Brookings: Experts - Peter W. Singer

Finally, Obama Breaks His Silence on Drones

Peter W. Singer — Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Over the last four years, there has been a strange irony. One of the greatest speakers of our era has largely kept silent about one of the signature aspects of his presidency.

Under President Obama's leadership, U.S. civilian intelligence agencies have carried out a series of not-so-covert operations in so-called secret wars that have reached a huge scale. There have been nearly 400 drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen since 2008, in periods of activity that have ebbed and flowed dependent on everything from the availability of intelligence to local political tides.

But the long-term nature and growth in scale of the "drone wars" campaign made targeted killings a key feature of the administration's foreign policy, both in its internal approach to counter-terrorism and external perceptions of America. The advantages were clear to an administration that throughout this period faced a daily drumbeat of terrorism threats. Targeted killings by drones offered new means for action in ways that were more accurate, more proportionate and less risky to American lives than previous alternatives. They have repeatedly been used in successful operations that eliminated key terrorist leaders.

However, the short-term benefits came with long-term questions. As these operations increasingly were leaked to the media, they grew more and more controversial, whether from concern over civilian casualties, disputes over the appropriate role of the CIA versus the military in what had evolved into a massive air war campaign, Congress' sense that it was the victim of an executive branch end run or broader worry about the danger to constitutional powers.

As this played out, the president's absence from the debate became more and more telling. Yes, there were a couple of speeches by presidential aides finally acknowledging the use of such technology, quick mentions on late-night talk shows and even presidential jokes about drone strikes. But the administration's case in the public debate remained disjointed, tentative and, as the controversy surrounding John Brennan's confirmation hearings as CIA director illustrated, far from strategic or satisfactory. The time was long overdue for the true stamp of presidential voice and authority on the topic to be heard.

That is what makes the president's speech Thursday at National Defense University so important, and simultaneously so challenging for him. He has to try to strike a balance between arguing that terrorism threats will remain with us for the long term, as recent events in Boston and London would illustrate, but that the structures we gradually built up in response, from the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the drone campaign, cannot remain with us in their ad hoc manner for the long term.

Beyond all the internal policy questions — such as what the CIA should control versus what the Pentagon controls — he has a broader task. He must lay out the overdue case for regularizing, so to speak, our counter-terrorism strategy itself, from the means to the ends. This will require touching on thorny issues such as how to bring more transparency to the ugly task of a targeted killings campaign, how to create more interaction with Congress — which both wants and avoids oversight — and, finally, how to find a path out of the Gitmo conundrum.

Beginning this kind of discussion has been described by some as just a way to change the topic in the midst of other would-be scandals dominating the news cycle. But let's be crystal clear: The president is making a big bet by speaking out on issues on which he still enjoys fairly broad public support.

The reason to take this bet is that the speech offers enormous advantages over the alternative of remaining silent. Though it may or may not assuage the genuine concerns at home about the drone campaign, the very act is hugely important inside government. Only the president can operate above the interagency disputes, and his vision will set the terms of internal policy development across multiple agencies (why those staff speeches and confirmation hearings never could substitute for his voice).

In turn, the public side of the speech matters in a manner beyond any blip in domestic poll numbers. Here again, only the president can truly stake out America's vision in a way the world notices. If well played, the speech might even be the foundation for future international norms that need to be set in the post-9/11, post-Osama bin Laden world. This is all the more important as our technologies proliferate and other nations, such as Russia, China and Iran, may seek to follow (or misuse) our precedents in drone strikes and targeted killings.

The issues at play are not just about which agency gets to do what and when to tell whom on Capitol Hill, but also how the United States might build a global coalition of the like-minded on the future of counter-terrorism.

In short, sometimes a speech is more than just a speech. By finally speaking out on some of the key issues that have grown to define his place in foreign policy history, Obama has his chance, finally, to set the terms of the debate and steer it toward more positive ends.

Authors

Peter W. Singer

Publication: Los Angeles Times

Image Source: © Jason Reed / Reuters

Lessons and Context of the Navy’s First Carrier Drone Flight

Peter W. Singer — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:33:00 -0400

The U.S. Navy recently made history with its flight of the X-47B UCAS, the first unmanned carrier drone (unmanned systems) to launch from an aircraft carrier. In 2009 and 2011, the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at Brookings had the pleasure of hosting then Chief of Naval Operations, ADM Gary Roughead, to discuss the future of unmanned operations. The vision he laid out is well on its way to fruition, making it especially useful to place what happened today in the context of the larger U.S. defense strategy and to look at what lessons have been learned in the development of unmanned systems. As I explored in a look at the past and future of naval aviation after 100 years of flight, this success is only one part of a much bigger story.

What this history tells us is that, now that the Navy has crossed yet another step that the naysayers said could never be done, the challenges are as much organizational and political, as they are technical. For example, now that unmanned systems have shown they can fly off a carrier, what will be their exact role? Whether they will be delegated to take on tasks on their own or paired with manned planes, for a package that is greater than the sum of its parts, is a crucial question of naval air combat doctrine moving forward. It is akin to the questions that early warplanes faced as to whether they were to be tethered to the existing surface force of battleships as scouts or serve as their own, as a new form of a battle fleet.

We are only at the start of this robotic revolution at sea, just around the World War I stage of things, if manned airplanes are a parallel. Just as the first Navy planes started out doing only observation, but soon began to be used for everything from bombing runs to carrier onboard delivery (COD), so we are seeing a similar expansion in the roles of unmanned systems. UCAS originally started out being just in the observation ISR role, but clearly has a more lethal future, while the Marines are already using robotic helicopters for roles like cargo delivery in Afghanistan. But just like back then, we don’t yet have all the answers as to the optimal doctrine. Even the basic design of this technology remains to be learned and adopted.

A second lesson is that despite its relentless advancement, there are no signs that technology will end the central role of humans in war and at sea any time soon. However, not “ending”, isn’t the same thing as not “changing.” The specifics of the human roles will be altered, but again, this is nothing new. Most Navy warplanes today don’t have tail gunners or navigators. The skill sets and ranks of those who wear the wings of gold might be altered, which opens up the kind of internal identity and qualification questions in the Navy that have also recently challenged the Air Force. Does the remote operator (note: “operator,” not “pilot” is the terminology so far in the Navy, as opposed to how the Air Force views the requirement) of a plane that can take off and land on its own, who is sitting behind a computer screen, actually need 20/20 eyesight or the ability to do 50 sit-ups? Do they even need to be an officer (akin to how the Army has handled UAS versus the Air Force)? The next few decades will be an exciting time, with new paths being forged, much like they were by the first generation of naval aviation pioneers.

This leads to a third challenge that may be the most vexing to the Pentagon in the years ahead. In an article entitled U-Turn, I explored how there are a series of speed bumps that loom for unmanned systems, not so ironically just as they are making their mark. These range from internal cultural resistance to budgetary battles, in which the new is often disadvantaged against the old. We are seeing this play out here again. Few realize that (according to figures from the DoD UAs office), at the very same time the X-47 knocked down yet another technical barrier, the Navy’s planned UAS budget is being cut by 24%, several times greater than the rest of the budget cuts. Indeed, the tension that the successful UCAS test created for F35’s longer term buy numbers is much like Voldemort in the Harry Potter books, not to be spoken about, but palpable.

Bottom line: Congrats to the Navy and the team behind the X-47B on yet again making history, but this history tells us we have an array of questions to explore in the years ahead.

Authors

Peter W. Singer

Image Source: © Jason Reed / Reuters

At a Dollar a Shot, Lasers Bring Down Missiles and Costs

Peter W. Singer — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Editor's Note: In an interview with the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research on emerging developments in warfare and defense technologies, Peter Singer sheds light on some of the pressing security concerns facing the Gulf Cooperation Council region and the need for greater defense coordination.

ECSSR: In your enlightening lecture, you raised very important questions about leadership issues regarding selecting and investing in the right kind of military technologies. What kind of new approaches and technologies should peace-loving countries like many GCC states with relatively small militaries invest in to ward off threats posed by big nations in their vicinity, like Iran, to strike a balance of power?

Peter Singer: I think there are several important issues to be put on the table here. First, while GCC member states are small countries, they do have relatively powerful defense budgets, when you sum them together. So while individually they may not be a match for the size of a large neighbor, like an Iran, collectively that is certainly within their power; particularly when you add in the advantage that they have of being able to purchase high technology.

In most areas, they are a generation ahead of Iran. For example, in terms of jet fighters they are literally a generation ahead. Secondly, they can have partnerships with allies like the US and France that aren’t accessible to a nation like Iran. So that gives them certain opportunities.

The challenge for the GCC, as I see it as a defense analyst from the outside, is a couple of issues. There hasn’t been as much cooperation and coordination as there might be both within the states of the GCC and with their allies, like the US and France. We can see this when it comes to areas like air defense and missile defense, where we still don’t have a well-integrated relationship despite the very clear threat from an Iran, particularly when it comes to missiles.

Another area of cooperation will be if you look for a low level threat from Iran. There is fear that they may not engage in direct hostilities but do something like mine the seaways nearby, which is something they had done previously in their history. And yet we don’t see the kinds of investment being made in mine-detection and mine-clearing at sea by the local states here that might match that threat. The United States, for example, has had to push almost all of its mine-sweeping capacity into the Gulf right now.

The second issue is focusing on spreading out your investments. There is a clear amount of technological change going around in the world today, ranging from the rise of unmanned systems to directed energies etc., and so each of the nations —whether it is the United States or the states of the GCC —have to figure out how to make smart investments. In many ways, like an investor on the stock market, you don’t put all you money in one place but spread out the risks. Again, you particularly don’t put all your money in the thing that is most shiny and most appealing. That’s a challenge, which is facing many militaries and we see that playing out in the market today. So I think that given the amount of transition that is going on, locking into any one program, or locking into any single system is not the way to go. There is enough uncertainty right now that you spread out the risk.

Authors

Peter W. Singer

Publication: The Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research

Image Source: © Ho New / Reuters

A Discussion About Drones

Peter W. Singer — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Editor's note: In an interview with Charlie Rose, Peter W. Singer joins Michael Boyle of LaSalle University, Rosa Brooks of Georgetown University, and Scott Shane of The New York Times to discuss the revolutionary nature of drone technology as well as the dilemmas—strategic, ethical, political—that they present. Read an excerpt below.

Charlie Rose: Peter Singer, put this in the context of warfare overall.

Peter Singer: Well you have a revolutionary change that’s happening in the technology of war. Now, the question here is, are we talking about war or counterterrorism—we’ve got things conflated. But when you look at the technology of drones, it’s a gamechanger in war. It’s something along the level of the introduction of gunpowder or the steam engine or the airplane. By that I mean it gives you a series of capabilities that we didn’t imagine we’d have a generation ago, but also it’s giving us a series of dilemmas that we also didn’t imagine we’d be having a generation ago. And they’re dilemmas that are political, strategic, tactical, all the way down to ethical and legal.

Now one thing that’s happening here I think that’s a challenge is that we’re seeing things conflated. So, just as the example that Scott gave of the conflation between the JSOC kill list and process—the Joint Special Operations Command on the military side—and the one that the CIA is doing, both of which are taking place in the shadow wars that are out there.

Peter Singer: Signature strikes is an illustration of this, where on one hand we’ve seen administration officials say either “we don’t do that,” and other times we’ve heard them say “we do do that, but this is why.” But then we also have a variety of tactics beyond signature strikes that, for example, in an overt military operation you would never utilize.

One’s called a 'double tap strike,' which is where you strike at a target and then you wait for the rescuers to come about and you strike again. Now that’s been something that we’ve pointed out that if adversaries did that in Afghanistan or Iraq we would say “how dare you, this is evidence of how bad they are.” Yet there have been reports that we may have conducted strikes in a similar manner. Don’t know whether they’re confirmed or not.

But what I’m getting at here is that a civilian, political appointee lawyer, operating under a very different set of laws and priorities, looks at that issue and the question of what tactics you might bring, what rules of engagement you operate under, very differently from how a military lawyer would. And that’s part of the importance of whether these do shift from intelligence agency to military, but also whether they stay in the complete black ops world or whether we own up to the fact that these are not covert operations anymore, they’re frankly not so covert, and we need to stop running away from them and embrace the fact that we are doing them and these are the rules we’re going to operate under and actually stick and follow those rules.

Authors

Peter W. Singer

Publication: Charlie Rose

Image Source: © KCNA KCNA / Reuters

Security Challenges During a Time of Transition

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 10:00:00 -0400

Event Information

March 13, 2013
10:00 AM - 4:00 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

Register for the Event
The 21st Century Defense Initiative’s Fourth Annual Military and Federal Fellow Research Symposium

On March 13, the 21st Century Defense Initiative at Brookings hosted its fourth annual Military and Federal Fellow Research Symposium, featuring the independent research produced by the members of each military service and the federal agencies who have spent the last year serving at think tanks and universities across the nation. Organized by the fellows themselves, the symposium provides a platform for building greater awareness of the cutting-edge work that America’s military and governmental leaders are producing on key policy issues.

