Yet, despite their litany of failures, our foreign policy and military elites stay shielded from accountability. withdrawal from Afghanistan, but decades of missteps and miscues prior. The competence of America’s top military brass has been rightfully questioned in response not only to the fallout from the U.S.
Toy defense 2 what is most useful software#
This kind of software cannot, in principle, tell us anything about these two unlikely events, which are paradoxically the most likely kind of event to result in great power war. Soldier) or a strategic decision at the highest levels of the Chinese government. If anything serious happens with China, it will likely be the result of a truly unpredictable accident (like a naval collision or accidental killing of a U.S. It is not obvious what “strategic friction” is. Some in the intelligence industry, Askonas said, “have suggested this is the kind of product consultants try to sell gullible commanders.” The tools that have been used for civil unrest in the past, Askonas said, are not useful against other state actors, who may act more strategically:
Like Dujmovic, however, Askonas told TAC that the software unveiled by USINDOPACOM attempts to apply tools that have previously been used to quell “decentralized social phenomena (riots, protests, unrest)” to a new realm: great power conflict. In conversations with folks working in the industry, my understanding is that the data is noisy but robust, and that it provides a bit of an early warning for emergent social phenomena such as the Arab Spring. began to invest heavily in social prediction software, combining disparate open sources, financial data, media, later social media, etc. Jonathan Askonas, another professor at Catholic University of America, emailed TAC to say that “using predictive software to monitor the strategic situation is nothing new.”īeginning in the 1990s, the U.S. The United States, and other nations for that matter, have long used algorithms and various softwares in the process or war-gaming exercises, but, Catholic University of America Professor Nicholas Dujmovic told The American Conservative via email, “this is the first I’ve heard of such a tool as an input to actual decision making, either here or in other countries.” This paradigm shift, and the necessity to respond rapidly to China’s maneuvering within the region and around the world, has increased the demand for a tool like the software program, with the professed aim of avoiding actions that could further worsen Sino-American relations and lead to an escalatory spiral. foreign policy establishment has hinted that the United States would be willing to aid in Taiwan’s defense if China were to invade, though remaining vague about what measures America would take to protect Taiwan’s territorial integrity. Tensions have only worsened since, given China’s continued crackdown on Hong Kong and Uyghurs in Xinjiang as well as their increased incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone over the past year. That change was, in part, solidified once Covid-19 escaped from China and brought about a global pandemic. “With the spectrum of conflict and the challenge sets spanning down into the gray zone, what you see is the need to be looking at a far broader set of indicators, weaving that together, and then understanding the threat interaction,” Hicks said.įormer President Donald Trump’s administration brought about a significant change in how the United States views China’s continued rise. The new software was unveiled to Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks last week at USINDOPACOM in Hawaii. However, will the military become complacent and dependent on the predictive software to respond to our largest competitor? Could using this software make China’s behavior more erratic as its planners try to beat the system? military navigate complicated geopolitical issues with China that are set to become more acute in the coming months and years. The software certainly seems to have immense capabilities, and may help the U.S. action will provoke a “disproportionate” Chinese response going forward up to four months into the future. United States Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) aims to use the tool to see whether or not a given U.S. actions that impacted the relationship between two of the world’s largest powers, and calculates “strategic friction,” as one defense official claimed. The software reportedly analyzes data since early 2020 on various U.S. military has built software that is supposed to predict how China will respond to various U.S.
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