Death by A.I.

New “Autonomous Warfare Center” will automate targeted killings

By Ken Klippenstein, KenKlippenstein.com

The U.S. military’s secretive Special Operations Command plans to establish its first-ever center for AI-driven missions like targeted assassinations.

Autonomous warfare is all the rage at the Pentagon, where computers and artificial intelligence process intelligence data, select targets and then transmit kill orders to a waiting robot, or a “loitering” missile or airplane.

The new “Special Operations Autonomous Warfare Center” is referenced in the $1.5 trillion Department of War budget request to Congress this week.

Special Operations Forces refers to commando units like Navy SEAL Team, Army Green Berets, Marine “Raiders” and others who support “unconventional” warfare, and since 9/11, targeted killing. SEAL Team 6 and Delta Force of the Army are two of the most infamous of the secret units, and have been central to capture and decapitation operations like those in Venezuela and Iran.

One can say a lot of things about the rapid and chaotic adoption of artificial intelligence in the American military. But in this context, the term “autonomous warfare” is a euphemism for automated killing. (Autonomous intrinsically means acting independently, governing internally, or operating without external control.)

An unusually frank description of the role AI will play in the future comes from former Joint Special Operations Command chief Gen. Stanley McChrystal (ret.), who compared AI to “infant Hercules,” invoking the Greek god’s own role as a killer even in infancy.

McChrystal says:

“And like the infant Hercules who strangled two snakes sent by Hera to kill him in his crib, AI will grow to be strong — and a part of almost everything we do going forward.”

What McChrystal doesn’t mention is what happened when Hercules grew up. He spent his life carrying out killings on the orders of Eurystheus — a weak, cowardly king who hid in a jar and never had to understand anything. Hercules’s overwhelming power substituted for strategy.

In the most famous of his myths, Hercules fought the Hydra, a monster that grew two heads for every one he cut off. He was strong enough to keep swinging, but sheer power alone only multiplied the problem. He had to change his approach entirely to win. It’s a useful parable for a military that has spent two decades perfecting decapitation strikes only to watch the threats multiply.

Welcome to the era of CombatGPT. The Pentagon has since 2022 used AI in quarterly exercises for “target detection” involving personnel from all six military service branches. The computers pull together the ocean of information pieces that are collected every day — every minute — and extract the most important, according to the AI program, aggregating and geolocating the blips and dots into a potential target.