Rough Edges of AI Technologies in Warfare | Manoj Kumar Mishra

Breakthroughs in technology and their adoption in warfare are likely to cause more wars by enhancing states’ capabilities and expectations to deter and dominate their enemies and win wars against them by engendering perceptions that balance of power has shifted in their favour of them. Germany buoyed by its industrial success miscalculated its power and lost to the Soviet Union in World War II. New technologies can also bring in relative stability in the anarchy of International Politics through even distribution of power such as advancement of nuclear technologies in the domain of weaponization has propelled the smaller powers to harness these to offset their conventional military capabilities and maintain rough balance of power with bigger powers. However, unlike the nuclear power, power accrued through cyber and AI technologies is very difficult to measure and compare to ascertain where a state stands vis-a-vis others. Thus, these technologies would rather disturb the existing balance of power by misperceptions and miscalculations.

The wars that are being fought in Europe and Middle East are “total wars” in which the distinction between combatants and noncombatants are not only blurred, the states pooled vast resources by mobilizing their societies including war volunteers, mercenaries, arms industries, technology companies and experts and civilians. Warring parties prioritize warfare over all other state activities, attack a broad variety of targets, and reshape their economies and those of other countries. Any advancement in the domain of AI technology can be assumed critical to win such total wars.

Underlining the criticality of technology in the warfare, China’s white paper on national defense has already made its aspirations of making comprehensive utilization of AI technology and tools for modernizing its army clear and leveraging this in future warfare is called “intelligentization” of warfare. Much in a similar vein, the US, European powers, Saudi Arabia and UAE have indicated their willingness to invest heavily to harness AI in conducting warfare.

While it is true to certain extent that AI technology in warfare can facilitate quicker and more widespread collection and analysis of this kind of information, they could also enable better decisions in conflict by humans that minimize risks for civilians, the limitations of increasing reliance on technology cannot be glossed over.

Synthesizing, analysing and interpretation of information pertaining to the enemy are crucial to a state’s military strategies. On the other hand, misinformation, disinformation, hacking of information, penetrations through virus and generation of hallucination traps are becoming parts of adversaries’ strategies of warfare at the same time. Over-reliance on technology could lead a state’s strategies of warfare to backfire.

Decentralized Warfare with Multiple Actors

While the dangers emanating from nuclear technology in the direction of weaponization is well-known, the state actors still have monopoly over their development and deployment. There are significant numbers of international laws, conventions and treaties which regulate and restrict their production and proliferation. However, harnessing and diffusion of AI technology by its very nature is a decentralized process where private actors such as software companies and individuals with technological expertise are poised to play a crucial part either to strengthen the state actor or to undercut its monopoly over power. Its decentralised nature makes it difficult for states to regulate it at the domestic or international level. State and non-state actors would be in constant competition for power leading to anarchy at the domestic and international levels.

The drone technologies used by state actors have been adopted by non-state actors not merely because of collusion between them as in the case of Iran on the one hand and Hezbollah and Hamas on the other. They are taking assistance from several private actors to gain access to these technologies independent of states as well. Hezbollah has been using Iranian-built reconnaissance drones to violate Israeli airspace apart from its own armoury of drones which include many refined and repackaged versions of old drones to suit its warfare strategies. Similarly, Hamas has been using drones against Israel since October 2023 procuring them from various sources. Diffusion of AI technology could empower these non-state actors exponentially.

As the ongoing wars attest to the crude reality that states are becoming increasingly dependent on sophisticated technologies to blur and undercut the technological edges of their enemies, the phenomenon called "automation bias" referring to increasing inclination of human-beings to uncritically accept technological outputs, recommendations and actions is going to be a reality in not too a distant future. Israeli defence experts while reviewed AI system Lavender’s recommendations before authorising attacks on Hamas, but they no sooner than later began treating them reliable.

In wars, the pressing need for faster, effective and precise responses through AI would undermine human values, temperament and judgment that could function as substantive inputs during the context of wars. Greater automation technologies in warfare would make it harder and almost impossible to leverage different possibilities of diplomatic channels that could open up during the twists and turns of the war.

Some experts point to the possibility of eventual loss of complete human control over AI technology that could lead to the phenomenon of “Hyperwar” referring to a type of conflict and competition so automated that it would collapse the decision action loop comprising stages -Observe, Orient, Decide, Act (OODA) loop where human inputs are vital in each step.

Algorithmic warfare underlining AI is susceptible to various external stimulants that could mislead human-beings and hence constant vigilance, verification and judgement by humans will remain crucial to technology-driven warfare. The day when technology decides the course of war and international politics independent of human agencies, the entire human civilisation that has come of age evolving over the millennia will collapse.

(Author: Dr. Manoj Kumar Mishra, Senior Lecturer in Political Science, SVM Autonomous College, Jagatsinghpur, Odisha)