Mass, Machines, and Munitions with Dr. Michael Horowitz

I don't love the Revolution of Military Affairs framing.

And I'll be honest, the reason is that I feel like we always get caught up in the like, is this revolutionary question, which is like almost impossible to resolve.

What's most important from my perspective is are there changes in in capabilities or organizational possibilities that are influencing how militaries fight and then what does that mean for force structure doctrine training um you know promotions and you know like thus like how does that impact the character of warfare and i do think that we are seeing a shift in uh the character of warfare Like Lucas is fascinating in this regard, you know, like the American Shaheed in that A, it went from sort of flash to bang in 18 months, which is incredibly unusual for any American kind of like weapon system, frankly.

And B, like the last time as far as I know that the U.S. copied another country's military technology was like a Russian pontoon bridge in the 1970s.

So it's been a minute and it tells you something about the way that warfare is changing, that the U.S. is now copying the technology of countries like Iran.

And the U.S. did this even before seeing the Shahids more firsthand in Operation Epic Fury.

And so I do think that Ukraine has really become a battle lab for the world where every new weapons technology is getting tested.

And frankly, that's where Shahids prove themselves.

in the part of Russia.

Now we see Russia doing things like introducing faster versions, like turbofan versions, other things designed to make them harder to shoot down.

We're seeing this iterative development cycle play out in a way that is very clearly, both the world is watching and now we are experiencing it in the context of Epic Fury.

And I think we haven't gotten into yet, but I want to make sure not to leave aside is the incredible work that US Central Command has done in targeting in Operation Epic Fury.

It doesn't mean that there haven't been mistakes.

but the ability to use AI-enabled systems, and specifically, like in this case, Maven Smart System, but there are potentially other possibilities as well, to be able to aggregate intelligence information, one, to provide transparency regarding the sources of that intelligence information, two, and then to cue that up for a commander for decision, three, in a way that is light years faster, than the sort of old, like entirely human and PowerPoint driven staffing system.

Like, I mean, if I was going to use the word revolutionary, describe anything in some ways, it would be like that just from like a rate of change perspective, which again, like doesn't mean that it's perfect and introduces questions surrounding, say, like automation bias and the use of these systems.

But it's frankly pretty extraordinary.

In the last six months, I've seen AI decision support tools move from basically the drawing board to the battlefield directly in a way that's been pretty incredible.

Now, bringing the Pacific in on this conversation, do you see any – God forbid there's conflict over Taiwan – Would you see any similarities? Do you think you'd see any similarities what we're seeing in the Middle East and in Europe that would happen over in that scenario? Yeah.

I think that the conflict in the Pacific would be different since it would be more a naval and air conflict than a sort of like grinding ground war.

And certainly different than what the U.S. was trying to achieve in the Iran context, at least as far as we know.

I think that the big difference, but like so, so like the conflicts are different.

But a lot of the capabilities would be really useful.

Like for example, a lot of the shorter range systems that Ukraine has employed or Russia has employed against Ukraine would have a lot of utility, say for Taiwan, or if you were fighting from the island trying to defeat a potential attacker in the Pacific, all some of those longer range systems like your Shahids, et cetera, could be really useful.

Longer range precise mass could be incredibly useful for generating a much more substantial rate of fire.

Both, frankly, for China on the offense seeking to attack targets and for those seeking to coerce and stop China.