National Security Innovation Forum: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on National Security

Understanding the AI Challenge

A new generation of technologies is transforming the nature of warfare, and the Department of Defense (DoD) must change decisively in the next five years to meet the rising challenge of artificial intelligence (AI). The National Security Commission on AI hopes that DoD will be “AI-ready” by 2025, meaning that “warfighters [are] enabled with baseline digital literacy and access to the digital infrastructure and software required for ubiquitous AI integration in training, exercises, and operations.”[1] But can DoD reach that goal in just five years? What relationships and capabilities will be needed, at home and abroad, to enable the United States to effectively lead on the new digitized frontier of national security? 

To address this challenge, the National Security Innovation Forum convened virtually on March 17, 2021 to discuss the impact of AI on national security. Bringing together perspectives from government, academia, defense, finance, and start-ups in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada, the Forum identified specific, urgent challenges along with concrete solutions. 

Participants observed that the democratic ethics and regulations that would ideally govern the worldwide applications of AI are lagging behind its global application. This is due to the fact that many leaders do not yet fully grasp how AI can transform national security. Just in the last decade, AI has advanced from research to reality, finding applications across a range of industries. Its development has not been confined to the borders of one nation, or at the initiative of one government; it has grown independently from the influence of free markets and democratic public policies. Its impact will not only be social and economic, but also political and strategic. The United States needs to work with allies, partners, and other like-minded countries to harness the potential of AI in the pursuit of common interests and shared values.

To read the full report, click here.