Defence
By Hannah Martinez
Hannah Martinez is a second-year War Studies student participating in an exchange program with Sciences Po. She is interested in analyzing the threats to the ideal of Western Democracies as well as studying the causes and impacts of the civil and proxy wars in the Middle East. This past summer, she has been interning at the European American Chamber of Commerce based in Paris.
The 2020s: the decade of the reign of Artificial Intelligence and old power competitions
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n the light of what is often referenced to as a contemporary Cold War between the People’s Republic of China and the United States, the defence policy of each country involved with those two actors is pivotal in the decade to come. The analysis of the prospective changes to national defence policies is therefore predominant to attempt to foresee the futur state of relations within the international system. First of all, technological progress regarding weapons can be analyzed as a change in the national defence policies of the 2020s. These technological advancements in weapons range from futuristic concepts such as the Russian hypersonic glide vehicle “Avangard“ who’s production began in 2017, to Artificial Intelligence (AI) cyberspace based weapons and hypersonic weaponry. Some weapons, such as drones, that have existed since the 1930s, have been or will also be perfected. The first massive swarm drone strike for example happened in September 2019 and was perpetrated by Houthi rebels against two oil production facilities in Saudi Arabia. [1] The main characteristic of the majority of these new weapons is that they are “standoff” weapons which means they are activated and used from a certain distance. The particularity of these weapons firstly entails a certain level of precision as they
are used and set off most likely in the comfort of an office space in which there is a possibility of hindsight and control of the situation. This characteristic allows a more reasoned use of force. Furthermore, “standoff“ weapons allow, by definition, discretion as well as the possibility of deniability, which has been and will be used by the political or military actors. [2] Finally, it can be argued that the technological advancement, violence and efficiency of these new weapons are new means of dissuasion. Moreover, these AI weapons consecrate big tech compagnies and GAFAs (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple) as major if not primary political and military actors of the 2020s, a process that gradually shifts the power relations between States that depend not only on the technological advancement some firms produce, but also on the data they detain. It is forecasted that warfare will also progressively become more net-centric, a phenomenon directly linked to the concept of Revolution in Military affairs. This concept implies that the military doctrine and paradigm of Western warfare has evolved and changed since the 1990s, a phenomenon that national defence policies of the 2020 only seem to confirm. Information and disinformation are now key in an increasingly interconnected global security environnement to which the Tech Giants, who detain the data, have the keys. Although social media has not been militarized, it is used by military actors and has been weaponized as a characterizing feature of the national defence policies of the 2020s and thus far. [3] The use and taming of Defence | 21
