Two. The coauthor with jeremy repton. Before supplies run out. That is a joke. And we are so pleased to have with us our two co panel to list mister lewis is a fellow at the strategic initiative. And also a long background in these issues in a number of governmental agencies that they were just complaining within the united nations. We were both really grateful to have them with us. I will describe some of the themes of the book. They will have about 20 to 25 minutes for your questions and answers and discussion. With that said, let me welcome all of you who are not from here. I could not think of a better place to talk about future technology that are prototype starship. It is an amazing facility. Looks like were already in the space age right here. I like to think Lindsay Lindsay weiss. And of course to the ai leadership in staff. In providing a nice home for them to do the research here. The book basically has three points to it. One is that a lot of the dances that advances that we are seen in technology in the economy are also coming to military weapon tree and so if you think about some of the major advances that you are seen. You are also seen great advances in robotics the unmanned areas that we have now seen that they are going to provide to military affairs. Much more complex drones, able vessels of the dont need a very large cruise. Drones that can operate in the air autonomously even ground vehicles and of course in tight missile defenses which is in the news. Cyber also presents just as we see the aggregation and rapid manipulation of data. And these algorithms to carry out everything from trading to Electrical Systems to the manager of social media and also seen in the military world. It was allegedly created by the United States and israel. Of course they have also been on the receiving end. And other alleged russian interference with the u. S. Electrical system. Also been on the defenses in cyber. In just a course of a few years. A rapid drop in the cost launching satellites into space thanks to private enterprise to space ex. At x. At the same time there is a lot of reluctance and concern concerned about the deployment of these technologies in warfare elon musk who himself is the have of the space x and the have of tesla recently issued a letter to weeks ago. With the Artificial Intelligence and weapon tree. Until three years ago. One of the founders of apple. In thousands of other scientists. To also call for regulation and prohibition and they fear a future where robots will make decisions on how to wage war where they will make decisions on whether to try to assassinate enemy leaders or attack ethnic groups or to invade or occupy territory. In a way it is a response to the efforts to create a ban or heavily regulate. We just think such efforts are doomed to failure. There has been a big advance in economics that is also technology that has also been married to similar changes in military affairs there has always been an effort to try to stop or abandon those new developments and have also been a failure. World war i. It really deployed for a first time in the broadway. The economic progress made during the industrial revolution. He saw the introduction of aircraft, submarines. People called for the banning of a lot of these new weapons. The only what that really succeeded was a ban on they were widely used. The second point we argue we should not actually. These new weapons. The past technical effects. It has been to make work cheaper more massproduced. More destructive and less discriminant in the sense that it was discriminated less between civilians. We think the new technologies actually have an opposite effect. With drones, cyber into space weapons the use of force could be much more precise less harmful. The third thing we would argue is that the main critics of these new technologies that come from some of the technologies themselves from the tech ceos have come from the United States nations. Many academics. In the field. Officials of other governments. Their main argument has been that work is going to become too easy when you can launch it by just pressing a button. Or when you can send a robot off to do the fighting. Why not ban these weapons to make work harder and more difficult to reduce were overall. That is not an argument about the technology its really an argument about the purpose of war. In the modern age. Whether there has been too much more or too little war. And so one thing we argue is that north korea or rwanda or syria we have examples where countries feel stuck between passivity or the step of deployed large amount of truth into resources and going there. These kind of technologies can provide nations with options in between doing nothing and going to fullblown war. It will hopefully lead to uses of force. They promote international order. Or allow great powers to have those disputes. Let me just close their before turning over to the commentators we are so welcome to have them here. A lot of the fear of a new weapon is because James Cameron is too good of a director. And he has convinced all of us that the terminator movies are what we should really fear. If we go down this route they will be left to terminator robots. They will somehow be lost. I love science fiction. It sounds like a great episode. Is it really a serious concern do we really had evidence of that happening. Has it ever happened before and why cant we take safeguards. Thank you with that i would like to turn it over to richard first. We look forward to your comments. Im coming at this from a little different angle having worked for the department of defense for quite a few years. And i taught at the National War College. Generally speaking what we try to do is figure out how to best use the technology so when i read in the book in my first thought is that doesnt sound like a very good idea. There is a different perspective. Let me take this to a different level. One of the things that we need to do coming from that perspective of america and being a representative of the American Government is we need to be concerned about how we can win if we use technologies we can preserve the system. The system does. And eventually the