepts. Particularly noteworthy is the emergence of a new style of special operations during the U.S. global war on terrorism. AI-enabled decision support systems became invaluable for finding terrorist operatives, planning raids to kill or capture them, and analyzing intelligence collected in the process. Systems like Maven became essential for this style of counterterrorism. The impressive American way of war on display in Venezuela and Iran is the fruition of decades of trial and error. The U.S. military has honed complex processes for gathering intelligence from many sources, analyzing target systems, evaluating options for attacking them, coordinating joint operations, and assessing bomb damage. The only reason AI can be used throughout the targeting cycle is that countless human personnel everywhere work to keep it running. AI gives rise to important concerns about automation bias, or the tendency for people to give excessive weight to automated decisions, in military targeting. But these are not new concerns. Igloo White was often misled by Vietnamese decoys. A state-of-the-art U.S. Aegis cruiser accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner in 1988. Intelligence mistakes led U.S. stealth bombers to accidentally strike the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Serbia, in 1999. Many Iraqi and Afghan civilians died due to analytical mistakes and cultural biases within the U.S. military. Most recently, evidence suggests that a Tomahawk cruise missile struck a girls school adjacent to an Iranian naval base, killing about 175 people, mostly students. This targeting could have resulted from a U.S. intelligence failure. Automated prediction needs human judgment The successes and failures of decision support systems in war are due more to organizational factors than technology. AI can help organizations improve their efficiency, but AI can also amplify organizational biases. While it may be tempting to blame Lavender for excessive civilian deaths in the Gaza Strip, lax Israeli rules of engagement likely matter more than automation bias. As the name implies, decision support systems support human decision-making; AI does not replace people. Human personnel still play important roles in designing, managing, interpreting, validating, evaluating, repairing, and protecting their systems and data flows. Commanders still command. In economic terms, AI improves prediction, which means generating new data based on existing data. But prediction is only one part of decision-making. People ultimately make the judgments that matter about what to predict and how to use predictions. People have preferences, values, and commitments regarding real-world outcomes, but AI systems intrinsically do not. In my view, this means that increasing military use of AI is actually making humans more important in war, not less. Jon R. Lindsay is an associate professor of cybersecurity and privacy and of international affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Oil is a global market, so when prices rise in one place, they rise everywhere. The current war against Iran has already raised oil prices significantly. Mideast oil production has been slowed by efforts to close the Strait of Hormuz, a key route for oil tankers from the Middle East to the rest of the world, as well as by attacksand fears of attackson oil production, storage, and shipment installations. This war has also disrupted the flow of liquefied natural gas from Qatar, which controls almost 20% of the global market. That also affects the world economy and supply chains. Shortages of natural gas affect production of fertilizer and aluminium, as well as other key materials. As a professor who has been studying oil price shocks for two decades, Im often asked about the effects of rising oil prices on the U.S. economy. The answer to that question has changed over the past two decades. The global economic picture Countries that import much of their oil have to pay other countries for that imported oil. That was a problem for the U.S. back in the 1970s through the early 2000s. The U.S. sent billions of dollars a year abroad to oil-producing countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. That money built up other countries economies or sloshed around as financial surpluses that fueled financial market exuberance and asset bubbles that could suddenly pop. Oil imports increased the U.S. trade deficit in the 1970s and beyond. And as a result, U.S. industries suffered from high energy costs, which forced closures of major U.S. steel plants and iron and copper mines. Falling purchases of cars and other durable goods also stimulated worker layoffs. A shift in U.S. production Now, however, the United States is a major producer and exporter of oil and refined petroleum products. Every day, on average, the U.S. exports more than 6 million barrels of refined products and more than 4 million barrels of crude oil. The U.S. does still import some crude oil, most of which is heavy oil from Canada handled at certain American refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Factoring in those imports, net U.S. oil trade balance is a positive 2.8 million barrels per day, as contrasted with the mid-2000s, when the balance was a deficit of 12 million barrels per day. U.S. production comes from 32 statesthough mainly from the biggest