October 15, 2019 | International, C4ISR
By: Kelsey D. Atherton
Military planners spent the first two days of the Association of the United States Army's annual meeting outlining the future of artificial intelligence for the service and tracing back from this imagined future to the needs of the present.
This is a world where AI is so seamless and ubiquitous that it factors into everything from rifle sights to logistical management. It is a future where every soldier is a node covered in sensors, and every access point to that network is under constant threat by enemies moving invisibly through the very parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that make networks possible. It is a future where weapons can, on their own, interpret the world, position themselves within it, plot a course of action, and then, in the most extreme situations, follow through.
It is a world of rich battlefield data, hyperfast machines and vulnerable humans. And it is discussed as an inevitability.
“We need AI for the speed at which we believe we will fight future wars,” said Brig. Gen. Matthew Easley, director of the Army AI Task Force. Easley is one of a handful of people with an outsized role shaping how militaries adopt AI.
The past of data future
Before the Army can build the AI it needs, the service needs to collect the data that will fuel and train its machines. In the shortest terms, that means the task force's first areas of focus will include preventative maintenance and talent management, where the Army is gathering a wealth of data. Processing what is already collected has the potential for an outsized impact on the logistics and business side of administering the Army.
For AI to matter in combat, the Army will need to build a database of what sensor-readable events happen in battle, and then refine that data to ultimately provide useful information to soldiers. And to get there means turning every member of the infantry into a sensor.
“Soldier lethality is fielding the Integrated Visual Augmentation Systems, or our IVAS soldier goggles that each of our infantry soldiers will be wearing,” Easley said. “In the short term, we are looking at fielding nearly 200,000 of these systems.”
The IVAS is built on top of Microsoft's HoloLens augmented reality tool. That the equipment has been explicitly tied to not just military use, but military use in combat, led to protests from workers at Microsoft who objected to the product of their labor being used with “intent to harm.”
And with IVAS in place, Easley imagines a scenario where IVAS sensors plot fields of fire for every soldier in a squad, up through a platoon and beyond.
“By the time it gets to [a] battalion commander,” Easley said, “they're able to say where their dead zones are in front of [the] defensive line. They'll know what their soldiers can touch right now, and they'll know what they can't touch right now.”
Easley compared the overall effect to the data collection done by commercial companies through the sensors on smartphones — devices that build detailed pictures of the individuals carrying them.
Fitting sensors to infantry, vehicles or drones can help build the data the Army needs to power AI. Another path involves creating synthetic data. While the Army has largely fought the same type of enemy for the past 18 years, preparing for the future means designing systems that can handle the full range of vehicles and weapons of a professional military.
With insurgents unlikely to field tanks or attack helicopters at scale anytime soon, the Army may need to generate synthetic data to train an AI to fight a near-peer adversary.
Faster, stronger, better, more autonomous
“I want to proof the threat,” said Bruce Jette, the Army's assistant secretary for acquisition, logistics and technology, while speaking at a C4ISRNET event on artificial intelligence at AUSA. Jette then set out the kind of capability he wants AI to provide, starting from the perspective of a tank turret.
“Flip the switch on, it hunts for targets, it finds targets, it classifies targets. That's a Volkswagen, that's a BTR [Russian-origin armored personnel carrier], that's a BMP [Russian-origin infantry fighting vehicle]. It determines whether a target is a threat or not. The Volkswagen's not a threat, the BTR is probably a threat, the BMP is a threat, and it prioritizes them. BMP is probably more dangerous than the BTR. And then it classifies which one's [an] imminent threat, one's pointing towards you, one's driving away, those type of things, and then it does a firing solution to the target, which one's going to fire first, then it has all the firing solutions and shoots it.”
Enter Jette's ideal end state for AI: an armed machine that senses the world around it, interprets that data, plots a course of action and then fires a weapon. It is the observe–orient–decide–act cycle without a human in the loop, and Jette was explicit on that point.
