Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Centur

Jackson, John Edward

Singer, P. W.

English

U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons

Naval War College ReviewVolume 62Number 4 Autumn Article 112009More than Three Laws of RoboticsJohn Edward JacksonP. W. SingerFollow this and additional works at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-reviewThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion inNaval War College Review by an authorized editor of U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. For more information, please contactrepository.inquiries@usnwc.edu.Recommended CitationJackson, John Edward and Singer, P. W. (2009) "More than Three Laws of Robotics," Naval War College Review: Vol. 62 : No. 4 , Article11.Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol62/iss4/11REVIEW ESSAYSMORE THAN THREE LAWS OF ROBOTICSJohn Edward JacksonSinger, P. W. Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Con-flict in the 21st Century. New York: Penguin, 2009. 499 pp.$29.95“May you live in interesting times” is frequently used as shorthand for enduringperiods of tumultuous change. Few would dispute that global events during theopening decade of the twenty-first century have indeed been “interesting.” In hiscarefully researched and cleverly written book Wired for War: The Robotics Rev-olution and Conflict in the 21st Century, Brookings Institute senior fellow P. W.Singer postulates that technological advances in artificial intelligence and ro-botics engineering (which together create the robotics revolution) are des-tined to guarantee that conflict in the twenty-first century will indeed be“interesting”! He effectively argues that the voracious appetite of tech-savvyconsumers and the outrage of casualty-averse citi-zens (and, to a degree, military leaders) will combineto generate an explosion of highly capable roboticsystems in the home, office, and battlefield. Society’stolerance for casualties in war has evolved from thepublic’s general acceptance of over five hundredthousand casualties in just five days at the first battleof the Marne at the beginning of the twentieth cen-tury to the attitude widely held in the Western worldthat in the twenty-first century few, if any, youngwarriors should be required to perish in defense ofthe republic. The potential for machines to fight toProfessor Jackson is the manager for the Naval WarCollege’s Navy Professional Reading Program and amember of its National Security Decision Making fac-ulty. Prior to his retirement from the U.S. Navy in 1996,Captain Jackson was a supply and logistics specialist,serving in his last active-duty assignment as the NavalWar College’s Frederick J. Horne Military Chair of Lo-gistics. He holds advanced degrees from Providence Col-lege and Salve Regina University and is a graduate ofthe Management Development Program at HarvardUniversity. Professor Jackson is the curriculum devel-oper and moderator of the course “Case Studies inTechnology and Warfare: Unmanned Systems.”Naval War College Review, Autumn 2009, Vol. 62, No. 41Jackson and Singer: More than Three Laws of RoboticsPublished by U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons, 2009their last circuit board while their human masters remain safe is an intoxicat-ing, if unrealistic, scenario for future war.Many observers believe that the combination of supercomputing technologyand cutting-edge robotic engineering will drive changes within the military en-vironment equal to the impact of the widespread use of gunpowder in the six-teenth and seventeenth centuries and of steam propulsion for ships in thenineteenth century. These changes relate not only to the development and man-ufacture of highly capable future systems but also to issues regarding their ethi-cal use and the manner in which command and control will be exercised.Chapter by chapter, Wired displays the history, current status, and possible fu-ture of the relationship between man and machine. In a chapter entitled “SmartBombs, Norma Jeane, and Defecating Ducks: A Short History of Robotics,”Singer blends playful prose with extensively annotated research to highlightthree hundred years of robotic development. In answering the self-imposedquestion “Why a book on robots and war?” Singer simply states that “robots arefrakin’ cool.”For those who may not recognize this version of the ubiquitous “F-word,” it isa censor-friendly expletive that peppered the dialogue of the wildly popular re-make of the science-fiction classic Battlestar Galactica. Singer’s unbridled decla-ration is the first, but by no means the last, reference to science fiction in Wired.In fact, when you search for the term “science fiction” in an electronic copy ofWired for War on a Kindle e-book reader (which sure seems like a piece of gearSpock would have used in the original Star Trek series), you get 196 hits. Singernotes that “science fiction [sci-fi] is more than just popular; it is also incrediblyinfluential, to an extent that is often surprising.” He goes on to say that “part ofthe popularity of science fiction comes from its remarkable skill at foreshadow-ing the future.” He makes his point that would-be futurists should be avid con-sumers of science fiction by citing the predictions of such writers as H. G. Wells,Jules Verne, and Robert Heinlein, whose visions of the future have in many wayscome to pass. Sci-fi fans can be found in the strangest places, and Singer notesthat the Joint Chiefs chairman, Admiral Mike Mullen, “proudly describes howthe Navy’s Professional Reading Program, which he helped develop to guide hissailors, includes the science fiction novels Starship Troopers [1959] and Ender’sGame [1985].” As a point of interest, Wired for War is