The United States has revealed an unusual new approach to sabotage with China: emotional predictions.
According to Reuters, military commanders in the Pacific have developed a tool to predict how the Chinese government will react to U.S. actions in the region.
A U.S. defense official said the software calculates “strategic friction,” but provided little details on how it works.
We tried to dig up more information – but found more questions than answers.
How would the tool work?
The tool is reportedly analyzing data from early 2020 and assessing the impact of historical actions. It then predicts what future action will plague China, up to four months in advance.
It is difficult to predict how such a system would work in practice. How is the training data validated? What information does it use to reach a decision? How is it built into the military’s workflow? Could such a system really give accurate predictions?
We asked Peter Lee, Professor of Applied Ethics and Director of Security and Risk Research at the University of Portsmouth, about his thoughts.
Professor Lee, whose research focuses on AI-enabled weapon systems, was skeptical about the potential of the tool:
I am cautiously skeptical of the extent to which AI can be introduced to weapons systems in an ethical and legal manner. But I am much more skeptical of AI’s ability to predict important political responses from China’s political leaders.
Lee cites the example of China’s actions on the last day of COP 26. Few people have predicted that the nation will insist on reversing the final declaration of an agreement to “eliminate” the use of coal-fired power plants to simply “cut down”. Those plants instead.
“Once it allowed itself to do almost anything with coal for 50 years,” he said. “The political maneuver worked because it was unpredictable and timed perfectly to give the whole conference no choice but to agree to the demand immediately or lose the final agreed statement altogether.”
Relying on some Magic Eight Ball to predict such moves seems optimistic at best, especially if it only analyzes data from 2020 to date.
What would it be used for?
The software reportedly predicts responses to actions including arms sales, congressional visits to Taiwan, and U.S. military action.
An official quoted by Reuters said that a demand for the tool had been triggered by events such as China’s response to the United States and Canada to send a battleship across the Taiwan Strait in October.
The United States certainly did not need a “tool” to understand that this action would run counter to Beijing. Couldn’t its multitude of human analysts have predicted this response?
Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks suggested the tool would play an additional role.
“With the specter of conflict and the challenge sets stretching down into the gray zone,” she told Reuters.
“What you see is the need to look at a much broader set of indicators, to put that together, and then to understand the threatening interaction.”
I hope the U.S. doesn’t delegate its understanding of other nations to a machine – or let AI determine military action. At best (or worst), I expect it to inform decisions made by military corps or civilian leadership.
Why did the United States announce its existence?
Tensions between the United States and China are rising. The nations are increasingly in conflict over Taiwan, trade, technology and governance. United States Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken described the relationship as “the major geopolitical test of the 21st century. “
The revelation of this tool adds another element to the discord. When military powers reveal a new system, it is because they want their rivals to know about its existence.
According to Reuters, the Pentagon wants to move budget dollars to a military that could discourage China and Russia. Promoting the forecasting tool could be part of this strategy.
However, we can only speculate on the reasons behind the disclosure of the software. The United States can hope to intimidate China with technology, add coverage of data “objectivity” to its decisions, or form a deceptive campaign. It would certainly provide a new approach to credible denial.
Whatever the intentions, the next time the United States comes to China’s wrath, questions will be asked. Did they ignore the software? Did it make inaccurate predictions? Did they choose the antagonistic action?
What could possibly be wrong?
Source
Thomas Macaulay