“Did you hear me anywhere in there say ‘man in the loop?,' ” Jette said. “Of course, I have people throwing their hands up about ‘Terminator,' I did this for a reason. If you break it into little pieces and then try to assemble it, there'll be 1,000 interface problems. I tell you to do it once through, and then I put the interface in for any safety concerns we want. It's much more fluid.”
In Jette's end state, the AI of the vehicle is designed to be fully lethal and autonomous, and then the safety features are added in later — a precautionary stop, a deliberate calming intrusion into an already complete system.
Jette was light on the details of how to get from the present to the thinking tanks of tomorrow's wars. But it is a process that will, by necessity, involve buy-in and collaboration with industry to deliver the tools, whether it comes as a gestalt whole or in a thousand little pieces.
Learning machines, fighting machines
Autonomous kill decisions, with or without humans in the loop, are a matter of still-debated international legal and ethical concern. That likely means that Jette's thought experiment tank is part of a more distant future than a host of other weapons. The existence of small and cheap battlefield robots, however, means that we are likely to see AI used against drones in the more immediate future.
Before robots fight people, robots will fight robots. Before that, AI will mostly manage spreadsheets and maintenance requests.
“There are systems now that can take down a UAS pretty quickly with little collateral damage,” Easley said. “I can imagine those systems becoming much more autonomous in the short term than many of our other systems.”
Autonomous systems designed to counter other fast, autonomous systems without people on board are already in place. The aptly named Counter Rocket, Artillery, and Mortar, or C-RAM, systems use autonomous sensing and reaction to specifically destroy projectiles pointed at humans. Likewise, autonomy exists on the battlefield in systems like loitering munitions designed to search for and then destroy anti-air radar defense systems.
Iterating AI will mean finding a new space of what is acceptable risk for machines sent into combat.
“From a testing and evaluation perspective, we want a risk knob. I want the commander to be able to go maximum risk, minimum risk,” said Brian Sadler, a senior research scientist at the Army Research Laboratory. “When he's willing to take that risk, that's OK. He knows his current rules of engagement, he knows where he's operating, he knows if he uses some platforms; he's willing to make that sacrifice.
In his work at the Vehicle Technology Directorate of the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, Sadler is tasked with catching up the science of AI to the engineered reality of it. It is not enough to get AI to work; it has to be understood.
“If people don't trust AI, people won't use it,” Tim Barton, chief technology officer at Leidos, said at the C4ISRNET event.
Building that trust is an effort that industry and the Army have to tackle from multiple angles. Part of it involves iterating the design of AI tools with the people in the field who will use them so that the information analyzed and the product produced has immediate value.
“AI should be introduced to soldiers as an augmentation system,” said Lt. Col. Chris Lowrance, a project manager in the Army's AI Task Force. “The system needs to enhance capability and reduce cognitive load.”
Away from but adjacent to the battlefield, Sadler pointed to tools that can provide immediate value even as they're iterated upon.
“If it's not a safety of life mission, I can interact with that analyst continuously over time in some kind of spiral development cycle for that product, which I can slowly whittle down to something better and better, and even in the get-go we're helping the analyst quite a bit,” Sadler said.
“I think Project Maven is the poster child for this,” he added, referring to the Google-started tool that identifies objects from drone footage.
Project Maven is the rare intelligence tool that found its way into the public consciousness. It was built on top of open-source tools, and workers at Google circulated a petition objecting to the role of their labor in creating something that could “lead to potentially lethal outcomes.” The worker protest led the Silicon Valley giant to outline new principles for its own use of AI.
Ultimately, the experience of engineering AI is vastly different than the end user, where AI fades seamlessly into the background, becoming just an ambient part of modern life.
If the future plays out as described, AI will move from a hyped feature, to a normal component of software, to an invisible processor that runs all the time.
“Once we succeed in AI,” said Danielle Tarraf, a senior information scientist at the think tank Rand, “it will become invisible like control systems, noticed only in failure.”
