Eurasia Press & News
MR. IGNATIUS: So–
GEN. MILLEY: Who was that guy?
MR. IGNATIUS: –I’m David Ignatius–
[Laughter]MR. IGNATIUS: –a columnist for The Washington Post. It’s my pleasure to be joined by General Mark Milley, former Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff who looks a lot younger, a lot more relaxed than he did–
GEN. MILLEY: Oh, please.
MR. IGNATIUS: –as Chairman. So, before we came out here, General Milley, you said–
GEN. MILLEY: Same eyebrows; same bags in the eyes.
MR. IGNATIUS: General Milley said, David, take off your tie.
GEN. MILLEY: Yes.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, it’s a rare appearance for me.
GEN. MILLEY: It’s a tech conference. No one in the tech world wears ties, David.
MR. IGNATIUS: I get it. So, everybody knows that General Milley is tough-talking, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. What is less well-known is he has been a champion of innovation at the Pentagon for years. When he was Chief of Staff of the Army, he decided to turn to our best tech companies to help him make sense of Army logistics. It was an early start to something that has really paid dividends for the Army and the Pentagon.
So, I just wanted to say, General Milley, welcome; glad to have you here.
GEN. MILLEY: Thanks, David. Appreciate it.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, I want to start with the big picture in terms of our subject of the role of AI in national security.
GEN. MILLEY: Have you noticed it’s impossible to see who’s in this crowd?
MR. IGNATIUS: So, I’m telling you, sir, these are all friends.
GEN. MILLEY: Is part of the AI thing?
MR. IGNATIUS: These are all friends. They’re actually virtual. They’re not really here.
[Laughter]GEN. MILLEY: Not really here?
MR. IGNATIUS: So, shortly before you retired last year, you wrote an article in Joint Forces Quarterly. I know everybody in this audience reads that regularly, called “Strategic Inflection Point.”
GEN. MILLEY: Right.
MR. IGNATIUS: And you wrote in that article, “We are witnessing an unprecedented, fundamental change in the character of war.”
So, I want to ask you to begin by unpacking that and talking about your theory of the case of what is happening in warfare in this moment that is so different?
GEN. MILLEY: Well, there’s two terms we use in the article, and I’ve spoken publicly many times really over the last eight-plus years or so. One is the nature of war and the other is the character of war. The nature of war is what Clausewitz talks about when he talks about the Holy Trinity between the government and the people and its army. He talks about fear and chance and blood and violence and the idea that war is act of politics. It is an act of imposing your political will on your opponent by the use of organized violence. That is the nature of war. And the theory of the case is that nature of war is unlikely to change as long as human beings are actively engaged in the conduct of war.
The character of war, on the other hand, changes frequently. And the character of war is referring to the tactics, techniques, procedures, the doctrines, the weapons, the training, the leader development, where you fight, when you fight: day, night, spring, summer, that sort of thing. All of those details of war are what is typically referred to as the character of war. Now, the character of war undergoes changes, and has undergone changes historically, quite frequently.
One of the most common drivers of change in the character of war is technology. And I would submit that we are undergoing the most fundamental change in the character of war ever recorded in human history, again, this case being driven mostly by technology, although not exclusively by technology.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, let’s talk about that, specifically, first in terms of offense. What is AI and other aspects of new technology doing to change the nature of offensive warfare?
And second–in some ways, to me, more interesting–how is it changing defense and what’s possible in defense?
GEN. MILLEY: Well, in both offense/defense, you’ve got to be able to see the battlefield, to sense the battlefield, see your enemy. And Sun Tzu tells us, you know, “See your enemy; see yourself; win a thousand battles.” So, you’ve got to be able to see your enemy, but you also have to be able to see yourself.
So, in the world of AI, your ability to use all the various sensors that are out there, everything–everybody’s got an iPhone. I’ve got a Fitbit watch, GP watch–GPS watch. So, all of these are sensors, right; and you’ve got sensors in space with satellites; you’ve got sensors on earth; you’ve got electronic sensors that can pick up electronic communication and so on and so forth. So, you’ve got a massive amount of sensors out there which are generating a massive amount of information.
What AI will do, you’ll be able to absorb that information, correlate it, and turn it into useful intelligence or actionable intelligence relative to the enemy, or useful intelligence to evaluate your own force. So, you should be able to figure out how much fuel you’re using; where all your soldiers are. Is this vehicle up or down from a maintenance standpoint; is this plane fully operational or not operational?
