There has been a marked increase in security, war, existential threat, related news stories recently. It seems that every day a new story breaks through on to the front pages. Stories which a few years ago would have been shocking and would have dominated the headlines and discourse for weeks or months. Now they are crowded out within a few hours, or days by another bigger broader story.
Is this evidence of arms race fever?
Is it just media churn going into overdrive?
Is it an amalgamation of threats, risks in different domains coming together to crystallise into existential threats for humanity as a whole, or civilisation as we have become accustomed to?
Just this week there are stories of hackers, ShinyHunters, hacking and stealing the personal details of all the agents of the FBI. Then there are the AI hacks, where rogue AI systems seem to be able to hack into anything.
Then there is threats envisioned around the development of AI
Also it has emerged in speeches at the UN this week that there is an emerging security risk in space. Where satellites may be targeted, that there is a race to dominate this space. The U.K. has announced a new military programme of space security and that the U.S. has had a secret weapon in space for some time.
Just yesterday Trump hosted China’s Xi in Washington where they are having a face off about AI domination. Trump has rejected calls for some kind of international monitoring and regulation of AI development. Xi spoke openly about the threat of the Thucydides Trap, in his speech. Warning the U.S. against escalating trade wars and risking real wars between competing superpowers.
Along side this we have commodities wars and shortages going on as a result of the Ukraine and Iranian wars. Economies and the global economy are reeling at the disruption and turmoil. Europe is racing to re-arm to contain a sabre rattling Russia.
This reminds me of the arms and technology race prior to the First World War in Europe. Where the fever pitch of the rhetoric became deafening.
We can draw various conclusions on current geopolitical matters and I absolutely agree with China, the US has gone into a protectionist overdrive which Trump believes will benefit US interests. This I suppose is the correct stance to adapt if we perceive China to be a real threat.
Israel on the other hand has foolishly misused the backing of the US to start their own wars against the Arab states that it is surrounded by, there might be a turning point in their relationship with the US because of this.
As for Ukraine, the leadership there is fairly good at keeping the Russian enemy at bay even though the war appears to be an unhealthy stalemate, and I hope for the sake of peace that both sides sit on the table and agree to terms of ceasefire or permanent peace which entirely depends on Putin accepting that he made a HUGE mistake starting this war in the first place, but we shall see
Yes, China is definitely a serious competitor and threat when it comes to AI dominance. I think they basically had a face off, with no compromise, or agreements about the issue. The protectionism you refer to is a retreat by the U.S. from her geopolitical alliances which have taken decades to put in place. Replacing them with tariff wars and seeding the role of the world’s leading superpower to China. So really China has now passed the U.S. and is already the new leading superpower.
Isreal is the tail wagging the dog, by convincing the Trump to go to war with Iran. Another demonstration of U.S. weakness. Now we see that U.S. ammunition stocks are depleted and Iran is still holding the the straits of Hormuz to ransom.
Yes, this has been debated on the forum extensively. What I’m thinking of here though is the advances in drone technology being undertaken by Ukraine. There are collaborations with European countries in this endeavour. Indeed there is a development and production facility near me at RAF Mildenhall in England. With evidence of Russian drone activity in the area. This development is changing the face of warfare with advanced drones cheaply produced in large numbers able to overwhelm traditional forces. And penetrate deep into enemy territory.
In the OP I was thinking more of advances in AI becoming an arms race and the fears about where this will lead and what the future threats will be.
Ah I see where your concerns lie. AI is the Pandora’s box. It’s got potential to equal us in most areas especially scientific, mathematical, biochemistry engineering etc. the issue is one of Qualia, AI does not have sense organs like we do to be able to enjoy the simple pleasures of life such as a cup of tea, a beer or sex nor can it contemplate mortality. The way it’s going it looks like it can realise immortality but that’s like saying a calculator is immortal because it does not rot decay or susceptible to biological degradation such as aging.
But that’s what makes us humans unique, even if we were to accept/grant/delegate superiority to machines. The advancement of AI is truly scary right now and poses danger as we have seen recently where they found vulnerabilities in an almost sandbox environment and got out onto the main internet. Now the issue is about portability and open source nature of it because the way it’s going it will be available to any nation state with sufficient IT infrastructure, and herein lies the problem because the leadership of such states can be malignant and create hereto unheard of bioweapons such as new fast spreading viruses etc.
as such it’s an arms race but it needn’t be because if used with good intention it’s a force for good. Yet the current geopolitical climate with petty bickering and needless wars hints and highlights the worst aspect of human nature.
the moto live and let live should be adapted now more than ever but there’s some truly shocking genocide that’s happening where the Netanyahu regime is showing utmost cruelty towards fellow human beings because of difference in ideology and religion. The retaliation in response to what hamas did is disproportionate. Yet the cause of resentment from both sides can be resolved, I believe this can be achieved although the new Jewish settlements there are a step too far. I believe this is the most pressing issue right now not just AI.
