WEBVTT - The Story: What Does the Future of War Look Like? 0:00:14.080 --> 0:00:17.160 Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm as Valoshan here with Kara Price. 0:00:17.400 --> 0:00:18.640 Hi Kara, hi os. 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:22.880 I'm excited to share today's interview with Dexter Philkins, who's 0:00:23.000 --> 0:00:26.599 a longtime war correspondent and now a reporter at large 0:00:26.600 --> 0:00:29.080 for The New Yorker. He recently wrote a piece to 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:32.519 answer a very big question, is the US ready for 0:00:32.600 --> 0:00:35.920 the next war? In search of that question, Dexter traveled 0:00:36.040 --> 0:00:41.360 all over the world, from Israel to Taiwan to of course, Ukraine, 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:45.480 where he visited a drone factory. Here's Dexter on how 0:00:45.600 --> 0:00:48.400 Ukraine became ground zero for drone warfare. 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:52.960 The Ukrainians, on their und really they have invented basically 0:00:53.040 --> 0:00:56.360 a whole new way of warfare. They build really chieved 0:00:56.440 --> 0:01:00.520 drones that are really really accurate and really really and 0:01:00.560 --> 0:01:03.400 they build them by the thousands and the thousands and 0:01:03.440 --> 0:01:08.400 the thousands. So last year twenty twenty four, the Ukrainians 0:01:08.440 --> 0:01:13.399 built and deployed two million drones on the battlefield. The 0:01:13.520 --> 0:01:16.319 moment the Russians start to move in any kind of 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:20.600 numbers at all, they walk right into a wall of drones. Yeah. 0:01:20.600 --> 0:01:23.240 I've actually seen videos of these drones. It looks like 0:01:23.319 --> 0:01:24.080 a swarm. 0:01:24.400 --> 0:01:26.959 It really does, and there are these insane stories about 0:01:27.000 --> 0:01:31.319 how Ukrainians are protecting themselves from drones. In fact, old 0:01:31.520 --> 0:01:34.279 fishing nets from the south of France are being shipped 0:01:34.280 --> 0:01:38.000 to Ukraine and kind of put over roads to basically 0:01:38.000 --> 0:01:41.240 prevent the suicide drones from hitting people and vehicles on 0:01:41.280 --> 0:01:43.800 the roads. There's a great story recently in The Guardian 0:01:43.840 --> 0:01:46.720 about how proud the fishermen of Provence are to be 0:01:46.880 --> 0:01:50.040 helping Ukrainians out with their old nets. There's also another 0:01:50.160 --> 0:01:53.120 detail in the story which I found just absolutely mind blowing, 0:01:53.160 --> 0:01:56.880 which is that drone operators in Ukraine are given points 0:01:57.080 --> 0:02:01.600 for kills and for destruction of tanks and other milestones essentially, 0:02:01.640 --> 0:02:04.680 and the units that get the most points get more drones. 0:02:05.040 --> 0:02:09.040 It's basically a video game mechanic for distributing weapons of war. 0:02:09.800 --> 0:02:12.119 But the story is not just about drones. It's also 0:02:12.200 --> 0:02:15.440 about how the wider future of warfare is being driven 0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:16.200 by technology. 0:02:16.360 --> 0:02:19.360 The most important thing is not the jet at the bomber, 0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:21.920 the aircraft carry that costs billions of billions dollars, the 0:02:21.919 --> 0:02:23.840 most important components of software. 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:26.320 On the one hand, it's inside baseball, but on the 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:30.840 other hand, it's absolutely fascinating. The whole paradigm of arms 0:02:30.880 --> 0:02:34.040 manufacturing is being turned on its head. In the past, 0:02:34.080 --> 0:02:36.560 the government would decide what it wanted and then put 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:40.480 in an order. Now the private sector is taking a 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:43.640 build it and they will come approach. And this simple 0:02:43.760 --> 0:02:48.480 fact explains the explosion of venture capital funding into defense 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:50.400 tech that we talk about quite often on the show. 0:02:50.800 --> 0:02:54.080 Yeah, you mentioned Ukraine, but you know another place my 0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:56.480 mind goes to in terms of the future of warfare 0:02:56.560 --> 0:02:57.640 is obviously Israel. 