The theme of this symposium was “Security Challenges During a Time of Transition,” reflecting the war drawdowns, new fiscal realities, and upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review. Panel discussions focused on fellows’ independent research findings in the areas of military leadership, the composition and structure of military forces, an increasing reliance on technology, and emerging maritime challenges. Thomas E. Ricks, senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, delivered opening remarks, and Dr. Arati Prabhakar, director of the Defense Advanced Research Agency, gave a keynote address.

Transcript

Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

20130313_security_challenges_transcript

Brookings Launches the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence (21CSI)

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:40:00 -0400

Washington, D.C. — The Brookings Institution announced today the establishment of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence (21CSI). The new center will be unique in addressing defense, cybersecurity, arms control and intelligence challenges in a comprehensive manner, seeking not just to explore key emerging security issues, but also how they cross traditional fields and domains.

“With the launch of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, Brookings will be at the forefront of research and public debate on the critical security issues of our time,” said Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution. "21CSI will bring together the extraordinary array of scholars already working on defense and security issues at Brookings, along with adding new experts in fields that range from cyber to intelligence policy."

The Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence will be housed in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings and Peter W. Singer will serve as its founding director. One of the world’s leading experts on modern warfare and author of the New York Times bestseller, Wired for War (Penguin, 2009), Singer has founded and managed two previous projects at Brookings, the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World and the 21st Century Defense Initiative.

The center will encompass four key focal points of policy research on security and defense issues:

A Defense Policy team will be led by Michael O'Hanlon, one of the most influential and widely published defense scholars in the world, who also serves as director of research in the Foreign Policy program. He will be joined by other resident and nonresident scholars including Senior Fellow Vanda Felbab-Brown, a leading expert on counterinsurgency and illicit networks, and Senior Fellow Stephen Cohen, a pre-eminent expert in South Asian security issues. The team will also comprise the Federal Executive Fellows (FEFs), career officers from each military service and the Coast Guard, who spend a year in residence researching and writing on defense topics.
The new Intelligence Project, focusing on the nexus of intelligence and policymaking, will be led by Senior Fellow Bruce Riedel, a 30-year veteran of the intelligence community who also served on the National Security Council staff for three presidents. Riedel will be supported by a team of resident and nonresident scholars, including Paul Pillar and John McLaughlin, as well as career officers seconded from the intelligence community, and an advisory group of distinguished former senior intelligence officials and policymakers. The Intelligence Project is the first of its kind to be established at a major research institution.
The Arms Control Initiative will combine a focus on existing challenges of nuclear and conventional disarmament with new policy research on the Iranian and North Korean challenges to the nuclear nonproliferation regime. It is led by Senior Fellow Steven Pifer, a former special assistant to the president with substantial arms control experience. Robert Einhorn, currently the State Department’s special adviser for Nonproliferation and Arms Control, is expected to join later this spring as a Senior Fellow. The Initiative will also house a new program designed to cultivate and mentor the next generation of arms control and nonproliferation scholars.
The new Cybersecurity project will bring together the work of Visiting Fellow Ian Wallace, a former senior official at the British Ministry of Defence, who helped develop British cyber strategy, as well as its cyber-relationship with the United States, and a team of nonresident fellows, including Noah Shachtman, national security editor at Wired magazine, recently named one of the top 10 cybersecurity writers in the world; Ben Hammersley, a war journalist, noted technology writer, and author of the upcoming book Approaching the Future: 64 Things You Need to Know Now for Then; and Ralph Langner, the cybersecurity expert credited with “decoding” Stuxnet.

21CSI will focus on cutting-edge, in-depth, policy-relevant research and programming, designed to help shape the public policy debate and inform policy-makers. Bringing together a diverse group of experts and scholars, it will seek to promote collaboration across the various policy domains, in order to better understand the rapidly evolving, increasingly complex 21st century battlefield.

“We’ve created 21CSI in response to the enormous changes playing out in the global security environment,” said Martin Indyk, vice president and director of the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. “To address the diverse range of issues in this field, we’ve assembled a world-class team of researchers, who are some of the leading voices on the current challenges driving security policy today, as well as how we should think about tomorrow.”

The Global Swarm: An International Drone Market

Peter W. Singer — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

"One plan was to use an unmanned aerial vehicle to carry 20kg of TNT to bomb the area, but the plan was rejected because we were ordered to catch him alive." This is what Liu Yuejin, director of China's public security ministry's anti-drug bureau, described of the manhunt for Naw Kham, the ringleader of a large drug trafficking outfit based in the Golden Triangle, who was suspected of killing 13 Chinese sailors. Ultimately, they got him via a cross-border nighttime ambush, the Chinese version of the Abbottabad raid.

This case, however, is useful to think about when talking about the global market for unmanned aerial systems (aka "drones") and where it is headed, a topic that got new energy last week with a New York Times report on the confusion as to whether it was American or Pakistani drones that carried out a controversial airstrike.

Too often in policy and media circles, we discuss a supposed American monopoly on drones that is potentially ending. Or, as Time magazine entitled a story, "Drone Monopoly: Hope You Enjoyed It While It Lasted." The article goes on to say,"It is going to happen; the only question is when."

The answer is: several years ago.

Read the full article »

Authors

Peter W. Singer

Publication: Foreign Policy

Image Source: © Handout . / Reuters

The Predator Comes Home: A Primer on Domestic Drones, their Huge Business Opportunities, and their Deep Political, Moral, and Legal Challenges

Peter W. Singer — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 15:09:00 -0500

At the turn of the last century, a strange new technology began to appear in America. As a January 4, 1900 article about one of the very first sightings in the state of Florida described, “The Locomobile resembles a rubber-tired driving buggy in its outward appearance, except that no allowance is made for attaching a horse…A brake is attached to the rear axle that will stop the machine in a much shorter space than a horse can be stopped.”[1]

The locomobile, or “horseless carriage,” caught people’s fancy and powered a huge new industry. Businesses opened up in places that ranged from Basic City, Virginia, home of the Dawson Steam Auto-Mobile, a two-cylinder runabout with single chain drive and tiller rather than a steering wheel, to the Southern Automobile Manufacturing Company of Jacksonville, which assembled five cars a day that sold for a princely sum of $400 each.

Soon, the industry rippled out into all sorts of directions. It was only two years after the first car hit the roads of Florida that the first car dealership was created. This led to new endeavors in areas like the logistics and support “garages,” which had ripple effects out into other areas. For instance, just three years after the first news article on the locomobile appeared in The Florida Times-Union & Citizen, the very first newspaper advertisement for one appeared.

But this new technology also brought strange new questions, such as how to protect people from them. The first fine for “speeding” came just a year later in 1904, when a man was arrested for endangering the lives and property of pedestrians in downtown Jacksonville. He had exceeded the 6 mile per hour speed limit

The new technology also created new demands on governments, like an entire new type of infrastructure. Staying in Florida for the moment, it was in 1907 when the first of what we now call “snow birds” arrived via horseless carriage. Mr. Ralph Owen “accomplished the amazing feat of driving an Oldsmobile motorcar from New York to Florida in only 15 days.”

The reason this took so long is that no one was ready for it, especially the government. There were no real roads, at least as we think about them now, and no truly reliable maps for the pathways that did exist. Indeed, as late as 1921 the Automobile Club of America recommended that motorists traveling from New England to Florida simply bypass the entire state of Virginia because of these problems.

It wasn’t just the poor state of transportation that required a network of roads and highways to be funded but also basic issues like what safety equipment the new technology required. For example, early horseless carriages often had headlights but no turn signals. Drivers had to use hand signals to indicate their intentions to turn or slow down. A new business started selling a seeming solution, Devilseye Reflector Rings.[2] Drivers would wear large red rings on their fingers at night so that when they held their hand outside the car the rings reflected other headlights and allowed other drivers to see the signal. Soon, this concept was replaced by the novel idea of requiring the reflector be embedded in the car rather than carried by the driver.

These stories of the early days of “horseless carriages” and “locomobiles” aren’t just fascinating but they should serve to help us frame the issues we face today in “unmanned systems” and robotics. They were a technology that once seemed alien but we figured it out.

Where are we now? Robots and War

While unmanned systems have a long history dating back to Da Vinci’s designs for a robotic knight, and first emerged in war with German remote-controlled torpedo boats in the First World War, it wasn’t until just a decade ago that they truly took off.[3] Advances in technology made unmanned systems more usable, especially through the incorporation of GPS technology that allowed such systems to locate themselves in the world. At the same time, the new conflicts that followed 9/11 drove demand. When U.S. forces first went into Afghanistan, the U.S. military had only a handful of unmanned aerial systems (UAS, also called “remotely piloted aircraft” or, more colloquially, “drones”) in the air, none of them armed, and zero on the ground. Now it has a force inventory of more than 8,000 in the air and more than 12,000 on the ground. Another example of how far the change has gone is that last year, the U.S. Air Force trained more unmanned systems operators than fighter and bomber pilots combined.

But when we think about technologies like the Predator or the PackBot, we need to remember that they are just the first generation, the Model T Fords and Wright Flyers compared to what is already in the prototype stage.[4] We are still at the “horseless” stage of this technology, describing these technologies by what they are not rather than wrestling with what they truly are. These technologies are “killer applications” in all the meanings of the term. They are technologies that advance the power of killing. They are also technologies that have a disruptive effect on existing structures and programs. That is, they are akin to advancements like the airplane or the steam engine in allowing greater power and reach in war, but they are also akin to what iPods did to the music industry, changing it forever.

What Next? The Robotics Revolution

While many are surprised by the existing use of robotics, the pace of change won’t stop. We may have thousands now, but as one three-star U.S. Air Force general noted in my book Wired for War, very soon it will be “tens of thousands.”[5]

But the numbers matter in another way. It won’t be tens of thousands of today’s robots, but tens of thousands of tomorrow’s robots, with far different capabilities.

One of the laws in action when it comes to technology is Moore’s Law, which states that the computing power that can fit on a microchip doubles just under every two years or so.[6] It has become an encapsulation of broader exponential trends in technology that have occurred throughout history, with technological power constantly doubling in everything from power to storage to broader innovation patterns.[7] If Moore’s Law holds true over the next 25 years the way it has held true over the last 40 years, then our chips, our computers, and, yes, our robots will be as much as a billion times more powerful than today. But Moore’s Law is not a law of physics. It doesn’t have to hold true. What if our technology moves at a pace just 1/1000^th slower than it has historically? In this slowed-down scenario, we’d only see a mere 1,000,000 times the change.

The bottom line is that what was once only fodder for science-fiction conventions like Comic-Con is now being talked about seriously in places like the Pentagon. A robotics revolution is at hand.

We should be crystal clear here. The robot revolution happening is not the Robopocalypse that Steven Spielberg was preparing to film.[8] It is not the type where you need to worry about the former governor of California showing up at your door, à la The Terminator.[9]

Instead, every so often, a technology comes along that changes the rules of the game. These technologies – be they fire, the printing press, gunpowder, the steam engine, the computer, etc. – are rare but truly consequential.

The key to making technology truly revolutionary is not merely its new capabilities but its questions. Revolutionary technologies force us to ask new questions about what is possible and consider things that weren’t conceivable a generation before. But they also force us to relook at what is proper. They raise issues of right and wrong that we didn’t have to wrestle with before.

If the horseless carriage is the parallel, think of the ripple effects that cars had on everything from our geopolitics to our law enforcement. A group of people who were, at the time, desert nomads became crucial players in the global economy simply because they lived over a sticky black substance previously considered more of a nuisance than anything else. The greater use of that same – now crucial – resource has changed the global climate. The growing use of cars, in turn, led to new concepts that reshaped the landscape, whether through highways and suburbia, or through new social notions, like dating (teens previously could only court on parents’ front porches).

And of course a whole new world requires the establishment of rules of the game, or rather new rules of the road. It wasn’t just a matter of fines for “speeding,” but also changes to the very structure of American law enforcement. The rise of easy cross state crime enabled by the speed and reach of horseless carriages, such as the string of bank robberies by Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, helped lead to the rise of the then Bureau of Investigation, now the modern FBI.[10]

Others, such as Bill Gates, make a different comparison to the computer in 1980.[11] Much like robots today, the computer back then was a big, bulky device for which we could only conceive a few functions. Importantly, the military was the main spender on computers’ research and development and a key client driving the marketplace, again comparable to the development of robots.

But soon, computers changed. They got smaller. We figured out more and more functions and applications that they could perform, both in war and in civilian life. And they proliferated. It has reached the point that we have stopped thinking of most of them as “computers.” I drive a car with more than 100 computers in it. No one calls it a “computerized car.” I have a number of computers in my kitchen. I call them things like “microwave” or “coffee maker.”

