"american history tv," military historian paul springer talks about the use of cutting-edge technology in the united states military. he argues the advancement of robotic weaponry in warfare such as drones and artificial intelligence have revolutionized military affairs, making previous tactics obsolete. the new york historical society hosted this 90-minute event. >> now is a pleasure to introduce my colleague and friend paul springer, who is a senior fellow of the foreign policy researchers but also from his day job at the air command and staff college in alabama. he also taught at at west point. he is the author of many books and many coming out on cyber war, military robotics, the history of prisoners of war and a load of other topics. he has been on cnn, npr, fox,

the history channel, the discovery channel, national geographic channel, and he is really one of our most popular lecturers. today we have asked him to speak , on the revolutions in military affairs which will give you a , quick survey of military history from the 13th century up to today. all in one hour, so i'm sure you will enjoy. please welcome paul springer. [applause] mr. springer: good morning. i would like to extend a thank you to dale and alan, the new york historical society and the policy research institute. both are wonderful organizations i support and love working with. it is a great opportunity to speak to all of you today. i will see if i can keep you terrified for the rest of the weekend with some military robotics information here. but i am an historian, by definition that means i have to

back up way to far to tell you the beginning of the story. before i get rolling, as i work for the air force do not worry , about reading the small disclaimer at the bottom. these are my views, not the views of the air force or the department of defense or the u.s. government. they are solely mine unless you really like them, in which case, everybody else can take credit too. all right, so this is the only slide i will throw at you with an enormous amount of text. i don't expect you to read it, and i'm not going to read it to you but my point of this like , your, my fundamental argument, is that the world right now is in the middle of a revolution in military affairs. that means the mode of human conflict is fundamentally altering, and that alteration is going to change virtually every aspect of the way the human conflicts are propagated. it will change how we decide whether or not we decide to go to war and how we behave when we

find ourselves in a war. this is due to technological changes that are really on the verge of upsetting human society. in the end, there will be some countries that adopt these changes, that take the new technology and learn how to it, and there will be some that don't. these will be the haves and have-nots of the future in conflict. there is an enormous advantage in being one of the first adopters. if you have a revolutionary change in the way that conflict is occurring it becomes possible , to dominate your rivals in a short period of time. the originator of the term "revolutionary nuclear affairs" argokoff.i it gives me some pain to get ready it -- credit to a soviet thinker but there are times when , fundamental changes occur and the occur so rapidly that they make everything that has gone before completely obsolete.

it is my contention that is occurring right now before our very eyes. let me give you an example that people are probably more familiar with. if you go back to the middle ages, this is what characterized war. tassels and boats -- castles and moats and heavily armored knights. if you wanted to capture something belonging to an opponent, that was an undertaking that was likely to take you months of c's craft, and unless you were lucky enough to find them at the gates open, the walls unmanned, the moat drained, and no preparations at made. here, we have three successful sieges in the 14th and 15th centuries. as you can see, each one of those was a major undertaking which required all of the resources and all of the time of an entire campaign season. this is what characterized war in that time the thing. -- time in that period.

however, when gunpowder became the norm in europe, the situation changed. it suddenly became possible to battered down the defenses of a tall high-walled castle from a , safe distance, and the attacker had the advantage because the capital and its defenders could not leave its position while the attacker had certain degree of mobility, could choose when to fight, where to fight. suddenly, being inside the castle was a disadvantage because you became an obvious target. as a result, here are some and you willeges, notice we are still in the 15th century, but the seed duration is suddenly measured in days rather than being a multi-month undertaking with no guarantee of success. but the situation did not remain stable. gunpowder has certainly changed the -- the approach to world but it was warfare,

possible to redesign fortifications, to make them less vulnerable to gunfire and thus it became possible to defend a static position. this is what one of those fortifications looked like in the 1600s. as you can see, it is an enormous fortification full of geometric designs. the idea behind this particular forge was that it could not be approached on any side without the attackers coming under heavy fire from multiple angles from the defenders. were backed up, really long sieges. and these were the sieges that really succeeded. the vast majority of siege attempts in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries were doomed to failure. he became once again a major undertaking, and warfare shifted back to a static approach. as you might imagine, those who have not adopted gunpowder, who had not changed to meet the new

situation found themselves , quickly overwhelmed. it became impossible for an army that did not use gunpowder to withstand one that wielded firearms. if siege craft came almost entirely impossible, it guaranteed you would have some battles fought away from static positions. sometimes you could not build the fortification in the place he wanted to defend long-term, and sometimes armies were going to meet in the fields. now in the 16th century, reloading a firearm could take approximately two minutes. and the effective range of a firearm was only about 50 meters. i am not exactly, should we say, a paragon of physical fitness but even i could cross 50 meters , in two minutes. i could crawl 50 meters in under two minutes. which means if you are using

firearms and you shoot and miss there is a reasonable chance i , am going to run across the field and hit you with something sharp or heavy. as a result, we get mixed formation. his is the spanish tersio. it comprises musketeers on the outside and pikemen in the center. the musketeers open fire. after they shoot, the pikemen come to the outside to protect them while they reload. for aade it impossible cavalry charge to overwhelm a group of musketeers in a second. it was a very wielding move, very slow. it swept everything before it on the battlefield because it was infinitely better than anything else someone else i come up with to that time to use firearms in the field, and it teaches us something. but he does that sometimes it is not the technology that matters. it is being the first one that figures out how to use it effectively. that is what is going on here.

the spanish wind up using the tercio to become the dominant land power in europe. but nothing lasts forever. now this is one of the rare times where you are going to hear a historian talk to about swedish military dominance. [laughter] mr. springer: it is not really what they are particularly known for, but it was the swedes who figured out how to counter the tercio. was veryized it unwieldy because everyone was getting in everyone else's way, it was hard to move around, you could have thousands of troops in the hearing of one person, screaming to be heard to get around. and maybe, the pikes that protect the musketeers with outstanding amongst the musketeers. the idea was called the brigade. and when the brigade swept onto the battlefield of europe under gustavus adolphus, it drove them

tercios from the field. adolphus entered the 30 year war knowing it was one of enormous carnage but he had this new idea that for a brief time the swedes could turn the tide of a war that had effectively engulf the entire european continent. and this thing was a bloody mess. as much as 25% of the european population died in that war, a much higher percentage than died in world war ii. so this tells us these new forms of weaponry, even though they seem very archaic today, could be extremely effective when used en masse. if we fast-forward a few centuries we reach world war i. , once again, gunpowder is the dominant weapon of the era. the difference of course each , individual wielding a machine gun like this can fire 600 rounds per minute, and they can sustain that rate of fire as long as they have bullets and