All this massive amounts of data that, today, is really put into databases and a lot of it is manually loaded and so on, AI will be able to absorb and gather up all that information and then spit it out to you, the commander, in a useful way that will allow you to then command and control a much better operation than you would have been otherwise.
And that’s really where AI comes in. So, your ability to see, sense the environment, gather that information, turn it into useful information for the commander to make decisions. And then, you’ll go through the OODA loop, the observe, orient, direct, act loop faster relative to your enemy and that will give you a decisive advantage.
It’ll also, if you think about see and then shoot, your ability to shoot with greater precision at range, AI will play a big role in that. And then, your ability to move: So, we know full way that robotics is coming at us very, very rapidly in the commercial sector; and robotics is coming at us very, very rapidly in the military sector, as well. You already see that with drone warfare and you see a lot of that in Gaza and you see a lot of that in Ukraine and elsewhere. And those are a form of robots, but what you’re going to see over the next, I don’t know, 10-15 years, something like that, you’re going to see sophisticated militaries, U.S. military, the Russian military, the Chinese military, et cetera, you’re going to see large components of those militaries become robotic.
So, we are on the cusp of seeing a pilotless air force, a sailorless navy, a crewless tank sort of thing. It won’t be a hundred percent. You’re still going to have pilots and sailors and soldiers, but you’re going to see an increasing use of robots and robotic forces in the years to come, not-too-far-distant from where we are today. And you see these experiments ongoing in all of the services in the U.S. military today.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, in that world where our robots are fighting their robots, is that world going to be safer for our civilian populations, or are we going to be more at risk?
GEN. MILLEY: Well, we don’t know. I would say you could make an argument either way. You could make an argument that if you have a much greater use of robots and less human tragedy, less human blood, less human death, you might actually make war more likely rather than less likely. Now, that’s possible, right? So, that’s one possible outcome.
And I don’t know that it would be robots versus robots, necessarily; it could be robots versus humans. So, there’s a lot of potential outcomes. The fact of the matter is none of us really fully comprehend what all of these technologies are going to imply in the use of–in the world of the military.
Clearly, AI has an enormous amount of value. So, if you can absorb all of the medical information in human history and then give that to a doctor to diagnose somebody who has some sort of disease, that’s going to be a big advantage, and we’re probably, within reason, years–maybe not decades but years of solving things like Alzheimer’s and cancer and other diseases because of the use of AI. So, there’s a lot of positive to AI. But at the same time, it is an enormously powerful–I would argue that AI is probably the most powerful technology ever developed by humans. There is going to be a military application–there is already a military application to artificial intelligence, but that’s going to expand tremendously as we move on in time. And the nation state or non-nation state actor, terrorist organization, that optimizes the use of artificial intelligence for military purposes, that nation state will have a decisive advantage in the conduct of war, and I want that nation to be the United States.
MR. IGNATIUS: Let’s talk about the two terrible laboratories–I hate to use that word–but conflicts where we’re watching–
GEN. MILLEY: Yeah.
MR. IGNATIUS: –this new era of warfare play out, Ukraine and Gaza–first, let me ask you about Ukraine.
One thing that’s been striking to me in my visits there since the war began is that the battlefield is increasingly transparent, that both sides can see everything.
GEN. MILLEY: Sure.
MR. IGNATIUS: And that that makes the weapons they use much more vulnerable. And I’m curious whether you think that stalemate is the right way to characterize where this war is now, and whether a breakthrough, like Ukraine tried last year, a counteroffensive, to drive the Russians out, is possible in this world where you can see everything as soon as it moves and try to kill it.
GEN. MILLEY: Yeah, I don’t know actually that you can see everything. So, it’s not–it is not absolute in that sense, but you certainly can see much more in today’s world with sensors and a variety of sensors than you ever could in human history. And that’s true in Gaza; that’s true in Ukraine; that’s true anywhere, right?
Is it at a stalemate? You know, the Russians have suffered a tremendous amount of casualties. I think they’re upwards of–they’re probably close to 400,000, maybe, killed and wounded, something like that; it’s a significant amount, mostly in their ground forces. They’ve lost a lot of tanks and mechanized infantry vehicles and other capabilities on the ground.
They have had to replace their ground forces, I think, twice over. So, he initially–“he,” Putin–initially attacked I think it was five or six or seven different axes of advance with about 200-, 250,000 troops in a combined arms mechanized offensive. That faltered and they didn’t succeed, and we know that. And then, they got pushed back in the counteroffensives by the Ukrainians in Kharkiv and Kherson.
