The end of military-techno Pax Americana? Washington’s strategic responses to Chinese AI-enabled military technology

Abstract

This article uses the international relations (IR) 'polarity' concept as a lens to view the shifting great power dynamics in artificial intelligence (AI) and related enabling technologies. The article describes how and why great power competition is mounting in within several interrelated dual-use technological fields; why these innovations are considered by Washington to be strategically vital, and how (and to what end) the United States is responding to the perceived challenge posed by China to its technological hegemony. The following questions addressed in this paper fill a gap in the existing literature: Will the increasingly competitive U.S.-China relationship dominate world politics creating a new bipolar world order, as opposed to a multipolar one? Why does the U.S. view China's progress in dual-use AI as a threat to its first-mover advantage? How might the U.S. respond to this perceived threat?

‘Catalytic nuclear war’ in the age of artificial intelligence & autonomy: Emerging military technology and escalation risk between nuclear-armed states

“…176 Strategic competition between great powers, to reap the perceived first-mover advantages of AI, will likely become a negative-sum enterprise without resolving the control and safety issues. 177 Can arms control agreements encompass emerging technologies such as AI? How might nonproliferation look in the age of AI?…”

The European Approach to Building AI Policy and Governance: A Haven for Bureaucrats or Innovators?

“…9 Thus, the policy action at that point was caught between two opposing approaches offered by the 'ethicists', or stringent GDPR proponents on the one hand, and 'self-regulation' advocates on the other hand. 10 As revealed later on, the latter has been represented in EU Commission expert circles to a greater extent (Johnson, 2019), although the chances of making a U-turn towards informal regulation have been largely decreased by the enacted GDPR and its core concept of the right to know why exactly a certain data-based decision has been made. Further steps taken by the European stakeholders can be organized into the following streams -communication of the strategic plans and debating of the proposals, research on risks and benefits, and legislating.…”

The US, Indo-Pacific, AI and Emerging Security Technologies

“…Will the increasingly competitive US-China relationship dominate world politics creating a new two-bipolar world order, as opposed to a multipolar one? (Boulanin, 2019;Geist and Lohn, 2018;Ayoub and Payne, 2016;Technology for Global Security, 2019;Johnson, 2019c). This chapter is an attempt to acquire greater insight into these questions, which have important implications for US-China relations and the future security landscape of the Indo-Pacific more broadly.…”

“…The chapter argues that the strategic competition playing out within a broad range AI and other emerging security technologies, will likely narrow the technological gap separating great military powers (notably the United States and China), and to a lesser extent, other technically advanced small-medium powers in the Indo-Pacific such as South Korea, Singapore, and Japan. The chapter builds on the growing body of literature that reinforces the perception in the US that China's pursuit of AI and other emerging security technologies will threaten the unassailable first-mover advantage that the US has in a range of dual-use (with both commercial and military application) emerging security technology (Boulanin, 2019;Johnson, 2019a;Johnson, 2019c;Johnson, 2021;Horowitz, 2018;Moore, 2017;Allen and Chan, 2017).…”