The same thing is happening with robotics – not just the changes in size and proliferation, but also the reconceptualization. Indeed, if you buy a new car today, it will come equipped with things like “parking assist” or “crash avoidance” technologies.[12] These are kind ways of saying that we stupid humans are not good at parallel parking and too often don’t look in our blind spots. So, the robotic systems in our car will handle these things for us.

But again, just as the story of the automobile reveals more than just the shift from owning horse stables to garages, so, too, was the computer about more than never having to remember long-division tables again. What were important were the ripple effects. The game-changing technology reshaped the modern information-rich economy, allowing billions of dollars to be made and lost in nanoseconds. It led to new concepts of social relations and even privacy. I can now “friend” someone in China I’ve never met. Of course, I may now be concerned about my niece social networking with people whom she’s never met. It became a tool of law enforcement (imagine the TV show CSI without computers) but also led to new types of crime (imagine explaining “identity theft” to J. Edgar Hoover).[13] And it may even be leading to a new domain of war, so-called “cyber-war.”

This comparison is a striking one because it illustrates how bureaucracies often have a hard time keeping up with revolutionary change. For example, the FBI director was so averse to computers that he didn’t have one in his office and never used email as late as 2001. Sound amazing? Well, the current Secretary of Homeland Security, the agency in charge of the civilian side of American cyber-security, doesn’t use email today.[14]

The final comparison that is made is perhaps a darker one: work on the atomic bomb in the 1940s. Scientists, in particular, talk about the field of robotics today in much the same way they talked about nuclear research back in the 1940s. If you are a young engineer or computer scientist, you will find yourself drawn towards it. It is the cutting edge. It is where the excitement is and where the research money is.

But many worry that their experience will turn out just like that of those amazing minds that were drawn towards the Manhattan Project, like a moth to an atomic flame.[15] They are concerned that the same mistakes could be repeated – of creating something and only after the fact worrying about the consequences. Will robotics, too, be a genie we one day wish we could put back in the bottle?

The underlying point here is that too often in discussions of technology we focus on the widget. We focus on how it works and its direct and obvious uses. But that is not what history cares about. The ripple effects are what make that technology revolutionary. Indeed, with robotics, issues on the technical side may ultimately be much easier to resolve than dilemmas that emerge from our human use of them.

How Our Robots Are Changing

The first generations of aerial robots were much like the manned systems they were replacing, even down to some of them having the cockpit where the pilot would sit looking like it’d been painted over. Now we are seeing an explosion of new types, ranging in size, shape, and form. With no human inside, they can stay in the air not just for hours, but for days, months, and even years, having wings the length of a football field.[16] Alternatively, they can be as small as an insect.[17] And, of course, they need not be modelled after our manned machines, but can instead take their design cues from nature, or even the bizarre.[18]

The other key change is their gain in intelligence and autonomy. This is a whole new frontier. Traditionally, we’ve compared weapons based on their lethality, range, or speed. Think about the comparison between a Second World War B-17 bomber plane and a B-24 bomber plane. The B-24 could be considered superior because it flew faster, further, and carried more bombs. The same could be said in comparing the MQ-9 Reaper UAS with its earlier version, the MQ-1 Predator. The Reaper is better because it flies faster and further and carries more bombs. But the Reaper is also something else, which we couldn’t say about previous generations of weapons: It is smarter, and more autonomous. We are not yet in the world of The Terminator, where weapons make their own decisions, but the Reaper can do things like take off and land on its own, fly mission waypoints on its own, and carry sensors that make sense of what they are seeing, such as identifying a disruption in the dirt from a mile overhead and recognizing it as something that we humans call a “footprint.”

From these changes comes a crucial opening up of the user base and the functionality of robotics. Much as you once could only use a computer if you first learned a new language like “Basic,” so, too, could you once only use robotic systems if you were highly trained. To fly an early version Predator drone, for instance, you had to be a rated pilot. Now, just as my three-year-old can navigate his iPad without even knowing how to spell, so, too, can you fly some drones with an iPhone app.

The Civilian Side Opens

This greater usability opens up the realm of possible users, lowering the costs and spreading the technology even further. So, we are seeing the range of uses expand not just in the military, but also, once proved on the military side, moving over to the civilian world. Take aerial surveillance with UAS. It’s gone from a military activity to border security to police to environmental monitoring.[19] Similarly, the notion of using a robotic helicopter to carry cargo to austere locations was first tested out in Afghanistan, but is now being looked at by logging companies.[20]

A key step in moving this forward in the U.S. will be the integration of unmanned aerial systems into the National Airspace System (NAS) and expanded civilian use. While there has been a huge amount of energy around the topic of domestic drones, such that many politicians speak about them as if they are already “watching everything from above,” the present laws restrict civilian use. An ever growing number of special permits, however, have been issued to domestic operators, now summing 1,428.[21] These early users range from small police departments like Mesa County in Colorado, which found they cost over 90% less to operate than police helicopters, to universities conducting environmental research in Alaska.[22]

Congress has set a deadline of September 2015 for the Federal Aviation Authority to figure out how to make this happen on a more regularized basis, in essence opening up the national airspace to the civilian public and private sector use.[23] As part of this process, there are to be six test sites created around the nation, which some twenty states are competing to be awarded. While it is unclear if the FAA will meet the deadline, the step is coming, and with it, the next ripple effect outwards in the market.

Indeed, what the opening of the civilian airspace will do to robotics is akin to what the Internet did to desktop computing. The field was there before, but then it boomed like never before. For instance, if you are a maker of small tactical surveillance drones in the U.S. right now, your client pool numbers effectively one: the U.S. military. But when the airspace opens up, you will have as many as 21,000 new clients – all the state and local police agencies that either have expensive manned aviation departments or can’t afford them.

The scale of this market is estimated to be in the tens of billions in its first years, but it is frankly too early to know where it will end up.[24] If history is any lesson, we shouldn’t just focus on the sale of drones in roles we already know but recognize that there are many more ways we don’t yet know of where robotics might be applied to other fields. Who saw agriculture as a field to be computerized? And yet the application of computers has led to massive efficiency gains. So, too, is agriculture appearing to be an area in which robotics will drive immense change. Agribusinesses nationwide such as Monsanto are lobbying for the use of domestic drones in roles that range from the monitoring and surveillance of the fields to the crop-dusting to the picking and harvesting.[25]

Impact on U.S. military

There are a huge set of ripple effects that will emerge from the opening up of the airspace to domestic drones. One is a potential role reversal. What will be the impact on the U.S. military as a technology area that it once led in, blossoms on the civilian side?

Take the areas of acquisitions. What happens when manufacturers have a wider set of clients than just the DoD and therefore become less responsive to its needs? If the parallel is computers, microchips and IT networks, the U.S. military once was in the lead in the research and development and then purchasing of computing. Now it is often behind the civilian side and, indeed, in areas like microchips can’t get makers to shift to its unique demands.

Beyond the obvious applications moved over from the military side, the real change occurs when imagination and innovation cross with profit-seeking. This is where parallels to computer or aviation history hold most, as the civilian side then starts to lead the way for the military. For instance, the idea of moving freight via airplanes was not originally a military role. It started out in 1919 with civilians. Today, it’s both a major military role (the U.S. military’s Air Mobility Command has some 134,000 members) and an industry that moves more than $10 trillion in global trade.[26] And, yes, a number of airfreight firms are starting to explore drone air cargo delivery, from large-scale trans-oceanic movement to small movement of medical supplies or even fast food.[27]

Similarly, what will it mean for training, when more and more young service men will come in with experience using the technology at home, or even when they see more advanced versions on the market than what they get from the Pentagon? The bottom line is that discussions of the civilian side also matter to the military.

Economic Winners and Losers: Nations and Communities

A new industry raises another ripple effect: Who will be the winners and losers?

One can certainly think about this issue on the global level. The U.S. faces a strange situation of trying to compete in a world economy, where technologic knowhow is a key differentiator, and yet has an education system that too often moves in an opposite direction. American high school students rank 23rd in science and 31st in math among wealthy nations, and 27th in college graduates with degrees in science and math. And the trends aren’t improving greatly. In 2004, the number of American computer science majors was 60,000. In 2013, it had shrunk to 38,000. (It is all not bad news, we are graduating twice as many journalists.) [28]

But the issue of winners and losers isn’t just a matter for Washington policymakers; it should have huge resonance for state and local leaders. That is, if what is playing out in the field of robotics is comparable to horseless carriage, who is Detroit, which became the epicenter of this industry for the 20^th century, and who are going to be like Basic City or Jacksonville that had early automobile companies around the same period? Or, if the comparison is to computers, who is going to be akin to Philadelphia, a key node in the early days of computing, and who is going to be the robotics version of Silicon Valley?

Answering this question turns on challenging a false notion that has taken hold, that in today’s world of globalization distance doesn’t matter. But despite our new technologies, we have repeatedly seen at the state and metropolitan level, success happens in clusters.[29]

As Maryann Feldman writes in her study Location, Location, Location: Creating Innovation Clusters, “Grounded in place, innovation and entrepreneurship rely on an ecosystem of firms (both suppliers and customers), universities and community colleges, government agencies, and trade associations, all systematically aligned to encourage creativity and experimentation. Once started, concentrations of industries within places become self-reinforcing as talent is attracted to opportunity, the flow of ideas increases, and their potential is understood and appreciated. With that dynamic, it becomes easier and less costly for entrepreneurs to realize their dreams.”[30]

The role of the government is central in developing these clusters. While entrepreneurship is a private-sector activity, it is public policy that sets the stage. For example, I am from North Carolina. Like that old Saturday Night Live joke, we were really happy there was a South Carolina and District of Columbia whenever the education rankings came out, as that meant we had someone to look down on from our lofty perch of 49^th in the nation.

Yet, when North Carolina’s textile manufacturing economy declined, the local government did something brilliant. It fostered a new “innovation cluster” centering around the Research Triangle Park that is now the home to more than 130 research facilities and helped North Carolina become one of the hubs of the biotech industry. This boom then benefited the rest of the state and made it one of fastest growing states in the nation during this period. The success didn’t happen overnight. As Feldman noted, the policy world can nurture these kinds of success stories via “…steady and consistent state policy, investment tax credits, and quasi-governmental, sector-specific agencies.”

Job Gain and Loss

The rise of domestic robotics use holds the potential to create a number of jobs. Indeed, the AUSVI industry trade group has claimed some 70,000 new jobs will be created in just the first few years once the airspace opens up, arguing (with an obvious self-interest) that the US loses some $27 million per day in economic activity the longer it waits to do so.[31]

This boom for the robotics industry, though, raises deep questions not just of which areas will win out, but also which individuals will win and lose.

Just as the horseless carriage made titans of Henry Ford and Alfred Sloan, computers created a whole new generation of billionaires and millionaires. But, of course, just like with the craftsmen before the first industrial age, there were also losers. For hundreds of years, there was a highly skilled profession of men who did mathematics for hire. They were well paid, many making the equivalent of $200,000 a year. They were called “calculators.” They have gone the way of so many other professions reshaped by new technology like the blacksmith making horseshoes or the elevator operator.

Indeed, robots have already and will continue to shape the economy both as an issue of growth and job loss. As a recent MIT study found, automation is "destroying jobs and creating prosperity," explaining both the gains in efficiency and the loss of as many as six million jobs over the last decade.[32] Robots are a large part of the reason the automobile companies of Detroit are back, but so many automobile workers are not back to work. (Already, one in ten has been replaced by a factory line robot, with many companies across a wide array of industries planning to fully automate their assembly lines.)[33]

Such trends mean that a part of our economy will make a great deal of money from robotics, which is why there is so much lobbying behind the area today. Last year, drone manufacturers gave $2.3 million in contributions to the House Unmanned Systems Caucus, while the industry’s trade group spent a quarter million lobbying for the FAA bill that opens up the airspace (the group proudly told donors that “Our suggestions were often taken word-for-word” in the language of the bill).[34] But these very same trends also mean the expansion of the industry will be seen as a threat to livelihoods, further stoking tensions and underlying suspicions of the technology.

Law and Privacy

One profession that will be busy, though, is the lawyers.

While some say drones are no different than manned planes or fixed surveillance cameras on the street, and so raise no new privacy issues, this is incorrect at face value. There are similarities but also fundamental differences.

To operate, a robot is always gathering and storing information about the world around it. Always. This is different from a regular plane, for example, where the human operator is gathering most of this information but cannot store it for playback. A robot’s operating requirements mean that even in the course of regular operations, it is gathering and storing information about everything that crosses its path. This gives robots an advantage over human operated planes, where a conscious decision to acquire and store data must be made. The other main advantage of unmanned systems is their ability to loiter for long periods of time, which again allows them to draw in more information, and as the ACLU's Jay Stanley and Catherine Crump have written, also allows them to “...pose a more serious threat to privacy than do manned flights."[35]

Taking in vast quantities of information even unintentionally is a key part of the concern. For example, a robot on a “Where’s Waldo?” mission to hunt down one person in a city will still be gathering data on the entirety of the city throughout the search process.