states that had different systems will begin to prevail we can maintain it for a longer time there is another thing thats going on along these lines. Our system in this International System it only worked as long as we can have that moral authority. If we start doing things which makes our allies uncomfortable about willing to work with us you have problems. So theres two sides to this. Even from the perspective of someone like me coming from the department of defense. We have to take into account some of what our allies and friends are saying. I am worried with this technological debate this is kind of serious and we have to be really careful about going along with what our american constituencies are trying to do in banning this technology or stopping technologies like robotics on the battlefield. Or the use of cyberspace. I dont think what theyre trying to do is necessarily logical i think there is a constituency out there that makes its living and make make their living by being anti u. S. And thats what they do. Doesnt matter what issue is. We cant take the arguments at face value. I dont think for the most part these guys are terribly serious at the end of the day because when we hear about the things that theyre saying or doing almost all of them in the legal way. In acts of practice we are doing things that they should say we shouldnt be doing. They are arguing that we shouldnt. It seems like everyone else is out there as well. Im not sure how serious the arguments are there making a lot of noise and i understand we need to take seriously what our allies are saying. I have not heard a lot of serious arguments again about using them on the battlefield. Or any of the other things that we are arguing against. Im trying to assess how serious these guys are in making these arguments against technology. Some would have to show me that they have a leg to stand on in the real world. So we had banned weapons in the past but usually it is weapons that had horrific effect. Weapons that dont have horrific effect are not banned. And i think that is one of the things we want to and about in this is not clear to me that johns points are wrong. If anything the new developments they will change warfare significantly. Anti satellite in space and hypersonic strike. It will be a different kind of battlefield. Its not clear to me that existing International Law one does not apply i think everybody agrees it does. That it wont reinforce some of the laws of the conflict. It is a bit premature. The audience we just heard about the International Lawyers. Another want to bear in mind is an old armscontrol trick is to write a treaty that bans what the opponent is doing. I would be except if the russians or chinese did not do that. The classic example is the Foreign Ministry and the satellite weapons up until the morning that they were if you expect that the opponents will take advantage of efforts to constrain the u. S. Without them selves being constrained. When you think about russian behavior. If youre thinking about this largely in the context. Why are we so risk adverse. What you had people writing about technologies that do not exist or if they do exist they had been around for a long time. The patriot has an autonomous mode. It is not the end of the world. It is profitable i preferable i think to have a machine shot out but you had people who object seriously to this. The western society. We are much more risk adverse that was the source of the godzilla movie. This is a replay of this. We worry about catastrophes that probably wont happen and this might be one of them. So when i look at these things for me it is just the further continuation of the technologies that have made militaries more effective we are not alone. Everyone i soon knows that they leading expert is china were not in first place. There is a larger debate about how the weapons bring unknown peril to the future of conflict. I will stop at that. We get of a larger discussion about improved military capabilities you could make the case about great powers more cautious. That reduces the risk. The unbelief is that we will never see another world war Something Like world war ii. I think most countries will want to avoid that. One of the reasons we want to avoid that is precisely because the increased capabilities provided by new military systems exit so costly. But that is not an argument for banning them. I want to briefly address one issue thats come up and goes to the true aspect of it. Maybe a lot of this talk about banning in control. Im open to that. Just see have a frame of reference. In the cyber area neater nato sponsored project of coming up with a manual of how the conflict applies to cyber. It is not officially an nato document but the center for excellence brought in scholars from around the world. Most of them are people who are affiliated with governments. And they came up with this quite bulky study about how they apply to cyber operations. And they assert very confidently. In all of the rules have to be applied. And you might think that is just like one thing. There are four heating things that have been written by private scholars and is not working for government. And then the original talent manual its called is now in the second adjust addition. Its longer and more detailed than the first. The launch for the second manual here in washington. It was interestingly sponsored by by the dutch government. People who were involved with that said we came out with a Second Addition three years later they expressed so much interest. Maybe these are not exactly the rules but there must be rules and the kind of like the rules. I dont know im not sure anybody could tell you what would really happen with extremely disruptive cyber attacks. Lets make them more and more detail. I think the point of that is to be inhibiting and i think the way governments work they are very much getting a lot of that. It makes it look as if it has all worked out. They are all saying that the lawyers cannot extrapolate how this works. I just want to say at least in some areas there are whole lot of people generating a whole lot of things that look semi authoritative. Is that a few people just saying