Will closer ties between the Pentagon, the world’s largest military machine, and Silicon Valley, arguably the world’s greatest engine for technology innovation, make the world safer?
The Pentagon has opened an office in Silicon Valley called Defense Innovation Unit-Experimental, or DIU-X. Its self-described mission is to help the Pentagon be “more permeable to sources of disruptive change that would keep us at par or ahead of the Nation’s adversaries.”
In September the Pentagon sponsored a conference—titled “Wait, What? A Future Technology Forum”—to explore “potentially attractive avenues of technological pursuit and to catalyze non-obvious synergies among participants.” The conference “is part of a broader effort by the Pentagon to tap into the ingenuity of Silicon Valley,” according to The New York Times.
The conference featured a talk on optogenetics and a demonstration of devices implanted in the brain to restore functions in disabled subjects. As I have reported previously, Pentagon officials have expressed interest in the potential of neural implants not only to treat wounded soldiers but also to enhance healthy ones. Yes, we’re talking bionic soldiers.
The Times did not quote anyone who questioned whether the U.S. should aggressively pursue “disruptive” military technologies. But two recent speakers at Stevens, both affiliated with Yale, have raised questions about the militarization of U.S. research. One is management professor Paul Bracken, who gave a talk last spring titled “Silicon Valley and the Pentagon: Disruptive Innovation and National Security.”
Calling the Pentagon the “mother of all VC [venture capital] funds,” Bracken noted that a “second Silicon Valley” of high-tech firms has sprung up around Washington, D.C., to feed the Pentagon’s appetite for innovative technologies. “We have more technologies coming online today in the military than at any time,” Bracken said. “The real question is what systems will help improve U.S. security, not just kill or disrupt the bad guys?”
Innovation is especially rapid in what Bracken called “targeted killing” technologies, which combine software that can recognize faces, license plates and other distinguishing features with drones and other weaponry. The United States is hardly alone in pursuing these technologies. Bracken asked the audience to consider the potential consequences if target-killing technologies are deployed by nuclear-armed nations, such as India and Pakistan. Nations with such technologies might be tempted to launch pre-emptive strikes against adversaries. “In principle you could decapitate the leadership of another country,” Bracken said. Technology is “racing ahead of strategy. We don’t know where this stuff is going.”
Yale bioethicist Wendell Wallach visited Stevens last month to talk about his new book, A Dangerous Master: How to Keep Technology from Slipping Beyond Our Control. He writes that the U.S. “is the world’s leading driver of an accelerating and ever-escalating arms race… The logic of staying ahead or keeping pace with potential adversaries rests on the dangers of a weak defense and contentions that weaker foes will be intimidated by one’s power, adversaries with similar strength will be restrained by mutually assured destruction, and technological supremacy will prevail. These three positions are flawed. Al Qaeda and ISIS militants were not cowed by the U.S.’s overwhelming military supremacy. Mutually assured destruction did not stop the former U.S.S.R. from keeping pace in the nuclear arms race.”
When the Pentagon talks about “disruptive” technologies, it doesn’t mean cool new smart-phone apps; it means, often, cool new ways to disable or kill people. The alliance of the Pentagon and Silicon Valley should make us all ask, “Wait, What?”
John Horgan directs the Center for Science Writings, which is part of the College of Arts & Letters. This column is adapted from one originally published on his scientificamerican.com blog, “Cross-check.”