they can fire relatively , accurately for a distance up to two miles. i cannot cross two miles in under two minutes. there is no way i'm going to be able to do it with a couple thousand bullets flying at me. and this caused warfare to once again become very static, very position-oriented. two, for all intents and purposes, stagnate. but progress continued. now world war i at the time was the bloodiest war in history. millions of people died. and there was a significant movement around the world to say, oh, well, we are never going to do that again. at one point, leading nations attempted to ban the practice of warfare which did not last very long. though technically, the united states has never repealed the kellogg briand act, where we swear we would never use warfare against an opponent. there were other attempts to try to mitigate the worst

aspects of warfare, a lot of which came out as a result of the gunpowder revolution. you had very prominent thinkers in the 17th and 18th centuries that effectively said there are , limits to what you can do in warfare. there are things that are not acceptable behavior. for example, you should not go out and poison your bullet the firing them at someone. four you should not deliberately kill someone after you have captured them. you should not deliberately spread disease amongst your enemies. yes, they are your enemies, but when wars end, you have to go back to at least being able to coexist unless your objective is , the complete and utter annihilation of your opponent. which, these thinkers would also tell you, is flat wrong. you should not do that. annihilation is bad. so even though we are innovating these new technological ideas, we are building these new concepts, at the same time, we

are saying there's something to just do not do. you do not invent weapons that are designed to maim. you accept the enemy's surrender if they offer it in good faith. over time, it becomes the norm in european warfare that there are specific limits. these thinkers also considered, when is it acceptable to go to war? they come to the conclusion there are times when war is an acceptable policy option. obviously, you have the right to go to war to defend yourself, to defend your citizenry, to defend your territory. but there are other circumstances in which warfare is also in acceptable alternative to these thinkers. as we move forward into the 20th century after world war ii, , there was a significant movement once again to never allow a conflict like this to happen. and when the united nations charter was written, a key component of the charter was that member states of the united

nations shall not make war upon each other. if you violate that norm, the expectation is that all of the other member states will come to the aid of the victim. as you all know, it has not always worked out that way. but there is an enormous body of international law governing what you can and cannot do in war. most is encapsulated in the geneva convention. there are four key components that are going to matter a little bit later in the lecture as to what are the ultimate limits of warfare in terms of who can and cannot anticipate. -- participate. the geneva convention makes this clear. number one, you must bear arms openly. you're not allowed to make war by hiding your weaponry, pulling it out, attacking the enemy, hiding it again. two, you must wear some form of uniform or recognizable device. it may be the uniform of a country with a flag on it. it may be something as simple as

the green headscarves common to hamas. but it has to be something recognizable and distinct so i know you are representing yourself as a combatant. and you are expecting me to follow the rules of war. third, you must be part of an organization of a hierarchical structure where the leadership is responsible for the behavior of subordinates. so there has to be a form of , command and control. someone that can be ultimately held responsible for the behavior of troops in the field. you must, -- fourth, follow the laws of war. if you do not follow the laws of war, you cannot claim their protection in any form of combat. now why does this matter? , the united states is currently in a fight. we are fighting the islamic state. we are fighting al qaeda. we are fighting terrorism as a

concept. and the organization with which we are in conflict do not bear arms openly. do not wear a recognizable uniform do not have a command , structure where the leadership is responsible for the behavior of subordinates, and they certainly do not although the -- follow the laws of war. so they are outside of our traditional understanding of who is an acceptable combatant and who is protected by the laws of war, and if the united states and its allies choose to extend additional privileges such as accepting surrender and restraining ourselves, that is our option. but we really effectively have to follow the rules of war, even though we are facing an enemy that doesn't. and that can be an increbly frustrating situation as this cartoon illustrates. we have to follow the laws of war for one fundamental reason. if we do not follow the laws of war, then the laws of war themselves become largely irrelevant, and the enemy that we are currently facing has its

primary goal being the destruction of the existing world order. you can conceive of the islamic state and al qaeda as a global insurgency. its goal is not necessarily just to bring down individual governments. its goal is to destroy the entire international system. it is trying to pull down the system we have with the united nations where there are nations that are considered haves and nations that are considered have-nots. and none of the haves resemble the organizations that are pushing to bring it down. consider the permanent members of the un security council have the ultimate international relations tool, a veto over you and use of violence. -- un use of violence. in those nations are the united states, britain, france, and china. none of them are in the middle eastern region. so imagine if you will, if we were to redesign the permanent

security council, if we were to choose new membership, would you put the same five countries in there? but on the basis of economics, you wouldn't. not on the basis of population size and probably not on the basis of geography. now, imagine the islamic state achieved everything and pushing -- it seems to be pushing for. it creates a caliphate that stretches from north africa all the way to the pacific ocean. would they have cause to claim membership in this most elite of fraternities? they might, or they might instead choose to simply pull down the system because they believe that chaos and anarchy will more effectively serve their end goal. so that is our starting point here. when it comes to 21st century conflict and military robotics, which is the heart of what i want to discuss today, i need to

establish a few definitions the first. media is a big fan of the term "drone." and drone has a specific meaning. a drone is a preprogrammed machine. it does whatever it is told to do. it does not think. it does not react to its environment. it does not choose from a host of different options. it simply does what it is told. you preprogram a route, it flies the route. you tell it to strike a certain point, it strikes a certain point. it is not a thinking machine. and a drone by definition is not being driven by some other intelligence. you fire a cruise missile it , flies off. you do not control it on its route. you might have the ability to stop it, to abort its mission, but there's no intelligence guiding its actions. it has already been done. a robotic system a robotic , system incorporates some degree of the ability to sense

an environment and make decisions on the basis of it. for example, you are probably familiar with a predator. a predator is being flown by a human operator but it has some functions it performs automatically which makes flying , it a lot easier. it does not choose to kill. a human being chooses to fire a missile from a predator. it does not choose where it will fly. a human being chooses where it will fly. but it does some things on its own. some of these other devices, here, this is called a pack box. it has become west -- most well-known as an explosive ordinance removal disposal robot. it allows you to avoid putting humans in the worst of harm's way. it does not disarm bombs on its own. it gets close to the bomb and then does what its operator tells it to do. incredibly useful to reduce as -- casualties.