But in the process, they lost their first tranche of soldiers. Then, they had to open up the prisons and they used Prigozhin’s group and so on. And they had to do a mobilization of several hundred thousand. They brought them into the battle over the winter, and then they got chewed up. And so, now, I think they’re on their third iteration of mobilization. So, their ground forces have been decimated, really, really badly.
Now, most recently, they’ve run a small–the Russians have run a small offensive operation up around Kharkiv. They made some penetrations, limited penetrations, five, six, seven, eight miles, something like that, but it wasn’t significant.
So, I would argue that the Russians probably–and I say probably, because all of war is probabilistic. There’s no definitive outcomes that you can predict with certainty, but I would say probably the Russians don’t have the military capability to overrun Ukraine, which is one of their political objectives initially.
So, in that respect, the Russians aren’t going to militarily resolve this thing with any kind of military decision.
The Ukrainians, on the other hand, they’ve also suffered tremendously. They’ve suffered 20-, 30-, 40-, maybe 50,000 innocent civilians have been killed. The Ukrainian military has suffered tremendously. The average age of Ukrainian soldiers has gone up. They’ve had to do several drafts. They’ve lost a lot of equipment. The offensive that they ran this past spring/summer did not achieve the objectives that they intended it to achieve.
So, they’ve also suffered tremendously. A third of their country is no longer arable and you can’t farm it and so on. They’ve economically suffered. And they’ve got–I think it’s maybe 20 percent of their country is still occupied by Russia.
And the Ukrainian military, brave, strong, did a great job in the defense, really held the line against the Russian offensive, but their offensive capability is limited in the sense that it is not likely that the Ukrainian military can militarily eject the 2- or 300,000 Russian troops that are still in Russian-occupied Ukraine.
So, by definition, if both of those descriptions are accurate, and I think they most likely are, by definition, then, from a military–purely military standpoint, you’re at a military stand–a stalemate.
MR. IGNATIUS: Right.
GEN. MILLEY: –where neither side can militarily bring about decision and conclusion in the war in the near term.
Now, things can change, and war is all about politics by violent means. Are there going to be negotiations? Yes? No? What will those negotiations be about? I don’t know. Will new weapons be introduced? You’ll see the ubiquitous nature of drone warfare now has come on very, very strong in Ukraine. Will those have significant battlefield effect or not? There’s a wide variety of variables out there that can change those equations.
But right now, it’s at a more or less military stalemate. You’ll see advances, small advances, by either side measured in miles, but you’re not going to see–I don’t think you’ll see something decisive, not in the near term.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, you’ve said in the past that given the terrible cost and the sense of a stalemated battlefield, that this is a time when we should think about diplomacy. You still feel that?
GEN. MILLEY: Well, I think you should always think about diplomacy. Warfare is never conducted without an adjunct of diplomacy. There are very, very few historical cases where you don’t have in parallel with the combat operations that are ongoing in the battlefields some degree of diplomatic efforts.
Even in World War II, that happened. There’s diplomacy even in World War II. I mean, you saw some senior-level Nazis fly to Europe–or fly to England to try to negotiate piece in Europe. You know, it was a failure, of course, but even in the most military of wars, World War II where things seem like it’s a total war; it’s all about the military. Even there, there are back channels, sometimes; and sometimes, not so back channel–negotiations ongoing.
When the Nazis invaded Poland, there was the Von Ribbentrop-Molotov agreement to divide Poland between the Soviet Union and the Nazis. So, diplomacy is always ongoing, even in the conduct of war. So, I would suggest that in the conduct of the current war in Ukraine, a very, very important component of that–and you see it, by the way. You see it in the news. You see Secretary of State Blinken out there and others. You see CIA Director Burns constantly going there back-and-forth. So, you’ll see negotiation of some kind, some sort of diplomatic efforts are ongoing, even in the conduct of war.
And you even see–you know, you see some indications in the media of some sort of level of effort between the Ukrainians and Russians. They’ve actually had some–at lower levels, they’ve had people meet, and that was in the media a couple of different times.
So, I would say you have to–you have to, in the conduct of war, you have to do both. Obviously, conduct military operations; but also, there always should be some diplomatic effort.
MR. IGNATIUS: Let’s talk just briefly about the lessons of Gaza. There’s so many tragic aspects of the Gaza war, but I want to ask you about one extraordinary moment, one night, when the Iranians launched a barrage of 100 ballistic missiles–
GEN. MILLEY: Right.