0:02:57.880 --> 0:03:00.720 Yeah, that's right. Deta talks about that about how the 0:03:00.760 --> 0:03:05.200 IDEF is using AI to identify and locate people with 0:03:05.320 --> 0:03:09.400 potential links to Hamas based on a number of factors. 0:03:09.320 --> 0:03:12.800 Based on their telephone calls, based on the location, based 0:03:12.840 --> 0:03:16.160 on the buildings they go into. And there's just enormous 0:03:16.160 --> 0:03:20.000 amounts of data, so much data that's all being crunched 0:03:20.080 --> 0:03:25.040 into these big computers that then essentially spit out target recommendations. 0:03:25.320 --> 0:03:27.240 And what did the IDF do with this information? 0:03:27.560 --> 0:03:30.840 They use it to decide who to kill. Dexter was 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:33.720 told that after the AI analyzes the data, it makes 0:03:33.720 --> 0:03:36.480 a recommendation on who to target, and then a team 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:39.760 of humans in the IDF tries to verify whether or 0:03:39.800 --> 0:03:42.680 not these targets are really connects to hamas and whether 0:03:42.800 --> 0:03:46.040 or not to make the kill decision. Dexter reports, however, 0:03:46.200 --> 0:03:48.960 this IDF team would get about one hundred recommendations from 0:03:49.040 --> 0:03:53.520 AI per day, and that sometimes the latency between the 0:03:53.560 --> 0:03:58.160 AI recommendation and the kill decision is less than a minute. 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:00.400 You know, at that point, is there like even a 0:04:00.480 --> 0:04:01.360 human in the loop? 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:06.080 I mean technically legally, legally yes, but practically less than 0:04:06.120 --> 0:04:08.880 a minute, not really. So we talk about that, and 0:04:08.920 --> 0:04:11.880 we also talk about Palme Lucky. He's the founder of Anderil, 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:18.000 Silicon Valley's hottest, most darling defense tech startup, Unicorn, And 0:04:18.000 --> 0:04:19.560 we talk about how all these different places in the 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:23.160 world come together, So how the battlefield of Ukraine and 0:04:23.200 --> 0:04:27.000 the warring Gaza are ultimately affecting how the US and 0:04:27.120 --> 0:04:30.839 China think about a potential conflict in Taiwan. 0:04:31.279 --> 0:04:33.240 It's fair to say it would be catastrophic for the 0:04:33.320 --> 0:04:35.200 United States and for the kind of the interests of 0:04:35.240 --> 0:04:36.120 the Western world. 0:04:36.960 --> 0:04:39.839 Before we get there, dextro Nite started off by talking 0:04:39.839 --> 0:04:43.120 about Dexter's visit to a Ukrainian drone factory. 0:04:43.640 --> 0:04:46.520 So you know, I was blindfolded. I was taking this factory. 0:04:46.520 --> 0:04:49.400 They took the blindfold off. I was inside this you know. 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:52.960 It was like a small, small like warehouse. There were 0:04:53.279 --> 0:04:55.839 a couple hundred people in there, most of them women, 0:04:56.080 --> 0:04:59.000 and they were they were making drones. But the drones, 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:02.840 it's just a little thing. It's nothing. It's a farb 0:05:02.920 --> 0:05:05.440 and fib or frame. It's like a foot and a 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:07.280 half by a foot and a half. It's just a square. 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:09.920 It's got little propellers on it. I mean, it's nothing. 