because at the end of the day, dies, cries if a robot does not die. it just gets rendered into small pieces. on the right, more terrifying. this is the larger, uglier cousin. it is called a talent. it weighs about 200 pounds. it is remotely driven. this thing is not driving itself around and shooting off guns and causing chaos everywhere it goes. there is in a operator driving it from a distance using a camera. but as you can see, it can be armed. you can put rocket launchers, you can put grenade launchers, you can put machine guns on it. it does not suffer from a lot of the problems that trigger in accuracy in humans when using weaponry. it does not have a pulse. it does not breathe. it instantly calculates the wind. it has a laser rangefinder. it doesn't care what it is shooting at. it doesn't feel bad if it is shooting at a house of children. -- a house full of children.

it just does what it is told. there is a human operator telling it to do that, but there is a certain divorce there. the human is a little further away from the intimacy of killing. a true robot, as you can see i have used a lot of pop-culture references here. roberts -- robots don't exist yet not in the way the military , means when it uses the term "robot." a robot senses it environment and makes decisions of what it will do on the basis of the environment it senses. right now, there are no weapons that are true robots in the classical sense, wandering around, causing headaches for everyone. they don't exist yet, but they are on the immediate horizon. i am going to show you some examples of how close we are getting and what we could do if we chose to if it came to fielding this type of device. final definition, a cyborg. that is a cybernetic organism. that is a human or any kind of

critter, but usually a human that has incorporated robotic , elements into themselves, usually as a form of an enhancement. rush limbaugh, whether you know it or not is a cyborg. ,he actually has an implant in his ear that has restored hearing to him, without which he is completely deaf, which as i understand it is a problem for radio hosts. there are other cyborgs out there, and we will see a few down the road. you may be surprised some of the things we can do now with mind-controlled implants. artificial intelligence. artificial intelligence is the notion you can create a machine that would be capable of processing information in the same fashion as a human. to a certain extent, artificial intelligence is a red herring. there is not a particularly compelling reason to create something that is artificially intelligent. robots it was the advantage that we can choose specialization.

we can design them. there is not a particularly compelling to produce a humanoid robot with all of the frailties and weaknesses of human beings. to be honest, if i was designing the next human being, this is not the shape i would choose. if i was designing this human being, this is not the shape i would choose either. i am a very picky guy, apparently. alan turing, right here was a , british cryptanalyst during world war ii. he posited the idea of the turing test. turing's idea was if you can , query a computer into human being through some mechanism where the sound would not tell you which was which -- maybe you're using a keyboard to ask a question -- you could determine whether or not you had created artificial intelligence by having a human being question the machine and other humans, and if they could not determine which was which, you would have created artificial intelligence. according to turing.

microsoft. a few weeks ago, let's run a little experiment. they created an artificial intelligence. and what they did was they created a twitter account and turned it over to a computer. and hypothetically, they programmed this computer to act the way and that microsoft thinks a 15-year-old girl would act on a twitter account. within 24 hours, this thing was tweeting racist responses. essentially it had been trained , by the internet and all of the horrific things the internet can bring to life. microsoft quickly shut it down. all right, all right, didn't note 15-year-old girls were quite that racist. a week later they brought it , back, and it only took a few hours before it was announcing that hitler was right. microsoft shut that down. there have been other companies. maybe you are familiar with a machine called watson. this was a computer that was designed to play jeopardy against human opponents. playing jeopardy requires a lot

more than just an enormous knowledge of trivia because most questions are written in such a way that they require abstract reasoning. they require you to think through and away that previous to now only humans could do. , watson won the game against the best jeopardy champion that ever played. this came as a major shock to us. now, we had a machine that appeared to be capable of very quickly reasoning through very challenging questions. but, what do you do with a machine like that? what is the practical use of something like watson? it turns out the thing is phenomenally helpful in the medical field. watson has been built by ibm and copies of it turned over to some major medical centers, and what we're finding is that this machine can read virtually every medical research item that has ever been produced in every language. and as a result, it is able to

make conclusions that would never occur to a human doctor. so, your left big toe itches and you taste in a butter in the roof of your mouth. -- you taste peanut butter in the roof of your mouth. you have liver cancer. that is a made-up example. but watson takes the strange symptoms, what some together, and then spits out what it thinks is the most likely answer. it is looking and very obscure medical journals for the individual strange cases that get written up by doctors. that often resulted in the death of a patient. they did an autopsy, they said, oh, itchy big toe, peanut butter roof of the mouth, clearly that was liver cancer. watson is doing that in real time. opportunity to revolutionize our approach to medicine. that could be wonderful. we will see some dark sides coming up in just a moment as well, though. when it comes to military

robotics and artificial intelligence, there are some things that machines do infinitely better than humans do. feel free to run a race with just a basic calculator and see whether you are faster than it is in arithmetic. you cannot. it is hyper specialize. it is a far harder process to do things like immediate calculations of ballistic tables and determinations of whether or not to engage what might be a threat. and that is what these devices are down here at the bottom. you might be familiar with the patriot system. it is an air defense system. you may not know that it has a fully autonomous mode. you flip the switch, and it will fire on anything that comes into its engagement zone that it perceives as a threat so hopefully you have predefined what it should consider a threat. unfortunately, on a number of occasions, patriot missile batteries have opened up on coalition aircraft fighting on the same side of the united states, and on at least two

occasions, they have opened fire on american aircraft despite the fact that those american aircraft were using the transponder code that should of told it, do not shoot at me, i am an american. so the system does not always work perfectly. but when it comes to something like air defense, sometimes you have to accept the loss ability failure because it is too dangerous not to turn on the system. in the center here this is , called a closed in weapon system. it is a radar-guided very , very powerful machine gun. it is used as the last line of defense on american naval vessels and has been used as such for more than 30 years. if somebody shoots a missile at one of our ships, this thing is the last chance to shoot that missile down before it hits our ship and potentially sinks and it might kill thousands of lives. in are willing to use this

fully autonomous mode because it is your last chance to save lots of lives and you are using it , over into oceans of the possibility of collateral damage is relatively low. in this regard, autonomy is your perfectly acceptable to use this in autonomous mode. it is not as acceptable to use autonomous weapons and other circumstances or collateral damage is more likely. just as you are willing to use this out in the open ocean, you're probably not what you did in new york city. you can only imagine what happens to every round that misses the missile. this thing can fire 6000 rounds a minute. that is an awful lot of projectiles flying through the air. now, when it comes to computerized warfare, we have seen some fundamental innovations and changes. in case you have not heard, israel does not always get along well with its neighbors. israel does not like the idea of any of its neighbors obtaining nuclear weapons.

