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w w w. m r c y. c o m WHITE PAPER 2017 ImageNet Challenge (a popular object detection contest) had a top 10 list dominated by Chinese teams. Famous AI leaders like Google, Facebook and Amazon either did not participate or did not place. China is not alone in building up a lead in AI. Russia is similarly seeking domination. "The United States currently leads in AI research, but the race is on to develop and wield AI advances. China has a nationally focused effort, pumping billions of dollars into AI. China has made no secret of its long-term plans to lead the world in AI by 2025 at the latest. It has its eyes on the prize and considers AI a national priority. What's bothersome about this is that China does not follow global behavioral norms." - Robert M Shea, Lt General, USMC, July 2018 To accelerate their AI arsenals national competitors are actively engaging in reverse engineering and cyber tactics (that may utilize AI) to attack other nations' commercial, learning and defense institutions. Their intent is to delay the advancement of other AI competitors and to grow their own domain advantage through industrial espionage. "Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia but for all humankind. It comes with colossal opportunities but also threats that are difficult to predict. Whoever becomes the leader within this sphere will become the ruler of the world." - Vladimir Putin, 2017 Realizing that other actors are doggedly seeking AI dominance, US military leaders are responding to the danger this presents to national defense and global political positioning. As Mary Miller, the Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering said to the House Armed Services Committee in March 2018, "The development of a new strategy for AI is a major priority. AI, machine learning and 'human-machine teaming' are major cornerstones of the 'third offset' strategy that responds to concerns that the US military is at risk of losing its technological edge to potential adversaries, including Russia and China." In the future, those without intelligent assistance and soon full AI- enabled autonomy will be at a severe disadvantage, on and off the battlefield. Artificial Intelligence Artificial Intelligence is the commonly used blanket terminology to describe a computer and algorithm that learn from patterns contained within data and then make autonomous decisions, potentially eliminating the need for a human in the decision loop all together. Technically, AI is a set of software algorithms that can process tremendous amounts of data to recognize complicated and not-so-obvious patterns. The relationships and patterns that can be detected are often so complex that any quantity of humans could never make such a realization. Artificial intelligence enabled military options – Whether we do or don't, they are Machine learning and its derivatives under CC and AI are established and influencing most facets of our lives. Enabled by giant strides in processing capabilities, abundant data and a history of delivering previously unimagined results, AI is revolutionizing everything. AI, although often hidden, is affecting all of us. Deployed AI applications include: • Apple Siri, Google Assistant and Cortana interpret spoken language and provide responses • Smarter vehicles avoid each other when other vehicles and objects act unexpectedly • Google learns about us to make our searches more intuitive • Facebook determines if we want to see cute cat pictures or contrarian political content • Banks determine credit worthiness and detect fraud • Target guesses when someone is pregnant before they have told their parents AI-powered smart machines and other cognitive offensive capabilities are being fielded by nations and non-nations who are seeking to raise their respective global postures and/or degrade others as a new age of warfare begins. The new age of warfare is AI-powered and uses technology that is affordable and widely available. While the US and its allies have lead in military technological capabilities since WW-II, the proliferation of AI-powered capabilities is fundamentally threatening this position. Command, control, communication and computers, and intelligence, surveillance and recognizance (C4ISR) capabilities including radar, electro/optical (EO/IR) imagery, electronic warfare (EW) and other computer-enabled systems form the cornerstone of the US and its allies' force-projection and defensive capabilities. International competitors are finding better ways to jam, confiscate and circumvent these systems, driving the creation of counter technologies in a continuous game of leapfrog. It is a game the US and its allies are used to winning. However, AI is a blue ocean of opportunities with all manner of actors diving in, all seeking to gain the initiative, and making previous outcomes no guarantee of future ones. While the US has enjoyed superiority in the pre-AI based military technology era, other actors have been quicker to adapt and invest in AI. They are developing capabilities that self-learn and predict countermeasures to previously encountered technology and are forming smart assessments regarding technology they have never previously encountered. Competitors are using data about current and legacy technology to feed their AI systems to amplify and leverage their knowledge to predict and potentially change the outcome of future military and offensive excursions. China, as an example has publicly stated that their goal is to lead all nations in AI by 2025. As Chinese investment grows, their commercial companies are eager to support the national effort. For perspective, in 2

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