MR. IGNATIUS: –that followed a swarm of over 200 drones.
GEN. MILLEY: Sure.
MR. IGNATIUS: And the Israelis were able, using advanced signal processing–just extraordinary technology–to essentially neuter that overwhelming barrage.
And I’d be interested in your comments about the implications of that. To me, one lesson was the power of defense, but I’m curious what you think as former Chair–
GEN. MILLEY: Yeah, I think, you know, in the history of warfare, various weapon systems swing back-and-forth between the ascent of the offensive or the ascent of the defensive in different periods of time. I think some of the capabilities of artificial intelligence in combination of some of the advanced air defense systems that we have might spell the increased power of the defense relative to ballistic missile attack, but only if you have enough of those and it’s in high enough density and if you have some early warning.
So, in that case, the attack that you’re talking about, I think it was–I’m not exactly sure the precise numbers, I think it’s 330-some-odd missiles, and it was a combination of theater-ballistic missiles in combination with unmanned aerial vehicles, in combination with other–with drones, and them some probably not theater-ballistic missiles, some close-range missiles, but a lot of missiles. A lot of missiles, drones, and unmanned–unmanned aerial vehicles, drones, and some of the cruise missile-type things coming at them.
But there was some early warning, and that early warning came from a variety of sources to include the United States. We have incredible intelligence collection capabilities; we have incredible sensors. And we had–and when I say “we,” the Israelis, central command, the Brits were involved, Jordan was involved, some other countries are involved, had a bit of early warning. So, that’s good. What did that mean? That meant you could prepare your defense a little more accurately. And then, once those weapon systems took off–and they took off in volley.
So, the slowest moving weapons were the unmanned aerial vehicles. And then, the next-slowest moving are the land-attack cruise missiles. And then, the fastest were the theater-ballistic missiles. And the Iranians designed the attack so that they would have time on target of all these missiles at approximately the same time, and they meant to do significant lethal damage.
But as soon as those weapons took off, our sensors were able to pick those up. And then, the defense then goes into a readiness condition one and we’re able to figure out all your latitudes and longitudes and the axes of advance as they come in. And then, the defense is prepared, because you know where those missiles are coming in from. And then, it’s layered defense, and it was a layered defense that went all the way through Syria and Iraq and all the way back through other countries on the border of Israel, and then Israel proper.
And these weapons, the defensive weapons could have various ranges and altitudes where you could start striking the enemy incoming missile tech. And they were successful. I think they–I’m not sure, but the media reports said seven–seven or eight of these missiles got through into Israel territory.
I mean, you think about that. You shoot down 330-some-odd and 7 get through. That’s an incredible batting average. It’s unbelievable, actually. So, a bit of early warning and the tactical skills of the crews and the gunners that were taking these missiles down is really impressive.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, I want to ask you about something that you worked hard on from your time as Army Chief of Staff that I think is of special interest for this audience. You tried to reach out to the smartest private sector entrepreneurs. I remember you telling me that you went to see Elon Musk, if I’m remembering this right, like, 2017, something like that–a long time ago.
GEN. MILLEY: Yeah, right after becoming Chief of Staff of the Army.
MR. IGNATIUS: Chief of Staff of the Army a long time ago.
GEN. MILLEY: And many others, too, not just…
MR. IGNATIUS: So, I want to ask you about the growing role of people like Elon Musk in our national security.
I mean, the dependence of the Ukrainians on Starlink is enormous.
GEN. MILLEY: Mm-hmm.
MR. IGNATIUS: You had some conversations with Elon Musk about whether Starlink could or should be used over Crimea that were part of Walter Isaacson’s book.
But in general, my question is, are you concerned that we’re becoming too dependent on these private companies and entrepreneurs like Musk who could decide tomorrow, ah, I’ve had it with the Ukraine war. You know, China is too important to me and I’m going to pull the plug. What about that?
GEN. MILLEY: Well, I think in the United States, there was a time–maybe it’s the ’50s or ’60s or something like that–where a lot of your innovative technologies were done actually by the government, DARPA and that sort of thing.
But at some point, I think it’s in the ’90s or so, the innovative engine of the United States shifts gears into the commercial sector. And the spinoff–these technologies have spinoff capabilities for military use. Now, there’s some things that are still done that are unique to the government that only the military uses–you know, building cannons, for example.