1981, the israelis got word that the iraqis have built a nuclear reactor and were in the process of enriching uranium towards the pursuit of nuclear weapons. the israelis refuse to tolerate that, they quietly worked out a deal with the saudis that allow them to fly over saudi airspace and they attacked and destroyed the reactor. iraqi nuclear program and made it clear that the israelis would launch an airstrike anytime the iraqis were close to achieving a weapon capability. 2007, israelis got wind that the syrians had built a nuclear program. it were using north korean, pakistani expertise in order to get the thing up and rolling. they did not want to tolerate a nuclear program with a hostile neighbor. the syrians had also purchased a first-rate air defense system and the israelis were not confident that the aircraft would penetrate. -- country.

-- penetrate syria. airspace. the israelis inserted a commando team, what in the ground, dug up a portion of the syrian fiber optic network that control be a defense network and the uploaded a virus. radars to caused the be convinced that there was nothing to see. just a nice night. the first tent that the syrians that they had they were under attack with the explosion striking the nuclear program and essentially wiping it out. this is what ciber had a dialed thenabled th israelise -- really to do. if we fast-forward a few years, net.ay have heard of stuck it is a virus that required, at the minium, the receives --

resources of a nation in order to create it. it used a sophisticated system in order to effectively seek out a very specific type of machine in the machine powers centrifuges. centrifuges that are used to separate uranium. somebody, and nobody has taken credit for yet, the leading candidates of united states and israel, i'm not revealing classified information, i do not have a clue, but they are the most likely candidates because iranian nuclear facility that had us nervous. somebody wandered around the parking lot that facility and drop a couple of thumb drives. and somebody else came along and went, huh, i bet someone will want that. they picked it up, plugged into a computer, try to figure out who it belonged to. the moment they did that, they

uploaded the virus into the system. the logicarched out controllers for the centrifuges intimate a tiny change in the program in that tiny change caused the centrifuges to spin up and spin down. up and down and induce just enough of a vibration to cause the centrifuges to start to fail. the rains were not sure what was going on. they did not know they were the victim of a cyber attack. they thought they were competent building centrifuges, or maybe they did not know how to create a nuclear program. it started to erode their confidence and weakened their belief in what they were doing. it was not until a couple years later when a small antivirus firm located in pointed out the location of it and even knew what had caused the centrifuges to fail. without using a single warplane, without committing a single act

of war, somebody shut down the radiant nuclear program for about three years. at about the same time, somebody, and it may have been the same somebody, started assassinating nuclear scientists from iran. that was a bit more open. a computer virus is one thing, shooting people is a little more obvious you are up to. again, i don't know who was response will. i just know -- responsible. i just know are a lot of people got excited about the idea of an iranian nuclear program. here we have the technology enabling the possibility of shutting it down without having to do the classic attacked them be characterized as an act of war. when it comes to military robotics, this is a much longer thing than most people realize. military robotics are not new. you can go back almost 100 years to have a very rudimentary system, the kettering bug, flying to appeal.

in air plane packed full of explosives that is designed to have its engine shut off after a certain period of light which will cause it to dive on a target beneath it. this was innovated by charles kettering it was never fielded for world war i, which is a good thing. it did not work very well. it was just as likely to come down on your own forces as it was on the enemy. bit, move forward a little getting on the verge of world war ii, the soviets came up with what they call helitank. they remotely driven tank. everything was normal about the tank, except do not have human beings. the human being that controlled it sat in another tank a couple miles away and controlled it via radio singles and line of sight. it did not work very well. it was clunky. the vast majority of their telitanks they destroyed himself

when people realized they could climb up on top, plot the reader control and get a new tank. a new tank just for me! the soviets out of destroying some of their stuff. the germans will create the go live. -- goliath. a wire driven vehicle designed to be driven underneath vehicles -- enemy tanks and destroyed. a landmine that moves around. wire guided. you cut the wire, it does not move anymore. the vast majority of the goliaths wound up just being stockpiled and never used. finally, the buzz bomb. these proved to be effective. much like the kettering bug, an airplane engine attached to a bomb. you launch it and you cope. -- hope. you can target the city the size of london and had the remote chance of hitting the city. you cannot target a specific

address it any chance other than dumb luck of hitting it. the city the size of london, suddenly faces a bombardment for which they initially have no real response. tie to shootish down these particular items, they discover they are a lot harder to shoot down then you would think. wind up finding out that easiest is to fly upown next to it, put your wingtip under its wingtip and tipping over. that will cause it to crash. not the safest of activities. not the best idea to spend a sunday afternoon. moving forward, into my lifetime, the pioneer, this was usually used for artillery spotting. in particular, the navy.

then we started finding things over china. china was intervening in the vietnam war, we to see what they were up to. the chinese start shooting them down. that the shoot them down, they run up to the wreckage and can't figure out why they can never capture the palate. probably market pallets are good pilotsng seek your -- are good at hiding and seek. this is kevin warwick. he is a british researcher and in my opinion, and incredibly creepy guy. very smart. i'momes up with this idea, going to get a microchip, and planted my wrist, and i'm going to use that microchip to

measure the electrical implants -- impulses of the nervous system. figure out how the human body control to tell. after a long medical study, they decided, we can let him do to himself. he has a surgically implanted. figures out which nerves in his wrist control which muscles in his hand. he then maps it to artificial hand which you can control with his mind. he closes his hand into a fist, it closes into a fist. he opens it up, it opens up. revolutionary. mind controlled -- a controlled prosthetic. wife has itat his and planted into her at and they can control each other's hand. able to control each other's hands with their own minds. that was all most two decades

ago. you can imagine where this is going. getting close to the modern era, the reaper is a much more powerful version of the predator. instead of caring to vessels, can carry up to 14. this man has a cybernetic hand's controlled his mind. it has since implanted onto his arm. he is capable of picking up in a with one hand, not his human hand and cracking it. i can't do that. i have two perfectly good hands and make a mess every time. this guy has such good fine motor control it has a force feedback system which means he can close his eyes and tell you when he is touching something and what it feels like all through the signals going back to his mind. the israelis took our patriot missile system and built iron dome. much larger, sophisticated system that is capable of tracking inbound the gentiles and missiles and choosing whether or not to shoot them