0:05:10.080 --> 0:05:12.719 And then it's got a bomb rack and then a 0:05:12.839 --> 0:05:15.680 camera so that the person who's driving the drunk can 0:05:15.760 --> 0:05:18.159 kind of see where he's going. That's it. It costs 0:05:18.160 --> 0:05:21.279 five hundred dollars and so with not a lot of money, 0:05:21.320 --> 0:05:23.640 they can deploy thousands of these things. And that's what 0:05:23.680 --> 0:05:26.160 they're doing. And I should say the Russians are doing 0:05:26.160 --> 0:05:30.159 the same thing. And so it's this incredible kind of 0:05:30.240 --> 0:05:34.240 dogfight that tapping in eastern Ukraine. But the technology for 0:05:34.360 --> 0:05:37.280 now appears to favorite the defense. And so it's largely 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:41.400 because of drones and drone swarms and the tactics Ukrainians 0:05:41.440 --> 0:05:44.240 have developed that they've been able to hold the Russians off. 0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:48.280 You talk about it largely favors the defense, but there's 0:05:48.320 --> 0:05:51.880 this extraordinary David and Goliath moment where some of the 0:05:51.960 --> 0:05:55.040 cheapest technology of warfare knocked out some of the most 0:05:55.080 --> 0:05:58.200 expensive thousands of miles behind the front lines. 0:05:58.520 --> 0:06:01.240 That's right, that's right. And so for instance, the guy 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:04.320 that I spoke to, he was like running like a 0:06:04.360 --> 0:06:07.159 trucking company like when the war started, and he's like, well, 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:09.600 you know, the Prime Minister called and they said, hey, 0:06:09.600 --> 0:06:11.600 can you make drones? And that was that was three 0:06:11.680 --> 0:06:13.680 years ago. He never made a drone his life. And 0:06:13.760 --> 0:06:17.520 so this was a government project that I saw with 0:06:17.640 --> 0:06:22.880 private companies, and they've developed these anti ship drones. They're 0:06:22.920 --> 0:06:26.839 like these little toy boats. They're like six feet long, 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:30.279 no people, a little cameras. Some of them are just 0:06:30.360 --> 0:06:33.360 loaded with explosives. Others had like kind of torpedoes on them. 0:06:33.960 --> 0:06:39.279 But they have chased the entire Russian Black Sea fleet, 0:06:39.760 --> 0:06:41.920 some of it out of the Black Sea and the 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:44.520 rest of it all the way to the eastern side 0:06:44.520 --> 0:06:47.960 of the Black Sea, where they've basically reopened what the 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:50.960 Russians had blockaded, which is the sea lanes that allow 0:06:51.680 --> 0:06:55.080 Ukraine to export grain, which is you know, lifeblood. It's 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:57.919 all the TRD currency. That's the kind of things that 0:06:57.960 --> 0:07:00.560 are happening here, and it's an amazing thing to see 0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:00.960 up close. 0:07:01.600 --> 0:07:03.719 The other moment in the piece that really caught my 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:07.680 imagination was the fact that the drone operators have a 0:07:07.760 --> 0:07:10.680 kind of internal economy and the more points they accrue, 0:07:10.880 --> 0:07:12.480 the more drones they can get for their unit. I 0:07:12.480 --> 0:07:13.679 mean literally like a video game. 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:16.800 It does feel like a video game. The drones are 0:07:17.000 --> 0:07:21.760 are flown to their destination by a guy on a joystick, 0:07:21.920 --> 0:07:24.560 you know, manning a joystick. They have a screen, they 0:07:24.560 --> 0:07:28.880 have a laptop. Often they're not sure what their destination is. 0:07:28.960 --> 0:07:33.240 They're they're looking for targets or more typically, they'll have 0:07:33.240 --> 0:07:36.800 a surveillance drone finding targets and then directing the other 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:41.040 drones to the target. So tank spotted go here. That's 0:07:41.160 --> 0:07:44.800 essentially how the game works. There's drone teams all over 0:07:44.840 --> 0:07:50.200 the front line everywhere, and the best drone team, the 0:07:50.280 --> 0:07:52.880 team with the most kills get You get points, you know, 0:07:52.920 --> 0:07:55.480 like you get a number of points when you blow 0:07:55.520 --> 0:07:58.280 up tank and you can prove it. You get a 0:07:58.360 --> 0:08:00.720 number of points when you when you kill a Russian 0:08:00.760 --> 0:08:04.440 soldier when you kill a missile battery and those points 0:08:04.480 --> 0:08:07.680 out up. So the team with the most points, they 0:08:07.680 --> 0:08:09.560 don't get a prize, you know, or they don't get 0:08:09.600 --> 0:08:12.080 a cash award, they get more drones. And so you 0:08:12.080 --> 0:08:14.720 can see how how well that works. So that the 0:08:14.880 --> 0:08:18.600 really killer teams, and there there's some just utterly lethal 0:08:18.680 --> 0:08:21.320 teams there. They were they were just getting as many 0:08:21.400 --> 0:08:22.520 drones as they could handle. 