The Ethics of an Arms Race
Following the public revelation of China’s hypersonic weapons test, which Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley called “very close” to a Sputnik moment, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki had an interesting response: “We welcome stiff competition [with Beijing],” she announced, with the caveat that the competition not “veer into conflict.”
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet — and a stiff competition to build better military technology than one’s rivals would still feel like an arms race, perhaps the gravest but most intellectually honest term for the United States’ status vis-à-vis China and other competitors like Russia. The term “arms race” is disquieting; it is redolent of mushroom clouds and apocalypse for good reason. But while recent headlines about arms races have focused on China’s nuclear buildup, the more decisive arms race is occurring across emerging technologies. China, Russia, and other actors are developing tools like autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, networked weapons, and cyberweapons that will reshape the battlefield. China, in particular, hopes to neutralize our military’s greatest assets with emerging technology, and, if our record in simulated wargames against the PLA is anything to go by, they may have already succeeded.
We should not shy away from calling it an arms race and the United States should not shy away from competing in it. And we should not doubt that the Chinese Communist Party believes it is in a race with us. This is not a result of the development of emerging technologies; it is a result of the geopolitics between the United States and China and the race to reap the benefits from the development of emerging technologies and their applications, including military.
Ethical considerations should be at the heart of our approach to an arms race. Those skeptical of the United States’ participation in an arms race need to confront the likelihood that a refusal to engage makes conflict more, not less, probable. They need to reckon with the ways in which this arms race differs from the Cold War and consider how new technology can make the conduct of war more ethical, in the event that hostilities break out. And they need to remember that the United States is not acting in a vacuum: if American leadership recedes, there will be competitors and adversaries with values antithetical to our own to fill the void.
Similarly, we in industry must make an honest, clear case to the American taxpayer that our technology will help to deter, not incite, conflict. We must reject accelerationism toward conflict, in both our rhetoric and in the technology we build. Defense executives can be guilty of drumming up anxiety about security threats to justify spending on their programs. Nobody — from the DoD to the American public — wants an outbreak of war. Let our actions reflect that.
The Case for Continued American Leadership
The United States is no perfect arbiter of justice, but it is the greatest protector of democracy and human rights the world has ever known. Since America rose to power, there has been no World War III; a U.S.-led system of global trade has lifted billions out of poverty; and institutions dedicated to protecting human freedoms and human rights have flourished. When malignant powers have threatened small democracies with invasion or other forms of coercion, we have intervened to protect them.
The security challenges we face today are greater in number and in complexity than any we have faced since the end of the Cold War. China and Russia threaten to seize territory from their sovereign, democratic neighbors; a theocratic Iran jockeys for hegemony in the Middle East and targets U.S. forces with drones; North Korea hopes to expand its nuclear arsenal; and terrorists flourish across Africa.
These challenges do not merely touch America’s self-interest; they ask questions of what, morally, the world should look like. Do we risk American lives to defend democracies worldwide? Will we compete tooth and nail with China for regional influence in East Asia, or with Russia in Eastern Europe? American voters empower the President and Congress to decide exactly where we fall on such decisions, but the decisions are made for us if we do not possess the technology we need to act. Insofar as we can, we should unshackle ethical and moral decisions from technological and logistical limitations.
Deterring Bad Behavior
Deterrence is an ancient and enduring principle of war. We simply cannot deter malicious behavior — ranging from economic coercion to military invasions — if we do not carry a big stick.
Today, we cannot credibly deter an invasion of Taiwan by the People’s Liberation Army. That is not CCP propaganda: it is the assessment of our own military, which regularly simulates such a scenario and finds that we lose. There is less public data on how similar scenarios with Ukraine would play out, but given how easily Russia annexed Crimea, I am pessimistic.