producers: Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota, Alaska, Oklahoma, and Colorado. Because that revenue comes to companies in the U.S., the nations gross domestic product is less vulnerable to oil price increases than in the past, when high prices meant more U.S. dollars flowing overseas. window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}); A changed economy In addition to being less dependent on imports, the U.S. economy is much less oil-intensive than it used to be, producing more economic value with far less oil use today than in the past. And researchers at the U.S. Federal Reserve report that gasoline prices havent been a major contributor to U.S. inflation in recent years. Thats because there are lots of ways Americans use less gasoline, including telecommuting and remote work, online shopping, and using electric vehicles and delivery trucks that run on batteries or other fuels. Still, other economists disagree and say current oil prices, which are above $100 a barrel, could increase current U.S. inflation rates by as much as 1 percentage point. The mental toll Though the U.S. is economically less vulnerable to oil-price shocks, there is also a psychological factor. Its hard not to feel pessimistic when gasoline prices at the local pump are already rising: Bulk market prices are already soaring amid hedging trades and speculative fervor among traders and wholesalers and on U.S. commodity futures markets. Americans feel pessimistic about consumer spending when gasoline prices are rising. And a study found that high gas prices even make people feel unhappy. Research also shows that people tend to put off major durable goods purchases, such as automobiles, when oil prices rise sharply. That could mean bad news for the U.S. auto industry. But it is also possible that high gasoline prices might encourage more Americans to consider buying electric cars. That could help the car companies that were having difficulty moving their electric-vehicle inventories. And for people who own electric vehicles, the war and its resulting price increases can be a reminder of the benefits of living gasoline-free. More broadly, th war might be yet another reminder of the benefits of diversifying energy sources away from fossil fuels. As my research shows, oil price shocks generally lead to greater investment in clean technologies. Amy Myers Jaffe is a director at the Energy, Climate Justice, and Sustainability Lab and a research professor at New York University. She is also a faculty affiliate of the Climate Policy Lab at Tufts University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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My friend Jessica Kriegel often warns her clients about the action trap, the urge to do somethinganythingwhen things arent going well. Yet while taking action might make us feel better, its no guarantee well get results. Many leaders fall into this trap, confusing taking action with making an impact, which can blind us to the underlying problem. The truth is that you cant change fundamental behaviors without changing fundamental beliefs. It is, after all, beliefs, in the form of norms, that get encoded into a culture through rituals that drive behaviors. So unless you make a serious effort to understand the underlying problem youre trying to solve, any action you take is unlikely to be effective. Thats why you need to start by asking good questions. While coming up with answers makes us feel decisive, those answers will close doors that should often be left open and explored. Good questions, on the other hand, can lead to genuine breakthroughs. With that in mind, here are three essential questions you need to ask before embarking on a transformational initiative. 1. Is this a Strategic Change or Behavioral Change? Every change effort represents a problem, or set of problems, to be solved. A strategic change starts at the top and needs effective communication and coordination for everybody to play their role, like the famous case at Intel, when Gordon Moore and Andy Grove made the fateful decision to move out of memory chips and bet the company on microprocessors. In a strategic shift, resistance is not particularly relevant. That doesnt mean it doesnt exist. As Grove recounted in his memoir, Only the Paranoid Survive, there were plenty at Intel who questioned the decision. But as chairman and CEO, Moore and Grove had full authority to allocate budgets and convert factories, and the change was going to happen whether people liked it or not. Thats why traditional change management methodologies, like Kotter’s 8 Steps or Proscis ADKAR (awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement), tend to be effective for strategic changes. Yet research shows that change itself has changed. In 1975, 83% of the average U.S. corporations assets were tangible assets, such as plants, machinery, and buildings, while by 2015, 84% were intangible, such as licenses, patents, and research. That means the changes we grapple with today have less to do with strategic assets like factories and equipment and a lot more to do with the things people think and do every day. Clearly, that changes how we need to approach transformation. Because often the most important changes involve collective action, which can be maddeningly complex. People adopt things when they see others around them doing so. Success begets more success, just as failure begets more failure. Big communication campaigns can ignite early resistance and backfire, while isolated individual efforts rarely scale. For collective action problems, we need to focus on, as network science pioneer Duncan Watts put it to me, easily influenced people influencing other easily influenced people. You build momentum and reach critical mass not through persuasion but through connectionby empowering early adopters and helping them influence others. 