American enterprise institute, and a coauthor with james rabkin at the other end of this book, striking power. By yours now before supplies run out. Thats a joke. Supplies will never run out. And we are so pleased to have with us our two copanelists and commentators, you have their bios and n front of you. Mr. Lewis is a fellow at the center for strategic some International Studies which is almost next door to us, and also as a long background in these issues and a number of governmental agencies, including just complaining the United Nations. And then to his right is professor andres, who is at the National War College and has a deep background in Cyber Security issues. So were both really grateful to have them with us. What well do today is im just going to briefly describe some of the themes of the book. Were going to hear first from rich and then from jim, and then jeremy will respond and well have 20 or 25 minutes for your questions and our answers and discussion. So, with that said also, let me welcome all of you who are not from ai to our new building. Couldnt think of a better place to talk about future technology than from our prototype bridge of the Starship Enterprise here. This amazing facility and looks like were already in the space age right here. So welcome to all of you who are not from aei. Also like to think lindseywise, over there, for organizing the panel and making sure earth ran well, and the aei leadership and staff for putting this on and providing a nice home for jeremy and i do to our research here. So, the book basically has three points to it. One is that a lot of the advances, the Rapid Advances were seeing in technology and the economy are also coming to military weaponry, and so if you think about some of the major advances, youre seeing in the civilian wore, autonomous cars. Youre also seeing great advances in robotics. Uav, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle wes have seen now for a little bit more than ten years are just the leading edge of advance rows aboutics will provide to military affairs. Much more complex drones. Naval vessel that dont need very large crews. Drones that can operate in the air autonomously, even ground vehicles, and of course antimissile defenses which is very much in the news and our thoughts with regard to north korea. Cyber also presents just as we see the aggregation and rapid manipulation of data, in the civilian world, and the use of algorithms that carry out everything from trading to management of electrical systems, management of social media, were also seeing it in the military world, just one example is the virus that allegedly created by the United States and israel, which delayed the Iranian Nuclear program by several years. Of course United States has been on the receiving end of cyber with alleged hacks hacks into te office of Personnel Management database the alleged russian interinterference and the United States has been on defensive, and then in space in the course of a few years a rapid drop in the cos of launching satellitess and into space, thanks to private enterprise to spacex. At the same time theres a lot of reluctance and concern about the deployment of these technologies in warfare. Elon musk, who himself is the head of spacex and also the head of tesla, issued a letter signed by 100 ceos of tech companies, calling for an outright ban on the use of Artificial Intelligence in weaponry. Two or three years ago he was also join a letter by stephen hawking, the famous english physicist, and steve wozniak, founder of apple and thousands of other scientists to call for regulation and even prohibition of the use of Artificial Intelligence in weapons, and they say they fear a future where robots make decisions on how to wage war, where robots will make decisions on whether to try to assassinate enemy leaders or attack specific ethnic groups or even to invade and occupy territory. So the book that jeremy and i wrote is a response to these efforts to create a ban or to heavily regulate these new kinds of weapons. One is historically just efforts have been doom to failure. Everyday there has been a big advance in economics, thats also or technology and productivity, thats also been married to similar changes in military affairs. Theres always been app an effort to try to stop or ban those new develops, and they have almost invariably always failed women can have an interesting discussion why they fail but they have. Think about world war i, which deployed for the first anytime broad way the economic progress made during the Industrial Revolution and saul the mass production of weapons, inthrow ducks of aircraft, artillery. But in the end, the only one that really succeeded was the ban on biological and chemical weapons. All those other mass production type of weapons survived and were widely used. The second point is we shouldnt actually fear these new weapons because the effect of the weapons is different than past revolutions, and past technical and military revolution the effect of war has been of these new technologies has been to make war cheaper, more mass produced, more destructive and less discriminate in the fact that weaponry discriminated less between civilians and combatants. These new technologies have the opposite effect it with drones, cyber and space weapons, the use of force can be much more precise less harmful and much more discriminating between targets and civilians. The third thing we argue is the main critics of this new technologies that come from some of the technologists themselves, some of the tech ceos, have come from the United Nations, from United Nations leaders, not all of the u. N. Many academics in the field, officials of other governments. Their main argument has been that war will become too easy when you can launch it just by pressing a button or can send a robot off to do the fighting. And so why not ban these weapons to make war harder and more difficult to reduce war . Our argument is thats not