Visual information is not the only type of data being gathered. Unmanned systems also carry out electronic surveillance. A drone unveiled at the DefCon hacking conference in 2011 can crack Wi-Fi networks and intercept text messages and cell phone conversations – without the knowledge or help of either the communications provider or the customer.[36] This type of drone draws in electronic information on a wide group of people beyond the intended target – and, different from a computer, includes those who have not signed a user agreement or otherwise signaled they accept this intrusion upon their privacy.

Finally, the size and mobility of robotic systems is fundamentally different – many are being designed in increasingly smaller sizes, and they are able to move and track targets covertly when required. A robotic system can watch from above, but can also get up close and personal, unlike a fixed security camera or a high altitude spy plane.

These differences lie at the heart of a lot of the worries over domestic use of unmanned systems. Such suspicion has mobilized left wing groups like the ACLU, but also those on the right, such as the Tea Party movement, perhaps best illustrated by the speeches and legislation of Senator Rand Paul, who has attempted in the words of one article to launch “a Preemptive Strike Against Domestic Drone Use.”[37] While some 20 states from Nevada to North Carolina are competing to be the home of the six FAA drone test sites, the anti-drone movement has crystallized into efforts to ban the use of drones in at least ten state legislatures, ranging from Virginia to Oregon. Indeed, Charles Krauthammer, a right wing commentator on Fox News, even urged Americans to use their Second Amendment powers to shoot down drones (something already done by a group of hunters in Pennsylvania, who shot down a drone doing environmental monitoring).[38]

Building Code

With these concerns brewing, we are starting to see some steps forward to respond. For instance, an industry “code of conduct” has been put forward by the same trade group that prompted the current controversy over domestic drones with its successful lobby to open the airspace. The AUVSI code took on many of the concerns circulating, grouping them into three core themes of Safety, Professionalism, and Respect.[39] It laid out how the industry and users would "commit" to not operating drones "in a manner that presents undue risk to persons or property;" to planning for "all anticipated off-nominal events;" and to share such contingency plans with "all appropriate authorities." It made great sense and was reported widely.

The challenge for the robotics code of conduct, however, is much the same as other industries' attempts at self-regulation, ranging from banking to the private military industry. It's a laudable start, but it doesn't change the underlying issues and concerns. Like such other would-be "codes of conduct," it lacks a key ingredient: consequences.

It is a voluntary code with no results if one violates it. Indeed, much of what is laid out is actually restatements of responsibilities the firms and users already should abide by, regardless of any code. For example, the code says that the firms "will comply with all federal, state and local laws." So, before the code, they could violate the law at will? Of course not.

But more importantly, the code is not able to deal effectively with all the areas where the law is absent or vague. It says that "We will ensure that UAS are piloted by individuals who are properly trained and competent to operate the vehicle or its systems." Who will determine this, and what does "trained and competent" mean in a world where some believe drones should only be operated by rated pilots, even though new versions can be flown by teens using iPhone apps?

Likewise, the code pledges to "respect the privacy of individuals," which is a bold statement. But "Respect" could be anything from avoiding the monitoring of individuals without their express permission to showing them "respect" only in the public-relations sense.

Of course, these are thorny issues. Indeed, it's their very thorniness that is why an industry self-regulatory code is the beginning of the discussion, not the final answer

The Police Weigh In

The same could be said of a push by police chiefs, who have offered a code of conduct for their use of drones.[40] This effort asserted that police wouldn’t let any images captured by unmanned aerial vehicles be open to inspection by the public, and that the images would not be stored, unless they are evidence of a potential crime or part of an ongoing investigation. Of course, that’s a pretty large out clause.

More importantly, the police chiefs’ effort is a proposal, not yet policy, with some huge gaps. Even worse, it has a big dose of unrealism. For instance, it suggests that police would use a “Reverse 911 telephone system to alert those living and working in the vicinity of aircraft operations. If such a system is not available, the use of patrol car public address systems should be considered.”

In reality, such a system would be unworkable and even laughable. Each and every time a UAS flies, the police are going to call all of an area’s residents’ home phone (setting aside the growing number who only have mobile phones)? Or, alternatively, the police are planning to ensure public awareness of potential privacy losses by recreating the scene from the movie The Blue Brothers, driving through the streets yelling out on a car’s bullhorn?

Similarly, we have next order questions, like whether drones should be armed. This is cast aside quickly in the proposed codes, but again definition and context matters. Law enforcement in Texas has shown interest in unmanned aerial systems armed with a shotgun that shoots “less than lethal” rounds.[41] One person’s shotgun or taser is another person’s unarmed drone.

The bottom line is that, as with revolutionary inventions of the past, no amount of handwringing by pundits late to the game will see a technology of such great promise banned.

Instead, a revolutionized world requires the establishment of new rules, which in turn requires an understanding of the new technology. Much of the substance of these rules will likely come from both public discourse and the private sector. For example, the origins of the modern way we drive can be found in Rules of the Road, published in 1903 by William P. Eno. Known as "the father of traffic safety,” Eno’s book contained such revolutionary ideas as cars only passing on the left, stop-lights and one-way streets. (Ironically he never drove himself; he was always chauffeured).[42]

We are seeing a similar evolution now, whether in the development of industry codes of conduct or guidelines for university research groups. But much like the early “rules of the road,” these will need enforceable laws to make them real. Early cars and planes, for instance, needed more than Eno’s book – mainstream use of these inventions demanded the drafting of traffic laws and the creation of regulatory institutions like the Federal Aviation Administration. Similarly, the increasing use of unmanned systems has highlighted a gap at the state and federal level that demands action.

Where the Law Goes Next

As these laws are hopefully built by Congress, we need to recognize that much of what is written in the law is just the first draft. For instance, federal district court judges have spoken about how, much like with computers and the privacy questions they created, questions over the proper use of drones by law enforcement will end up as Supreme Court cases.

But even then what will the Court decide? A case that is frequently spoken about as a potential precedent is 2001's Kyllo vs. U.S.[43] In this instance, a federal government agent used a "thermal imaging device" to scan a home in Florence, Oregon. They did not have a warrant, but it allowed them to learn that marijuana was being grown.

When the case made its way up to the Supreme Court, the majority opinion, written by Judge Scalia, was that when the "government uses a device that is not in general public use, to explore details of a private home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a Fourth Amendment 'search,' and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant."

Many point to this as evidence that the Supreme Court will be less likely to approve domestic use of drones in an intrusive way by police. But they ignore the caveat. What about when a technology becomes in “general public use,” as drones are evolving to?

Similarly, last January in the U.S. v. Jones case, the Supreme Court ruled that placing a GPS tracking device on a vehicle is considered a search under the Constitution and required a warrant. Notably, though, it was the physical placement of the GPS on the vehicle that mattered most.[44] The Court said other evidence obtained without using the GPS device was admissible because the suspect had no "reasonable expectation of privacy" for a vehicle on the public streets. One way to read it is that your car can’t be tracked without a warrant; another is that your car can be tracked without a warrant, just as long as the police don’t place anything on the vehicle, which is no longer required with our current technology.

The underlying point is that the precedents cited with certainty by analysts and lawyers are often not as clear as they might be. And, when there are questions, or even potential abuses, it will be years before the legal system resolves them. The GPS case happened in 2005, but didn’t get resolved until 2012, well after the technology of a physical tracker was no longer needed. Moreover, just because the Supreme Court ruled one way, doesn’t mean it won’t rule differently on very similar issues, just at a different time. As everything from voting rights to abortion rulings demonstrates, all it takes to reorder the law is just a few seats changed on the court. Neither technology nor laws are written in stone, and justices don’t live forever.

User Questions

The innovation spread of robotics represents another trend of opportunity and peril. An ever-wider set of users is innovating for all sorts of positive purposes with robotics, from the great work being done by young students at robotics labs at McGill University to the team in Australia that built an autonomous drone to help find lost hikers.[45]

But not all of the people behind machines have only the best in mind. Take the traditional notion of using a robotic drone for surveillance. The new users have not just been militaries or police, but have also been civilians. These include news journalists who have reported on natural disasters with drones, as well as parents who want new ways to watch their kids.[46] A father in the U.S. gave new meaning to the term “helicopter parent,” using an automated quadcopter drone to escort his child to the school bus stop.[47]

The problem is that each and every technology has its darker side. The technology is enabling a new field of drone journalism (already taught at University of Nebraska and University of Missouri) that reports important stories with a whole new level of fidelity.[48] But the same phenomenon also advances the field of paparazzi. For instance, Gary Morgan, chief executive officer of Splash News, a celebrity-photo agency, has already said he’d like to be buzzing his quarry soon with silent, miniature drones mounted with tiny cameras: “It would strike fear in the hearts of every celebrity having a birthday party.”[49] And, one has the sense that the child may end up telling a therapist one day about his father loving him a bit too much, to the extent of following him with a drone.

Open Source

More seriously, just as software has gone “open source,” so has warfare. Robotics is not a technology like the atomic bomb or aircraft carrier, where only the great powers can build and use it effectively. Instead, just like with the “app” in the field of software, it is not just the big boys who control the field. The barriers to entry are not exceptionally high, and that means that bad actors will be able to gain and use this advanced technology.

If history is any guide, the repurposing of a low-entry revolutionary technology tends to happen fairly quickly. The first car bomb was set off as early as 1905, used in an assassination attempt on the Ottoman sultan. Similarly, the first hijacking of a plane took place in 1931, very early in civilian air travel.

A particular area of concern, then, is the use of robotic systems by terrorists and other non-state actors. Israel as a state has long used drones, and now so does its non-state opposition. Hezbollah, for example, is not a major state military, but it has already operated UAVs, as too has Hamas.[50]

The impact of this trend is twofold. The first is that it reinforces the empowerment of individuals and small groups against the power of the state. During the Second World War, for example, Hitler’s entire Luftwaffe could not manage to reach across the Atlantic to strike at Canada or the U.S. Just a few years ago, a blind 77-year-old man managed to build his own drone that flew itself across the Atlantic.[51]

And one man’s hobby may be another man’s plot. In 2011, the FBI arrested Rezwan Ferdaus, a man who wanted to recreate the 9/11 attacks (not so ironically, he had been angered by drone attacks in the Mideast intended to stop terrorism).[52] Unable to hijack planes, he instead obtained a large drone and planned to fly it into the Pentagon. Fortunately, he made the mistake of asking an FBI informant where he could obtain C-4 explosives. The plot was averted, but it showed we are now in a world where it is easier to get the drone than the bomb.

This greater reach and power may also see a lowering of the bar. One does not have to be suicidal to carry out attacks that previously might have required one to be so. This allows new players into the game, making al-Qaeda 2.0 and the next-generation version of the Unabomber or Timothy McVeigh far more lethal.

Just as car bombs are not the only way automobile technology has been misused, we should not make the mistake of only focusing on terrorism when it comes to the potential criminals uses of robotics. The early horseless carriage may have been reworked into a car bomb by turn-of-the-century terrorists, but the main illegal use was as a getaway device for criminals. Similarly, the best example of innovation in the field of robotics last year might be the team of thieves in Taiwan, who used tiny helicopters equipped with pinhole cameras to carry out a jewellery heist. They made away with $4 million worth of loot before being caught.

Accountability

The challenge for the law is not just how to prevent bad guys from doing bad things, but what to do when things go wrong without someone having bad intent, such as when the Google car was in a wreck in August 2011. Like most wrecks, the various sides involved blamed each other, just now they did it via online social networks.

Now take these issues and move them into the air. Congressional investigators report that there were over 200 drone accidents in Iraq and Afghanistan over the course of four years. This doesn’t include the many that happened in the not so covert world of strikes in Pakistan and Somalia. Perhaps the most amusing, but also maybe scary case took place at a base in Djibouti in March 2011.

As The Washington Post reported, a Predator parked at the Camp Lemonnier started its engine without any human direction, even though the ignition had been turned off and the fuel lines closed. “Technicians concluded that a software bug had infected the “brains” of the drone, but never pinpointed the problem…“After that whole starting-itself incident, we were fairly wary of the aircraft and watched it pretty closely,” the Air Force squadron commander testified to an investigative board.”[53]

The issue here isn’t that Predators are poised to take over the homeland, but rather another vexing question of law, politics, and ethics. Robotics has a long history of what one Vice President of a technology firm described to me as “oops moments.” These are when things don’t work out with your machine as planned and you have to take it back from the field. With military robotics, the examples range from the machine gun armed UGV that went “squirrelly” and started spinning around during a demonstration to the automated anti-aircraft system in South Africa that had what investigators thought was a “software glitch” during a training exercise. It shot nine soldiers by accident in a real world version of the famous scene from Robocop.[54]

Today, these oops moments might even be intentionally caused by hostile man-made threats, including criminal or adversarial efforts at UAS communications interference or hacking. Here again, this scenario is not science fiction, but was recently demonstrated in a test in Texas, where a university team hacked the navigation system of a drone.[55]

The issues this phenomenon presents are not just how to avoid them through technology improvements and deconfliction protocols, but also more vexing questions of process, policy, and even philosophy. How do we investigate and apportion out accountability in a realm where more and more is happening outside our old concepts of control and responsibility?

