Department of War (DoW) installations in the United States are heavily dependent for electricity, natural gas, drinking water and wastewater treatment, telecommunications, and rail transportation on critical infrastructure owned and operated by contractors, whether inside or outside the fence. The availability of these services is controlled by operational technology (OT) that is uniquely vulnerable to cyberattack. The regulatory structure for U.S. critical infrastructure cybersecurity is spotty, with jurisdiction divided among federal, state, and local governments.

Continue reading at cyberdefensereview.army.mil.

Since October 2019, the Brookings Institution’s Foreign Policy program and Tsinghua University’s Center for International Security and Strategy (CISS) have convened the U.S.-China Track II Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence and National Security. This piece was authored by members of the U.S. and Chinese delegations who participate in this dialogue.

Continue reading at brookings.edu

American companies are world leaders in technology—be it innovative software, cloud services, artificial intelligence, or cybersecurity products. Yet beginning as many as three years ago, hackers believed to be backed by the Chinese government did something the United States, the tech powerhouse, could not adequately defend against: they gained and maintained access to major U.S. telecommunications networks, copying conversations and building the ability to track the movements of U.S. intelligence officers and law enforcement agents across the country. The attack, dubbed “Salt Typhoon,” constituted a large part of a global campaign against telecoms, and it penetrated systems at many U.S. carriers so thoroughly that officials will almost certainly never know the full scope of the capabilities China achieved to spy on Americans’ communications.

Salt Typhoon was more than a one-off intelligence success for China. It reflected a deeper, troubling reality. Mere decades after the widespread adoption of the Internet opened a new realm of geopolitical contestation, China is positioning itself to dominate the digital battle space. The United States has fallen behind, failing to secure a vast digital home front—and the physical assets that depend on it. Because cyberspace has no borders, the U.S. homeland is always in the fight. Every hospital, power grid, pipeline, water treatment plant, and telecommunications system is on the frontlines, and most of the United States’ critical infrastructure is unready for battle.

Continue reading at foreignaffairs.com.

In recent years, the previous bipolar nuclear order led by the United States and Russia has given way to a more volatile tripolar one, as China has quantitatively and qualitatively built up its nuclear arsenal. At the same time, there have been significant breakthroughs in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, including for military applications. As a result of these two trends, understanding the AI-nuclear nexus in the context of U.S.-China-Russia geopolitical competition is increasingly urgent.

There are various military use cases for AI, including classification models, analytic and predictive models, generative AI, and autonomy. Given that variety, it is necessary to examine the AI-nuclear nexus across three broad categories: nuclear command, control, and communications; structural elements of the nuclear balance; and entanglement of AI-enabled conventional systems with nuclear risks. While each of these categories has the potential to generate risk, this report argues that the degree of risk posed by a particular case depends on three major factors: the role of humans, the degree to which AI systems become a single point of failure, and the AI offense-defense balance.

Continue reading at cnas.org 

Since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, the breakneck pace of progress in artificial intelligence has made it nearly impossible for policymakers to keep up. But the AI revolution has only just begun. Today’s most powerful AI models, often referred to as “frontier AI,” can handle and generate images, audio, video, and computer code, in addition to natural language. Their remarkable performance has prompted ambitions among leading AI labs to achieve what is called “artificial general intelligence.” According to a growing number of experts, AGI systems equaling or surpassing humans across a wide range of cognitive tasks—the equivalent of millions of brilliant minds working tirelessly at the top of their fields at machine speed—may soon be capable of unlocking scientific discoveries, enhancing economic productivity, and tackling tough national security challenges. With advances once in the realm of science fiction now in the realm of possibility, the United States has no time to spare in crafting a coherent and truly global strategy.

Continue reading at foreignaffairs.com

Discussions in Washington about artificial intelligence increasingly turn to how the United States can win the AI race with China. One of President Donald Trump’s first acts on returning to office was to sign an executive order declaring the need to “sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance.” At the Paris AI Action Summit in February, Vice President JD Vance emphasized the administration’s commitment to ensuring that “American AI technology continues to be the gold standard worldwide.” And in May, David Sacks, Trump’s AI and crypto czar, cited the need “to win the AI race” to justify exporting advanced AI chips to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Continue reading at foreignaffairs.com