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April 16, 2020 | International, C4ISR

Technology alliances will help shape our post-pandemic future

Martijn Rasser

There's no question the post-corona world will be very different. How it will look depends on actions the world's leaders take. Decisions made in coming months will determine whether we see a renewed commitment to a rules-based international order, or a fragmented world increasingly dominated by authoritarianism. Whomever steps up to lead will drive the outcome.

China seeks the mantle of global leadership. Beijing is exploiting the global leadership vacuum, the fissures between the United States and its allies, and the growing strain on European unity. The Chinese Communist Party has aggressively pushed a narrative of acting swiftly and decisively to contain the virus, building goodwill through ‘mask diplomacy', and sowing doubts about the virus' origin to deflect blame for the magnitude of the crisis and to rewrite history. Even though the results so far are mixed, the absence of the United States on the global stage provides Beijing with good momentum.

Before the pandemic, the world's democracies already faced their gravest challenge in decades: the shift of economic power to illiberal states. By late 2019, autocratic regimes accounted for a larger share of global GDP than democracies for the first time since 1900. As former U.K. foreign secretary David Miliband recently observed, “liberal democracy is in retreat.” How the United States and like-minded partners respond post-pandemic will determine if that trend holds.

There is urgency to act — the problem is now even more acute. The countries that figure out how to quickly restart and rebuild their economies post-pandemic will set the course for the 21st century. It is not only economic heft that is of concern: political power and military might go hand in hand with economic dominance.

At the center of this geostrategic and economic competition are technologies — artificial intelligence, quantum computing, biotechnology, and 5G — that will be the backbone of the 21st century economy. Leadership and ongoing innovation in these areas will confer critical economic, political, and military power, and the opportunity to shape global norms and values. The pre-crisis trajectory of waning clout in technology development, standards-setting, and proliferation posed an unacceptable and avoidable challenge to the interests of the world's leading liberal-democratic states.

The current crisis accentuates this even more: it lays bare the need to rethink and restructure global supply chains; the imperative of ensuring telecommunication networks are secure, robust, and resilient; the ability to surge production of critical materiel, and the need to deter and counteract destructive disinformation. This is difficult and costly — and it is best done in concert.

Bold action is needed to set a new course that enhances the ability of the world's democracies to out-compete increasingly capable illiberal states. The growing clout of authoritarian regimes is not rooted in better strategy or more effective statecraft. Rather, it lies in the fractious and complacent nature of the world's democracies and leading technology powers.

In response, a new multilateral effort — an alliance framework — is needed to reverse these trends. The world's technology and democracy leaders — the G7 members and countries like Australia, the Netherlands, and South Korea — should join forces to tackle matters of technology policy. The purpose of this initiative is three-fold: one, regain the initiative in the global technology competition through strengthened cooperation between like-minded countries; two, protect and preserve key areas of competitive technological advantage; and three, promote collective norms and values around the use of emerging technologies.

Such cooperation is vital to effectively deal with the hardest geopolitical issues that increasingly center on technology, from competing economically to building deterrence to combating disinformation. This group should not be an exclusive club: it should also work with countries like Finland and Sweden to align policies on telecommunications; Estonia, Israel, and New Zealand for cyber issues; and states around the world to craft efforts to counter the proliferation of Chinese surveillance technology and offer sound alternatives to infrastructure development, raw material extraction, and loans from China that erode their sovereignty.

The spectrum of scale and ambition this alliance can tackle is broad. Better information sharing would yield benefits on matters like investment screening, counterespionage, and fighting disinformation. Investments in new semiconductor fabs could create more secure and diverse supply chains. A concerted effort to promote open architecture in 5G could usher in a paradigm shift for an entire industry. Collaboration will also be essential to avoiding another pandemic calamity.

Similar ideas are percolating among current and former government leaders in capitals such as Tokyo, Berlin, London, and Washington, with thought leaders like Jared Cohen and Anja Manuel, and in think tanks around the world. The task at hand is to collate these ideas, find the common ground, and devise an executable plan. This requires tackling issues like organizational structure, governance, and institutionalization. It also requires making sure that stakeholders from government, industry, and civil society from around the world provide input to make the alliance framework realistic and successful.