Btw did you see how most of the UN members walked out when Netanyahu gave his speech ?
There obviously is an arms race going. If you haven’t noticed, Russia has gone into full wartime economy mode. The attack on Ukraine AND Trump’s demands (basically his unreliability as an ally) has made NATO to ramp up it’s own military spending and industry.
And then there’s China that has now the largest naval fleet in the World and building warships, missiles and fighters at a record pace. Plus will likely double it’s nuclear arms.
So yes, there is an arms race going on.
There’s similarities to pre WW1 era, but many things are different. First of all, we do know how lethal the modern weapons are: there is a large-scale conventional war going on in Ukraine. And Russia is saying that it is already in a war with NATO. That’s a bit different from the time Europe was sleepwalking to a conflict. I think we are now quite more awake.
At least what we can surely say that we aren’t anymore living in a time of deep peace where wars are limited to other continents and the possibility of the conflicts expanding isn’t just theoretical, but a genuine (if small) possibility.
Yes, certainly in Europe and Russia. Also I acknowledge the efforts by China to become the largest military in the world.
Yes, in terms of conventional arms. But I’m thinking of drone and autonomous technology. Which is developing fast and we really don’t know where that will take us, or how a bad actor may use them.
There are some real tensions and race in technology and some shift in international relations is occurring, but in situation where there are falling standards and systemic problems where no one has solutions and growing dissatisfaction among citizens, falling standards then fear-mongering and outrage creation is usual tactic that works.
What I find as really odd is that people nowadays are getting involved in heated arguments about things that aren’t affecting them in any meaningful way in other parts of the world and Hungarian and Argentinian elections and freedom of speech in UK without any proper understanding of the situation.
Well when I read your post, I can’t decide which way to read it. Is it right wing populists who are exploiting climate fear to claim that climate action is a rip off, or hoax?
Or alternatively is it leftists convincing us that the climate crisis is existential and making us make expensive changes to technology and lifestyles to tackle it?
There’s a political divide, which side of it are you on?
Well there is social breakdown, including morals and the social contract. There is also some political breakdown as old models are being challenged etc. But when it comes to technology, there isn’t a falling in standards. They are still improving and becoming more efficient. The transition to electric vehicles and more efficient electrical goods is going well.
The causes of dissatisfaction among citizens in the West is caused by globalisation and the competitiveness of China and other Far Eastern economies. I have written in more detail about this in another thread (Pax Americana). Resulting in a shift away from manufacturing, towards financial and hi tech economies in the West. A transition which was poorly managed, resulting in these socio economic problems.
Well I am in the U.K., so can comment at length about the free speech issue. Otherwise I generally focus on US, European and global issues.
Basically drones are conventional arms. First flew in WW2 (the famous V-1 flying bomb and others), the US used them in the Vietnam war and the Israelis gained an upper hand against Syria during the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 by using drones in large formations (that mimicked IAF combat aircraft and revealed Syrian radar sites). Yet Then the drones were only scouting and observation platforms.
What basically has happened is a revolution in scale and a dramatic reduction in cost in a role where earlier you needed manned aircraft. Manned aircraft have been and are very expensive and you needed a developed and large organized air force. Now tactical air power is replaced with rather inexpensive systems. Cruise missiles aren’t anymore limited as they were during the Cold War to the two Superpowers. I think this development something equivalent to the fielding of the machine gun in numbers to the battlefield: something that totally changes earlier tactics, once the weapon system is used frequently at the platoon level, even if the Gatling gun was an old invention. Also rocket technology has gotten more cheaper and widespread.
The results you can see now in two ongoing conflicts. In Iran it’s really likely that indeed the conventional Iranian air force and navy has been destroyed, yet Iran is totally able to hit US bases and have them basically withdraw from the region. Iran’s “mosaic defense” strategy has worked.
Ukraine basically didn’t have (and doesn’t have now) a navy, yet it has destroyed many surface combatants of the Russian Black Sea fleet, which has had to withdraw from Sevastopol. Also Ukraine has the ability to strike Moscow and further away targets without it’s conventional air force basically never even attempting to fly into Russian held territory. Earlier such attacks would have needed a huge air force.
Basically this leaves many armed forces to be very vulnerable and de facto using antiquated tactics if opposed by a military that does use modern drone and missile warfare in quantity. The next leap that is now happening is that drone swarms are assisted by AI, which creates one operator capable of commanding a huge swarm of drones. Yet we have to remember that lot of the drones can be defended against with Cold War-era air defense systems, starting with an WW2 era heavy machine gun. So not everything has changed.
By climate of fear, I meant right wing populists play up fears about other countries ambitions largely for domestic reasons.
I appreciate that this does not prove that there is not an ams race developing.
But before we assume that it is inevitable lets us recall that in America, at least, it seems to be quite unpopular and Americans have choices at the ballot box.