down. it does not just engage everything that flies overhead. instead, a calculus where is that thing going to come down, is it a populated area in which case i should intercept, or is it in unpopular did area in which case i should let it fly off into the middle of nowhere and let it strike where will be safe. this has massively reduced the number of casualties israelis are facing from rockets being fired out of gaza and the northern regions from southern lebanon. big dog. this is from boston dynamics. this company has built a robotic meal. can carry 300 pounds of gear, can move at the same speed as a human on put, can move up slopes of 30 degrees which i can assure you is a high slope. an walk on ice, can follow individual human being. the idea is, american troops that are dismounted moving

through urban areas tend to be floated down with up to 100 pounds of gear. with 100 pounds of gear. now they can upload it. that is the idea. the atlas robot. designed to be able to go into dangerous locations. the first time we saw this in operation, it was sent into the kemah jima -- fuji reactor. at one of the trying to robot, but that is a much better alternative than destroyed a human. radiation levels were so high that it would have killed anyone that had gone inside to see what was going on. this machine is designed to go where humans go. one of the rare cases we want the machine to have roughly the same humanoid design so that they can use the radically the same types of vehicles and move in the same areas. in case you are wondering, the sea ram.

this is the land version. iraqt this into basis in which were being shelled by artillery and mortar fire. it is capable of locating and engaging for gentiles -- projectiles as small as 50 millimeters. we like to think of ourselves as if i mentally friendly, we have made biodegradable projectiles. are they come down, they designed to be no collateral damage and not to harm the environment. right? where we are going. .his man is quadriplegic he's wearing a mind controlled exoskeleton that allows him to walk and move. slow system.y he's not moving at normal human speed. it is a heck of a lot better than the alternative. leg individual is wearing a that is controlled by his mind. it allows him to move at regular

walking speeds. both of those cases, the research was highly advanced thanks to all the casualties we were taken from ieds. awful lot of american service personnel that have lost limbs and the dod has put a lot of effort into trying to advance research into giving them a better quality of life. you have artie seen the talent talon-- already seen the sword. rather than having a human being dedicated to driving them, you would instead have been moving along beside or in place of your human troops. that starts to make a little nervous. you can program those things to engage human targets without human intervention. nobody in the losing yes, shoot or don't shoot. with an audiothem detection system that picks up the sound of gunfire and

automatically commits to return fire. ivots to return fire. if you have a problem with snipers, he can deploy these. if a sniper takes a shot, you immediately have the ability to shoot back at the position. this reduces coalition cashel to spirit the other hand, it will not take long before our putting children in front of cyber positions. this is the way they will potentially take advantage of our ethics, morality and sapir technology. [laughter] sapir technology. superior technology. about 20 years ago, the u.s. air that came up with a system was designed to buy over a battlefield, look for target and by without human intervention. i want you to take a moment and

imagine what happens if you parody facial recognition system with the fully economists loitering vehicle -- autonomous loitering vehicle which looks for pictures uploaded and fires missiles at them. of missiles, it crashes itself as a final projectile. startare the things that to keep me awake at night. , swarm. are going you can have complex behavior out of very simple devices. darpa a few years ago came out with the scent about -- centi bot. small robots that have simple programming. move around and look around. number two, stay away from other robots. number three, report back what you see. simple programming.

they are capable of mapping a city the size of new york, every building, every street with just a hundred robots in a matter of two weeks. there is not a human teen driving them. all they are doing is wandering around and mapping out they go. this is assuming that they are not being run over by cabbies or kick by angry new yorkers. the principle, they cannot quickly. -- they can map quickly. this is where we are going in terms of shooting and not picking about it anymore. one of the problems for us, who is responsible if this thing makes a strike a target that we would consider to be illegal? who do you blame? you can't punish the robot, at least you can't punish it in any way that you consider it punishment. to feelt force a robot bad about what it has done.

in 30, you could punish the commander who released the weapon, you could punish whoever made the decision to ship it to the theater. you could punish ever wrote the software. the history of military prosecutions would indicate that is likely to happen. -- not going to happen. who was responsible the death of 400 civilians, his punishment was six months house arrest. what are the chances we will hold somebody response will if one of our machines malfunctions? and by the chances we will write it off as an unfortunate situation? i'm a pessimist. i think it will be the latter. final case study from the news. you're probably familiar with this individual, and more alan nunnelee. not a pleasant individual. he was born in the united states, american citizen, he

becomes radicalized, once a moving to yemen and becomes a spiritual leader of the al qaeda in the arabian peninsula. he is over there doing his best to inspire attacks against the west. he is being fairly successful. some of his known associates include the fort hood shooter, and therwear bomber, men who try to set off a bomb in times square. he was associated with three of the 9/11 attackers and a 15-year-old boy who try to detonate a car bomb at a christmas tree lighting ceremony in portland, oregon. he was a busy guy. he spent a lot of time recruiting individuals for what he saw as the quintessential fight against the west.

his last few years of his life are spent in hiding. he is on the run. he is living in yemen and he knows that he has been placed on the united states designated targeted kill list. effectively, the list that is maintained by the treasury department that is they kill or capture but emphasis on kill list. citizen, thanks that he -- thinks that he ought to have constitutional protection. that he has been judged and sentenced to execution without a criminal trial. in a federales court to get him taken off the list on the grounds that he is an american citizen and that he has not done anything that is technically against the law. area a great area -- gray whether what he did violated u.s. laws. something the court could

decide. the case get thrown out because his father does not have the legal standing to bring the case in a court of law and united states. according to the courts, only alwaki himself can file the lawsuit. of course, filing that lawsuit would require him to come back to the united states to file said lawsuit. he's not willing to do that. he is convinced if you try to come back to the united states, he will never see the light of day again. he has made his peace. he is living on the run. he knows he's being stocked. on a number of occasions, he is our most killed by american remotely piloted aircraft. on one case, on may 5, 2011, a predator bout a missile at what we thought was a vehicle carrying him. it turns out he had swapped vehicles with a couple al qaeda operatives. he escapes. 2011, heth of october,

