Abstract: Artificial intelligence is one of the most discussed and alarming technologies that can entirely change the nature of warfare in the times to come. Man is the most hazardous species on the planet earth who has done an enormous harm to life and after two World Wars we are once again marching towards the third that can completely wipe out the traces of life on earth. The article discusses the development of AI in the field of Modern warfare and the technologies employed for their creation and operation.
Introduction
The Russian Warship Moskva was sunk in the black sea by a drone named Bayraktaras claimed by Ukraine and US (BBC). Cyber-attacks on Ukrainian’s communication system by Russia, Clearview AI used by Ukraine for facial recognition to identify the dead, and many other technologies are being tested in the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The hacking of defence, space and communication installation has become a new regime in operation that invokes a counter deterrent regime. It is feared by many that with the excessive use of technology man can be enslaved by machines and human species could be exterminated with the ushering in of the robotic era.
The Background
The fire lance, which initially appeared in China during the 10th and 12th centuries, was the world’s first firearm. A bamboo tube filled with gunpowder that is fastened to a spear is how a fire lance was manufactured (Andrade, 2016). There is a big hand of technology from this era to a self-steering bullet gun. Bayonets, rifles, revolvers, machine guns, grenades, artillery, mortars, and tanks were the main weapons in World War I. The front-line artillery of World War I was the most powerful weapon.
AI in Recent Conflicts
In the current ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, drone assaults have replaced the use of fighter jets in confined areas. Soldier equipment is geared with sensors that can tell how much ammunition is left, the health of the armor, and many more. The seismic and acoustic sensors used in 1B75 Penicillin are a success for Ruselectronics and the Russian Armed Forces. This acoustic-thermal artillery reconnaissance system aims to locate enemy artillery, mortars, anti-aircraft, or tactical-missile firing position, without emitting any radio waves (Nikolov, 2022). The range of effective communication with other military assets is up to 40 kms and is capable to be operated in fully automatic mode.
During the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, Russia conducted many cyber-attacks such as DDoS attacks which had a significant impact on cybercrime activity and created chaos by stealing the important information about the government and leaking the information (Pavel and Holland, 2022). It also installed destructive malware and forged attacks such as phishing, SQL injection to destroy Ukraine’s network completely so that the communication could not take place. Meanwhile, Elon Musk was asked for help to sustain its network for communication and deal with all the cyber-crimes by deploying Starlink satellites that provide high-speed internet to maintain communication all over Ukraine even if the ground infrastructure is destroyed (Dave, and Dastin, 2022).
On January 11, 2023 the US aviation system suffered a massive glitch, leading to cancellation of flights across the country. The Federal Aviation Administration held that they were ‘experiencing an outage that is impacting the update of Notice to Air Missions (NOTAMs). Although, the cyberattack has been ruled out yet the grand failure could be one in the series of latest attacks. According to CNN, in October 2022, a Russian hacking group called Killnet claimed a cyber-attack on the United States multiple airports where most of the attack was the denial of service which caused inconvenience to the public to access information or aims to flood the servers with fake web traffic (Wallace & Lyngass, 2022).
The cyber-attacks proved to be more effective than dropping a nuclear bomb. Meanwhile, other countries like India, China, and Japan are now aware of the cyber threats and by seeing the capabilities of Russian hackers on America and Ukraine one must be ready for the worst. India has the second largest population in the world and thus owns a large amount of data which is rising day by day and can be easily hacked if India’s Defence Cyber Agency (DCA) doesn’t work on monitoring the military cyber infrastructure along with the public as well. However, India has already taken a step by focusing on IT for students in the early stage of learning. Educating people about cyber ethics can at least reduce 1% of breach risks.
Conclusions
This is just the beginning of the technologies used in war. Nations are building the best technologies to dominate the whole world without seeing the risk of invoking the robotic era. Giving machine a brain will erase the human race. Imagine a robot designed with an AI system that can work on its failure and update itself for the best accuracy. Moreover, some of the models are already developed and scientists are very much aware of the disasters that can come their way. Elon Musk once stated the danger of using AI and how AI can outsmart humans (TOI, 2023). However, will the building of an AI robot for Tesla boost its productivity or take the man one step closer to the end, is the question?
Source: Modern Diplomacy
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