0:08:23.080 --> 0:08:25.440 One of the sort of iconic images I've seen of 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:30.920 the Ukrainian battlefield is this crisscrossed FIBROTI cable. 0:08:31.120 --> 0:08:33.960 Yeah, it's crazy. But the biggest challenge to be overcome 0:08:34.000 --> 0:08:37.600 if you're trying to run a drone war is electronic jamming. 0:08:37.880 --> 0:08:40.080 And so you're sitting there with your joystick and you're 0:08:40.120 --> 0:08:42.520 flying your drone around and you're looking for a tank 0:08:42.880 --> 0:08:45.760 or you're looking for a platoon somebody, and somebody to 0:08:45.800 --> 0:08:49.280 crash your drone into. The Russians are really really good 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:53.680 at jamming the radio signals and so that renders the 0:08:53.800 --> 0:08:57.920 Ukrainian drones inoperable. When I picked up the five hundred 0:08:57.920 --> 0:09:02.320 dollars drone in the Factory and Western Ukraine, it had 0:09:02.360 --> 0:09:05.080 a kind of frequency horp so like if it goes 0:09:05.200 --> 0:09:07.800 up on one frequency, so the guy with the joystick 0:09:07.840 --> 0:09:10.360 is steering the drone and then if the Russians jam that, 0:09:10.720 --> 0:09:13.720 he quickly bounces to another frequency. If they jam that, 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:16.640 it bounces to another where the long cables come in 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:18.720 and they're fiber op the cables, so they're just you know, 0:09:18.920 --> 0:09:22.480 super super thin. You can't jam fiber op the cable, 0:09:23.280 --> 0:09:25.520 and you can. You can find us on the web. 0:09:25.559 --> 0:09:29.000 You can find video footage. But there's there's drone teams, 0:09:29.040 --> 0:09:34.560 like Ukrainian drone teams racing down roads in eastern Ukraine 0:09:34.600 --> 0:09:37.520 that they've covered with netting the whole road. 0:09:38.679 --> 0:09:43.400 Of course, there's a big connection between jamming drones and 0:09:43.480 --> 0:09:47.199 the race towards autonomous weapons. I want to come back 0:09:47.200 --> 0:09:52.280 to Palmer Lucky and full autonomy. But in between is 0:09:52.280 --> 0:09:56.840 Israel and Gaza. And some have suggested or questioned that 0:09:57.400 --> 0:10:02.400 Israel is already letting a I make kill decisions on 0:10:02.440 --> 0:10:06.280 the battlefield in Gaza. I think in your piece, the 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:09.920 answer is AI is identifying targets, and sometimes the gap 0:10:10.000 --> 0:10:12.920 between identifying the target and making the kill decision is 0:10:13.200 --> 0:10:16.000 extremely short in terms of time. But nonetheless there is 0:10:16.040 --> 0:10:19.480 always a human in the loop. I mean, what's the 0:10:19.480 --> 0:10:23.160 difference between a killer robot and a robot telling a 0:10:23.240 --> 0:10:24.080 human who to kill. 0:10:24.760 --> 0:10:27.800 I mean, that's the heart of the matter. So in Israel, 0:10:28.120 --> 0:10:31.480 you get a recommendation from the AI, the mother computer, 0:10:32.080 --> 0:10:35.960 and it says it's basically a coordinate. It doesn't tell 0:10:36.000 --> 0:10:37.839 you who it is because I don't necessarily know who 0:10:37.880 --> 0:10:40.840 it is, and I think typically it gives you a 0:10:40.920 --> 0:10:44.440 kind of percentage of certainty. So if you fire at 0:10:44.480 --> 0:10:47.520 this coordinate on the map, the chances are eighty percent 0:10:47.559 --> 0:10:49.880 you're going to kill a bad guy, or it's seventy 0:10:49.880 --> 0:10:52.120 percent you're going to fifty percent you're going to kill 0:10:52.120 --> 0:10:54.440 a bad guy. And that's essentially what they're acting on. 0:10:54.559 --> 0:10:57.480 So what the Israeli say is that it's always the 0:10:57.600 --> 0:11:00.120 human that kind of pulls the trigger. What we as 0:11:00.240 --> 0:11:03.760 the targeting officers is to try to verify the target 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:08.600 recommendation from the computer independently. But I think my great 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:12.719 impression of talking to them was that perfection is kind 0:11:12.720 --> 0:11:15.679 of not really possible in more time, and so what 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:19.480 you have is like in the heat of battle, when 0:11:19.480 --> 0:11:22.920 that little waypoint the coordinate on the map is moving 0:11:23.160 --> 0:11:25.200 and you just have a few seconds to decide whether 0:11:25.280 --> 0:11:27.959 or not to kill it or not. How much independent 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:30.400 verification can you do? Do you really have time to 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:32.840 send another drone over it to look at it, or 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:35.480 do you just kill it? That's the really hard part 0:11:35.600 --> 0:11:38.320 right there. That's what's happening in the room where they're 0:11:38.320 --> 0:11:40.480 making these targeting decisions. 0:11:40.800 --> 0:11:45.079 Do the algorithms have a built in calculation of chollateral damage? 0:11:45.120 --> 0:11:48.520 Is that information that the officers have access to when 0:11:48.559 --> 0:11:51.480 they're making these decisions, or is that not even consideration. 0:11:52.360 --> 0:11:54.880 Now this is where it gets really really I think 0:11:55.000 --> 0:11:59.520 morally tricky. As I understood it from my reporting, the 0:11:59.559 --> 0:12:03.559 computer will say fire here, here's your coordinate on a map. 0:12:03.960 --> 0:12:07.200 You have an eighty percent certainty, but you might kill 0:12:07.840 --> 0:12:11.360 eight civilians and that has to be included in the 0:12:11.400 --> 0:12:13.680 decision that you're making. You know, if I were a 0:12:13.720 --> 0:12:16.760 newspaper porter, I would have just written a separate story 0:12:16.760 --> 0:12:20.520 on this fact alone. I heard this from an IDF 0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:24.760 targeting officer. He said, we were allowed in the beginning 0:12:24.800 --> 0:12:28.040 phases of the war, and I can't remember the exact number, 0:12:28.040 --> 0:12:31.160 but it was very, very high. We were allowed to 0:12:32.040 --> 0:12:36.120 kill a target that was recommended by the computer. If 0:12:36.480 --> 0:12:38.880 we believed that there was a possibility that we were 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:43.600 going to kill as many as twenty civilians. Now, you know, 0:12:43.960 --> 0:12:48.199 hit pause there, because that's pretty extraordinary. You're basically saying, 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:51.360 I'm going to kill the one bad guy who's standing 0:12:51.400 --> 0:12:54.160 in a crowded market, and I think we might kill 0:12:54.200 --> 0:12:57.160 twenty people, but we're going to do it. And that's 0:12:57.160 --> 0:13:00.240 a human decision. I mean, that is in fact to 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:02.520 what we're seeing in Gaza. If you want to know 0:13:03.440 --> 0:13:06.440 why and how there's so much distruction in Gaza and 0:13:06.640 --> 0:13:09.720 so many civilians dead, that's the reason. It's the rules 0:13:09.720 --> 0:13:14.280 of engagement decision. But they just dialed it way way back. 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:18.360 And I had a conversation with an American senior civilian 0:13:18.360 --> 0:13:21.720 in the Pentagon, Biden and who had been involved in 0:13:21.760 --> 0:13:26.240 a lot of the decisions in Gossip War, helping these rallies, 0:13:26.280 --> 0:13:30.000 and he said, if we had ever in the course 0:13:30.240 --> 0:13:32.200 of say the Iraq War, the Afghan War, if we 0:13:32.240 --> 0:13:33.800 had thought that there was a chance we were going 0:13:33.880 --> 0:13:37.120 to kill twenty civilians, that a decision like that would 0:13:37.120 --> 0:13:38.800 go to the President or it would go to the 0:13:38.840 --> 0:13:42.280 Secretary Offense. He said, the Israelis are doing this every day. 0:13:42.400 --> 0:13:45.160 Sometimes more than once. So that gives you a sense 0:13:45.200 --> 0:13:49.520 of how I think, extraordinarily loose the rules of engagement 0:13:49.559 --> 0:13:51.800 have been for the Israelis. And I think it's not 0:13:51.880 --> 0:13:55.320 as much a technological kind of decision as it is 0:13:55.320 --> 0:13:58.559 a human decision. I think. Yeah. 0:13:58.679 --> 0:14:03.199 I mean the ciche about you know, technology is that 0:14:03.480 --> 0:14:06.199 these are tools and we choose how to use them, right. 