really an argument about the technology. Thats really an argument about the purpose of war. In the modern age. Whether theres been too much war or theres too little war. So one thing we argue is that, for example, north korea or rwanda or syria, countries feeling stuck between passivity, peace or doing nothing or the momentous step of demoneys large opts of troops, resources and going to war. They argue these kind of technologies can provide nations with options in between doing nothing and go to fullblown war that hopefully will lead to uses of force that promote International Order and stop human rights abuses or allow great powers the space to negotiate disputes before theycome to the stage of a fuel human shooting war. So let me just close there before turning it over to our two commentators. Last thing is, seems theres a lot of the fear of the new weapons is because James Cameron is too good a director and has convinced us that the terminator movies are what we should fear, and you can see it in the rhetoric opposed to new Technological Developments and the headlines and articles that, well, if we go down this route, war will by left to terminator row boats and skynet will take over and humanity will be lost. That sounds great. Love science fiction, the episode of many star trek series, which i highly recommend, but is it really a serious concern . Do we really have evidence of that happening . Has it ever happened before . Why cant we take safeguards, as we do with any kind of new develop to make sure it doesnt happen in the future. So, thank you. With that id like to turn it over to richard first. Think youre going to go first and then followed by james. Im coming at this from maybe a different angle, having worked for the department of defense for quite a few years, and i taught the National War College. So, generally speaking what we try to do is figure out how to best use the technology. Whenned rae in the book about the illegal efforts to maybe ban or discriminate against using these types of technology, my first thought is that doesnt sound like a very good idea. That would make it harder to win. So, theres a different perspective when youre coming from the department of defense side. But let me take this to a different level. One thing that we need to do is a coming from the perspective of america and being a representative of the american government, is we need be concerned about how best we can win, because if we use technologies that help to us stay ahead we can preserve the system, this International System, that we have built and sustained since world war ii for a longer period of time. Our system wont last forever. No system dog, and eventually states who have different systems of government who we dont agree with, will begin to prevail but we can main it for a longer period of time. Theres another thing going opening along these lines and that is our system this International System, thats peaceful, stable, democratic system, depends on having allies. Only works as long as we can be the moral authority and have allies behind us. If we start doing things which makes our allies uncomfortable or unwilling to work with us, well have problems. So theres two sides to this. Even from the perspective of someone like me coming from the department of defense who wants our country to win on the battlefield and on the bigger political diplomatic double. We have to take into account some of what our allies or friends are saying. Im worried that with this technological debate, this is kind of serious. We have to be really careful about going along with what our allies are some of our friends and some of our american constituencies are trying to do in banning this technology or stopping technologies like robotics on the battlefield or the use of cyber space, because i dont think what theyre trying do is necessarily logical. I think theres a constituency out there that makes its living mostly International Lawyer, who make their living by being antiu. S. And thats what they do. It doesnt really matter what the issue is. So, we cant take the arguments as face value. Dont think theyre really terribly serious at the end of the day because when we hear about the things theyre say that we santa do, were doing all of enemy in a legal anyway. Actual practice were doing the things they say we shouldnt be doing. Actually using drones, and theyre arguing we shouldnt but were doing it, and it seems like everyoneles out there is as well. So im not sure how serious their arguments are. Theyre making a lot of noise, and i understand we need to take serious my what our allies are saying. Cant dismiss them out of hand, but i have 0 not heard a lot of serious arguments against using drones on the battlefield or using cyber space to pursue our interests or using guided munitions or the other things that were worthing against. Im on two minds here and trying to assess how serious these guys are making these arguments against technology. Guess somebody would have to show me that really they have a leg to stand on in in the real world, and thats my going in thoughts on this topic. Jim . We have banned weapons in the past, but usually its weapons that have horrific effect. So chemical weapons, biological weapons, nuclear weapons. Weapons that dont have horrific effect are not banned. And i think that is one of the things we want to think about in this. Its not clear to me that johns points are wrong. That if anything, the new developments will change warfare seguantly and youll see a blend of antisite antisatellite and pace and precision and hyper sonic strike, different battlefield just as in 1990 we saw a different battlefield but its not clear to me that existing International Law, one, doesnt apply. Think everyone agrees it does. They dont agree how it applies but theres agreement at least amongun members it apply and second instant point reinforce the key principles of the laws of Armed Conflict, proportionality, distinction, discrimination. So