For instance, aviation law and insurance right now focuses on determining if the problem was a hardware error (a widget broke), wetware error (the human pilot made an error), or spiritual (an “Act of God” caused the loss). Now we have much in between, the role that software plays. And in the software field, responsibility and accountability is not something easily assigned. It can be stretched over the long periods of time between design and use, over the large numbers of people involved in writing and selling and buying and upkeeping software, by a business approach that often intends to let the customer find the errors, and by the fact that software will repeatedly be put in real world circumstances for which it wasn’t originally designed. In short, we have to figure out how to catch up our 20^th century laws, with our 21^st century technologies.

The Psychology Side

The irony in all this is that while the future may involve more and more machines watching us, whether it is police watching city streets from above, or the NSA reading your email, or your phone letting Starbucks know you are walking nearby, how we react to it will still be driven by the very fuzzy combination of our human programming, our identity and emotions – our chemical makeup that drives human psychology.

So what then will be the reaction to this next level step in the surveillance state? Will we redefine our notions of privacy, reacting like how teenagers have handled their online behavior on Facebook and Twitter? Who cares if all my behavior is shared with the world? Instead, I’ll embrace a loss of privacy that would have shocked my parents generation, and even mock it. One can already see this in the new offerings of anti-drone “stealth clothing” for any “style-conscious” terrorists the U.S. seeks, as well as “fashionistas who value their privacy.” As its designer told the media, it also doesn’t fall along clear partisan lines, making it the “Project Runway” version of Rand Paul’s filibuster. “It interests people on the far right as much as it interests people on the far left. Ultra-conservatives see it as anti-government and ultra-liberals see it as anti-military.”[56]

Or will we fear it? And is this a good or bad thing? Some, such as one senior State Department official, believe that our unmanning of war “…Plays to our strength. The thing that scares people is our technology.”[57] The carryover of this belief to the domestic side is the belief that a world of more drones will be a safer world, via a deterrent value. Where’s Waldo won’t mug me if he knows he’ll be caught on screen,

But the psychology of scaring people with technology is a tricky business. It’s the domestic version of the problem we face in our counterterrorism today. Abroad the U.S. government is wrestling with the robot’s impact on our very human “war of ideas” that we are fighting against radical movements. U.S. troops in Afghanistan describe having drones overhead as reassuring, saying they can sleep better as they feel like someone is always above, watching out for them. On the other hand, many civilians there say it’s intrusive, and creates a climate of fear and distrust. That is, on the domestic side, the risk is that robotic surveillance will instead be perceived as an intrusive “Big Brother” figure, as the Russian police who have already used drones to monitor protesters have been called.

The broader issue might not be one of fear, however, but a redefinition of how those who are watched look at the watchers. There is the potential that the drone could become emblematic of those trying to police people they don’t know, on the cheap, from afar. The drone becomes like the cameras favored by the disconnected Baltimore police force of the TV show The Wire, who watch a world of crime play out that they don’t understand.[58]

Conclusions

The ripple effects of robotics will continue to push out into all sorts of domains, in ways both expected and unexpected. Through it all, though, one fundamental principle will hold true as it has in the past: There are always two sides to technologic revolutions. From our new technologies we gain amazing capabilities that seem like they are straight from science-fiction. But from our new technologies we also gain new human dilemmas that seem like they are straight from science-fiction. Moore’s Law is operative, but so is Murphy’s Law.[59]

The issues of domestic “drones” all seem futuristic, but notice how none of the examples that were explored in this article were from the distant future. The questions they raise are fundamental policy questions of today. We can ignore them, or we can embrace and engage in the opportunities and dilemmas of these exciting times.

The above paper includes sections explored in the article The Robotics Revolution, for the Canadian International Council. The author would also like to thank the Christopher Newport University Center for American Studies.

[1] John W. Cowart, “Jacksonville’s Motorcar History,” 2004, http://www.cowart.info/Florida%20History/Auto%20History/Auto%20History.htm.

[2] Rebecca Rose, “Richmond’s part in the early automobile and racing industries,” Virginia Historical Society’s Blog, August 27, 2012, http://vahistorical.wordpress.com/page/4/.

[3] “Robotic Knight,” Leonardo DaVinci Inventions, 2008, http://www.da-vinci-inventions.com/robotic-knight.aspx.

Bud Shortrigde, “Remote Control In 1917 – Was This Possible?” Naval & Merchant Ship Articles of Interest, May 21, 2010, http://navalmerchantshiparticles.blogspot.com/2010/05/remote-control-enemy-is-it-possible.html#!/2010/05/remote-control-enemy-is-it-possible.html.

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Authors

Peter W. Singer

Image Source: © Reuters Staff / Reuters

China's New Cybersecurity Actions

Peter W. Singer — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 09:23:00 -0500

As the New York Times teaches China's spies that the old saying "Never argue with the man who buys ink by the barrel" still holds true in the cyber age, it might be useful to put this new turn in cybersecurity issues into context.

Explore Ken Lieberthal's and my report on the impact that cybersecurity has been having on US-China relations [PDF] (note: there is already a Chinese language version [PDF] on the Brookings website, so that the poor fellows busy in UNIT 61398 don't have to worry about translation) and my work on explaining these Advanced Persistant Threat campaigns.

Authors

Peter W. Singer

Image Source: © Carlos Barria / Reuters

It's Time to Recognize the Valor of Cyber Warriors

Peter W. Singer — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Editor's note: In an interview with NPR's Celeste Headlee, Peter Singer argues that outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that the military will award a new medal to recognize exceptional accomplishments in areas including drone and cyber warfare. Read an excerpt below.

Celeste Headlee: What is different about this medal from other military medals?

Peter Singer: Oh, it's an odd sort of medal, in that the very description of it, the official description says that it, quote, "may not be awarded for valor in combat under any circumstances," which we've never seen happen in a medal before. Essentially, the idea is that it's to recognize accomplishments that are exceptional and outstanding, but not bounded in any geographic or chronologic manner - that is, it's not taking place in the combat zone. And so, essentially, it's recognizing that people can now do extraordinary things because of the new technologies that we're using in war, drones and cyber, but that the system wasn't prepared to recognize them.

Headlee: But, you know, explain for me exactly how - when a person distinguishes themselves if they're a drone pilot, for example. I mean, how do you go above and beyond if you're sitting at a computer, piloting a drone?

Singer: Well, you're putting your finger on one of the controversies that surrounds this, and that's what a lot of the spin around has been. But let's use the case of the mission that got the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Zarqawi. So there was a team of unmanned aerial systems, drone operators, that tracked him down. It was over 600 hours of mission operational work that finally pinpointed him. They put the laser target on the compound that he was in, this terrorist leader, and then an F-16 pilot flew six minutes, facing no enemy fire, and dropped a bomb - a computer-guided bomb - on that laser. Now, who do you think got the Distinguished Flying Cross?

Headlee: Whoa. The...

Singer: The people who spent 600 hours, or the six-minute pilot? And so that's really what we're getting at. Actually, the drone operators, in that case, they didn't get the medal, but they did get a nice thank-you note from a general. This is a true story, here.

So, essentially, you know, what we're hitting at is, one, you have this growing portion of the military that's engaged in these kind of operations. It's important to the future of the military. But at the same time, the system wasn't set up to recognize some of their accomplishments. But the other thing that's playing out here - and it's what I went into in the piece - is that we have to recognize that technology has always changed what we think of as heroism.

So, you know, when the first guns came out in the 1400s, there was a nobleman back there who, you know, essentially said: Anyone who uses a gun is a coward. We've change our notion of that. Or there's a great saying from a - in World War I where this French general was complaining that three men with a machinegun can defeat a battalion of heroes. I mean, we've seen this play out. We've seen the story play out before. It doesn't make it something, you know, that we should celebrate or be happy about. It's just the cold, hard reality of war, is that technology continually reshapes our notions of the values that we look for in it.

Authors

Peter W. Singer

Publication: NPR

Image Source: © Heinz-Peter Bader / Reuters

Obama, Own Your Secret Wars

Peter W. Singer and Thomas Wright — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Irony pervades President Obama’s place in foreign policy today. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to roll back the nuclear bomb, the signature weapon of the 20th century, but he has also broken new ground in the use of revolutionary military technologies — from the armed drone to cyber weaponry — that may well become the signature weapons of the 21st century.

As the controversy continues about secret drone strikes and leaked legal documents, Obama promised in his State of the Union address last week to work with Congress to make the drone program, now shrouded in secret, more transparent.

But the problem is that a tipping point has already been reached, and it’s not just a matter of playing nice with Congress. A veil of official semi-silence surrounds these new technologies, the policy that guides them and their growing use in what can only be described as not-so-covert operations. When crucial information does come out, it’s most often through leaks to the press.

It is time for a new approach. And all that is required of the President is to do the thing that he does perhaps best of all: to speak.

Obama has a unique opportunity — in fact, an urgent obligation — to create a new doctrine, unveiled in a major presidential speech, for the use and deployment of these new tools of war.

Read the entire opinion piece at nydailynews.com >>

Authors

Publication: New York Daily News

Image Source: © Handout . / Reuters

A Military Medal for Drone Strikes? Makes Sense.

Peter W. Singer — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0500

It is an odd medal indeed that “may not be awarded for valor in combat under any circumstances.” But that definition is precisely what drives the need for and the controversy surrounding the military’s new Distinguished Warfare Medal.

Announced by Leon Panetta this past week in one of his final acts as defense secretary, the medal recognizes achievements in post-Sept. 11 military operations, accomplishments “so exceptional and outstanding as to clearly set the individual apart from comrades or from other persons in similar situations.” But what makes the medal so noteworthy is that there is no geographic limit on where the action took place. It was created to catch up to the military’s growing use of unmanned systems (i.e., drones) and cyber-warfare tools, and can therefore be awarded “regardless of the domain used or the member’s physical location.”

Before this medal, a Predator pilot carrying out an important mission, such as the 2006 operation that found the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, or a cyber-warrior taking down a key enemy network couldn’t receive such a high recognition.

The notion of granting medals to those who don’t physically go into harm’s way has elicited indignation (“Awarding war medals to those who operate America’s death-delivering video games” was the headline on a column by Salon’s Glenn Greenwald) as well as mockery (“Medals have jumped the shark when drone operators get higher medals than dudes on ground,” tweeted defense blogger Jason Fritz).

Yet, a medal of this kind was bound to come about eventually. New technologies have changed the operations and makeup of the military; a growing segment of our warriors are fighting from afar. Over the past decade, we’ve gone from a mere handful of unmanned systems to more than 20,000 in the air and on the ground. The Air Force now trains more unmanned-systems operators than it does manned fighter and bomber plane pilots combined. And military spending on cyber-operations measures in the billions of dollars, with Cyber Command set to quintuple in size.

Authors

Peter W. Singer

Publication: Washington Post

Image Source: © Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

On FAA Announcement of Domestic Drones Test Sites

Peter W. Singer — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 20:51:00 -0500

This week the FAA announced the selection process for domestic drone test sites. This is a key step in the opening up of the national airspace to unmanned systems, which has huge implications, from potentially determining which states might become the robotics versions of Silicon Valley to opening up huge privacy and legal concerns.

I gave a speech on these opportunities and challenges of the coming domestic drone boom, which might be of interest given this news.

Authors

Peter W. Singer

Image Source: Reuters

The Opportunities and Challenges of the Coming Domestic Drone Boom

Peter W. Singer — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Editor's Note: In his January 28, 2013 Alexander Hamilton Society Keynote Lecture at Christopher Newport University, Peter Singer spoke about the revolutionary effects of drones and the issues policymakers will face as such robotics become more prevalent. A portion of the speech is below; the entire speech is available via Vimeo.

In 1899, a strange thing appeared on the streets of Norfolk – it was loud, ungainly, and ugly. It was also the first of its kind. It was the first quote “horseless carriage” to appear on the streets of Virginia – a steam-powered car. It was also called a “loco-mobile.” Now, within a decade after that, there were more than 2,705 of these strange things. This strange new technology registered with the Commonwealth of Virginia, and by 1915 there were more than 37,000 of these now what we call automobiles in Virginia.

Now this new technology brought all sorts of new opportunity to the area. The first Virginia-made car called the “Dawson car” was built in Basic City, what is now called Waynesboro, in 1901. And the Piedmont and Klein car were manufactured in Lynchburg and Richmond respectively. Virginia manufacturers would make over 2,500 horseless carriages before Henry Ford shifted to the assembly line and basically moved the industry to Michigan.

