Armenia's National Security needs both Futurists and Traditionalists.
Armenia's National Security needs both Futurists and Traditionalists.
Drones, AI, Quantum Computing: The 21st century freedom fighter?
Since the Stone Age…
groups of humans have found new means to protect and kill one another. Thanks to technology.
Stone spears, iron swords, guns, and bombs transformed the globe, while other tech became tools for farming and building. At the same time, peaceful technologies like the printing press and computers disrupted governments, economies, and societies. There no longer is a natural selection, sorry Darwin, humans are just too amazing.
Technological change is not new. Nor does a focus on technology at this moment make one a “futurist.” Technology is an instrument of national power, a power fueled by the human capital of its citizens. With so many new technologies with potentially transformative applications emerging at once, focusing on understanding, developing, and leveraging these technologies is well justified, even if it seems myopic at times.
If the Republic of Armenia wants to stop aligning its national security with Russia, should it work towards building a comparative advantage in frontier technologies? It should not focus on developing NEW technologies but rather focus on using what already exists, 100% better than anyone else.
China and the United States are the epicenters of the “Computer Revolution”. Both nations are consistently creating and innovating technologies at an unparalleled speed. For a quarter-century, military, intelligence, and political leaders have argued that a divide exists between those who believe these technologies are critical to a nation’s security (“futurists”) and those who do not (“traditionalists”).
Does a nation’s success only attribute to its ability to create, develop, and leverage new technologies?
I certainly do believe technology is the only aspect of nations’ security. Would I be considered a futurist? Sure, I and other researchers may focus on technology to the exclusion of other elements of national power, but so too may other researchers emphasize diplomacy, trade, or military organization above other elements of national power (traditionalists). Armenia should be focused on owning an advantage in frontier technologies, it should focus on the future. But the reality is, Armenia is much more traditionalist. In order to blend both methodologies, policies, and organizational cultures, Armenia should not focus on developing NEW technologies, but rather focus on utilizing what already exists, 100% better than anyone else. It just so happens that right now, the technological face of national power is changing drastically, with what’s available and underutilized, Armenia can greatly benefit itself and larger nation-states.
Technology as an Element of National Power
Technology is clearly at the core of most military power. Technology enables the acquisition, improvement, and sustainment of military capabilities. A dirigible fleet might have made some sense in 1921, but states have fighter aircraft, bombers, helicopters, and unmanned vehicles now. These capabilities matter for hard power-based strategies too. Deterrence requires a state to have the capability to follow through with a threat.
Nuclear deterrence is the ultimate expression of how technology shapes military power and strategy because it revolves around the possession of nuclear weapons enabled by submarines, missiles, bombers, and other supporting systems. Whether a particular technology actually matters is an important question, but technology is still central.
Better technology also means more demand for and impact in foreign military assistance. States benefit more when they are provided with cutting-edge weapons. Military assistance can also help the United States and others improve and build relationships with weapon recipients and exercise influence. After the success of the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drone in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, Ukraine bought the system from Turkey too. Providing drones and other weapons to a state creates a level of dependency for future maintenance, parts, and upgrades. Could Armenia develop military technologies other nations would pay them for?
Other Elements of National Power Support Technology
American and Russian/China battles over propaganda, news, and culture in the 21st century are only possible because of the internet. During the Cold War, it was the radio. The voice of America needs a megaphone to be heard across the globe. So does Russia’s, so does China’s. In the Middle East, Saudi and Iran are notorious for controlling their societies and the image of their society to outsiders, mostly through social media technology.
As technology supports the military, diplomatic, and economic power, so too do those elements of power support technology.
The quest for military superiority has long driven innovation. The Global Positioning System (GPS) used throughout the civilian world is fundamentally a U.S. military system — the U.S. Space Force designs, develops, and sustains the 24 satellites that comprise the GPS constellation. Military funding made possible a host of other transformative inventions from the internet to the walkie-talkie. Although the private sector now drives the current explosion of artificial intelligence, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency funding over the past decades helped make that explosion possible.