Our vulnerabilities stem from our reliance on old technology — specifically, a handful of large, exquisite systems that our adversaries believe they can knock out (e.g. our brittle satellite communications infrastructure, our $13B aircraft carriers). They also stem from an arsenal built for previous wars, in which air superiority and uninhibited communications were a given. By contrast, a conflict today could occur across more domains, over vaster distances, and against far more sophisticated opposition than we are trained for. It could also leave us without communications and targeting information; if our vulnerable communications infrastructure is disrupted, we could be sitting on incomplete or inaccurate information, making it more likely that a conflict escalates.
These weaknesses are not immutable. A slew of emerging technology, including autonomous systems, precision guided missiles, cyber defenses, distributed C2 and more can build resilience into our structures of deterrence and shift the balance of power. A force armed with such tools could credibly compete in the Pacific or Eastern Europe and substantially raise the costs of war for our competitors. In doing so, we can push them toward diplomacy and other non-violent means of pursuing their interests.
Diplomatic solutions will not, however, result from wishful thinking. With complacency comes vulnerability (thanks, Yoda) and we need to acknowledge that if we do not modernize our armed forces, military actions against the people of Taiwan, Ukraine, and possibly others are all but assured. Preventing this is the overwhelming moral impetus behind our engagement in this arms race.
Even in the absence of conflict, however, staying ahead of our competitors can prevent other pernicious behavior. A healthy world is full of sovereign nations acting in their best interests to strike trade deals, security agreements, and other accords. Though the United States has acted coercively in the past, its default position has been to respect other nations’ rights to self-determination and sovereignty. China and Russia have made it plainly apparent that that is not their approach to global order. The United States can offer developing nations an alternative economic and security partner. Just as a consumer in a marketplace is better off when they have competition, a developing nation is better off when it can choose between multiple partners in its development.
Conducting War Ethically
The arms race in the Cold War was in most respects about quantity — the infamous “missile gap” and “bomber gap” were campaigns to get the United States to build more of the same. Today’s arms race, by contrast, is characterized by the development of new technology and hence has implications for how war is waged. Promisingly, there is good reason to believe that many of the technologies the United States is developing will make the conduct of war more morally sound, in accordance with the principles of just war theory.
Consider artificial intelligence, for example. The most powerful battlefield application of AI is in dispelling the “fog of war” by processing vast quantities of information. AI-enabled systems can take the burden of data processing out of human hands, providing warfighters with more information and more time to make a decision. Armed with more time and information, warfighters are less likely to panic or confuse friend, foes, and civilians. They will have a greater capacity to act proportionately and discriminately in combat.
Precision-guided missiles, which can target enemy combatants more accurately; distributed cheap sensors, which can provide more accurate real-time situational awareness; and unmanned systems, which can take the burden of dangerous jobs from our men and women in uniform also promise to make war more just.
Conversely, we cannot credibly discuss or regulate the use of new defense technologies if we do not possess them. The Department of Defense was right to issue ethical guidelines surrounding the use of AI, and no doubt as the technology evolves these guidelines will be referenced, debated, and updated. But if we believe there are ethical and unethical ways to use a given technology, we should push for global standards reflecting this. By owning the technology, we’ll have the technical know-how to support sensible regulations. More importantly, we’ll have “skin in the game.” Nonnuclear nations that call for nuclear bans typically receive short thrift, and we should expect nothing different.
Conclusion
We are entering an uncertain geopolitical age. By many accounts, we are exceptionally lucky that we came out of the Cold War as unscathed as we did. An arms race with adversaries determined to unseat the United States should be treated with the utmost seriousness and caution.
But refusing to participate in today’s arms race is not the ethically neutral decision one might hope it to be. Doing so would accelerate international conflict, undermine modern liberal governance, and prevent the development of technology that would make war less bloody.
I hope this piece is the beginning, not the conclusion, of healthy ethical debates around the arms race we are in. Ultimately, I believe our conduct must uphold the values that make the United States, despite our faults, the country to which the world still turns for leadership. Anything else would be tantamount to a loss.
