Cyber Technologies are becoming more critical to today’s warfare. While in earlier periods in history following the Industrial Revolution, the sheer industrial technological superiority of European countries determined their military success in terms of colonization and subjugation of Asians and Africans, now most of the states as well as non-state actors are engaged in developing updated cyber and automation technologies, adoption of these technologies into warfare are making wars not only more complex but they are being fought more in the space of information too.
By adopting Cyber and AI technologies, warring parties in the ongoing wars in Europe and the Middle East have tried to serve many purposes of warfare and sought to alter the existing balance of power in their favour. New cyber technologies of warfare as well as AI-induced enhanced automation in warfare have immensely elevated not only the states’ capacities to assess the strength of the enemy, divulging their secret plans and sabotaging their critical infrastructure including health, electricity and energy sectors but the ongoing wars in Europe and in the Middle East pointed to as to how these technologies were crucial to bringing precision to strikes, assisting in identifying enemy targets and enemies, carrying surveillance operations on enemy locations and patrolling border areas.
Information and technology have made wars less expensive as cheap drones have replaced costly aircraft and fighter planes so far as precision to hit the targets matters more than lethality and destruction. The ongoing wars in the Middle East and Europe attest to the facts of how drone swarms can breach the enemy’s borders and hit targets with more precision.
Such technologies have been used by Ukraine to find safe routes and infrastructure for displaced people and monitor supply routes to restore to them shelter, food and health amenities.
The wars that are being fought in Europe and the Middle East are “total wars” in which the distinction between combatants and noncombatants is not only blurred, the states pooled vast resources by mobilizing their societies including war volunteers, mercenaries, arms industries, technology companies and experts and civilians. Warring parties are prioritizing warfare over all other state activities, attacking a broad variety of targets, and reshaping their economies and those of other countries. Any advancement in the domain of AI technology can be assumed critical to winning such total wars.
The Israeli Defence Force used the AI system- Lavender which helped it by providing a simplified digital model of the battlefield and identifying 37,000 people linked to Hamas. AI clearly enabled it to quickly identify and locate the foot soldiers with more precision. Arguments for the use of AI have been corroborated by the technology’s exponential potency to not only enhance a warring party’s ability of faster targeting and effective attacks with lesser collateral damage compared to earlier conflicts but its use for humanitarian assistance during the wars also inflates its significance as well.
Ukraine has used facial recognition technology, supplied by U.S. company Clearview to identify Russian soldiers crossing the border. This apart, its military has also made use of an autonomous machine gun enabled by AI technologies to target enemies in flux. Besides, a dog-like autonomous robot designed by British Company Alliance has been used to monitor the combat zones and to detect enemy locations including the minefields using thermal vision. On June 20, 2024, the IT Army of Ukraine consisting of a group of volunteer hackers reportedly launched a cyber war against Russia’s banking system temporarily crippling several Russian banks, causing significant financial disruptions symbolizing the success of a decentralized model of warfare. The IT Army’s cyber offensive has targeted the Russian energy sector to sabotage critical infrastructure supporting Russia’s war effort.
Underlining the criticality of technology in warfare, China’s white paper on national defence has already made its aspirations of making comprehensive utilization of AI technology and tools for modernizing its army and leveraging this in future warfare which it calls “intelligentization” of warfare. Much in a similar vein, the US, European powers, Saudi Arabia and UAE have indicated their willingness to invest heavily to harness AI in conducting warfare.
AI’s Rough Edges
Breakthroughs in technology and their adoption in warfare are likely to cause more wars by enhancing states’ capabilities and expectations to deter and dominate their enemies and win wars against them by engendering perceptions that the balance of power has shifted in their favour. Germany buoyed by its industrial success miscalculated its power and lost to the Soviet Union in World War II. New technologies can also bring relative stability in the anarchy of International Politics through even distribution of power as the advancement of nuclear technologies in the domain of weaponization has propelled the smaller powers to harness these to offset their conventional military capabilities and maintain a rough balance of power with bigger powers. However, unlike nuclear power, power accrued through cyber and AI technologies is very difficult to measure and compare to ascertain where a state stands vis-a-vis others. Thus, these technologies would rather disturb the existing balance of power by misperceptions and miscalculations.
While it is true to a certain extent that AI technology in warfare can facilitate quicker and more widespread collection and analysis of this kind of information, they could well enable better decisions in conflict by humans that minimize risks for civilians, the limitations of increasing reliance on technology cannot be glossed over.
Synthesizing, analysing and interpreting information pertaining to the enemy are crucial to a state’s military strategies. On the other hand, misinformation, disinformation, hacking of information, penetrations through viruses and generation of hallucination traps are becoming parts of adversaries’ strategies of warfare at the same time. Over-reliance on technology could lead a state’s strategies of warfare to backfire.
While the dangers emanating from nuclear technology in the direction of weaponization are well-known, the state actors still have a monopoly over their development and deployment. There are significant numbers of international laws, conventions and treaties which regulate and restrict their production and proliferation. However, harnessing and diffusion of AI technology by its very nature is a decentralized process where private actors such as software companies and individuals with technological expertise are poised to play a crucial part either to strengthen the state actor or to undercut its monopoly over power. Its decentralised nature makes it difficult for states to regulate it at the domestic or international level. State and non-state actors would be in constant competition for power leading to anarchy at the domestic and international levels.
The drone technologies used by state actors have been adopted by non-state actors not merely because of collusion between them as in the case of Iran on the one hand and Hezbollah and Hamas on the other. They are taking assistance from several private actors to gain access to these technologies independent of states as well. Hezbollah has been using Iranian-built reconnaissance drones to violate Israeli airspace apart from its own armoury of drones which include many refined and repackaged versions of old drones to suit its warfare strategies. Similarly, Hamas has been using drones against Israel since October 2023 procuring them from various sources. The diffusion of AI technology could empower these non-state actors exponentially.
As the ongoing wars attest to the crude reality that states are becoming increasingly dependent on sophisticated technologies to blur and undercut the technological edges of their enemies, the phenomenon called “automation bias” refers to the increasing inclination of human beings to uncritically accept technological outputs, recommendations and actions is going to be a reality in not too a distant future. Israeli defence experts reviewed Lavender’s recommendations before authorising attacks, but they no sooner than later began treating them reliably.
In wars, the pressing need for faster, more effective and precise responses through AI would undermine human values, temperament and judgment that could function as substantive inputs during the context of wars. Greater automation technologies in warfare would make it harder and almost impossible to leverage different possibilities of diplomatic channels that could open up during the twists and turns of the war.
Some experts point to the possibility of eventual loss of complete human control over AI technology that could lead to the phenomenon of “Hyperwar” referring to a type of conflict and competition so automated that it would collapse the decision action loop comprising stages -Observe, Orient, Decide, Act (OODA) loop where human inputs are vital in each step.
Algorithmic warfare underlining AI is susceptible to various external stimulants that could mislead human beings and hence constant vigilance, verification and judgement by humans will remain crucial to technology-driven warfare. The day when technology decides the course of war and international politics independent of human agencies, the entire human civilisation that has come of age evolving over the millennia will collapse.
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