No one can dispute the fact that the computer was “born” in and out of war. By the 1950s, computers were organizing America’s air defenses. In the decades that followed, the Artificial Intelligence played little part in the war. Now it is about to become decisive. Just as the political and artistic world – and not only – “tastes” its spread AIso the military world must prepare for the onslaught of innovation, but also of destabilization.

Today’s rapid change has several causes. One is the very “melting pot” of war, mainly in Ukraine. Small, inexpensive chips are guiding Russian and Ukrainian drones to their targets, expanding a technology once limited to a superpower’s missiles. A second is the recent exponential progress of Artificial Intelligence, which enables amazing feats of object recognition and solving serious problems. A third is the rivalry between America and China, where both countries see Artificial Intelligence as the “key” to military supremacy, as “The Economist” writes in an article.

Aerial and naval drones have been vital for both sides in Ukraine to locate and attack targets. The role of AI is a catalyst for interference: allows a drone to locate targets even if GPS signals or connection to the pilot have been lost. Breaking the connection between pilot and aircraft will soon allow militaries to deploy much larger numbers of low-cost munitions.

Artificial Intelligence is also revolutionizing the command and control that military officers use to organize wars. On the front lines, drones embody only the last and most dramatic link in the chain of death, the sequence of steps that begins with searching for a target and ends with an attack. It sorts and processes data with superhuman speed, can pick out each tank from a thousand satellite images, or interpret light, heat, sound and radio waves to distinguish decoys from the real thing.

Far from the front line, it can solve much bigger problems of those faced by a single drone. Today, that means simple tasks like finding the most appropriate weapon to destroy a threat. In due course, “decision support systems” may be able to grasp the unimaginable complexity of warfare quickly and at scale – perhaps across the entire battlefield!

AI systems, combined with autonomous robots on land, sea and air, are likely to find and destroy targets at unprecedented speed and at massive scale. The speed of such a war will change the balance between soldier and software. Humans will oversee the system without interfering with every action.

Artificial Intelligence and War

It may be believed that new technology will allow armies to become more flexible. However, if the software can pick out tens of thousands of targets, armies will need tens of thousands of weapons to hit them. And if the defender has the advantage, the attackers will need more weapons to break through.

It is a given that the “winners” in this story will be the big and rich countries. Drones may become cheaper, but the digital systems that link the battlefield together will be… “fiendishly” expensive. Also, training the models will require access to huge amounts of data.

Which major country favors Artificial Intelligence the most? China was once thought to have an advantage, thanks to its data pool, control of private industry and looser moral restrictions. However, things have changed and America seems to be leading the way in this area as well. And ideology matters: it is not clear whether the militaries of authoritarian states will be able to exploit the benefits of such technology.

If, tragically, the first AI-assisted war breaks out, international law is likely to fall by the wayside. One more reason to think today about how to limit the disaster. Armies that anticipate and master technological developments the fastest and most effectively will likely prevail. All others are likely to become victims.