Future Imperfect #36: The Unthinkable War
Welcome to Future Imperfect! This week I’ve been reading about scenarios for a USA-China conflict, breaking news in the autonomous vehicle sector, implantable computer chips for your brain, and the potential sale of the International Space Station. Oh, and whatever the hell is going on with Ryan Lochte.
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The Unthinkable War
There are many reasons to think that a war between the United States and China are impossible. There have also been many reasons to think that any range of historical events were likewise unthinkable. Thus, RAND Corporation projected a scenario for a conventional war between the United States and China.
Premeditated war between the United States and China is very unlikely, but the danger that a mishandled crisis could trigger hostilities cannot be ignored. Thus, while neither state wants war, both states’ militaries have plans to fight one. As Chinese anti-access and area-denial (A2AD) capabilities improve, the United States can no longer be so certain that war would follow its plan and lead to decisive victory. This analysis illuminates various paths a war with China could take and their possible consequences.
Technological advances in the ability to target opposing forces are creating conditions of conventional counterforce, whereby each side has the means to strike and degrade the other’s forces and, therefore, an incentive to do so promptly, if not first. This implies fierce early exchanges, with steep military losses on both sides, until one gains control. At present, Chinese losses would greatly exceed U.S. losses, and the gap would only grow as fighting persisted. But, by 2025, that gap could be much smaller. Even then, however, China could not be confident of gaining military advantage, which suggests the possibility of a prolonged and destructive, yet inconclusive, war. In that event, nonmilitary factors — economic costs, internal political effects, and international reactions — could become more important.
Political leaders on both sides could limit the severity of war by ordering their respective militaries to refrain from swift and massive conventional counterforce attacks. The resulting restricted, sporadic fighting could substantially reduce military losses and economic harm. This possibility underscores the importance of firm civilian control over wartime decisionmaking and of communication between capitals. At the same time, the United States can prepare for a long and severe war by reducing its vulnerability to Chinese A2AD forces and developing plans to ensure that economic and international consequences would work to its advantage.
Why does this matter? It’s easy to forget that the risk of interstate conflict remains in an era defined by actions against largely non-state actors (as well as ISIS, which straddles the line). It’s unlikely by any measure that we’ve seen the last major interstate war.
I also appreciate the last line in the report’s summary from RAND: “While the primary audience for this study is the U.S. policy community, we hope that Chinese policymakers will also think through possible courses and consequences of war with the United States, including potential damage to China’s economic development and threats to China’s equilibrium and cohesion. We find little in the public domain to indicate that the Chinese political leadership has given this matter the attention it deserves.”
Driving forward
It’s been a big week for the burgeoning autonomous vehicle industry—particularly in the ride hailing sector. First off, Uber is debuting its first autonomous vehicles in Pittsburgh this summer.
In Pittsburgh, customers will request cars the normal way, via Uber’s app, and will be paired with a driverless car at random. Trips will be free for the time being, rather than the standard local rate of $1.05 per mile. In the long run, Kalanick says, prices will fall so low that the per-mile cost of travel, even for long trips in rural areas, will be cheaper in a driverless Uber than in a private car. “That could be seen as a threat,” says Volvo Cars CEO Hakan Samuelsson. “We see it as an opportunity.”
For now, Uber’s test cars travel with safety drivers, as common sense and the law dictate. These professionally trained engineers sit with their fingertips on the wheel, ready to take control if the car encounters an unexpected obstacle. A co-pilot, in the front passenger seat, takes notes on a laptop, and everything that happens is recorded by cameras inside and outside the car so that any glitches can be ironed out. Each car is also equipped with a tablet computer in the back seat, designed to tell riders that they’re in an autonomous car and to explain what’s happening. “The goal is to wean us off of having drivers in the car, so we don’t want the public talking to our safety drivers,” Krikorian says.
Meanwhile, Uber’s purchase of Otto sets the company up to get into the global logistics industry:
Otto has developed a kit that allows big-rig trucks to steer themselves on highways, in theory freeing up the driver to nap in the back of the cabin. The system is being tested on highways around San Francisco. Aspects of the technology will be incorporated into Uber’s robot livery cabs and will be used to start an Uber-like service for long-haul trucking in the U.S., building on the intracity delivery services, like Uber Eats, that the company already offers.