killed by predator fired a hellfire missile. to a certain extent, i'm ok with that. i'm not sad that he is not part of the earth anymore. however, the president for it has me nervous. theory, at least in article three of the u.s. constitution defines treason. was he guilty of treason? i would say he was. was he given a trial? no he was not. the executive branch made the decision that they would execute him at the first opportunity regardless of his citizen status. it would have been harder to get permission to place a wiretap on his cell phone that it was to put him on the catalyst. kill list. --

moving further into the constitution, the fifth amendment tells us you cannot be held to answer for capital crime without an indictment of a grand jury and without having the opportunity for a trial. the sixth amendment says that , you needs to be public are allowed to confront the witnesses against you and you have the right to counsel. none of these things were true in the case of him. i understand, and more times, there is a gray area. killing him probably saved american lives. there is a kicker. that is his teenage son. father in seen his more than five years. he is living in yemen with his grandparents and he hears a rumor of where his father might be. so being a teenager, he is 16 years old, he is impulsive. he decides he's going to run away from home, hop on a bus and

go to the town or he has heard his father is living and he's got to find his dad. what he does not know that his father had been killed two weeks before. he was not even in the town that his father was in. he heads off. his grand parents wake up and he has kindly left a note. i'm sorry, but i had to do this. they call ahead to the town that the kid is headed to and say, adubdul says he will look for hs father, can you pick him up and hold him for a few days. etc.. meeting hisew days distant cousins, wondering at town -- around the country on day,ast day -- on the last he sitting in a coffee shop when hellfire missile strikes and kills them all. it strikes with such force and

power that the family is not able to distinguish the remains and they wind up having to bury all seven of them. the familyt imagine, protests and asked why did you kill my consent -- grandson? the federal response was this man was a 21-year-old al qaeda operative was actively planning operations against the united states to which the family said, no he wasn't? he was a teenager. 16 years old, or to denver -- born in denver. look at his facebook profile. ,e's not in any way, shape or form radicalize. you killed him because of his father. the government came back and said, actually, we do not kill him -- did not kill him, we killed the guy next to him.

makere aiming at the bomb from egypt. you sit next to bad people, that things happen. , the cia had the ball maker under surveillance at the same time and he was in egypt. the government has not commented since and i don't think they will because there's not really anything good you can say about this reticular incident. -- particular incident. it is indicative of a lot of our decision-making. military robotics have made us feel like we can wait for -- wage for with impunity. that we can fight a war without taking the possibility of casualties. has eroded the normal standards for when we use conflict as opposed to other mechanisms. military robotics are making us more likely to go to war but the

domain we can fight wars with impunity. the reason why is the enemy does not simply sit there and take the punishment from robots in the sky. it can't shoot down those robots and even if they could, it would not be satisfying. instead, they look for other targets that they can reach. bese targets don't tend to uniformed personnel who have adopted the risk, have accepted it as part of service. rather, the organizations we are targeting tend to aim for civilians. whether embassy personnel or tourists that happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. they strike back by placing bombs on civilian airliners, by leaving car bombs in crowded areas, they don't just absorb the punishment and they're are not going to follow the rules. my argument is not that we should give up military robotics, that we should stop this, that will not happen. we do need to think about where it is we are try to go and what

it is we are try to produce lest we choose the worst possible scenario. take you for your kind attention. i appreciate the opportunity. [applause] i believe, if you would like to ask a question, there are microphones on the side. >> how much has been robotics or, cyber -- robotics war, cyber war been responsible for the destruction of isis and al qaeda? those groups have retreated a great deal. >> whether they have retreated or metastasized. al qaeda has a lot more franchises now than it did in 2001. it may be because it takes words have been destroyed. very difficult for al qaeda to group large formations in afghanistan or iraq and

anywhere. most of those organizations have also received the allegiance of a lot of terrifying groups. most people don't realize the deadliest care organization in the last 10 years is boko haram . if has warned its allegiance to the alarming state -- it has sworn its allegiance to islamic state. it is a judgment call whether this is really eroding abilities, hindering opportunities to engage in operations or not. a lot of what we are doing against the islamic state is manned aircraft strikes because we're launching so many of them and carry so many ammunitions. geographically the islamic state has been pushed back, in terms of the number of casualties, they are still an incredible dangerous organization. i'm not sure this is eroding the power at all. >> thank you.

>> do you think the russians were in violation of the rules of four in ukraine with the ?roops they sent in >> yes. the so-called russian volunteers, the patriotic russians, i would argue that is a violation of the laws of war. russia was openly engaged in an indication -- invasion. that is something russians have done recently take the case of georgia where the russians effectively said there is an ethnic majority of russians and we have a supposedly possibly to protect them from the evil overlords of the georgia government. in the ukraine, same argument. these people are ethnically russian and ukrainian government is mistreating them. therefore, we have a legal right to invade. according to the u.n. charter, they do not. they don't have the right.

but, they do have a beta which means -- veto which means if the u.n. wanted to pass a security council resolution, the russians could bveto and the have the legal right. there is no real mechanism to override that veto. is it illegal to infiltrate forces out of uniform? no. does that mean the international community will do anything about it, i seriously doubt it. try to intervene, that close to russia, that far from our supply bases, while we are engaged in so many other conflicts is a really difficult opposition and without american leadership, the rest of the world will not do it. when artificial intelligence is going to integrate with robots and sent to war, what you think is a realistic contingency

plan as a kill button to terminate them? >> when our enemies use robots? >> when they go out of control like in the movies. [laughter] >> had in your basement, surrender. -- hide in your basement, surrender. in theory, he can program a kill street whic -- kill switch. maybe an emp to defry it. andou design killer robots make them powerful enough to engage in war, shutting them could be a bloody proposition. the last thing i want to see is a fight between humans and robots. our even means if it is robots and humans we don't like, i think that is a bad idea. here is a little tidbit, the united states army right now is capped, there is no limit to how

many robots we can have. you could build one million, 2 million of those robots and send them into conflict. a lot of americans would say, as long as no american troops die, no big deal. we never value so else's life as we do our own. life as we dose's our own. the allure of fighting a war without losing citizens could unless most irresistible you educate them on the ramifications. i don't have a good answer on how to stop them other than making people not build them in the first place. >> a lot of what i know about robotics in the military comes " eyehem film -- the film in the sky." how much is realistic? how much of that would be

realistic? >> it has been a long time since i have even come into passing with that. you could program an entire area to be off-limits. we have done that before. we do that right now. we have areas that are ill boxes and areas that are off-limits whether it be humans or robotics. if you want to 14 often area, you could. off anod -- quarantine area, you could. hollywood does not tend to be accurate. less exciting far and far more terrifying and others. i would not more -- rely on hollywood to much to get the story right. as of the same people who would you watch a crime show and say keep the villain on the line for 30 seconds to trace them.