0:14:06.240 --> 0:14:08.520 I mean a soldiers sitting in a bunker making kill 0:14:08.600 --> 0:14:12.920 decisions with an eighty percent probability it's a quote unquote 0:14:12.960 --> 0:14:15.800 bad guy and you know, full civilians or six cividians, 0:14:16.000 --> 0:14:20.520 eight civilians being killed. I mean the technological element kind 0:14:20.520 --> 0:14:25.400 of creates this remove from the consequences of a decision almost. 0:14:25.880 --> 0:14:28.920 Yeah, you can't. You can't hear the screams. But you know, 0:14:29.160 --> 0:14:31.720 you mentioned the Obama administration when they have the drone 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:34.320 more in Pakistan. They made a lot of decisions like this, 0:14:35.120 --> 0:14:38.400 and they're very similar decisions. I had lots of conversations 0:14:38.400 --> 0:14:42.000 with people during the Obama administration about what they were 0:14:42.000 --> 0:14:43.720 trying to do in Pakistan, and they're trying to kill 0:14:43.760 --> 0:14:45.880 all kinda guys in Pakistan, but it was kind of 0:14:45.920 --> 0:14:48.040 the same. They'd have a drone in the air watching 0:14:48.080 --> 0:14:50.680 a house and they'd say, well, we don't really know 0:14:50.720 --> 0:14:53.320 who's in the house, but there's guys in a pickup 0:14:53.360 --> 0:14:55.880 truck and they come and they all have guns, and 0:14:55.920 --> 0:14:59.160 they're going in and they're going out. And the guys 0:14:59.200 --> 0:15:00.880 with guns, like when I left the house, they went 0:15:00.920 --> 0:15:03.720 to another place. They went to a military camp. We 0:15:03.760 --> 0:15:05.600 don't know who they are, but we think they're probably 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:08.480 bad guys. Are the civilians in the house. We don't 0:15:08.480 --> 0:15:10.800 know the answer to that, but I think it's a 0:15:10.800 --> 0:15:13.880 pretty well documented. Some of those guys traumatized by what 0:15:14.000 --> 0:15:17.520 happened because you know they're killing people. It's totally bizarre. 0:15:17.600 --> 0:15:19.440 You've got a joystick and you're looking at a video 0:15:19.480 --> 0:15:21.360 screen and then you blow up a house it's got 0:15:21.360 --> 0:15:23.680 fifteen people in it, and then you get in your 0:15:23.720 --> 0:15:26.720 car and like you're gone and have dinner with your family. 0:15:27.080 --> 0:15:30.520 It's like you're removed from those consequences, but like you 0:15:30.560 --> 0:15:33.120 can see how it's still I think haunting a lot 0:15:33.160 --> 0:15:42.640 of the people that have been involved after the break. 0:15:43.080 --> 0:15:47.200 Could technology be the spot that creates World War three? 0:15:47.720 --> 0:16:07.080 Stay with us. Let's talk about full autonomy, i e. 0:16:07.520 --> 0:16:12.400 Killar robots making their own target and killed decisions. Is 0:16:12.400 --> 0:16:17.800 it a technological barrier to arriving there or is it 0:16:17.840 --> 0:16:21.200 a rules of engagement barrier? And if the latter, how 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:22.600 on do you see that holding. 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:27.840 For Well, that's a good question. I think ultimately, as 0:16:28.000 --> 0:16:30.160 was explained to me by Palmer, Lucky and others, like, 0:16:30.640 --> 0:16:34.160 we can do this, we can, and we are preparing 0:16:34.240 --> 0:16:37.360 to go fully autonomous. That's what we are making these 0:16:37.360 --> 0:16:40.880 things to do, because the technology is taking us there. 