No one country can expect to achieve its full potential by going it alone, not even the United States. An alliance framework for technology policy is the best way to ensure that the world's democracies can effectively compete economically, politically, and militarily in the 21st century. The links between the world's leading democracies remain strong despite the challenges of the current crisis. These relationships are an enduring and critical advantage that no autocratic country can match. It is time to capitalize on these strengths, retake the initiative, and shape the post-corona world.

Martijn Rasser is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

https://www.c4isrnet.com/opinion/2020/04/14/technology-alliances-will-help-shape-our-post-pandemic-future/

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  • Winning The Spectrum: Pentagon Unveils New Strategy

    May 19, 2020 | International, Security

    Winning The Spectrum: Pentagon Unveils New Strategy

    By BRYAN CLARK and TIMOTHY WALTON on May 19, 2020 at 4:01 AM The Electromagnetic Spectrum is the key to waging electronic warfare, and EW is key to waging modern war. An enemy who can jam communications or GPS, mislead you (spoofing is the term of art) and stop your weapons from functioning (cyber attacks using radio waves). The US largely abandoned EW after the Cold War ended. Then the Russians made it very clear in their war against Ukraine just how effective EW could be and senior folks in the US military grew uneasy. They and Congress realized how much we had made ourselves vulnerable and the Hill ordered creation of a group to devise a strategy to restore American EW eminence. Bryan Clark and Tim Walton of the Hudson Institute preview the new strategy below — only at Breaking D Read on! The Editor. The electromagnetic spectrum is getting more popular and crowded every day. As Breaking D readers know, the DoD and FCC are battling over frequencies adjacent to those used by GPS, which the telecommunication company Ligado wants to use for its satellite-based 5G network. DoD worries that Ligado's transmissions will drown out the relatively weak signals that reach Earth from GPS satellites. Ligado fired what is only the first of what will be many salvos in the 5G spectrum battle. To achieve 5G's promised low latency and broadband speed telecommunication companies require wider swaths of spectrum compared to 4G–some of which they don't control. With high-frequency millimeter wave 5G towers only able to reach a few city blocks, telecom providers like Ligado are pursuing mid and low-band spectrum below 6 Ghz that enables greater coverage–but also puts them in conflict with FAA and military radars, radios, and GPS. The clamor for 5G spectrum comes as DoD is itself fielding a collection of new networks to support its concept of Joint All Domain Command and Control, or JADC2. The Army Integrated Tactical Network, Air Force Air Battle Management System, and Navy Integrated Fire Control combine existing datalinks and radios with emerging communications systems to connect all U.S. forces across a theater, placing new demands on spectrum. But the EM spectrum is also a global common like the air or sea. To prevent U.S. forces from operating effectively, the Chinese and Russian militaries spent the last 20 years modernizing their electronic warfare equipment, training new EW operators and technicians, and placing EW forces in every unit or formation. During the same period, DoD rested on its Cold War laurels and failed to invest in EW systems or training. DoD strategies developed in 2013 and 2017 addressed the growing challenges of managing and controlling the EM spectrum by directing services to develop better versions of current capabilities and concepts but failed to significantly close the gaps between the U.S. and adversary militaries. Congress, increasingly worried, mandated that DoD stand up an EM Spectrum Operations Cross-Functional Team and create a new strategy. That is nearing completion and may be DoD's last opportunity to gain an enduring advantage in the EM spectrum. New EM Spectrum Superiority Strategy Instead of incrementally improving existing EM systems and tactics in a doomed effort to solve capability shortfalls, the new EM Spectrum Superiority Strategy will emphasize how to undermine the strengths and exploit the weaknesses of adversaries in the EM spectrum. The strategies' initiatives will be targeted at fundamental asymmetries between U.S. and opposing militaries that can provide DoD leverage. A change in approach is desperately needed. The U.S. military didn't fall behind in EW and EM Spectrum Operations due to a lack of funding, as spending for both rose steadily since 2015, but because the additional dollars were not spent implementing a coherent strategy. Funding instead upgraded legacy systems to fill various capability gaps, not all of which were high priorities. Under today's plans, DoD will take decades to catch great power adversaries enjoying “home team” advantages and the luxury of focusing on only one potential opponent. Moreover, post-pandemic budget constraints will likely prevent increasing funding to plug capability gaps faster. The key asymmetry between the U.S. and opposing great power militaries is the simple facft that Chinese and Russian are close to likely areas of conflict. China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the Russian Armed Forces can place EW and sensor systems on their own territory or in nearby sea or airspace where they can rely on reliable and difficult-to-jam wired or line-of-sight EM communications. Leveraging their understanding of the environment, Chinese and Russian forces can employ passive, multistatic, and low-frequency EM sensors and pre-architected systems of systems and tactics to find and attack U.S. forces. The U.S. military must span the world. This requires a more expeditionary force and adaptable C2 process compared to the Chinese or Russians, and which can accommodate more contested communications, changing force packages, and the variety of local conditions. When communications are lost, junior leaders of U.S. forces would employ mission command, exploiting their initiative and judgement to improvise a course of action that follows the commander's intent. Giving The Enemy Something To Worry About The PLA's reliance on pre-planned, static systems of systems and tactics could be a liability against highly dynamic and unpredictable U.S. spectrum operations. The EM Spectrum Superiority Strategy should exploit this opportunity by adopting new operational concepts that emphasize maneuver and complexity. A maneuver-centric approach doesn't require across-the-board improvements to U.S. EM spectrum systems. To create complexity for opponents U.S. forces need capabilities for dynamic and automated spectrum sharing with commercial or military users guided by electronic support sensors and electromagnetic battle management, or EMBM, systems. To protect themselves from enemy attack, U.S. forces would rely on passive or multistatic sensing, complemented by LPI/LPD communications and electronic countermeasures. And U.S. electronic attacks would need the agility afforded by AI-enabled cognitive jammers that use photonics to move across wide ranges of spectrum. The ability of cognitive jammers or EMBM systems to understand the EM environment will depend on their access to information on threat, friendly, and civilian EM spectrum systems. Today, data and analysis from the Intelligence Community is slow to reach operators and slower still to be programmed into EW equipment. DoD will need to establish new frameworks for EM spectrum information sharing and build on its recent success in accelerating the reprogramming process by incorporating AI to a greater degree in deployed EW and EMBM systems. Capabilities for complex and unpredictable EM operations will be difficult to define for today's top-down requirements process, which seeks a point solution for a particular application and situation. DoD will need to identify potential new EM capabilities through comprehensive assessments of their mission impact in a variety scenarios using modeling and simulation or experimentation and mature them through new processes like the DoD Adaptive Acquisition Framework. The most challenging element of a new strategy will be preparing EW and EM spectrum operators for maneuver warfare. DoD's current ranges are unable to provide realistic EM operating environments for experimentation or training due to a lack of modern threat systems and concerns that adversaries can monitor U.S. EM emissions during live, open-air events. Rather than focusing on expensive range upgrades, DoD should shift its emphasis to virtual and constructive events, which would enable concept development, tactics innovation, and training against the most challenging threats at all security levels. The urgency to change DoD cannot continue pursuing EMS superiority through incremental, evolutionary improvements. This approach is too unfocused, will take too long to reach fruition, is potentially unaffordable, and cedes the initiative to America's adversaries. DoD should move in a new direction and focus EM capability development on implementing concepts for maneuver warfare that create adaptability for U.S. forces and complexity for adversaries. If the DoD does not mount a new more strategic and proactive approach to fighting in the EM spectrum, adversaries could be emboldened to continue their efforts to gain territory and influence at the expense of U.S. allies and partners. Demonstrating the ability to survive and fight in a contested and congested EM spectrum could help U.S. forces slow Chinese and Russian activities and give them something to worry about for a change. Bryan Clark is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. Timothy Walton is a fellow at Hudson. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/05/winning-the-spectrum-pentagon-unveils-new-strategy/