Now this strange new technology didn’t just bring opportunity, it brought all sorts of new questions that nobody was ready for in Virginia – especially the state government. There were no real roads, there were no maps to the paths that existed, and indeed as late as 1921 the Automobile Club of America recommended that motorists driving from New England to Florida bypass the state of Virginia.

As with revolutionary inventions of the past, like the horseless carriage and manned airplanes, no amount of handwringing by pundits late to the game will see a technology of such great promise banned. That said, new technologies bring with them the need for revising old laws. Early cars and planes, for instance, led to the creation of newfangled things like "traffic laws" and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Watch Peter Singer's speech on the CNU Center for American Studies Vimeo page »

Authors

Peter W. Singer

Publication: Christopher Newport University Center for American Studies

The Big Bet: New Rules of War

Peter W. Singer — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Brookings Foreign Policy experts have come together to create a series of policy memos addressing the “big bets”—opportunities to strengthen President Obama’s second term—and “black swans,” the low probability, high-impact events that could derail the administration’s priorities. These were released at a public event on Thursday, January 17. Senior Fellow Peter Singer says a "Big Bet" for the Obama administration would be taking a leadership role in charting how, when and where drones and cyber warfare can be used.

Video

The Big Bet: New Rules of War

Authors

Peter W. Singer

An Obama Doctrine on New Rules of War

Peter W. Singer and Thomas Wright — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0500

The Obama administration has an opportunity — perhaps an obligation — to outline a doctrine that lays out criteria by which the United States will develop, deploy and use tactics such as drones and cyber attacks. Peter W. Singer and Thomas Wright wrote this memorandum to President Obama as part of Big Bets and Black Swans: A Presidential Briefing Book.

What are the key strategic goals and ethics that should drive development of drones and cyber systems?
When is authorization required for the operational deployment of such technologies versus notification?
How does the United States ensure that technologies that limit physical risk to the operator do not numb us to the political consequences of their use?

Download Memorandum (pdf) | Download the Presidential Briefing Book (pdf)

TO: President Obama

FROM: Peter W. Singer and Thomas Wright

Over the past four years, your administration worked hard to rollback one of the signature weapons of the 20th century, the nuclear bomb, which was one of the reasons why you were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet during this same period, the United States broke new ground in the use of new and revolutionary military technologies that may well become signature weapons of the 21st century.

There has been a game change in weaponry over the last several years, with a new generation of advanced technology that moves the point of critical human decision, both geographically off the battlefield and also, increasingly, chronologically away from the time of kinetic action. These encompass both physical systems, like unmanned aircraft (a.k.a. “drones”), and a new class of virtual weaponry, malware that can conduct a cyber attack with real world consequences.

The United States has been a leader in driving this revolution. Its military unmanned systems now number more than 8,000 in the air and 12,000 on the ground and are used daily in Afghanistan. The U.S. Cyber Command became operational in 2010 and military spending on cyber operations now measures in the billions of dollars.

At the same time, civilian intelligence agencies are increasingly using these technologies in a series of not-so-covert operations and so-called “secret wars” that have leaked into the press. There have been over 400 drone strikes into places like Pakistan and Yemen. The United States also deployed Stuxnet to sabotage Iranian nuclear development, the world’s first known use of a specially designed cyber weapon.

Such weapons seem advanced, but represent just the beginning. Technologies currently under development are far more effective and more autonomous, and capable of operating in a wider set of circumstances. We are at the onset of a decades-long technological revolution in warfare, comparable to the introduction of mechanization and airpower onto the battlefield or the advent of the atomic bomb.

Recommendation:

You now have an opportunity — and perhaps an obligation — to outline a doctrine that lays out criteria by which the United States will develop, deploy and use these weapons. The goal should be to establish a framework for how the United States believes the evolution of these revolutionary new technologies should proceed. The effort to set the terms of the future debate and create a doctrine for guidance should draw upon past lessons from comparable situations and culminate in a major presidential speech.

Background:

These new weapons have become a hallmark of this administration’s foreign policy for good reason. They offered new options for action that have proven more accurate and proportionate, and less risky than previously-available alternatives. They have repeatedly been used in successful operations that have saved soldiers’ lives, eliminated key terrorist leaders, and offered a much-sought-after third way to deal with Iran’s nuclear program.

However, the situation surrounding these once science-fiction, then highly covert weapons has changed. First, there has been a global proliferation. The United States is leading the way, but many follow. At the end of 2012, 76 other countries have military robotics programs and over 100 have cyberwar capabilities.

Second, the international discourse and debate over them has risen significantly, increasing external pressure on U.S. policy interests. These range from international controversy over the drone strike campaign and the appointment of a U.N. special rapporteur to new NGO campaigns to preemptively ban the next generation of technologies under development.

Finally, after years of silence, the U.S. government has started to make efforts to establish policies and engage in the growing debate. These range from speeches by your aides finally acknowledging the use of such technologies in a counter-terrorism context to lesser noticed workinglevel documents, such as an attempt to establish the policy for the next, far more autonomous generation. These have been very good starts but they have been disjointed and preliminary. Most importantly, they are missing the stamp of your voice and authority, which is essential to turn tentative first steps into established goals and policy. Much remains to be done, and, more importantly, said out in the open.

What Would the Big Bet Entail?

Armed with a new revolutionary weapon in the 1940s and 1950s, the Truman and Eisenhower administrations engaged in a series of comprehensive reviews to understand better the technology, its best doctrine of use, and likely impact on geopolitics and the direction of U.S. foreign policy. These doctrines were not binding for all time. Nor did they solve all the problems of the nuclear age. But, the efforts proved valuable. Setting nuclear doctrine in public molded the strategic environment for the better, not just against adversaries, but also in relationships with allies. The discussions also helped set the terms of the discussion both internationally and domestically, helping to introduce Congress and the American public to a world of powerful new technology and important new responsibilities.

Today, the United States should embark upon a similar effort around the new generation of weaponry. This endeavor should answer where it stands on the key questions emerging now and soon to become central, including:

• What are the key strategic goals and ethical guidelines that should drive development of these new technologies? Are there any limitations that should be established or areas of the technology that should be preemptively banned?

• Is current international law sufficient to cover the development and use of these new technologies, or are there emerging gaps that should be filled?

• What is the dividing line between the military vs. civilian intelligence agency use of such technologies? What distinguishes a covert action using these technologies from an act of war?

• What is the proper role for Congress vs. the Executive Branch? When is authorization required for the operational deployment of such technologies versus notification? Does the War Powers Resolution apply even in situations where no U.S. personnel are in harm’s way?

• Are there any key criteria for how the U.S. will similarly evaluate other nations’ use of the technology, including by potential adversaries?

• How does the United States plan to coordinate development and use doctrines with major U.S. allies?

• How does the United States ensure that technologies that limit physical risk to the operator do not numb us to the political consequences of their use?

There is a need to be realistic about what is possible. Much as with the early doctrines on nuclear weapons, the answers to these questions will not be set in stone. Rather, the goal is to set out a presidential level vision that will fill today’s gaps in the discourse and guide tomorrow’s policy.

Accessing the Downside:

There is a counterargument that it is better to say nothing, for fear of tipping off rivals, unilaterally tying U.S. hands, or that no initiative will work unless all other countries sign on, which they won’t.

That is a mistake. The less you say, the more that vacuum will be filled by others, in harmful ways. Having already used the technologies, but without proper elucidation, the precedents the United States sets may be exploited. Other states and non-state actors will use these technologies in far more crude and non-discriminatory ways, but claim to be merely following in U.S. footsteps. Finally, the debate will not stop simply because the United States is not part of it. International organizations will push ahead with investigations and propose new treaties, which, while likely ineffective, will nevertheless isolate the United States and drain our soft power. And on the home front, the original foundations of congressional and public support for many of the covert uses of these technologies could erode as the United States moves further away from 9/11. Indeed, the administration recently won a court case to maintain the veil of semi-silence that surrounds the drone strike program, but the judge described continuing the policy of denial as having an “Alice in Wonderland” feel.

Conclusion:

Beginning this discussion is a modest step with no budget costs, but entails a big bet with enormous advantages over the alternative of remaining silent. You would lay out your vision, helping both to guide internal policy development across multiple agencies as well as assuage genuine concerns at home and abroad. Most importantly, the voice of a respected commander in chief, with a strong expertise in the law, would create the foundations of an international norm, allowing the United States to build a large coalition of the like-minded on these issues, making it easier to identify and isolate those who depart from this norm. It will help maintain U.S. influence over the future of these technologies, even as they proliferate and evolve beyond our control.

By speaking out now, you will not just set the terms of the debate but steer it towards more positive ends. It’s the kind of effort for which leaders win Nobel Peace Prizes, again.

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The Big Bet: New Rules of War

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The Big Bet: New Rules of War

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Defense Spending and U.S. National Security Strategy

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 09:30:00 -0500

Event Information

January 7, 2013
9:30 AM - 11:30 AM EST

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036

While the so-called fiscal cliff has been averted, questions about needed defense spending cuts still remain and additional defense budget cuts are still possible. Pentagon officials as well as other agencies, organizations and individuals have repeatedly questioned whether major cuts in defense spending would be extremely damaging, resulting in lost jobs, decreased readiness, and more. All of this takes place as the international environment remains in turmoil. Yet at the same time, the nation’s military budget stands near a historical high while the deficit and debt have themselves become major national security issues.

On January 7, the 21st Century Defense Initiative at Brookings hosted a discussion examining defense spending and U.S. national security, featuring a keynote address by Robert Hale, Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) and chief financial officer at the U.S. Department of Defense. Following Hale’s remarks, a panel discussion followed, including: Brookings Senior Fellow Michael O’Hanlon; Richard Betts of Columbia University; and Paul Wolfowitz of the American Enterprise Institute. Senior Fellow Peter W. Singer, director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative, moderated the discussion.

After the program, panelists took audience questions.

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Inside China's Secret Arsenal

Peter W. Singer — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 14:59:00 -0500

In a single generation, China has transformed itself from a largely agrarian country into a global manufacturing and trading powerhouse. China’s economy is 20 times bigger than it was two decades ago and is on track to surpass the United States’ as the world’s largest. But perhaps most startling has been the growth of China’s ambitious and increasingly powerful military.

Just 10 years ago, the budget for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was roughly $20 billion. Today, that number is more like $100 billion. (Some analysts think it’s closer to $160 billion.) The PLA’s budget is only a sixth of what the U.S. devotes to defense annually, but defense dollars go much further in China, and in the years ahead, Chinese military spending will grow at the same rate as its economy. Meanwhile, Chinese president Hu Jintao has called for the PLA to carry out “new historic missions” in the 21st century—to move beyond the traditional goal of defending the nation’s sovereignty and develop the global military reach of a true world superpower. In some cases, China’s increasing international presence could lead to greater cooperation with the U.S., as it did in 2008 when China joined antipiracy patrols off Somalia. But if American and Chinese forces end up in the same place with different goals, the result could be a standoff between two of the best-equipped militaries in the world.

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Authors

Peter W. Singer

Publication: Popular Science

The Robotics Revolution

Peter W. Singer — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 13:42:00 -0500

Whether it is a report about the latest drone strike into Pakistan or an awesome web video of a cute robot dancing in the latest style, it seems like robots are taking over the world, figuratively if not yet literally. But within their growing appearance in the news is perhaps something bigger, a story that is reshaping the overall history of war and politics, and even humanity.

Where are we now?

While unmanned systems have a long history, dating back to Da Vinci’s designs for a robotic knight and including things like German remote-controlled torpedo boats in the First World War, it wasn’t until just a decade ago that they truly took off in war. Advances in technology made unmanned systems more usable, especially through the incorporation of GPS technology that allowed such systems to locate themselves in the world. At the same time, the new conflicts that followed 9/11 drove demand. When US forces first went into Afghanistan, the U.S. military had only a handful of unmanned aerial systems (UAS, also called “remotely piloted aircraft” or, more colloquially, “drones”) in the air, none of them armed, and zero on the ground. Now it has a force inventory of more than 8,000 in the air and more than 12,000 on the ground. Another example of how far the change has gone is that last year, the U.S. Air Force trained more unmanned systems operators than fighter and bomber pilots combined.

But when we think about technologies like the Predator or the PackBot, we need to remember that they are just the first generation, the Model T Fords and Wright Flyers compared to what is already in the prototype stage. We are still at the “horseless carriage” stage of this technology, describing these technologies by what they are not, rather than wrestling with what they truly are. These technologies are “killer applications” in all the meanings of the term. They are technologies that advance the power of killing, but also have a disruptive effect on existing structures and programs. That is, they are akin to advancements like the airplane or the steam engine in allowing greater power and reach in war, but they are also akin to what iPods did to the music industry, changing it forever.