its a bit premature be worried about this, and when you think about it, i would say there are two audiences. The odd kensens we just howard about, the International Lawyers and another one to bear in mind is an old arms control trick, as an old arms controller i can say that. An old arms control trick is to write a treaty or amend a treaty that bans what your opponent is doing and not what youre doing. And that is respected, its normal, id be upset if the russians or chinese didnt try to do that. The classic example, of course, is the Chinese Foreign ministry was stoutly denouncing the weaponization of space, and antisatellite weapons. Up until the mark they woke up and read in the person that the pla had tested on antisatellite weapon we have to expect our opponents will take advantage of efforts to constrain the u. S. Without themes being constrained. Of course, biological weapons are a classic example of that. When you think about russian behavior. The other thing ive been thinking about this largely in the context of cyber attack, is why are we so risk averse . Why do you have people writing about technologies that do not exist or if they do exist, theyve been around for a long time. The patriot has an autonomous mode, right . Some of the antiship Defense Systems have an autonomous mode. Its not the end of the world. Its preferrable to have a machine shot its as opposed to having a human shot at but you have people who october seriously to this spread of this alleged capability. Why are they so risk averse . I think its because this society itself has changed. Western society, american society, so we are much more risk averse than the nuclear precedent, which is a new demonic technology, in that whats source of the godzilla movie and this is a rye play. We worry about catastrophes that probably wont happen and this might be one of them. When i look at these things, for me it is just a further continuation of the technologies that have made militaries more effective. We are not alone. Everyone i assume knows that the leading expert of drones in the world, uavs, is china. Were not in first place. But there is this larger debate about how these weapons bring unknown peril to the future of conflict. We ill stop with that but we could have a larger discussion about improved military capables. You could make the case seem to make great pures more caution about cautious about going into war and reduces the risk my belief i well never see another world war. Something like world war ii. Where you had mass mobilization, industrial warfare, on the global scale. I think most countries will want to avoid that and one reason is precisely because the increased capables provided by new military systems makes it so costly. That isnt an argument for backing them. Jeremy. Yeah, so, i want to just briefly address one issue that has come up, and go into two aspects of it. That is maybe a lot of this talk about banning control, this is just talk and no one is taking it too seriously. Im open to that. But just so you have a frame of reference, in the cyber area, nato sponsored a project of coming up with a manual on how the law of Armed Conflict applies to cyber and did it at half a remove. Its not officially a nato document, but the nato center for excellence in estonia brought in scholars from around the world, most of them are people who are affiliated with governments and came up with this really quite bulky study on how the law of Armed Conflict applies to cyber places and they assert very confidently, of course it does, and all the rules have to be applied in the cyber context, and you might think, well, just like one thing. Theres four competing treatises that have been written by private scholars i mean private meaning not working for governments. Mostly people at universities. And then this original tallen manual its called, is now in its second edition. The second edition is longer and more detailed than the first. I went to the sort of book party, the launch for the second edition of the tallen manual near washington, and which was interestingly sponsored by the dutch government, the finnish government, some european country yes, dutch. And the people who are involved with it said, well, we came out with a second edition three years later because so many governments expressed so much interest and everybody now sighs maybe thats arent exactly the rule but there mussbe rules and these are kind of like the rules itch dont know. Im not sure anyone can tell you confidently what would really happen if we started going back and forth with extremely destructive cyber attacks, but i think its not real good to have everything channeled into, yes there are rules, let make the rules more and more detailed. I think the point of that is to be inhibiting, and i think the way governments work, certainly the way our governments work, there are lots and lots of lawyers lawyers and its basically giving a lot of material for lawyers to say, no, sorry, we cant do this, here are the rules. Looks is a this has all been worked out and no one is proposing a new treaty. All saying lawyers, extrapolate how this works. First thing i want to say is at least in some areas, cyber being a leader example example, a whole lot hoff people generating a whole lot of things that look kind of semi authoritative and serious. Its not a few people just kind of saying things on tv and theyre just kidding. The second thing i want to say is this to follow on. It discourages people who need to think about that from thinking in a serious way. The point of our book is not lets just cut loose and be wild. That is note point at all. It is that new technologies put us in many ways and many cob texts into a different situation, and we should think about how this works. Let me just give two examples. The main treaties going back to the 1970s make a big distinction between military targets, which are permissible, and civilian, not only civilian human beings but civilian infrastructure shou