  • Airbus pulls out of Polish helo tender due to offset requirements

    December 7, 2018 | International, Aerospace

    Airbus pulls out of Polish helo tender due to offset requirements

    By: Jarosław Adamowski WARSAW, Poland — Airbus Helicopters has decided to pull out of the Polish Defence Ministry's tender to acquire new copters for the country's Navy. The "offset requirements defined by the Polish MoD made it impossible for Airbus Helicopters to submit a competitive offer," the company said in a statement sent to the state-owned news agency PAP. “Airbus Helicopters continues to be interested in supporting the process of the modernization of the Polish Armed Forces in the field of helicopter fleet replacement,” the vendor said with respect to Poland's other helo procurement plans. Earlier this year, Airbus Helicopters and Leonardo placed their offers in the ministry's tender to purchase four helicopters. Leonardo, which is now the only active participant of the tender, owns Polish aircraft plant PZL Swidnik which makes the AW101 copter, among others. The new helos, enabled with anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and search-and-rescue (SAR) capabilities, are designed to replace the Polish Navy's Kaman SH-2G Super Seasprite copters, according to First Deputy Defence Minister Wojciech Skurkiewicz. Local observers have also said the new helos could replace the Navy's Soviet-designed Mil Mi-14 copters. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2018/12/04/airbus-pulls-out-of-polish-helo-tender-due-to-offset-requirements

  • Government watchdog finds 3 issues disrupting US nuclear modernization efforts

    June 20, 2019 | International, Other Defence

    Government watchdog finds 3 issues disrupting US nuclear modernization efforts

    By: Kelsey Reichmann WASHINGTON — The U.S. agency responsible for making explosive materials used in nuclear weapons is facing challenges that could impact the country's planned modernization of its nuclear arsenal, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office. The National Nuclear Security Administration, a semiautonomous agency within the Energy Department, is facing three main challenges, according to the report: a dwindling supply of explosive materials, aging and deteriorating infrastructure, and difficulty in recruiting and training qualified staff. This report comes amid congressional debate over the cost of modernizing the U.S. nuclear arsenal, an effort driven by President Donald Trump. NNSA's supply of materials, which are “highly specialized” with specific chemical and physical characteristics, are in low supply, the report says. Furthermore, the NNSA is lacking the knowledge base to produce the materials, as the recipes to make them were not well-documented, or the processes themselves infrequently practiced, the report notes. Challenges in obtaining materials is not a new issue for the NNSA, the watchdog notes. The agency experienced a similar situation with a material known as “Fogbank,” and the GAO reported in March 2009 that the NNSA lacked the knowledge to manufacture the material — leaving the process for Fogbank “dormant for about 25 years." Fogbank is used in the production of the W76-1, a warhead for the Navy's Trident ballistic missile. Under the Trump administration's plans for a new low-yield nuclear weapon, the U.S. is making a W76-2 variant, which entered production earlier this year. The GAO notes that when the NNSA is actually able to replicate formulas for materials, procuring those materials has proved challenging, given the irregular and small order specifications to contractors. But the GAO identifies aging infrastructure as the greatest risk to the NSSA. “The NNSA 2019 Master Asset Plan states that 40 percent of the explosives infrastructure of NNSA's sites is insufficient to meet mission needs, which can lead to contamination of explosive products or limit the use of facilities,” the report says. It notes that contamination has already occurred from rust falling off rafters and grass blowing through cracks in the walls, contaminating batches of explosives. Aging facilities must receive updates to modern safety standards to protect employees, the GAO says. The Los Alamos High Explosives Chemistry Laboratory, for example, was built in the 1950s and has struggled to adopt to modern instrumentation, according to the report. Facilities also deal with limited storage, the report says, meaning explosives can be stored in a single location where they could potentially cause a chemical reaction. The report also cites NNSA documents that describe challenges in recruiting qualified staff, who often must have a security clearance. For example, Pantex, a contractor hired by the agency, in 2018 estimated it would need 211 full-time staff members. However, in November that year, it reported only 172 full-time employees. Officials with agency contractors told the GAO that the problem is largely due to the competitive industry; in particular, Pantex competes with oil and gas companies in Texas. The company has now expanded its recruitment efforts to include local colleges and universities, the report says. In a written response to the report, the head of the NNSA, Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, said the “GAO's observations and recommendations are consistent with [the Department of Energy]/NNSA's recent efforts to centralize management of energetic material." The Office of Safety, Infrastructure, and Operations previously identified many of the infrastructure data issues presented in the report and developed a series of actions aimed at improving the accuracy of asset data,” she wrote. “These efforts have already resulted in improved data quality, and the accuracy and consistency of data will continue to improve as additional actions are completed.” https://www.defensenews.com/global/the-americas/2019/06/19/government-watchdog-finds-3-issues-disrupting-us-nuclear-modernization-efforts/

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