What Next? The Robotics Revolution

But the numbers matter in another way. It won’t be tens of thousands of today’s robots, but tens of thousands of tomorrow’s robots, with far different capabilities.

One of the laws in action when it comes to technology is Moore’s Law, that the computing power that can fit on a microchip doubles just under every two years or so. It has become an encapsulation of broader exponential trends in technology that have occurred through history, with technology constantly doubling upon itself in everything from power to storage to broader innovation patterns. If Moore’s Law holds true over the next 25 years, the way it has held true over the last 40 years, then our chips, our computers, and, yes, our robots will be as much as a billion times more powerful than today. But Moore’s Law is not a law of physics. It doesn’t have to hold true. What if our technology moves at a pace just 1/1000^th slower than it has historically? In this slowed-down scenario, we’d only see a mere 1,000,000 times the change.

The bottom line is that what was once only fodder for science-fiction conventions like Comic-Con is now being talked about seriously in places like the Pentagon. A robotics revolution is at hand.

I should be clear here. The robot revolution happening is not the Robopocalypse that Steven Spielberg is preparing to film. It is not the type where you need to worry about the former governor of California showing up at your door, à la The Terminator.

The key to what makes a revolutionary technology is not merely its new capabilities, but its questions. Truly revolutionary technologies force us to ask new questions about what is possible that wasn’t possible a generation before. But they also force us to relook at what is proper. They raise issues of right and wrong that we didn’t have to wrestle with before.

The historical comparisons that people make to the robotics revolution illustrate this. When I conducted interviews for my book, I asked people to give historical parallels to where they think we stand now with robotics. As I noted earlier with the comparison to the “horseless carriage,” many of them, especially engineers, liken where we are now with robotics to the advent of the automobile. Indeed, at this stage of the last century, Ford was selling fewer than 1,000 cars a year. Within a decade, especially spurred on by the military proving ground of the First World War, it was selling a million a year.

Others, such as Bill Gates, make a different comparison, to the computer in 1980. Much like robots today, the computer back then was a big, bulky device for which we could only conceive a few functions. Importantly, the military was the main spender on computers’ research and development and a key client driving the marketplace, again comparable to the development of robots.

But soon, computers changed. They got smaller. We figured out more and more functions and applications that they could perform, both in war and in civilian life. And they proliferated. It soon got to the point that we stopped thinking of most of them as “computers.” I drive a car with more than 100 computers in it. No one calls it a “computerized car.” I have a number of computers in my kitchen. I call them things like “microwave” or “coffee maker.”

The same thing is happening with robotics – not just the changes in size and proliferation, but also the reconceptualization. Indeed, if you buy a new car today, it will come equipped with things like “parking assist” or “crash avoidance” technologies. These are kind ways of saying that we stupid humans are not good at parallel parking and too often don’t look in our blind spots. So, the robotic systems in our car will handle these things for us.

But, again, just as the story of the automobile was more than just the shift from owning horse stables to garages, so, too, was the computer about more than never having to remember long-division tables again. What were important, again, were the ripple effects. The game-changing technology reshaped the modern information-rich economy, allowing billions of dollars to be made and lost in nanoseconds. It led to new concepts of social relations and even privacy. I can now “friend” someone in China I’ve never met. Of course, I may now be concerned about my niece social networking with people whom she’s never met. It became a tool of law enforcement (imagine the TV show CSI without computers), but also led to new types of crime (imagine explaining “identity theft” to J. Edgar Hoover). And it may even be leading to a new domain of war, so-called “cyber-war.”

This comparison is a striking one because it illustrates how bureaucracies often have a hard time keeping up with revolutionary change. For example, while computers were obviously important by then, the director of the FBI was so averse to computers that he didn’t have one in his office and never used email, as late as 2001. Sound amazing? Well, the current U.S. secretary of Homeland Security, the agency in charge of the civilian side of American cyber-security, doesn’t use email today in 2012.

The final comparison that is made is perhaps a darker one. It is to the work on the atomic bomb in the 1940s. Scientists, in particular, talk about the field of robotics today in much the same way they talked about nuclear research back in the 1940s. If you are a young engineer or computer scientist, you will find yourself drawn towards it. It is the cutting edge. It is where the excitement is, and where the research money is.

But many worry that their experience will turn out just like that of those amazing minds that were drawn towards the Manhattan Project, like a moth to an atomic flame. They are concerned that the same mistakes could be repeated – of creating something and only after the fact worrying about the consequences. Will robotics, too, be a genie we one day wish we could put back in the bottle?

How Our Robots Are Changing

The first key ripple effect with robotics is the diversification of the field and expansion of the market itself.

The first generations of aerial robots were much like the manned systems they were replacing, even down to some of them having the cockpit where the pilot would sit looking like it’d been painted over. Now we are seeing an explosion of new types, ranging in size, shape, and form. With no human inside, they can stay in the air not just for hours, but for days, months, and even years, having wings the length of a football field. Alternatively, they can be as small as an insect. And, of course, they need not be modelled after our manned machines, but can instead take their design cues from nature, or even the bizarre.

The other key change is their gain in intelligence and autonomy. This is a whole new frontier for weapons development. Traditionally, we’ve compared weapons based on their lethality, range, or speed. Think about the comparison between a Second World War B-17 bomber plane and a B-24 bomber plane. The B-24 could be considered superior because it flew faster, further, and carried more bombs. The same could be said in comparing the MQ-9 Reaper UAS with its earlier version, the MQ-1 Predator. The Reaper is better because it flies faster and further and carries more bombs. But the Reaper is also something else, which we couldn’t say about previous generations of weapons: It is smarter, and more autonomous. We are not yet in the world of The Terminator, where weapons make their own decisions, but the Reaper can do things like take off and land on its own, fly mission waypoints on its own, and carry sensors that make sense of what they are seeing, such as identifying a disruption in the dirt from a mile overhead and recognizing it as something that we humans call a “footprint.”

This greater usability opens up the realm of possible users, lowering the costs and spreading the technology even further. So, we are seeing the range of uses expand not just in the military, but also, once proved on the military side, moving over to the civilian world. Take aerial surveillance with UAS. It’s gone from a military activity to border security to police to environmental monitoring. Similarly, the notion of using a robotic helicopter to carry cargo to austere locations was first tested out in Afghanistan, but is now being looked at by logging companies.

A key step in moving this forward in the U.S. will be the integration of unmanned aerial systems into the National Airspace System (NAS) and expanded civilian use. Congress has recently set a deadline of 2015 for the Federal Aviation Authority to figure out how to make this happen. While it is unclear if the FAA will meet that deadline, the step is coming, and with it, the next ripple effect outwards in the market.

Indeed, what the opening of the civilian airspace will do to robotics is akin to what the internet did to desktop computing. The field was there before, but then it boomed like never before. For instance, if you are a maker of small tactical surveillance drones in the U.S. right now, your client pool numbers effectively one: the U.S. military. But when the airspace opens up, you will have as many as 21,000 new clients – all the state and local police agencies that either have expensive manned aviation departments or can’t afford them.

Beyond the obvious applications moved over from the military side, the real change occurs when imagination and innovation cross with profit-seeking. This is where parallels to computer or aviation history hold most, as the civilian side then starts to lead the way for the military. For instance, the idea of moving freight via airplanes was not originally a military role. It started out in 1919 with civilians. Today, it’s both a major military role (the U.S. military’s Air Mobility Command has some 134,000 members) and an industry that moves more than $10 trillion in global trade annually. And, yes, a number of airfreight firms are starting to explore drone air cargo delivery.

If history is any lesson, there are many more ways we don’t yet know of that robotics might be applied to other fields. Who saw agriculture as a field to be computerized? And yet the application of computers has led to massive efficiency gains. So, too, is agriculture appearing to be an area in which robotics will drive immense change, from the surveillance of the fields to the crop-dusting to the picking and harvesting.

The Global Revolution

As this progress in robotics plays out, it leads to more ripple effects, notably on the global level. While this is a robotics revolution, it will not be solely an American revolution.

The U.S. is certainly ahead now in this revolution, and well it should be, given that it outspends the rest of the world on military research and development.

There is a rule, however, in both technology and war that means the U.S. should not rest on its laurels: There is no such thing as a permanent first-mover advantage. Companies like IBM and Commodore may have once led the world of computing, but their wares likely don’t sit on your desk today. Similarly, the British may have invented the tank in the First World War, inspired by an H.G. Wells short story about “Land Ironclads.” But it was the Germans who figured out how to use them better in the Blitzkrieg of the Second World War.

Today, there are more than 50 other countries building, buying, and using military robotics of some sort. They range from close allies like Canada and the United Kingdom to potential adversaries like Iran, China, Russia, and Pakistan. Indeed, China has gone from having no UAS under development just a few years back to showing off well more than 25 different models of Chinese-made drones at its tradeshows, ranging from the Predator-like “Pterodactyl” to a stealthy, lethal-looking “Dark Sword.”

Battles of Ideas and Persuasion

The introduction of a revolutionary technology brings new races for ideas and new interactions of knowledge, power, and communication. In the case of robotics, a new fascinating cross has emerged between intellectual-property rights issues and defence studies.

As a critical field to security and industry, akin to the rise of the car, the computer, or the atomic bomb, we are unsurprisingly seeing attempts at stealing information for copying abroad. The examples of this already range from advanced persistent threats in the cyber-security space targeting the secrets of major defence manufacturers to a sales guy for a small robotics maker I spoke with, who happened to see a clone of his firm’s ground robot being sold at an Asian arms fair.

Beyond the stealing of design secrets, unmanned systems have also opened a competition to reach into the communications of the machines themselves. In Iraq, insurgents managed to hack into the video feed of U.S. military drones – in effect, the equivalent of a robber listening in on a police radio scanner. What is even more notable is that the insurgents were able to do so using a $29 piece of software they had obtained from a Russian website. It had originally been designed to allow college kids to illegally download movies online.

As we use more and more systems that are digitally controlled, where a human is not physically inside, we will see a new step in this race open. The battle is not just for design secrets and access to communications, but also for control. We enter into an era of battles of persuasion.

This is a fundamental shift. We have never been able to “persuade” a weapon to do what its owner didn’t want. You never could change the direction of a bullet or arrow in mid flight. Now you can do the equivalent. The goal then moves from only seeking to destroy the enemy’s plane or tank, to co-opting it to “persuade” it to do things its original owners wouldn’t want. “Recode all allied soldiers as enemies, and all enemy soldiers as friendly.” A human would ask why, needing motivation to change his or her ways. With the proper access, a computer will just comply.

Privacy and the Law

A computer will also not ask for an explanation when tasked with surveillance. While some say drones are no different than manned planes or surveillance cameras and so raise no new privacy issues, this is incorrect. There are many similarities but also fundamental differences.

To operate, a robot is always gathering and storing information about the world around it. Always. This is different from a regular plane, for example, where the human operator is gathering most of this information but cannot store it for playback. A robot’s operating requirements mean that even in the course of regular operations, it is gathering and storing information about everything that crosses its path. This gives robots an advantage over human-operated planes, where a conscious decision to acquire and store data must be made. The other main advantage of unmanned systems is their ability to loiter for long periods of time, which again allows them to draw in more information than manned systems. Taking in vast quantities of information happens unintentionally – a robot on a “Where’s Waldo?” mission to hunt down one person in a city will still be gathering data on the entirety of that city throughout the search process.

Visual information is not the only type of data being gathered. Unmanned systems also carry out electronic surveillance. A drone unveiled at the DefCon hacking conference last year can crack Wi-Fi networks and intercept text messages and cell phone conversations, all without the knowledge or help of either the communications provider or the customer. This type of drone draws in electronic information on a wide group of people beyond the intended target, including those who have not signed a user agreement or otherwise signaled they accept this intrusion upon their privacy.

Finally, the size and mobility of robotic systems is fundamentally different: they are being designed in increasingly smaller sizes, and they are able to move and track targets covertly when required. A robotic system can watch from above, but can also get up close and personal, unlike a fixed security camera or a high altitude spy plane.

These differences lie at the heart of a lot of the suspicion of domestic use of unmanned systems. Such suspicion has been encouraged by the American Civil Liberties Union, and by right wing commentators on Fox News, who have urged Americans to use their Second Amendment powers to shoot down drones (something already done by a group of hunters in Pennsylvania, who shot down a drone doing environmental monitoring).

As with revolutionary inventions of the past – like the horseless carriage and manned airplanes – no amount of handwringing or fear mongering by pundits late to the game will lead to a ban on technology of such great promise.

Instead, a revolutionized world requires the establishment of new rules, which in turn requires an understanding of the new technology. Much of the substance of these rules will likely come from public discourse and the private sector. For example, the origins of the modern way we drive can be found in Rules of the Road, published in 1903 by William P. Eno. Known as “the father of traffic safety,” Eno’s book contained such revolutionary ideas as cars only passing on the left, stoplights and one-way streets. (Ironically he never drove himself; he was always chauffered).