October 12, 2022 | International, Other Defence
A stable demand for weapons is necessary after months of viewing and supplying the war in Ukraine, defense industry leaders said during a panel.
May 6, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security
NAVY Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems, McKinney, Texas, is awarded $325,000,000 for a firm-fixed-price contract for the repair of the Advanced Targeting Forward Looking Infrared System used in support of the F/A-18 aircraft. Work will be performed in McKinney, Texas (59%); and Jacksonville, Florida (41%). Work is expected to be complete by May 2025. This is a five-year base period with no option periods. Annual working capital (Navy) funds in the amount of $54,507,477 will be obligated at time of award, and funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. One company was solicited for this sole-sourced requirement under authority 10 U.S. Code 2304 (c)(1), and one offer was received. The Naval Supply Systems Command, Weapon Systems Support, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the contracting activity (N00383-20-D-WC01). Flightline Electronics Inc., Victor, New York, is awarded an $18,588,079 firm-fixed-price indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for the manufacture and delivery of 543 TTU-597/E engineering change proposal kits to address parts obsolescence and availability issues on the fuel control test set for Navy and Foreign Military Sales customers. Additionally, this contract provides logistics support documents to include technical manual updates, provisioning data and the interim support items list. Work will be performed in Victor, New York (60%); and Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, United Kingdom (40%), and is expected to be complete by May 2024. No funds will be obligated at the time of award. Funds will be obligated on individual orders as they are issued. This contract was not competitively procured pursuant to 10 U.S. Code 2304 (c)(1). The Naval Air Warfare Center, Aircraft Division, Lakehurst, New Jersey, is the contracting activity (N68335-20-D-0008). Bell Boeing Joint Project Office, Amarillo, Texas, is awarded a $10,178,059 modification (P00029) to a previously awarded, fixed-price-incentive-firm-target, cost-plus-fixed-fee contract (N00019-17-C-0015). This modification provides for additional repairs in support of the V-22 Common Configuration Readiness and Modernization program. Additionally, this modification provides non-recurring engineering for a drive tube engineering change proposal in support of V-22 (Osprey multirole combat aircraft) production. Work will be performed in Fort Worth, Texas (30%); Ridley Park, Pennsylvania (15%); Amarillo, Texas (13%); Red Oak, Texas (3%); East Aurora, New York (3%); Park City, Utah (2%); McKinney, Texas (1%); Endicott, New York (1%); various locations within the continental U.S. (28%); and various locations outside the continental U.S. (4%). Work is expected to be complete by September 2022. Fiscal 2018 aircraft procurement (Navy) funds in the amount of $4,804,019; fiscal 2019 aircraft procurement (Navy) funds in the amount of $5,119,758; fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance (Navy) funds in the amount of $240,500; and fiscal 2020 aircraft procurement (Navy) funds in the amount of $5,108 will be obligated at time of award, $5,044,519 of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity. AIR FORCE StandardAero Inc., San Antonio, Texas, has been awarded a $237,395,588 firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract action for the J85 engine repair. The contractor will provide maintenance, repair and overhaul repairs of the J85 engine. Work will be performed in San Antonio, Texas, and is expected to be completed by May 2028. This award is the result of a competitive acquisition in which one bid was received. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance funds in the amount of $10,135,844 is being obligated at the time of award. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma, is the contracting activity (FA8124-20-D-0005). L-3 Communications Integrated Systems, Greenville, Texas, has been awarded a not-to-exceed $76,000,028 cost-plus-fixed-fee, undefinitized contract modification (P00008) to contract FA8620-19-F-4872 for procurement of Group B materials, ground systems integration lab and subcontracts. Work will be performed in Greenville, Texas, and is expected to be completed by March 31, 2024. This contract involves 100% Foreign Military Sales and is the result of a sole-source acquisition. Foreign Military Sales funds in the amount of $37,240,021 are being obligated at the time of award. The 645th Aeronautical Systems Group, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity. DMS Contracting Inc., Mascoutah, Illinois (FA4407-20-D-0001); C. Rallo Contracting Co. Inc., St. Louis, Missouri (FA4407-20-D-0002); Davinroy Mechanical Contractor Inc., Belleville, Illinois (FA4407-20-D-0003); Hank's Excavating & Landscaping Inc., Belleville, Illinois (FA4407-20-D-0004); J&B Builders Inc., St. Charles, Illinois (FA4407-20-D-0005); Mantle-Plocher JV, Worden, Illinois (FA4407-20-D-0006); Surmeier & Surmeier, Mascoutah, Illinois (FA4407-20-D-0007); and Pugsley Byrne JV LLC, Brighton, Illinois (FA4407-20-D-0008), have been awarded indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contracts with a maximum estimated aggregate value of $45,000,000 under a multiple award task order contract. The awards are in support of the multiple award paving contract program to support the Scott Air Force Base construction program, including paving and civil categories. Work will be performed on Scott AFB, Illinois, and is expected to be completed May 4, 2021. These awards are the result of a competitive acquisition and nine offers were received. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance funds in the amount of $500 are being obligated to each contractor at the time of award. The 375th Contracting Squadron, Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, is the contracting activity. DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY SupplyCore Inc.,* Rockford, Illinois, has been awarded a maximum $60,000,000 firm-fixed-price contract for facilities maintenance, repair and operations items. This was a sole-source acquisition using justification 10 U.S. Code 2304(c)(1), as stated in Federal Acquisition Regulation 6.302-1. This is an 18-month bridge contract with no option periods. Locations of performance are Illinois and Alaska, with a Nov. 5, 2021, performance completion date. Using military services are Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2022 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (SPE8E3-20-D-0011). Raytheon Co., Andover, Massachusetts, has been awarded a maximum $36,688,190 firm-fixed-price delivery order (SPRRA2-20-F-0077) against a seven-year basic ordering agreement (SPRRA2-19-R-0046) for radio frequency exciters. This was a sole-source acquisition using justification 10 U.S. Code 2304 (c)(1), as stated in Federal Acquisition Regulation 6.302-1. This is a three-year, 11-month contract with no option periods. Location of performance is Massachusetts, with a March 31, 2024, performance completion date. Using military service is Army. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2024 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is Defense Logistics Agency Aviation, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. Leading Technology Composites Inc., doing business as LTC Inc., Wichita, Kansas, has been awarded a maximum $26,752,704 modification (P00010) exercising the second one-year option period of a one-year base contract (SPE1C1-18-D-1073) with three one-year option periods for enhanced side ballistic inserts. This is a firm-fixed-price, indefinite-quantity contract. Location of performance is Kansas, with a May 4, 2021, performance completion date. Using military services are Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2021 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. American Water Enterprises LLC, Camden, New Jersey, has been awarded a $21,810,972 modification (P00251) to a 50‐year contract (SP0600‐03‐C‐8268), with no option periods for the ownership, operation and maintenance of the water and wastewater utility systems at Fort Rucker, Alabama. This is a fixed-price with prospective-price-redetermination contract. Locations of performance are New Jersey and Alabama with an April 15, 2054, performance completion date. Using military service is Army. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2054 Army operations and maintenance funds. The contracting activity is Defense Logistics Agency Energy, Fort Belvoir, Virginia. Raytheon Co., Andover, Massachusetts, has been awarded a maximum $8,362,088 firm-fixed-price delivery order (SPRRA2-20-F-0079) against a seven-year basic ordering agreement (SPRRA2-19-R-0046) for radio frequency exciters. This was a sole-source acquisition using justification 10 U.S. Code 2304 (c)(1), as stated in Federal Acquisition Regulation 6.302-1. This is a two-year, nine-month contract with no option periods. Location of performance is Massachusetts, with a Jan. 31, 2023, performance completion date. Using military service is Army. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2020 through 2023 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is Defense Logistics Agency Aviation, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. ARMY ASM Research LLC, Fairfax, Virginia, was awarded a $40,284,199 firm-fixed-price contract to provide comprehensive credentialing and privileging program support for the Army National Guard or Air National Guard. Bids were solicited via the internet with four received. Work locations and funding will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of May 4, 2025. The National Guard Bureau Operational Contracting Division, Arlington, Virginia, is the contracting activity (W9133L-20-D-1000). Miller Electric Co. Inc., Reno, Nevada, was awarded a $12,000,000 modification (P00004) to contract W911SA-17-D-2006 for sustainment, modernization and improvement projects for the 88th Army Reserve Centers throughout the states of Kansas and Nebraska. Bids were solicited via the internet with six received. Work locations and funding will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of May 31, 2021. The 419th Contract Support Brigade, Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, is the contracting activity. CAE USA Inc., Tampa, Florida, was awarded an $11,157,134 firm-fixed-price contract for advanced helicopter flight training support services. Bids were solicited via the internet with seven received. Work will be performed at Fort Rucker, Alabama, with an estimated completion date of May 15, 2027. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance, Army funds in the amount of $11,157,134 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Mission and Installation Contracting Command, Fort Eustis, Virginia, is the contracting activity (W9124G-20-C-0008). Manhattan Construction Co., Tulsa, Oklahoma, was awarded an $8,300,000 modification (PZ0001) to contract W912BV-20-C-0008 for alternate care facilities in Oklahoma. Work will be performed in Tulsa and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, with an estimated completion date of May 10, 2020. Fiscal 2020 civil construction funds in the amount of $8,300,000 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Tulsa, Oklahoma, is the contracting activity. DEFENSE ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY Perspecta Labs Inc., Basking Ridge, New Jersey, was awarded a $29,917,092 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for a research project under the Fast Network Interface Cards (FastNICs) program. The FastNICs program will speed up applications such as the distributed training of machine learning classifiers by 100x through the development, implementation, integration and validation of novel, clean-slate network subsystems. Work will be performed in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, with an expected completion date of May 2024. Fiscal 2019 research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) funding in the amount of $1,110,000; and fiscal 2020 RDT&E funding in the amount of $2,925,000 are being obligated at time of award. This contract was a competitive acquisition under an open broad agency announcement and eight offers were received. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Arlington, Virginia, is the contracting activity (HR0011-20-C-0090). *Small business https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/2177362/source/GovDelivery/
July 30, 2018 | International, C4ISR
By: Kelsey Atherton Bob Work, in his last months as deputy secretary of defense, wanted everything in place so that the Pentagon could share in the sweeping advances in data processing already enjoyed by the thriving tech sector. A memo dated April 26, 2017, established an “Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team,” a.k.a. “Project Maven.” Within a year, the details of Google's role in that program, disseminated internally among its employees and then shared with the public, would call into question the specific rationale of the task and the greater question of how the tech community should go about building algorithms for war, if at all. Project Maven, as envisioned, was about building a tool that could process drone footage quickly and in a useful way. Work specifically tied this task to the Defeat-ISIS campaign. Drones are intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms first and foremost. The unblinking eyes of Reapers, Global Hawks and Gray Eagles record hours and hours of footage every mission, imagery that takes a long time for human analysts to scan for salient details. While human analysts process footage, the ground situation is likely changing, so even the most labor-intensive approach to analyzing drone video delivers delayed results. In July 2017, Marine Corps Col. Drew Cukor, the chief of the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Function Team, presented on artificial intelligence and Project Maven at a defense conference. Cukor noted, “AI will not be selecting a target [in combat] ... any time soon. What AI will do is complement the human operator.” As Cukor outlined, the algorithm would allow human analysts to process two or three times as much data within the same timeframe. To get there, though, the algorithm to detect weapons and other objects has to be built and trained. This training is at the heart of neural networks and deep learning, where the computer program can see an unfamiliar object and classify it based on its resemblance to other, more familiar objects. Cukor said that before deploying to battle “you've got to have your data ready and you've got to prepare and you need the computational infrastructure for training.” At the time, the contractor who would develop the training and image-processing algorithms for Project Maven was unknown, though Cukor did specifically remark on how impressive Google was as an AI company. Google's role