things on tv. I sort of follow on that. It discourages people who need to think about this from thinking in a serious way. The point of our book is not just lets cut loose and beat wild. Its not the point at all. The new technologies put us in many ways and context into a different situation and we should think about how this works. Let me just give two examples. The main treaty is going back to the 1970s. The distinction between military targets which are permissible and civilians not only civilian human beings but the infrastructures is literally the way of casting this. If there is going to be incidental harm to objects and infrastructures has to be incidental. It cant be the thing youre aiming at. It still cant be more than that. You have to hit some civilian things. The whole way of thinking. If you bombed cologne a lot of stuff. It better be worth it. The whole way of thinking about it which makes a certain sent if you are sending in a lot of bombers to hit a city with 1943 technology. They could not get within a 5mile radius of the attendant target. They were not close to their actual target which is why it they needed sony bombers. You can to say that iranian to refine that. When i can blow anything up. Were just can target the industrial control it just incapacitated this particular piece of equipment. If you talk about the lawyers question. First of all was that a permissible target. Was it a military target. They swear up and down it was a Peaceful Nuclear reactor. Is it civilian. That itself is somewhat disputed. And even if you said their capacity to produce a bomb down the road you did this incidental damage in the meantime. That whole set of questions that people have learned how to ask the kind of technology that we have in the 1970s it just doesnt really make sense when youre dealing with cyber strikes. You might want to do before you are actually involved in this. The main point is its not only a matter of who they will inhibit us from doing things that we should do that from thinking in an imaginative weight in a creative way in an appropriate way what do they enable us to do. What kind of limits do we not want to have. We just need have a more open consideration of these things rather than in our robotic way. Lets just go planking forward. I was actually in town. Can they captured tigers. Great powers behave in a certain way. You really need to look at the p5 for tat perhaps even a subset. It does not like that at all. It will do what it needs to do. And if a member chooses not to pursue these technologies they may be disqualified themselves from being a great power in the future. More importantly the treaties have some value because they set these rules for how warfare should be in an engaged way that minimizes civilian damage. The Geneva Convention and the protocols does all came and they were posted factor. One of the things i worry about the came after morse where we saw aerial bombardment. Thats what inspired them. As you said we are theorizing that. It may not be a good way to do it. Usually these sorts of constraints are posted factor. There is another issue here that is really important. How the laws in norms in tradition work in this field. It something i spent a lot of time thinking about over the last ten years or so. And it strikes me that it is very subversive. We always think about a giant cyber pearl harbor. What happens is your opponents find some way to get inside of your system they do it subtly. They find something that allows them to penetrate you without penetrating you. You want to be able to keep warming up at that water. But never to the point where it forces them to actually take defense. And do something big. Our adversaries have gotten very good at this sort of thing. The russians as well. They are often legal teachings. They allow them to get into the system. With ways that we cant resist. One of the things that has been in the news a lot lately. Has been the Chinese Companies purchasing u. S. Companies. And you see them buying strategic technologies. They come up with a Great Technology or company why not let them as an american having the freedom of our property you want to sell that. But once that technology is in the hands of the Chinese Government can be used to do is similarly devastating things to our military, our economy are Critical Infrastructure and so forth. That is a chink in our armor. How do you revise our laws and traditions in such a way that we can start to address the critical vulnerabilities which exist because we had outpaced what we need in an earlier era. This is something i think really needs to be addressed whenever we talk about new technologies. I will continue even though i am a coauthor i will still be the moderator. We will change this and its a strange position to be in. As an asian kid my mother would say and i know she was really proud of me she would say thats a good score but why do you do better. Having heard these two comments why dont we do better in our book. Is there something we should have added. But what would you say in response to these these two points. Its hard to know what the real significance of it is particularly when were not fighting it. It is the easiest thing. We would never do that. We just when it appeared we are teaching this that we are not supposed to do. What does that tell you. Since you posted that as a question. I wish i knew the answer to these things and then it would have a chapter i think this is a pervasive feature of modern life. If they keep seeing them. You start to worry that kind of makes a different. If i could give you an analogy which i probably shouldnt i will anyway. Betsy devos was at my School People have gone really crazy with these procedures. And i think part of the reason that they went a little bit extreme. They kept saying things they didnt quite fully think but they just kept saying it. There was a certain moat to bashan. I think the main interest the main importance of these weapons what begins as it allows us to deliver coercive strikes in a compact city. I think it was excellent. And nobody in the world no government said that. It is precisely in that shadowland where you are not an all out war and yo