AI and National Security

The world has changed and adopted a lot over the past few years, and that too at such a pace that it is not easy for everyone to sync with it. We as an individual have become so competitive, which in a way is a good thing for the overall development of the nations. There is competition everywhere, be it among humans or among countries. Everyone wants to grow and leave behind the other and thus try to develop new technologies to get an edge over the other. We are making changes to the infrastructure of the country to make it look better than other countries and for the public’s comfort as well.

There is one more field that we as the public do not indulge in much, but it is an important sector that also needs new technologies, evolution, and advanced infrastructure, and that is national security. Every country is investing heavily in its defense sector to be ready for any kind of situation. They are spending millions to get advanced infantry, vehicles, high-tech fighter planes, and much other stuff. These are common things that every country focuses on generally, but to stand out or become technically more advanced, countries are shifting their focus toward artificial intelligence. Artificial Intelligence is the future and requires more and more research. It has been successfully gaining a lot of attention from superpower countries in the world, and many commercial investors, defense intellectuals, policymakers, and international competitors are closely analyzing the outcomes of AI in the defense field. Recently a lot of activities like cyberattacks using AI and the growth of hybrid warfare techniques have forced the governments to turn the page and move over from old techniques and focus on how AI is potentially applying itself and affecting the National Security of countries.

Whenever we talk about AI and national security, there might be certain questions that take root in your head, like, "What exactly is artificial intelligence, and what is its relevance to fields like national security?" How can we create an environment which can strengthen National Security? Will it anyhow make an impact on global geopolitics? Most importantly how is India benefitting itself from AI and what all chance are we creating using such technologies? We will look to find answers to many similar questions.

In a very simple language, if we try to explain Artificial Intelligence, then we can say it is the process of inheriting human intelligence from the machine to perform certain tasks that require human understanding by teaching the machine and training it via different models. This will help machines perform cognitive tasks that include thinking, decision-making, perceiving, learning, and problem-solving. AI has forced itself and successfully managed to make space in the system by providing some amazing developments like unlimited access to computing power, a notable decline in the cost of storing data, and an explosion of digitized and structured data.

AI is creating an impact in every field, and not everyone is quite ready to handle AI, especially in the national security domain. Since countries are not immune to the disruptions caused by the increasing use of AI, we need to certainly pay attention to this as it is a topic of national security.

There are a few disruptions that require our serious attention and cannot be ignored in the following context:

1. Security’s nature changing:

· Hybrid warfare’s increasing influence- Some countries like China are doubtful of causing potential tech. warfare as recently China-backed company Zhenhua’s information theft may threaten the internal security of the state by targeting selected individuals.

· Rise in the frequency of cybersecurity threats- There are several reports that suggest that there has been a 37% increase in cyberattacks in Q1 of 2020 in India and very recently in 2021, there were several instances in which China was accused of data theft and privacy infringement of Indian public.

2. Higher Accessibility to AI-Based Tools:

The dual-use nature of AI applications is extremely dangerous, as they can be used for both military and civil purposes. This makes blocking the flow of technology extremely difficult.

· Absence of Global coalitions for AI-based tools on the line of Wassenaar Arrangement or Missile Technology Regime (MTCR)- Nuclear weapons are very dangerous and thus there are organizations and committees that keep a watch on the nation’s nuclear activities or development but there is no protection organizational setup which ensure safety from AI based tools and might harm nations internally from root, if not physically. National Security breach may cause economical crash leading the nation into blackhole without even firing a bullet.

If we look at greater perspective, than AI based attacks are more dangerous than physical attacks, at least in war we know what situations are possible but since AI being new technology might it makes us clueless and unaware about what might happen and may hurt us more.

By virtue of AI one can create technologies which requires human brain but no longer actually need a brain to perform task one built completely. When invested heavily and given adequate amount of resources we can create certain opportunities like:

Increasing Real-time intelligence- What we expect from AI technologies is that they can perform certain human based tasks without actually involving human that too faster than humans like analyzing big data sets and then extracting the required information and matching the details with available computational power can generate significant actionable intelligence. We can use such tech to perform tasks like converting unstructured financial data to find possible irregularities and security threats.

Autonomous and Semi-autonomous system creation- Widening of geographical reach which can help in super-visioning of security without endangering the lives of soldiers at borders and other risky fields by introducing autonomous systems and such systems can be installed in all military based vehicles including fighter aircrafts, ground vehicles, naval vehicles, and drones.