2. What are the Shared Values? Humans naturally form tribes. In a study of adults who were randomly assigned to leopards and tigers, fMRI scans revealed signs of hostility toward out-group members. Similar results were found in a study involving 5-year-old children and even in infants. Evolutionary psychologists attribute this tendency to kin selection, which explains how groups favor those who share their attributes in the hope that those attributes will be propagated. Our ideas, beliefs, and values tend to reflect the tribes we belong to, and sharing our thoughts and feelings plays a key role in signaling our identity and belonging to these groups. For instance, expressing an expert opinion can demonstrate alignment with a professional community, while sharing a moral stance can signal inclusion in a particular cultural group. Every organization has its own tribes, with their own values, customs, and lore. Divisions and functions develop their own norms, rituals, and behaviors, shaped by their institutional needs and priorities. As the workplace expert David Burkus told me, there isnt really any such thing as an organizational culture because each organization contains multitudes of cultures. So before you start trying to evangelize a transformational initiative across those myriad cultures, with all of their internal biases and emotional trip wires, think about the values they share and build an inclusive vision. That may sound simple and straightforward, but its harder than it seems, which helps explain why so many transformational efforts fail. The problem is that when were passionate about something, we want to focus on how its different, because thats what makes us passionate in the first place. We want to talk about how innovative and disruptive it is. Yet while that may honor the idea itself, it doesnt do much for the people we want to adopt it. If we want them to share our priorities and aspirations, they have to believe that they share our values. 3. What are the Sources of Power? We like to think of transformation as a heros journey. Theres an alternative future state that we want to reach, and wed like to think that if were good enough, we do all the right things, and our cause is righteous, well eventually get to that place. Yet the truth is that change is always a strategic conflict between that future state and the status quo, which always has soures of power keeping it in place. These sources of power have an institutional basis and form pillars supporting the current state. It is only through influencing these pillars that we can bring about genuine change. Without institutional support, the status quo cannot be maintained. Thats why to build an effective transformation strategy, we need to identify the institutions that support the status quo, those that support the future state, and those that are still on the fence and as yet uncommitted. These institutions can be divisions or functions within an organization, customer groups, government agencies, regulators, unions, professional and industry associations, media, educational institutionsthe possibilities are almost endless. Whats important is that they have power and/or resources that can either hold things up or move them forward. Thats what makes them viable targets for action. If you can influence the sources of power upon which the status quo depends, genuine transformation becomes possible. But make no mistake: As long as the forces upholding the status quo stay in place, nothing will ever change. The Power of a Question All too often, transformational initiatives are presented as a fait accompli. A strategy is set, a plan is made, and everything is announced with a lot of hoopla at a big launch event. Questions are treated as a nuisance, something to be batted away rather than engaged with. Change leaders, in an effort that seldom succeeds, try to act as if they have all the answers. Yet while answers tend to close a discussion, questions help us open new doors and lead to genuine insights. Asking What kind of change is this? is essential to building a strategy to overcome challenges. Investigating shared values is key to getting widespread buy-in. Analyzing sources of power is how you identify institutional targets for action. The truth is that every great breakthrough starts with a question. As a child, Einstein asked, What would it be like to ride on a bolt of lightning? which led to his theory of special relativity. He then asked a second question, What would it be like to ride an elevator in space? and that led to his theory of general relativity. Change leaders often feel they need to have all the answers, but what they usually need is to ask moreand betterquestions. Thats the essence of the changemaker mindset: Its not about building consensus around a plan and executing it, but about building a coalition to explore possibilities that lead to a better future.
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