We are seeing a similar evolution now, whether in the development of industry codes of conduct or guidelines for university research groups. But much like the early “rules of the road”, these will need enforceable laws to make them real. Early cars and planes needed more than Eno’s book – mainstream use of these inventions demanded the drafting of traffic laws and the creation of regulatory institutions like the Federal Aviation Administration. Similarly, the increasing use of unmanned systems has highlighted a gap at the state and federal levels that demands action.

The Psychological Side

There is a degree of irony to all the calls for regulation. Our reactions to drones policing city streets from above, computers at the National Security Agency reading emails, and smartphones letting Starbucks know when there’s a potential customer walking nearby, are still mostly determined by the very fuzzy combination of our identity and our emotions – by the DNA coding and chemical makeup that drives human psychology.

What then will be the reaction to the intensification of the surveillance state? Will we respond similarly to those teenagers given access to Facebook and Twitter who couldn’t care less that the world is watching and who have embraced the system to the point of overload? Or will we respond with fear? And how will our response to being watched impact the way we look at the human operators behind the robots?

We are facing the domestic version of the problem confronting our counterterrorist efforts abroad – the impact of robots on the very human “war of ideas”.

We need to consider what message we think we are sending with our robot watchers versus the one publics are actually receiving, and the range of impacts that message can have. U.S. troops in Afghanistan describe unmanned systems as reassuring, saying that they can sleep better because they feel like someone is always overhead, watching out for them. On the other hand, many Afghan civilians fear and distrust them.

Some, such as one senior State Department official, believe that our unmanning of war “…Plays to our strength. The thing that scares people is our technology.” Their idea is that it has a deterrent value even if it is scary.

But the psychology of scaring people with technology is a tricky business. There is the risk that robotic surveillance will instead be perceived as an intrusive “Big Brother” figure, as the Russian police whose used drones to monitor protesters have been called. Or, they might be seen as emblematic of those trying to police people they don’t know, on the cheap, from afar. The drone becomes like the cameras favoured by the disconnected and corrupt Baltimore police force of the TV show The Wire, who watch a world of crime play out that they don’t understand.

User Questions

But not all of the people behind machines have only the best in mind. Take the traditional notion of using a robotic drone for surveillance. The new users have not just been militaries or police, but have also been civilians. These include news journalists who have reported on natural disasters with drones, as well as even parents who want new ways to watch their kids. A father in the U.S. gave new meaning to the term “helicopter parent,” using an automated quadcopter drone to escort his child to the school bus stop.

The problem is that each and every technology has its darker side. The same field of drone journalism that reports important stories with a whole new level of fidelity also advances the field of paparazzi. For instance, Gary Morgan, chief executive officer of Splash News, a celebrity-photo agency, has already said he’d like to be buzzing his quarry soon with silent, miniature drones mounted with tiny cameras: “It would strike fear in the hearts of every celebrity having a birthday party.” And, one has the sense that child may end up telling a therapist one day about his father loving him a bit too much, to the extent of following him with a drone.

Open Source

If history is any guide, the repurposing of a low-entry revolutionary technology tends to happen fairly quickly. Indeed, the first car bomb was set off as early as 1905, used in an assassination attempt on the Ottoman sultan. Similarly, the first hijacking of a plane took place in 1931, very early in civilian air travel.

A particular area of concern, then, is the use of robotic systems by terrorists and other non-state actors. Israel as a state has long used drones, and now so has its non-state opposition. Hezbollah, for example, is not a major state military, but it has already operated UAVs, as too has Hamas.

The impact of this trend is twofold. The first is that it reinforces the empowerment of individuals and small groups against the power of the state. During the Second World War, for example, Hitler’s entire Luftwaffe could not manage to reach across the Atlantic to strike at Canada or the US. Just a few years ago, a blind 77-year-old man managed to build his own drone that flew itself across the Atlantic.

And one man’s hobby may be another man’s plot. In 2011, the U.S. arrested Rezwan Ferdaus, a man who wanted to recreate the 9/11 attacks (not so ironically, he had been angered by drone attacks in the Mideast intended to stop terrorism). Unable to hijack planes, he instead obtained a large drone and planned to fly it into the Pentagon. Fortunately, he made the mistake of asking an FBI informant where he could obtain C-4 explosives. The plot was averted, but it showed we are now in a world where it is easier to get the drone than the bomb.

Just as car bombs are not the only way automobile technology has been misused, we should not make the mistake of only focusing on terrorism when it comes to the potential negative uses of robotics. The early horseless carriage may have been reworked into a car bomb by turn-of-the-century terrorists, but the main illegal use was as a getaway device for criminals. Similarly, the best example of innovation in the field of robotics this year might be the team of thieves in Taiwan, who used tiny helicopters equipped with pinhole cameras to carry out a jewellery heist. They made away with $4 million worth of loot before being caught.

The Biggest Impact

Perhaps the biggest ripple effect of the robot, however, is in reshaping the narrative in that most important realm of war. We are seeing a reordering of how we conceptualize war, how we talk about it, and how we report it.

In democracies, there have always been deep bonds between the public and its wars. Citizens have historically participated in decisions to take military action, through their elected representatives, helping to ensure broad support for wars and a willingness to share the costs, both human and economic, of enduring them.

In the U.S., our Constitution explicitly divided the president’s role as commander-in-chief in war from Congress’s role in declaring war. Yet, these links and this division of labour are now under siege as a result of a technology that our founding fathers never could have imagined.

We don’t have a draft anymore. Less than 0.5 per cent of Americans over 18 serve in the active-duty military. We do not declare war anymore. The last time Congress actually did so was in 1942 – against Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania. We don’t buy war bonds or pay war taxes anymore. During the Second World War, 85 million Americans purchased war bonds that brought the government $185 billion. In the last decade, we bought none and instead gave the richest five per cent of Americans a tax break.

And now we possess a technology that removes the last political barriers to war. The strongest appeal of unmanned systems is that we don’t have to send someone’s son or daughter into harm’s way. But when politicians can avoid the political consequences of the condolence letter – and the impact that military casualties have on voters and on the news media – they no longer treat the previously weighty matters of war and peace the same way.

For the first 200 years of American democracy, engaging in combat and bearing risk – both personal and political – went hand in hand. In the age of drones, that is no longer the case.

This last year, unmanned systems carried out strikes from Afghanistan to Yemen. The most notable of these continuing operations is the not-so-covert war in Pakistan, where the United States has carried out more than 350 drone strikes since 2004.

Yet, this operation has never been debated in Congress. More than seven years after it began, there has not even been a single vote for or against it. This campaign is not carried out by the Air Force – it is being conducted by the CIA. This shift affects everything from the strategy that guides it to the individuals who oversee it (civilian political appointees) and the lawyers who advise them (civilians rather than military officers).

It also affects how we, and our politicians, view such operations. U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision to send a small, brave Navy SEAL team into Pakistan for 40 minutes was described by one of his advisers as “the gutsiest call of any president in recent history.” Yet, few even talk about the decision to carry out more than 350 drone strikes in the very same country, and certainly not with the same “gutsy” narrative.

I do not condemn these strikes – I support most of them, especially in the cases where it is the only way to get an identified terrorist leader. What troubles me, though, is how a new technology is short-circuiting the decision-making process for what used to be the most important choice a democracy could make. Something that would have previously been viewed as a war, not just by our leaders, but also by our media and public, is simply not being treated like a war.

The change is not limited to covert action. Last spring, the U.S. launched airstrikes on Libya as part of a NATO operation to prevent Moammar Gadhafi’s government from massacring civilians. In late March, the White House announced that the American military was handing over combat operations to its European partners and would thereafter play only a supporting role.

The distinction was crucial. The operation’s goals quickly evolved from a limited humanitarian intervention into an air war supporting local insurgents’ efforts at regime change. But it had limited public support and no congressional approval.

When the administration was asked to explain why continuing military action would not be a violation of the War Powers Resolution – a Vietnam-era law that requires notifying Congress of military operations within 48 hours and getting its authorization after 60 days – the White House argued that American operations did not “involve the presence of U.S. ground troops, U.S. casualties, or a serious threat thereof.” But they did involve something we used to think of as war: blowing up stuff – lots of it.

Starting on April 23, American unmanned systems were deployed over Libya. For the next six months, they carried out at least 146 strikes on their own. They also identified and pinpointed the targets for most of NATO’s manned strike jets. This unmanned operation lasted well past the 60-day deadline of the War Powers Resolution, extending to the very last airstrike that hit Gadhafi’s convoy on Oct. 20 and led to his death.

Choosing to make the operation unmanned proved critical to initiating it without congressional authorization and continuing it with minimal public support. On June 21, when NATO’s air war was lagging, an American Navy helicopter was shot down by pro-Gadhafi forces. This previously would have been a disaster, with the risk of an American aircrew being captured, or even killed. But the downed helicopter was an unmanned Fire Scout, and the story didn’t even make the newspapers the next day.

Congress has not disappeared from all decisions about war – just the ones that matter. The same week that American drones were carrying out their 145th unauthorized airstrike in Libya, the president notified Congress that he had deployed 100 Special Operations troops to a different part of Africa.

This small unit was sent to train and advise Ugandan forces battling the cultish Lord’s Resistance Army, and was explicitly ordered not to engage in combat. Congress applauded the president for notifying it about this small noncombat mission, but did nothing about having its laws ignored in the much larger combat operation in Libya.

We must now accept that technologies that remove humans from the battlefield, from unmanned systems like the Predator to cyber-weapons like the Stuxnet computer worm, are becoming the new normal in war. And like it or not, the new standard we’ve established for them is that leaders need to seek approval only for operations that send people into harm’s way – not for those that involve waging war by other means.

Without any actual political debate, we have set an enormous precedent, blurring the civilian and military roles in war and circumventing the Constitution’s mandate for authorizing it. Freeing the executive branch to act as it chooses may be appealing to some now, but many future scenarios will be less clear-cut. And each political party will very likely have a different view, depending on who is in the White House.

The ease of operations raises concern not just in the initiation of operations, but also how we frame them, sometimes only focusing on the seeming absence of direct risks, ignoring the broader context. Unmanned operations are not “costless,” as they are too often described in the news media and government deliberations. Even worthy actions can sometimes have unintended consequences. Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square bomber, was drawn into terrorism by the very Predator strikes in Pakistan meant to stop terrorism.

Similarly, CIA drone strikes outside of declared war zones are setting a troubling precedent that we might not want to see followed by the close to 50 other nations that now possess the same unmanned technology, including our allies, who have to start to contemplate the risks, but also including nations like China, Russia, Pakistan, and Iran that might abuse these precedents in even worse ways.

A deep deliberation on war was something the framers of the Constitution sought to build into our system, and that example was followed by other systems of democracy in allied countries, as well. Yet, these thinkers in past centuries could not have imagined war being reframed in such a manner. To them, war involved both the act of, and the risk of, violence. It was about killing, but it was also about sending people into harm’s way to do so. Now, the technology opens up new possibilities, and new questions for our democracies.

Going to War

This changing meaning of “going to war” isn’t just about the nation – it is also about the individual. For 5,000 years of humans at war, the experience of going to war had the same essential meaning. Whether one was talking about the ancient Greeks going off to fight Troy, or my grandfather going off to fight the Japanese in the Pacific theatre of the Second World War, going to war meant going to a place of such danger that one might never come home again.

This essential truth is now changing. Note how a Predator pilot described his wartime experience of fighting insurgents in Iraq, while still being at home in Nevada: “You are going to war for 12 hours, shooting weapons at targets, directing kills on enemy combatants and then you get in the car, drive home and within 20 minutes you are sitting at the dinner table talking to your kids about their homework.”

This new experience of going to war is not easy. Indeed, far from the portrayal of UAS pilots as “video gamers” who don’t care about what they do, these remote warriors are experiencing notable challenges, including rates of combat stress and burnout comparable to those physically in the field.

Though they may be doing so from afar, these UAS pilots are still experiencing acts of violence. One American non-commissioned officer spoke to me about the heartbreak of watching a team of NATO soldiers die on screen, while the unarmed drone that her team was flying could only helplessly circle above. They also face a weird disconnect of being at home and at war simultaneously. Another officer spoke of standing in line at a Burger King, and then realizing she’d been part of a “kill chain” decision just half an hour earlier.

We have not been in this new world long enough to think that we can fully understand it all, but it is clear that all forms of war carry psychological costs.

Conclusions

The issues of “drones,” “unmanned systems,” and “robots” all seem futuristic, but notice how none of the examples that were explored in this article were from the future. This sets a great challenge for us all, well before we have to worry about our robotic vacuum cleaners sneaking up on us at night.

Are we going to let the fact that what is unveiling itself now seems like science-fiction to keep us in denial of the fact that it is already part of our technological and political reality?

Authors

Peter W. Singer

Publication: Canadian International Council

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