Squaring Clausewitz's Trinity in the Age of Autonomous Weapons

Hoffman, Frank G.

doi:10.1016/j.orbis.2018.12.011

Cited by 3 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…The impact on global security constitutes a significant part of the discussions. There is broad agreement among security studies scholars that AI is bringing and will continue to bring significant transformations to the way wars are being fought (Allison & Y, 2020; Gill, 2019; Goldfarb & Lindsay, 2022; Hoffman, 2019; Johnson, 2019; Payne, 2018; Rossiter, 2021). This consensus is coupled with a significant degree of skepticism toward “futuristic” and “alarmist” discussions about a pending takeover of war by robots and distrust of unequivocal statements on the future of warfare.…”

Section: Ai and Global Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hoffman, on the other hand, focuses his attention on how war is conducted. The historical horizon that he adopts is the Second Machine Age or the “Age of Autonomy” (Hoffman, 2019, p. 55). The Age of Autonomy is characterized by the machine’s ability to “compose and select among different courses of action” (Defense Science Board, 2016 as cited in Hoffman, 2019, p. 48).…”

Section: Ai and Global Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The historical horizon that he adopts is the Second Machine Age or the “Age of Autonomy” (Hoffman, 2019, p. 55). The Age of Autonomy is characterized by the machine’s ability to “compose and select among different courses of action” (Defense Science Board, 2016 as cited in Hoffman, 2019, p. 48). While we are not there yet, we are experiencing aspects of the Age of Autonomy according to Hoffman.…”

Section: Ai and Global Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…After reviewing the claims in this literature, Hoffman settles on his preference for a more flexible analysis based on Clausewitz’s trinity. He argues that “the age of autonomy poses major discontinuities” (Hoffman, 2019, p. 55) for the trinity. The non-rational aspect of passion/emotion is affected by AI in various ways.…”

Section: Ai and Global Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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I TRENDS Security Politics and Artificial Intelligence: Key Trends and Debates

Bahçecik

2023

International Political Science Abstracts

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This article delves into the academic discourse surrounding the security implications of artificial intelligence (AI). It highlights the lack of consensus on what AI truly encompasses, which poses challenges for regulating the technology. While some express concerns about the security risks of AI, there are proponents of ethical AI who believe in the possibility of programming the technology to operate ethically, and supporters of AI for Good (or AI for Social Good) who see potential for AI to address sustainable development challenges. Scholars agree that AI will have a significant impact on global security, but they disagree on the specific mechanisms and dimensions of this impact. Some focus on changes in the balance of power and the effectiveness of autonomous weapons, while others highlight the tactical advantages, defensive and offensive capabilities, and even national differences in AI development and deployment. Overall, the article concludes that more critical studies are needed to explore how AI is already affecting security in a broad sense.

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Section: Ai and Global Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ai and Global Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ai and Global Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ai and Global Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

I TRENDS Security Politics and Artificial Intelligence: Key Trends and Debates

Bahçecik

2023

International Political Science Abstracts

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“…These categories, of ‘nature’, ‘essence’, ‘eternal’, ‘rational’, ‘willpower’, ‘human’ and the ‘universal’, are rarely interrogated as being in flux within these arguments and their assumptions. Recent analyses suggest AI squares the trilogy as autonomous calculation varies the speed and complexities of elements but just tweaks the components (Hoffman 2019 ). Traditional military conceptions of consider Clausewitz’s trinity as a two-dimensional isosceles triangle.…”

Section: War Is Dreaming Of Itselfmentioning

confidence: 99%

Xenowar dreams of itself

Sear

2020

Digi War

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What has war become in an age of recursive computation and the globalised technobiome? Combining speculative fiction, Clausewitzian theory and metadisciplinary analysis, this exploratory piece outlines the emergence of a war that is both new and familiar—Xenowar. ‘Xeno’ because this war incorporates the alien and the Other into a new, dynamic, topological trinity. Xenowar is the Clausewitzian trinity spun in recursive loops of alterity, where conflict diagonalizes into an inhuman, alien cognition. War persists, but Clausewitz’s wunderliche Dreifaltigkeit morphs to become topological. Combatants emerge from corporations and nations as the understanding of war as human activity evolves into the realisation that all human activity is now war. ‘Users’ are a ‘standing reserve’ for the Gestell . Simultaneously, the technological and biological merge, transforming conflict into three dimensions in a way that emphasises connection and shape, not geometry. This deforms war’s properties while preserving its form: asymmetry will be expressed as inhuman scales, and feedback loops will redefine geopolitics. Topological equivalence will mean the continuous mapping of States within Stack homeomorphism via oscillations of stretching and contraction. Westphalian deformations will increase turbulence at higher manifolds and dimensions. Equally, an inability to cut and paste borders of Stack topology will accentuate disconnection. Some Stacks may be enantiotopic to each other, mirror images but not superimposable. At other scales friction will spiral in recursions of homotopic functionalities across Stack infrastructures and diastereotopic data planes of invertible war: ‘recurgency’ will replace insurgency. State and Stack firewalls will constitute cosmotechnic event horizons of compression. From this black hole of Xenowar will pulse another type of Un-War, fought at the edges of the incomputable, an axiomatic reboot of Non-Turing mathematics and non-Abelian anyons of topological quantum computing. Sovereignty will not just be defined in the ontology of mathematical alterity. Life will prove non-computable. Adverserial relations will thus multiple via biolocial processes of mutation, while digital war’s front lines will recede to reflevive, recursive interstices. Consciousness is another limit upon which total war will press, and when war has co-opted consciousness what will we do—or even be?

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Data Science in Military Decision-Making: Foci and Gaps

Meerveld,

Lindelauf

2024

Global Society

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Squaring Clausewitz's Trinity in the Age of Autonomous Weapons

Cited by 3 publications

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I TRENDS Security Politics and Artificial Intelligence: Key Trends and Debates

I TRENDS Security Politics and Artificial Intelligence: Key Trends and Debates

Xenowar dreams of itself

Data Science in Military Decision-Making: Foci and Gaps

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