in developing Maven would not come to light until March 2018, when Gizmodo reported that Google is helping the Pentagon build AI for drones. Google's role in the project was discussed internally in the company, and elements of that discussion were shared with reporters. “Some Google employees were outraged that the company would offer resources to the military for surveillance technology involved in drone operations,” wrote Kate Conger and Dell Cameron, “while others argued that the project raised important ethical questions about the development and use of machine learning.” A petition by the Tech Workers Coalition that circulated in mid-April called upon not just Google to pull out of Pentagon contracts, but for Amazon, Microsoft and IBM to refuse to pick up the work of Project Maven. (The petition attracted 300 signatures at the time of this story.) Silicon Valley's discord over the project surprised many in positions of leadership within the Pentagon. During the 17th annual C4ISRNET Conference, Justin Poole, the deputy director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, was asked how the intelligence community can respond to skepticism in the tech world. Poole's answer was to highlight the role of intelligence services in reducing risk to war fighters. Disagreement between some of the people working for Google and the desire of the company's leadership to continue pursuing Pentagon contracts exacerbated tension in the company throughout spring. By May, nearly a dozen Google employees had resigned from the company over its involvement with Maven, and an internal petition asking the company to cancel the contract and avoid future military projects garnered thousands of employee signatures. To calm tensions, Google would need to find a way to reconcile the values of its employees with the desire of its leadership to develop further AI projects for a growing range of clients. That list of clients, of course, includes the federal government and the Department of Defense. While efforts to convince the tech community at large to refuse Pentagon work have stalled, the pressure within Google resulted in multiple tangible changes. First, Google leadership announced the company's plan to not renew the Project Maven contract when it expired in 2019. Then, the company's leaders released principles for AI, saying it would not develop intelligence for weapons or surveillance applications. After outlining how Google intends to build AI in the future, with efforts to mitigate bias, aid safety and be accountable, Google CEO Sundar Pichai set out categories of AI work that the company will not pursue. This means refusing to design or deploy “technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm,” including an explicit prohibition on weapons principally designed to harm people, as well as surveillance tech that violates international norms. Taken together, these principles amount to a hard-no only on developing AI specifically intended for weapons. The rest are softer no's, objections that can change with interpretations of international law, norms, and even in how a problem set is described. After all, when Poole was asked how to sell collaboration with the intelligence community to technology companies, he framed the task as one about saving the lives of war fighters. The “how” of that lifesaving is ambiguous: It could equally mean better and faster intelligence analysis that gives a unit on patrol the information it needs to avoid an ambush, or it could be the advance info that facilitates an attack on an adversary's encampment when the guard shift is particularly understaffed. Image processing with AI is so ambiguous a technology, so inherently open to dual-use, that the former almost certainly isn't a violation of Google's second objection to AI use, but the latter example absolutely would be. In other words, the long-term surveillance that goes into targeted killing operations above Afghanistan and elsewhere is likely out of bounds. However, the same technology used over Iraq for the fight against ISIS might be permissible. And software built to process drone footage in the latter context would be identical to the software built to process images for the former. The lines between what this does and doesn't prevent becomes even murkier when one takes into account that Google built its software for Project Maven on top of TensorFlow, an open-source software library. This makes it much harder to build in proprietary constraints on the code, and it means that once the Pentagon has a trainable algorithm on hand, it can continue to develop and refine its object-recognition AI as it chooses. But the window for Google to be involved in such a project, whether to the joy or dismay of its employees and executive leadership, is likely closing. In late June, the Pentagon announced creation of a Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, which among other functions would take over Project Maven from the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team. The defense sector is vast, and with Google