a telephone trace takes less than a second. that is why 911 knows in less than a second. hollywood has depicted so many robots now that i think a lot of people are thinking, they could be cute and cuddly, this new star wars movie has the one that all scary.d, not at unless you put some c4 on him in which case he is a rolling bomb. that might seem far-fetched except american troops did that with a robot that looked like it was built out of somebody's erector set. on -- clayclaim or more on it and send it forward and if any guys come out we are fighting against, we're going to detonate this. people are capable of horrific innovations. they did not want up using it.

d up using it. i would not rely on hollywood. ofwe have heard stories --ators in the military we've heard stories about civilians who push the kill button on those drones. war?at in the laws of >> we have title x which is a u.s. code that governs all military operations. i may title x employee. i work for the night of states air force. title 50 covers the intelligence service. in the 1970's, president to fordd issued -- gerald issued the assassination ban. members of intelligence agencies are not allowed to kill people or assassinate people.

why? we have been caught doing it a couple times publicly and we have tried and failed a bunch of times to kill fidel castro. like watching a wily coyote cartoon? [applause] that.ing cigars, we tried we put a scuba suit and loaded it with lsd to poison him. gerald ford said no more assassinations. every president renewed that until the 1990's. the present and in printed an exception for individuals who are leaders and foreign terrorist organizations. as designated by the state department. the band means you can't kill foreign heads of state. it is ok for intelligence officers to target al qaeda or other groups that we have said are terrorists and we don't like you and will put you on this list.

when it comes to remotely piloted aircraft, the vast majority of strikes by those aircraft, particularly outside of afghanistan and iraq have not been carried out by uniformed air force personnel. some have been carried out by cia, a lot has been carried out by contractors working for the cia. what that does is create a cutout. it divorces you further and further away from the rules and makes it easier. intelligence things it is better at hiding what they are doing and who is responsible for the decision to kill, the decision to strike. it becomes harder and harder to untangle who is responsible. of war?ainst the laws it is a great area. you could perceive them as mercenaries. as could conceive of them

agents of the united states government in which case they would be protected. i can't give you a good answer because i don't think there is a good answer. >> thank you. two particlecal -- things stopping the expansion of robotics now are the budget and predator drone's that cost millions of dollars and some people that can create these. you don't think you think that will stop those from becoming the dominant form of warfare and why? >> united states has always been willing to spend money more than blood. especially since world war ii. the in world war ii, germans would say you can't fight against the americans because they fired 10 times as much as they need. it is because the united states is going to substitute firepower for human power. this is just an extension of that. you're right, the predator cost

a lot of money. most of the cost of a predator is a sensible. not the airframe itself -- sensor ball. not the airframe itself. the stuff you strap on that makes it more expensive. it turns out in american infantry person is incredibly expensive. you pay them a salary and spend more than a quarter million dollars just turning them to just do their job and you spent another quarter million of a dollars -- million dollars outfitting them. if there is a castle to, you might spend millions of dollars on the medical care, millions of dollars on a veterans benefits, in terms of a cost benefit analysis, the nice thing about the machines, you can mass-produce them and stockpile them. you can have them sitting around. you have to create the sports and being. there's also the attractiveness if you are civilian decisionmaker in a way to go do

x, there's a possibility a human will not doing that. immoral or illegal. robots don't talk back. they just do what they're told. that can make them very attractive if you want to be a really controlling leader. right now, as you know, thank you the constitution, the military is subordinate to civilian control. that can cause restoration sometimes. frustration sometimes. sometimes the military feels like they are not being listened to because civilians want to tell them what to do things. have not been instances in american history for the military blackouts -- flat out refuses to do what is being asked of them. but it times on nonmilitary missions they have said, that is not our thing, we get to that. back. don't talk there might be a large investment, but once they are

invested, because nothing to operate. you have to replace them emissions and charge them, but that is it. they are becoming or in more attractive. -- more and more attractive. if you go to the korean border, the south koreans have started to build and deploy century robots. -- sentry robots. you don't have to have personnel patrolling. the infrared spectrum and uv spectrum. one of the other attractive robots, your sentry don't have to use lethal force. are willing to risk a robot. you can arm a robot with a taser or with tear gas and that might actually like to save lives on both sides. that is not necessarily what they are armed with. it is a hostile border. what't think cost will be stops it. we are 20: dollars in debt, we

seem to be comfortable with that. trillion in debt, we seem to become to both with that. the pegida, we're talking about a few million dollars being spent on -- in comparison to that, we are talking about a few million dollars being spent on robots. >> will constitute an act of war in cyberspace from your view? bit.will stall a that is a good question. [applause] -- [laughter] >> generally, the threshold for act of war is-- in the recipient eyes. it can launched a border canada launched a border incursion, if a couple canadian hunters wonder across

the border and are shooting at a deer, but they see my cousin instead, that is not an act of war. unless the u.s. government is looking for an opportunity to pick a fight with canada. with a cyber incursion, what the was theernment has said u.s. reserves the right to retaliate for any kind of a cyber attack and we don't say we will restrict ourselves to the cyber domain. we are effectively saying, if you do anything and cyber that we could possibly call and active work, then if we think -- active for, then we will call it an act of war we think it is an advantage. an act of war need to cause casualties or significant property damages in my opinion. it can't be accidental. i tried to engage in espionage and i actually shut down a power

grid, that is not an active war, -- act of war. that is sabotaged. it turns out it is not up to me. depending on who we thought launched the attack, we might very well classify it as an act of war so we would have the opportunity for retaliation that serves our interest. in the cyber domain, one of the hardest things to do is picking out who did it. -- figuring out who did it. if i pull out my phone and launch a cyber attack that shuts down his system, for all you know, i was sending a text to my wife. graye cyber realm, this area is incredible he hard to decipher and we don't have a good answer. like every other one of potential conflict, it is the greek nation -- grieved nation