But look it, a lot of weapon systems today are highly dependent on software, are highly dependent on things like artificial intelligence. And there is this, you know, team of commercial and governmental folks that work together to develop the various systems that are necessary for national security. You’re not going to have a military unless you have the cooperation and the innovation from the commercial sector. It’s just not going to happen.
And so, the Pentagon–and all of the services are highly dependent upon the cooperation, the teamwork of U.S. industry. And look it, is there a chance someone would say, yeah, I’m not going to this anymore? I suppose. But at the end of the day, they’re Americans, they’re patriots, and they’re going to do the right thing, I think.
And they have been–my experience with the industry–and this is all types of industry, small startups all the way up to your major corporations are very cooperative with the Pentagon and, to the extent possible, they will develop the best systems available to defend the United States.
MR. IGNATIUS: I want to ask you about a subject that you and I have discussed at other public sessions, and that’s the danger of escalation in the Ukraine conflict and in the general standoff we have now with Russia. Russian ships, including a nuclear submarine, just sailed into Havana.
Putin and former President Medvedev seems like every other day–
GEN. MILLEY: Yeah.
MR. IGNATIUS: –threaten the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Medvedev has just said today, following new sanctions against Russia, that basically anything is possible for us as retaliation. How do you think about that danger that we could find ourselves in an escalatory cycle where we’re at the point we remember in the Cuban missile, where it’s a real existential risk.
GEN. MILLEY: Yeah.
MR. IGNATIUS: Do you think we’ve been there over the past two years during this war–
GEN. MILLEY: Not to that level, no.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, how do you think about, as former chairman, about that question of the risk of escalation leading to catastrophe?
GEN. MILLEY: It’s something you’re constantly attuned to and the president, secretary of defense, chairman joint chiefs, all the joint chiefs, the combatant commanders, escalation is something that you’re always attuned to and you want to try to prevent it from starting, to begin with.
And if it does begin to escalate, you want to invoke a series of measures to do escalation control if you’re on the escalation ladder, and those are very unique to the actual escalation that’s happening at the time.
There’s–I would not compare the current situation in the ship–Russian ships in Cuba to the Cuban missile crisis. The Cuban missile crisis were 13 days where the United States and Russia went to the brink of nuclear war. And through tremendous efforts by the U.S. Government and the leadership at the time and the thing was deescalated, but we’re not at that level at escalation. But it’s a provocative act. You know, Putin is doing it for a reason; he’s being provocative for a reason. Part of that has to do, I think, it’s a bit of–I’m not sure. It’s hard to read Putin’s mind, I suppose, but I suspect it has something to do with the United States saying to Ukraine that you can use U.S.-produced weapons to fire into mainland Russia–you know, in the vicinity of Kharkiv and fire into Belgrade and that sort of thing.
And I suspect that the Russians come up with some clever plan to say, okay, well, we can do something on your border, as well. Now, I might be wrong because that U.S. action was only a couple weeks ago. These ships would have had to have a ship’s plan, so maybe it’s been in the works much longer than that, but it’s clearly provocative. And then, the language–there’s been several times throughout the war where Mr. Putin and some of his senior officials have rattled the nuclear saber or rattled other sort of sabers, and that’s what you see with Medvedev.
War is–the conduct of war is an interactive political event with the use of violence and/or coercive diplomacy and so on. And that’s why you’re seeing play out. But we’re not–in my estimation, we’re not at Cuban missile crisis level, but it’s serious. It’s provocative; it’s serious; it needs to be controlled.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, I want to turn to our closing by speaking about your recent trip to Normandy.
GEN. MILLEY: Yeah.
MR. IGNATIUS: You and I talked about going there for the D-Day anniversary. Your dad fought in the Pacific, as mine did. Your uncle, you were telling me, was on Omaha Beach.
I want to just ask you to speak a little bit about that tradition of military service, what it means to you, and what do you think it ought to mean to the country as we think about what happened in the past, where we’re going in the future.
GEN. MILLEY: Well, I think–you know, in my case, I spent 44 years in uniform. My mother and father, you see there on that photo, they’re commissioning me in 1980.
My mother was in the Navy. She served in the Medical Service Corps of the Navy and took care of the wounded at a hospital out in Seattle during World War II.
My dad was a Navy Corpsman, Navy medic, who served with the 4th Marine Division. He did the assault landings at Kwajalein and Saipan, Antonia, and Iwo Jima.
And his brother, and I just found this out maybe a month, a month-and-a-half ago–I knew that his brother–my dad was the oldest of ten and his second in line, the number two brother, I knew he was at Normandy. He was in the Navy; he was at Normandy. I thought he was on a ship.