0:16:41.320 --> 0:16:42.640 One of the things he said to me, and we 0:16:42.840 --> 0:16:46.920 were standing in the showroom in the Andrel's office, so 0:16:47.000 --> 0:16:50.960 we're surrounded by the drones and the pilots airplanes and 0:16:51.000 --> 0:16:54.360 the in the in the anti drones and all the 0:16:54.400 --> 0:16:59.400 stuff that they sell, and he said, every vehicle in here, 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:05.040 i'm a will be cut off from communication, from controlling 0:17:05.280 --> 0:17:09.359 our own weapons. But what it means is that these 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:12.560 weapons have their own brains and they will have to 0:17:12.600 --> 0:17:16.600 go and find their targets on their own. And you 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:20.480 can see all the problems that could potentially arise from that, 0:17:20.800 --> 0:17:24.640 because you're really talking about kind of autonomous warfare. And 0:17:24.760 --> 0:17:27.199 so I had a conversation with I think he's now 0:17:27.240 --> 0:17:31.159 the president of and Brian Shimp and Brian sketched out 0:17:31.200 --> 0:17:35.000 the following scenario, which I thought was really interesting. He said, look, 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:40.840 just imagine a one hundred miles square in the Pacific Ocean. 0:17:41.560 --> 0:17:45.440 Imagine somewhere inside of there, in that vast stretch of ocean, 0:17:46.240 --> 0:17:51.119 there is a fleet of Chinese ships. What Andreil weapons 0:17:51.160 --> 0:17:53.720 are being designed to do, and what they will be 0:17:53.760 --> 0:17:58.760 able to do is we will fire our missiles at 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:02.240 those ships, and they will, independently of us, with no 0:18:02.400 --> 0:18:05.560 human control, they will find the ships, they will target 0:18:05.600 --> 0:18:08.919 the ships, they will communicate with each other and decide 0:18:08.920 --> 0:18:12.480 who's going to take which ones and then go destroy them. 0:18:12.680 --> 0:18:15.919 But ultimately those are human decisions. And so in the 0:18:15.960 --> 0:18:18.640 Pentagon there's a whole executive order that Biden put out 0:18:18.840 --> 0:18:23.040 and then I think Trump slightly revised that basically kind 0:18:23.040 --> 0:18:27.040 of allows for full autonomy as I understand it. Palmer 0:18:27.320 --> 0:18:30.359 Lucky was really clear about this, which was this is 0:18:30.359 --> 0:18:35.080 where it's going full on killer robe on it science 0:18:35.080 --> 0:18:37.960 fiction movie. These things are fighting each other and they're 0:18:38.040 --> 0:18:40.720 killing people, and like, the Chinese are gonna have theirs 0:18:40.840 --> 0:18:43.399 and we're gonna have ours, and the humans are going 0:18:43.480 --> 0:18:45.879 to be basically taking a ringside seat. 0:18:46.520 --> 0:18:49.880 What was your sense of Palm and Lucky and what's 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:52.520 the scale of his ambition and where is he on 0:18:52.640 --> 0:18:53.119 achieving end. 0:18:53.800 --> 0:18:59.719 Palmer Lucky is a remarkable guy, and he's deceptively modest 0:18:59.720 --> 0:19:01.600 about the whole thing. Like when you meet him, he's 0:19:01.640 --> 0:19:04.120 just you know, he's like a tech guy. He's young, 0:19:04.240 --> 0:19:06.800 he's wearing flip flops. He's got like a flowered shirt on, 0:19:06.920 --> 0:19:08.960 he's got she had shorts on. When I met him, 0:19:09.359 --> 0:19:12.480 he was eating from a bag and took He's revolutionizing 0:19:13.440 --> 0:19:17.800 the way that America is approaching its wars and approaching 0:19:17.880 --> 0:19:21.480 to wars in the future. And and so the system 0:19:21.720 --> 0:19:24.720 that we've inherited and the system that we have now 0:19:25.560 --> 0:19:28.960 is hundreds of people in the Pentagon will decide what 0:19:29.080 --> 0:19:31.040 they need. And so they'll say, you know, we need 0:19:31.040 --> 0:19:34.200 a we need a jet fighter. And it has to 0:19:34.240 --> 0:19:37.760 do all these things. It has to fly at supersonic speeds, 0:19:37.760 --> 0:19:39.560 and it needs to be able to die at this 0:19:39.600 --> 0:19:42.040 particular angle, and it has to have a range, and 0:19:42.560 --> 0:19:46.240 one thing after another, and this takes literally years for 0:19:46.320 --> 0:19:50.000 the Pentagon to devise a new