that the sides. in 2007, the russians effectively shut down the entire estonian cyber system. it is the most wired country on earth. done transaction is electronically. they russians shut down their entire internet for three weeks over a really tiny political issue. russia iians appended try to move a statue of a patriotic russian soldier. they wanted to move it away from the city center into a garden in the russians got angry. what that an act of war? to shut down the economy and power grid? to shut down the banking industry? you could call it an act of war. estonia, do you really want to pick a fight with

your russian neighbor? and what will you do in response? cyber retaliation network. -- would not work. the estonians apologize and put the statue back. was it an act of war? probably. ato?data -- did n no. they will not fight over a nine foot statue. >> my father experienced the effects of remote-controlled glider bombers in italy. he was a casualty also there. that the germans had continued with the offensive and they would have pushed us into the sea change the outcome of

the war. why did we not work on something also during the second world war? were we more content using infantrymen. ? my father was infantry. why did we not work on that? >> worked on the atomic bomb and we pick and choose which technologies we want to pursue. one of the technologies that we were pursuing that cost almost as much as the atomic tom was the b-29 i going to deliver it. b-29 that wase going to deliver it. or going to the proximity fuse which would allow an artillery shell to explode near a target which made for the nominally effective air defense systems but terrified us that the enemy might get a hold of it. we got a hold of some of the glide bombs and we started to reverse engineer them, but part of the problem with these things were jet engines and the germans

were so far ahead of us in terms of jet technology that even as you try to reverse engineer it and bring out your copies of it as fast as you can, the enemy had a significant head start. they had done all the experiments on how to control jet engines and produce them effectively. we did take the captured technology and start tried to produce our own copies and at the end of the war, we captured as many german scientists and engineers as we could have brought them into our high technology programs. at huntsville, alabama, we built an enormous rocket program centered around german rocket science. they fled west as fast as they could to surrender to the western allies rather than the soviets. we worked on it, but we were born up behind that we did not advertise it because we were prioritizing of the things.

sometimes that meant we had to put up with the enemy have an advantage over us. that's the danger when you face a technologically advanced opponent. earlier the emp and hardening robots, i would love you to comment on how hardened we are at a micro level in terms of individual predator s, which protect us completely from isis and people like that try to do something electronically and more on a macro, strategic level how our increasing dependence upon computer-driven defense and offense is in fact hardened against a more robust electronic enemy, say russia or china. thatrdening is possible

extensive. we don't typically do it. especially if we are facing and meat that is not have the capacity to do anything about it. the islamic state does not have the fences or cyber capabilities or cyberences capabilities. when it comes to a predator, the life expectancy of a predator, if you want to fight against a competitor like china or russia, measured in seconds. its radar cross-section is obvious, we are not try to hide what it is. we use it with impunity because the enemy cannot do anything about it. experiencepensive -- with hardening of emp is this race rubber. space is a harsh environment. satellites, in particular, have to be hardened against things. the sun has a bad habit of so it had toiation learn how to -- we have had to

learn how to do it. we know how to do it. it is expensive, it weighs down whatever you are try to harden. if you want to have a loiter time of 24 hours, you can harden electronics now. -- can harden electronics now. can't hardened electronic copy if you remote-controlled something, there is a theory that someone else could take over it. it landed on an ianating highway, -- iran highway, they said they took it over. what they did was broadcasting gps signal at a stronger wattage than the one that is normally broadcast satellite. they overwhelmed the gps receiver and convinced it was somewhere it wasn't. they convinced it was over the airfield where was supposed to land. that is not taking over.

but it was a clever way to bring it down. the iranians proved to be incapable of reverse engineering the thing. it does not mean that the chinese are russians are incapable should the iranians just to sell components of it. every time you create these devices that are remote-controlled, you run the risk of someone else remote-control and it. that is one of the things pushing towards economy. if a machine control to itself, then it is not as susceptible to external intro. control. when it comes to things like emp, setting off an emp pulse without a nuclear detonation is not particularly easy. ladder instruments have shown it is theoretically done. hollywood makes it seem like it is simple. snap your fingers and knockout is city. -- a city. jamming is a bigger problem than some kind of pulse.

final question. >> robotic weapon systems have had domestic popular support because we, the good guys come are using them on them, the bad guys. it will not be pretty for us when the tables are turned which is not long off. do you know of any diplomatic initiatives or thoughts about making a band of -- ban of wmds? >> we have a number of treaties like a biological weapon convention, chemical weapon convention. we collectively said these are bad. the syrian regime was recently accused of using chemical weapons. there are people that will violate the rules. the nuclear weapons situation in theory, there is a nuclear nonproliferation treaty in place

that means no other nations are going to start and develop nuclear weapons programs. in practice, we have seen that is not true. there are not signatories to it that have chosen to develop their own systems and are signatories that are chosen to ignore its provisions. tore is a social movement ban autonomous weapons. there has not been a significant push in the international legal arena yet. there are lot of individual scholars and theorists saying, we could probably save a lot of trouble if we ban these horrible things before we use them. unfortunately, that does not seem to be the way humans work. the chemical weapons ban came about after world war i and we saw how horrible chemical weapons were and how a decisive they were. they did not win the war, he just made it worse. -- they just made it worse. that is how i see thomas weapons going. they will not win the war unless

you are facing an opponent you could have be without them. they will make war worse. if we get into a war with a peer competitor that is using military robotics. let's assume all robots destroy theirs. if that country going to surrender -- is that country going to surrender? human history says no, they will keep fighting. case,of conquest, in that now you're robots are going to have to deploy against their human troops and they will be very effective at killing them, but humans will fight a lot longer than hindsight would indicate with a practical idea. particularly in wars of national survival. pessimist,see, i'm a you build enough of these machines, you will feel a compulsion to use them before somebody else gets a better advantage over you. you're going to wind up using

these things and may create one of the worst human atrocities in history without actually changing the nature of state interaction. on that happy note. [applause] >> on behalf of the new york historical society and the poor policy research institute, i'm with you think all springer -- i springer fork paul his remarks and judicious this in addressing conflict issues we face today. i think all of you for joining us and are a lot of things going on here at the society. come back often. thank you very much. [applause]

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social, economic, racial and bimetal justice to philadelphia. >> every minute of the republican and democratic party convention. >> each week, american artifact takes years into historical sites across the country. , we visit this is melanie and -- up next, we visit the smithsonian air and space museum. jeremy kinney is a curator who shows us some of the museum's prayer and one-of-a-kind artifacts. hello. we're going to go through a tour of some artifacts that really stand out in terms of the story of higher, faster,