Power & Security, Technology, United States A Force for the Future
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April 21, 2022
By
Michael C. Horowitz, Lauren Kahn, and Laura Resnick Samotin | Foreign Affairs
Gunpowder. The combustion engine. The airplane. These are just some of the technologies that have forever changed the face of warfare. Now, the world is experiencing another transformation that could redefine military strength: the development of artificial intelligence (AI).
Merging AI with warfare may sound like science fiction, but AI is at the center of nearly all advances in defense technology today. It will shape how militaries recruit and train soldiers, how they deploy forces, and how they fight. China, Germany, Israel, and the United States have all used AI to create real-time visualizations of active battlefields. Russia has deployed AI to make deepfake videos and spread disinformation about its invasion of Ukraine. As the Russian-Ukrainian war continues, both parties could use algorithms to analyze large swaths of open-source data coming from social media and the battlefield, allowing them to better calibrate their attacks.