weapon, whether it's an 0:19:50.040 --> 0:19:54.120 F thirty five fighter jet or a new Navy ship 0:19:54.240 --> 0:19:58.040 or a submarine. It takes them years. And so the 0:19:58.080 --> 0:20:01.560 paradigm that I think is finally being broken is that, 0:20:02.000 --> 0:20:04.639 you know, the tech world moves very very rapidly. That 0:20:04.760 --> 0:20:07.000 I'm talking about our tech world in California. They move 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:09.280 it super high speeds because if you don't move a 0:20:09.359 --> 0:20:12.600 high speeds to go out of business. Pentagon moved very slowly, 0:20:12.680 --> 0:20:16.280 and these two worlds never really came together. That's where 0:20:16.280 --> 0:20:19.359 Palmer Lucky comes in. So Palmer Lucky has figured out 0:20:19.400 --> 0:20:23.720 a way to bring these two worlds together. And he 0:20:23.800 --> 0:20:28.679 did that by by standing the Pentagon procurement process entirely 0:20:28.720 --> 0:20:32.960 on its head. And so instead of you know, hundreds 0:20:32.960 --> 0:20:36.280 of people taking years and years to design a weapons system, 0:20:36.960 --> 0:20:41.280 Palmer went out there and just built the most advanced 0:20:41.800 --> 0:20:45.960 anti drone and the most advanced pilotless airplane. He just 0:20:46.040 --> 0:20:47.879 built the most sophisticated one that he could and he 0:20:47.920 --> 0:20:50.280 went to the Pentagon and said, this is for sale. 0:20:50.800 --> 0:20:52.720 We can do these, and we can make them. We 0:20:52.760 --> 0:20:55.280 can make a ton of these really fast, really cheaply. 0:20:55.720 --> 0:20:58.080 But take it or leave it here it is. And 0:20:58.200 --> 0:21:01.159 so instead of an F three five fighter jet that 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:05.560 costs two hundred million dollars, you have a drone like 0:21:06.040 --> 0:21:10.520 they cost fifty thousand dollars. And what Palmer again is 0:21:10.600 --> 0:21:13.280 kind of figured out is it's all about the software. 0:21:13.320 --> 0:21:15.920 So they just have these kind of very cheap shells, 0:21:16.280 --> 0:21:19.320 you know, i e. The drone itself, the missile carrying 0:21:19.359 --> 0:21:22.439 its explosives, but the only thing that really matters is 0:21:22.520 --> 0:21:26.240 software so that they can constantly make it better. The 0:21:26.359 --> 0:21:29.359 drone missed its target, We'll fix the software. We'll tinker 0:21:29.359 --> 0:21:31.840 with the software. How do we make it more accurate? 0:21:31.880 --> 0:21:33.840 How do we make it better? The Pentagon says it 0:21:33.880 --> 0:21:36.119 wants us to do something differently, We'll just go in 0:21:36.160 --> 0:21:39.119 and tinker with the software. And they can do that really, 0:21:39.160 --> 0:21:43.359 really cheaply for nothing. And that's that's how the Palmer 0:21:43.440 --> 0:21:48.000 Lucky stood the whole Pentagon procurement process on its head. 0:21:48.320 --> 0:21:52.520 I mean, both China and the US have looked extremely 0:21:52.640 --> 0:21:55.760 hard at what's been happening in Ukraine. How are the 0:21:55.840 --> 0:22:00.840 two countries responding from a technology point into view? And 0:22:00.880 --> 0:22:02.280 where does Taiwan say. 0:22:02.080 --> 0:22:04.560 In all of this, Well, Taiwan's it's right in the 0:22:04.640 --> 0:22:10.000 middle between China and in the United States. You know, 0:22:10.040 --> 0:22:11.840 you could like look out a map at the Pacific 0:22:11.840 --> 0:22:14.440 and go like, who cares, you know, it's just this 0:22:14.560 --> 0:22:17.000 big island one hundred miles off the coast of China. 0:22:17.080 --> 0:22:20.000 Who cares? And like, it's a democracy. It's an ally, 0:22:20.520 --> 0:22:24.200 a very close ally. And it's also they make something 0:22:24.280 --> 0:22:28.760 like ninety five percent of the most sophisticated microchips in 0:22:28.840 --> 0:22:32.040 the world are made in Taiwan and made nowhere else. 0:22:32.680 --> 0:22:36.040 The big rilla in chip manufacturing, the most sophisticated, the 0:22:36.080 --> 0:22:40.320 best is TSMC in Taiwan. And I remember more than 0:22:40.359 --> 0:22:42.560 a couple of timewhen Hees kind of jokingly said to me, 0:22:42.600 --> 0:22:45.080 you know, if the Chinese invade, the safest place and 0:22:45.160 --> 0:22:47.520