Lethal Autonomous Weapon System- There are certain special weapons which use sensors and automated target setting using computing algorithms and automatic commanding to engage & destroy target without manually involving humans.

Logistic involvement for Military use- It won’t be surprising if in near future we see AI based logistics to provide military with needful things in remote or low reachability areas and also deployments of such tech on borders might help in maintaining infrastructure and providing its intelligent inputs regarding repairs or any inconsistencies noticed if needed.

Cyber Operations- Using AI technology in military cyber operations for both offensive and defensive approach. Like, conventional cybersecurity tools look for historical matches to know malicious code, so without doing much, hackers only need to modify small portions of the code to evade defense. On the other hand, such technologies can also be used in detecting any kind of inconsistencies or anomalies and accordingly protecting using more dynamic barrier.

Replacing humans in ‘dull, dangerous or dirty work’- Since AI is about using human intelligence in certain fields and replacing humans and carrying out the task, so this can be used as an advantage by employing AI robots and using human intelligence to perform task which are dangerous and were used to perform by humans. Like conducting research based long duration intelligence collection to analyze, study or cleaning up environment contaminated by chemical weapons and many other such tasks.

AI is gaining so much attention and, in the future, it can be one of the most dangerous silent weapons. Whichever nation invests heavily and focuses on developing more AI based tools in next 10–15 years might be known as the global superpower as there have been instances like in 2017, China declared the Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Plan with an only aim to claim global leadership in AI innovation. In 2019, Russian President issued a statement that “He who can establish monopoly in Artificial Intelligence will rule the world”. America also recently announced ‘American AI Initiative’ to work on the development of such AI based technologies.

A healthy competition is good for AI as well among the countries but if it becomes more competitive that nations try to hurt each other to gain global geographic superpower, then it can be a serious topic of concern.

The absence of any international committee/regulation and proliferation in the AI based weapons is a dangerous combination and might be very harmful for the human race. This might even lead to trilateral Arms competition between US, China, and Russia. For e.g., Russia’s creators of AK-47(Kalashnikov) are integrating neutral nets with big guns to develop an AI equipped warfare technology.

INDIA’S Initiatives in Building AI based Tools

INDIA is also working on its AI resources and trying to invest as much as possible to be able to compete with the so called ‘global superpowers’. From the research conducted by Wuzhen Institute, it was found that India stands on number 4 globally in hosting most no. of AI based companies in the country itself.

In 2018, Indian government constructed a task force under the leadership of Natarajan Chandrasekharan comprising of the representatives from the government, services, industry, academia, start-ups, and professionals for the sole purpose of creating a structured roadmap for the inclusion of AI in National Security.

In 2019 most of the task force recommendations were accepted, and thus leading to the creation of Institutional framework for AI’s adoption in National Security.

A defense minister supervised council known as Defense AI Council (DAIC) was created to perform following roles and responsibilities:

· Providing ideas and strategic directions towards AI based transition in National Security.

· Providing valuable inputs and solving issues related to data sharing.

· Provide detailed strategy on involving industries to help build tools and tech.

· Review recommendations and ideas of industry and start-up which may be beneficial for the National Security.

· Keeping a check on the working principles, ethics, privacy, and safety of AI usage in defense.

· Prepare policies to incorporate governmental institutions and industries to create damper for social and technology misuse.

DAIPA, the Defense AI Project Agency, it was envisaged to establish DAIPA with Secretary as its ex-officio chairman. The tasks performed included, evolving new technology stack within the Defense establishment for AI development, adopting standard technology development and delivery process of AI projects, enabling, and reviewing the delivery of AI projects, etc.

CENTRE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND ROBOTICS (CAIR)

This is one of the laboratories in the DRDO (Defense Research and Development Organization). DRDO helps in providing weapons, equipment, navigation tools, drones and several other high-tech militaries required equipment for the Defense Usage. CAIR is a laboratory primarily established for using R&D in different fields of Information and Communication Technology.

It holds comprehensive libraries for AI-based algos and data mining toolboxes which can be used potentially in image and audio recognition, swarming (machine learning from observing nature and applying concepts to the machines), and natural language processing. CAIR is currently, focusing on developing an AI-based Signal Intelligence Solution, to enhance the capabilities of intelligence collation and analysis of different armed forces.

So, the role of AI has significantly increased over the years in the field of National Security, and it is just a beginning and we have got a long road to travel and certainly need to put in a lot of hard work. It said to believe that AI is the future of world, and we must work on this for quite a few generations.