now also a recommendedsupplemental selection in the Navy’s Reading Program.To be clear, this book is far more than a paean to science fiction, for Singerdoes a remarkable job of cataloging the ways in which the military forces of theworld have adopted robotic technologies. He speaks of the thirteen thousandground-based robots, six thousand aerial systems, and hundreds of sea-basedsystems in the active inventory of soldiers, sailors, and airmen around the world.1 5 6 N A V A L W A R C O L L E G E R E V I E W2Naval War College Review, Vol. 62 [2009], No. 4, Art. 11https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol62/iss4/11Singer also describes such sophisticated systems as the RQ-4 Global Hawk, athirty-two-thousand-pound unmanned reconnaissance airplane with a130-foot wingspan and a 5,400-mile operating radius. Putting the GlobalHawk’s operating envelope into more familiar terms, Singer states, “GlobalHawk can (in effect) fly from San Francisco, spend a day hunting terrorists in theentire state of Maine, and then fly back to the West Coast.” In reality, the RQ-4sfly from bases in the Middle East while being monitored and controlled by pilotssitting at command consoles at Beale Air Force Base, in California. The U.S.Navy is now operating a maritime version of Global Hawk, as part of the BroadArea Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) program. Though the aircraft arelaunched, recovered, and maintained in the Middle East, all are controlled fromNaval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland. In addition to these reconnaissancetasks, the nightly news is filled with coverage of armed Predator and Reaper un-manned aircraft systems regularly attacking targets in Iraq, Afghanistan, andother locations, in the service of both the U.S. Air Force and the Central Intelli-gence Agency. Singer goes from these large-scale aircraft to the micro, un-manned air vehicles (some weighing less than a pound) at the opposite end ofthe size spectrum, to other tactical systems that are literally tossed into the air bysoldiers in the field.On the ground, robots have become indispensable partners to the men andwomen who risk their lives on a daily basis to locate, disarm, or destroy the pri-mary weapon of the Iraqi insurgency—the improvised explosive device (IED).Singer opens chapter 1 with a touching story about the loss of an explosive-ordnance-disposal technician in Iraq, but he provides a happy ending when hediscloses that it was a robot that took the blast—no letter had to be writtenhome to grieving parents. He provides vignettes of troops working side by sidewith PackBots, SWORDS, throw-bots, TALONS, and even an experimentalsystem called the Robo-Lobster. His forty-five pages of notes provide countlessresources for readers who seek to learn more about these systems.The real strength of this work, however, is that it goes well beyond the scienceand technology of unmanned robotic systems, delving into the legal and ethicalramifications of their use. Singer weighs the arguments for and against greaterautonomy for robotic systems and considers the pros and cons of “keeping aman in the loop” to provide a degree of human judgment in potentially lethaloperational decisions. The problem, however, is that decision loops of less than asecond make this impossible. He quotes a U.S. Army colonel who says that “thetrend towards the future will be robots reacting to robot attack, especially whenoperating at technologic speed. . . . As the loop gets shorter and shorter, therewon’t be any time in it for humans.” One wonders, however, who is responsible ifa robot accidently kills the wrong person. The programmer? The operator? TheR E V I E W E S S A Y S 1 5 73Jackson and Singer: More than Three Laws of RoboticsPublished by U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons, 2009vendor who sold the product? Singer does not try to answer these questions butrather encourages the reader to think about them in the context of future wars.Singer does not limit his learned discussions to war-bots but touches also onrobots in the home (more than three million Roomba robotic vacuums havebeen sold), in research (NASA flies several Global Hawks), and in everyday life(ATMs, security robots, and automated systems in our cars). These topics inevi-tably lead to a discussion of artificial intelligence and the question of how smartshould we allow these machines to become, at what point they might become athreat to their creators. A half-century ago, the noted author Isaac Asimov pos-tulated his famous “Three Laws of Robotics,” which sought to ensure the safetyand superiority of the human race. In reality, securing our future may require farmore than three simple laws.This book is a must-read for futurists, fans of technology, and students of war.It is, in fact, the required text for a new course at the Naval War College entitled“Case Studies in Technology and Warfare: Unmanned Systems,” which was firstoffered in the 2009–2010 semester.Singer closes with some sobering food for thought: “And now we are creatingsomething exciting and new, a technology that might just transform humans’role in their world, perhaps even create a new species. But this revolution ismainly driven by our inability to move beyond the conflicts that have shaped hu-man history from the very start. Sadly, our machines may not be the only thingwired for war.”1 5 8 N A V A L W A R C O L L E G E R E V I E W4Naval War College Review, Vol. 62 [2009], No. 4, Art. 11https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol62/iss4/11

More than Three Laws of Robotics

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More than Three Laws of Robotics

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