You should debate about free speech in your country and get involved in political, economical and other issues, what I was trying to say that in reality most of political arguments are distraction and taking eyes off the ball, so to speak- and most of the media rattling and fear-mongering is serving the same purpose, in my opinion- because if you listen to any media- they don’t give you an information- they give you “full package” it already processed for you, you don’t need to think, there are scriptwriters who do that for you.
As for the technological race- we humans are just competitive and if you look at the end of the cold war- collapse of SSSR in long run affected USA as badly as Russians, as having an “arch enemy” has its own benefits.
This is where I see a problem, not just with online activity though. But with autonomous machines and drones. Someone could already be producing an army of small cheap drones, which can be controlled by AI. With a lethal weapon in each one.
Yes, I did see the delegates walk out and Netanyahu descend into a rant.
This is what I was thinking about, but also the developments in AI which are being depicted as a race. Both things which could in some way, in the worst case scenario overwhelm normal society, or countries. There could be vast swarms of very small drones, the size of a matchbox, or fly, able to deliver a lethal dose of a nerve agent, for example. Entirely autonomous each one with the name, bio data and location of a person in a population to be targeted. They would come into your home and kill an entire population overnight.
I think you have still some basic rules of economy that one has to think about: drone size of a matchbox with a dose of nerve agent sounds impractical and not very cost effective and would need another drone to carry them to a target area. Think about the Shaheed-drones, which have been copied quite a lot now by many nations (including the US). There you can see the size of cost effective warhead to size of drone, cheap motor to fuel and range. All that amounts to a cheap, simple and cost effective weapon system. Putting a jet motor to it makes it more difficult to shoot down, but also more costly. Making everything smaller to the matchbox size will be far more costly.
There’s now really a revolution in warfare going on and I fear that the Trump administration with all it’s nonsense, stupidly started wars and firings of generals will make the US military distracted and unable to reorganize and develop it’s tactics as it has earlier done. That would need simply that the politicians would leave the generals to do what they want and not have the White House/political leadership micromanaging the military.
There usually emerges these rules of cost effectiveness, which for example have kept modern fire arms technically rather similar to their earlier counterparts in the late 19th Century early 20th century, and these firearms haven’t been replaced by ray-guns as 20th Century Scifi conclude about our Century.
Yes, match box size drones containing nerve agents might not seem viable at the moment, due to the limitations you suggest. But we don’t know where this technological arms race will take us. In 10 years, or 50 years, these things might be developed in secrecy, or more effective warfare technologies that we can barely imagine now might be in play.
I would be looking at where AI and autonomous vehicles would emulate strategies already exploited in nature to begin with. Like how insects, or viruses make use of large animals like mammals as a resource. A miniature drone for example might emulate a fly. Flies get everywhere and are easily replicable. Viruses use them as effective vectors.
This is where I would be looking for an arms race, rather than conventional weapons, which are becoming more and more expensive these days.
When we look at the history of arms races and weapon system development in general, a distinct pattern emerges.
Usually the technology doesn’t change. It can be the same for centuries. A truly phenomenal invention like the aircraft, the long range rocket or the atom bomb, creates a rapid technological improvement phase lasting about two to three decades. Then the rapid advancement slows down and some of the most inventive and combat effective weapon systems will then go have a very long life. The newest B-52s now flying in the USAF were built in 1962 and can keep on until they are 100 years old perhaps. Old viable systems do linger on for a very long time. I was still (in the early 1990’s) taught in the military to use the bayonet. It was the last remnant of the Cold Weapons era, the way to combine close quarters defense with firearms (earlier from the 15th to 17th Century it had been the pikemen defending the line of arqebusiers). Bayonets were used for the first time in the 30-years war and still modern assault rifles like the American M4/M16 family have an attachment for the bayonet, which usually is also a handy knife.
With drones I guess the real limitation will be simply physics and engine and fuel/battery limitations, not AI control or AI production. Just as the speed of sound has basically made a limitation for aircraft (the vast majority of aircraft, even combat aircraft, spend much time flying slower than the speed of sound), such physical limitations will likely limit the scope just where AI drones and robots can develop from here. It’s not the fact that there indeed can be missiles flying multiple times the speed of sound, but they are extremely expensive and too simply not cost efficient.
So with the example of your tiny nerve-gas delivery drone, it might be that there will be these with the CIA and the Russian intelligence services. Likely a couple, and likely specifically built to kill some high value target, the future Fidel Castro or something.
But the idea of huge swarms of those attacking a city is truly Scifi. The world of arms procurement doesn’t work that way. This can also generalized to all technological advances. I’ll give a different example: the makers of the film “2001 A Space Odyssey” truly thought that their movie would be a realistic forecast of the future technology in the year 2001. Well, in 1968 space flight and rocketry were in the rapid development stage, with the first pioneers like Werner von Braun still at the helm. The idea that similar rapid development would continue (as in 1935-1968) decades more is a very common error that people make.