The Otto deal is a coup for Uber in its simmering battle with Google, which has been plotting its own ride-sharing service using self-driving cars. Otto’s founders were key members of Google’s operation who decamped in January, because, according to Otto co-founder Anthony Levandowski, “We were really excited about building something that could be launched early.”
Back on the ride-hailing front, however, Ford announced its debut entry into the market, planned for 2021. Volvo, beware!
Ford’s vehicle will be manufactured with no steering wheel, no gas or brake pedal. In other words, a driver will not be required. “The world is changing, and it’s changing quickly. We’re not sitting on the sidelines. Ford will be actively driving that change,” Ford CEO Mark Fields said during a news conference held at the company’s Palo Alto, Calif. research facility…
What Ford will not be producing by 2021 is a fully autonomous vehicle for consumers, according to Nair. That will come several years after the 2021 release of an autonomous ride-sharing fleet because the “economics don’t make sense” and the company has yet to determine how to hand control of a vehicle back to a driver safely.
Why does this matter? Don’t get me wrong, shorting Uber might still be the right approach, but these are all big positive signs for both the company as well as autonomous vehicles.
Additionally, the purchase of Otto in particular diversifies it away from a risky, and costly, race to the bottom in the ride-hailing sector. Who knows—maybe Amazon will purchase the company as it seeks to dominate anything remotely having to do with logistics?
Dawn of the cyborgs
In The Washington Post this week, an observation that implanting computer chips in our brains is no longer science fiction.
From an unassuming office in Venice Beach, his science-fiction-meets-science start-up, Kernel, is building a tiny chip that can be implanted in the brain to help people suffering from neurological damage caused by strokes, Alzheimer’s or concussions. Top neuroscientists who are building the chip — they call it a neuroprosthetic — hope that in the longer term, it will be able to boost intelligence, memory and other cognitive tasks.
The medical device is years in the making, Johnson acknowledges, but he can afford the time. He sold his payments company, Braintree, to PayPal for $800 million in 2013. A former Mormon raised in Utah, the 38-year-old speaks about the project with missionary-like intensity and focus.
“Human intelligence is landlocked in relationship to artificial intelligence — and the landlock is the degeneration of the body and the brain,” he said in an interview about the company, which he had not discussed publicly before. “This is a question of keeping humans front and center as we progress.”
Why does this matter? This is the first step toward me finally following through on my repeated declarations to my wife that I’ll become a cyborg (sorry Abby!). This is one way to stave off the inevitability of death and the decaying body, though some of you might have also heard of … other methods … recently.
For Sale: Slightly used space station
Got a few billion dollars lying around? Then I’ve got just the thing for you … the ISS!
NASA is giving us some more insight into its plans to get humans to Mars, under the blanket mission called ‘Journey to Mars,’ and during the press conference, NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development Bill Hill revealed that the current hope is to hand off control of the International Space Station to a commercial owner by sometime around the mid 2020s.
“NASA’s trying to develop economic development in low-earth orbit,” Hill said, speaking on a panel of NASA staff assembled to discuss the upcoming Mars mission. “Ultimately, our desire is to hand the space station over to either a commercial entity or some other commercial capability so that research can continue in low-earth orbit, so that research can continue in low-earth orbit.”…
NASA didn’t specify any potential buyer, but two commercial entities are about to add significant real estate to the ISS: a new docking adapter is being put in place to support crew shuttle missions from Boeing and SpaceX, both of which are set to start shuttling personnel to the station in 2017.
Why does this matter? No company has anything more than satellites in orbit, so this would be a huge step forward for whichever one steps up to purchase the station. I said a few billion dollars, but who knows what the government would accept as a sale price? It’s not as if there is an established market for space stations.
Kill Bill … and everyone else in the building
Today, a short film called Controller: “A girl that can control everything, perpetrates her own rescue by taking control of her boyfriend.” Look out for a feature-length version, produced by 20th Century Fox.
GIF of the Week: Stop Motion Puppetry
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