proving to be a complicated contractor for the Pentagon, new leadership may simply take its AI contracts worth million elsewhere with to see if it can get the programming it needs. And Maven itself still receives accolades within the Pentagon. Gen. Mike Holmes, commander of Air Combat Command, praised Project Maven at a June 28 defense writers group breakfast, saying that the use of learning machines and algorithms will speed up the process by which humans process information and pass on useful insights to decisions makers. Inasmuch as the Pentagon has a consensus view of explaining tools like Maven, it is about focusing on the role of the human in the process. The software will do the first pass through the imagery collected, and then as designed highlight other details for a human to review and act upon. Holmes was adamant that fears of malicious AIs hunting humans, like Skynet from the “Terminator” movies, are beyond premature. “We're going to have to work through as Americans our comfort level on how technologies are used and how they're applied,” said Holmes. “I'd make the case that our job is to compete with these world-class peer competitors that we have, and by competing and by setting this competition on terms that we can compete without going to conflict, it's better for everybody.” AI of the tiger Project Maven, from the start, is a program specifically sold and built for the work of fighting a violent nonstate actor, identifying the weapons and tools of an insurgency that sometimes holds swaths of territory. “Our responsibility is to help people understand what the intent is with the capability that we are helping to develop. ... Maven is focused on minimizing collateral damage on the battlefield. There's goodness in that,” said Capt. Sean Heritage, acting managing partner of Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx). “There's always risk in how it will be used down the road, and I guess that's where a small pocket of people at Google's heads were. But, as Mr. Work pointed out during his panel at Defense One, they don't seem to have as challenging of a time contributing to AI capability development in China.” Google's fight over Project Maven is partly about the present — the state of AI, the role of the United States in pursuing insurgencies abroad. It is also a fight about how the next AI will be built, and who that AI will be built to be used against. And the Pentagon seems to understand this, too. In the same meeting where Holmes advocated for Maven as a useful tool for now, he argued that it was important for the United States to develop and field tools that can match peer or near-peer rivals in a major conflict. That's a far cry from selling the tool to Silicon Valley as one of immediate concern, to protect the people fighting America's wars presently through providing superior real-time information. “The idea of a technology being built and then used for war, even if that wasn't the original intent,” says author Malka Older, “is what science fiction writers call a ‘classic trope.' ” Older's novels, set two or three generations in the near-future, focus on the ways in which people, governments and corporations handle massive flows of data, and provide one possible vision of a future where the same kinds and volumes of data are collected, but where that data is also held by a government entity and shared transparently. While radical transparency in data is alien to much of the defense establishment, it's an essential part of the open-source technology community for security concerns both genuine and sometimes not-so genuine. Building open source means publishing code and letting outsiders find flaws and vulnerabilities in the algorithm, without looking at any of the sensitive data the algorithm is built to process. And Project Maven is built on top of open-source framework. “One of the dangerous concepts that we have of technology is that progress only goes in one direction,” says Older. “There's constantly choices being made of where technology goes and where concepts go and what we are trying to do.” While it's entirely possible that the Pentagon will be able to continue the work of Project Maven and other AI programs with new contractors, if it wanted to reach out to those skeptical of how the algorithm would interpret images, it could try justifying the mission not just with national security concerns, but with transparency. “Part of being an American is that Americans have expectations about what their government does and whether the government uses tech and tools to infringe upon their rights or not,” said Holmes. “And, so, we have really high standards as a nation that the things that we bring forward as military tools have to live up to.” To work with the coders of the future, it may not be enough to say that the code — open source or not — is going to be used in ways consistent with their values. The Pentagon may have to find ways to transparently prove it. https://www.c4isrnet.com/it-networks/2018/07/27/targeting-the-future-of-the-dods-controversial-project-maven-initiative/