So, I asked to get the records. I got the records about a month-and-a-half ago, and I discovered that he was actually at Omaha Beach and he was a beachmaster. And I didn’t even know the Navy did that. Now, I realize it wasn’t just Army guys on those beaches; it was a lot of Navy guys, too, and Coastguardsmen. So, he was a communications specialist and he was part of the beachmaster team at Omaha Beach, which is pretty cool.
So, my grandmother had one son hitting the beach at Saipan on 15th June, 1994; and another son hitting the beach at Omaha and she had no idea. She was taking care of eight other kids back home in Somerville, Massachusetts.
And I’m very proud of their service. My dad’s uncle before him was in the British Army–the Newfoundland Regiment, which was part of the British Army, and he was wounded at Gallipoli in World War I, and because of that he wasn’t at the first Battle of the Somme. So, he wasn’t killed. Only 87 members of the regiment that survived World War I.
And his other uncle was wounded at Meuse–Argonne in the 26th Division; my mother’s brother was in the Philippines; my father’s number three brother fought in the hill fights of Korea with the 7th Division.
So, I’m very proud of my family’s contribution and military service, and I encourage anyone to get out there and put the uniform on and serve their country. But you don’t have to put the uniform on. There’s a lot of ways to serve this country. You can do it as teachers and nurses and cops and firemen. You can do it as reporters. You can do it in any number of ways you can serve this country, but we’re very fortunate to have a country like we have and our commitment to the Constitution, we want to pass that on to the next generation.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, well said. Thank you. So, last question: We’re asking every guest at this AI summit who they found has explained this AI future to them most powerfully that we might not be aware of.
Who’s that person for you?
GEN. MILLEY: Well, actually, it was Elon Musk when I first met him. That’s right.
MR. IGNATIUS: I believe that.
GEN. MILLEY: Yeah, so–
MR. IGNATIUS: And you’ve told me, but share what he said.
GEN. MILLEY: And he’s said this publicly a couple of different times, since. So, I don’t think I’m sharing anything particularly unusual.
But when I first met him, I guess it was eight or nine years ago. He’s obviously brilliant; he’s a genius, he’s a technologist. And he’s obviously a good businessman; he’s got lots of things going on.
But he has an ability, I think, to see and connect dots that other people may not have. So, at the time–and I did a little research before I met him. And at the time, Stephen Hawking, who’s passed on, and Bill Gates, the Microsoft Bill Gates, and then Elon Musk, independent of each other, all three of them around the same time eight or nine years ago, said words to the effect that they thought AI was the most powerful and potentially most dangerous technology ever developed by humans.
And then, when I’m out talking to Elon Musk for a couple of hours and I asked Elon, I said, what do you think of AI? And he just started saying “house cats,” which I was like–you know, Elon, you okay? House cats? What’s happening, here.
And he says, hey, look it, the reason we humans are at the top of the food chain, it’s not because we’re the strongest; that would be the gorilla. And it isn’t because we’re the fastest; that’s the cheetah. It’s because we’re the smartest.
And when you combine AI, which is going to be orders of magnitude smarter with human beings and you combine it with robotics, in Elon’s words, you could potentially create a new species, which would be the smartest, and that’s a dangerous–and I was like, Elon, come on now? I can’t get my head wrapped around that; I’m just an infantry soldier, here. But it was an interesting conversation.
So, look it, there’s a lot of positive to AI. First of all, no one’s going to stop it. You can’t stop technology. This is one of those things, throughout history, no one could stop the Gutenberg press and no one could stop the development of the wheel and no one could stop the development of the airplane, et cetera. You’re not going to stop technology. Technology is going to be developed.
What has to happen with AI is how are human beings going to interact with it and how are they going to control it and use it, and are there going to be regulations?
There’s some serious–very serious–legal, ethical, and moral considerations to the use of artificial intelligence, especially when you have the application of lethal force in military operations. And none of those questions are answered. They’re being asked, but they’re not answered, yet, and that’s a real challenge that’s going to have to come to grips–that we all collectively are going to have to come to grips with over the next five years.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, folks, house cats.
GEN. MILLEY: House cats, there you go.
MR. IGNATIUS: That’s–the question is whether that’s our future.
General Mark Milley, one of a kind. Thank you so much for joining us.
GEN. MILLEY: Thank you.
[Applause] [End recorded session]