Diplomacy helps technology too. The United States funds scientific research around collective global problems like climate change and disease hosts scientific exchanges and embarks on joint ventures like the International Space Station, none of which would be possible without American diplomatic resources. The United States also inks research and development agreements to pool resources, access specialized expertise, and generally respond to shared threats. Technology-specific opportunities exist too, such as trading datasets to create larger, more diverse datasets to train AI algorithms.
Innovation requires the resource commitment to experimenting, quickly decide if the experiment is worthwhile, and if it is, transition the innovation to operations, organization, and strategy. Researchers also must have the flexibility and freedom to explore new ideas, even ones that may upend the status quo. People need resources and freedom too. A prosperous, free state draws the best and brightest from around the world, especially when a talent for major technology like artificial intelligence comes from abroad.
Today’s Technology Focus for Armenia
Focusing on technology is appropriate because it is changing in major ways, with significant implications for broader national power. Artificial intelligence has broad applications across warfare, from improving financial management and payroll systems to streamlining logistics, building sophisticated autonomous drone swarms, and identifying nuclear submarines. 3-D printers are producing COVID-19 masks, mobile trailers, drones, and parts for the International Space Station. Technology evangelists claim 3-D printing could revolutionize manufacturing. At the same time, CRISPR-CAS9 (short for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) enables easier genetic engineering to improve agricultural research and develop better cancer medications, and it may enable the acquisition of current and novel biological weapons agents, enhance the capabilities of those agents, and potentially create genetically engineered super soldiers. Regardless of whether these technologies are about to turn Star Trek from science fiction into reality, there are clearly opportunities and risks that the Republic of Armenia should identify, exploit, and counter as appropriate.
The Republic of Armenia needs to ensure this element of national power is well integrated with military, diplomatic, and economic power. Specifically, Armenia should undertake the following steps.
Search for Synergies:
Armenia should search for opportunities to connect technology and other instruments of national power. For example, Taiwan’s investment in a new AI business park shows the country desires a more robust AI capability. Encouraging Armenian companies, universities, and agencies to find opportunities for joint AI development could generate wealth for both Armenia and Taiwan, leading to military-relevant innovations, support Armenia-Taiwanese relations, and strengthen overall an important partner. Likewise, Taiwan could aim to encourage friends and allies to create and expand similar types of efforts with Armenia, such as India and Japan’s cooperation on unmanned ground vehicles. Bilateralism could be extended to multilateralism to create a regional technology forum for friends and allies to share their work and identify new opportunities for collaboration.
Align Technology to Objectives:
If technology is a core component of national power, investment, research, acquisition, policy, and strategy around technology should be aligned to support national objectives. Armenia must work towards a national technology strategy. Such a strategy should emphasize not only which technologies matter but how best to integrate the national security bureaucracy to serve broader objectives. In the last few years, the United States has established the Department of Defense Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, the Army Futures Command, the State Department Bureau for Cybersecurity and Emerging Technologies, and the new post of deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology. An effective strategy should answer several questions How best can these organizations work together and with existing technology-related organizations? And how best can the bureaucracy accelerate the technology pipeline, moving from an initial concept to working prototype to testing and verification to operations across the military, national security complex, and society as a whole?
Technology is just one element of national power, but the most important. The Armenian government must consider how technology best serves its objectives in conjunction with other capabilities. That means the government needs folks to think about the implications of emerging technology, just as it needs folks to think about global changes in trade regimes, international organizations, and military strategy. Creating an artificial divide between emerging technology and everything else is a mistake.
Armand has worked as an investment analyst and technology project manager for the last 5 years. Prior to Grüv & Illuria Security , Armand spent 2 years with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he was responsible for budgeting, marketing, and overseeing business deliverables for NASA’s “Juno” spacecraft. Fun fact: Juno now orbits Jupiter. Most recently, Armand spent his time working as a Derivatives Analyst at the TCW Group - an asset management firm with over $200 Billion under management. He was in charge of trading documentation, onboarding assets in excess of $1B via Future and OTC Clearing, and servicing over 200 clients while negotiating over 50 successful trading documents with broker/dealers. An avid lyricist and poet, Armand has been writing and recording his own hip hop tracks since he was 14.