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<\/a><\/p>\nHypersonic missiles, stealthy cruise missiles, and weaponized artificial intelligence have so reduced the amount of time that decision makers in the United States would theoretically have to respond to a nuclear attack that, two military experts say, it\u2019s time for a new US nuclear command, control, and communications system. Their solution? Give artificial intelligence control over the launch button.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n In an article<\/a><\/strong><\/span> in War on the Rocks<\/em> titled, ominously, \u201cAmerica Needs a \u2018Dead Hand,\u2019\u201d US deterrence experts Adam Lowther<\/strong> and Curtis McGiffin<\/strong> propose a nuclear command, control, and communications setup with some eerie similarities to the Soviet system referenced in the title to their piece. The Dead Hand was a semiautomated system developed to launch the Soviet Union\u2019s nuclear arsenal under certain conditions, including, particularly, the loss of national leaders who could do so on their own. Given the increasing time pressure Lowther and McGiffin say US nuclear decision makers are under,<\/span><\/p>\n \u201c[I]t may be necessary to develop a system based on artificial intelligence, with predetermined response decisions, that detects, decides, and directs strategic forces with such speed that the attack-time compression challenge does not place the United States in an impossible position.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In case handing over the control of nuclear weapons to HAL 9000 sounds risky, the authors also put forward a few other solutions to the nuclear time-pressure problem: Bolster the United States\u2019 ability to respond to a nuclear attack after the fact, that is, ensure a so-called second-strike capability; adopt a willingness to pre-emptively attack other countries based on warnings that they are preparing to attack the United States; or destabilize the country\u2019s adversaries by fielding nukes near their borders, the idea here being that such a move would bring countries to the arms control negotiating table.<\/span><\/p>\n Still, the authors clearly appear to favor an artificial intelligence-based solution.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cNuclear deterrence creates stability and depends on an adversary\u2019s perception that it cannot destroy the United States with a surprise attack, prevent a guaranteed retaliatory strike, or prevent the United States from effectively commanding and controlling its nuclear forces,\u201d they write. \u201cThat perception begins with an assured ability to detect, decide, and direct a second strike. In this area, the balance is shifting away from the United States.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n History is replete with instances in which it seems, in retrospect, that nuclear war could have started were it not for some flesh-and-blood human refusing to begin Armageddon. Perhaps the most famous such hero was Stanislav Petrov<\/strong>, a Soviet lieutenant colonel, who was the officer on duty<\/strong><\/span><\/a> in charge of the Soviet Union\u2019s missile-launch detection system when it registered five inbound missiles on Sept. 26, 1983. Petrov decided the signal was in error and reported it as a false alarm. It was. Whether an artificial intelligence would have reached the same decision is, at the least, uncertain.<\/span><\/p>\n One of the risks of incorporating more artificial intelligence into the nuclear command, control, and communications system involves the phenomenon known as automation bias. Studies have shown that people will trust what an automated system is telling them. In one study<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, pilots who told researchers that they wouldn\u2019t trust an automated system that reported an engine fire unless there was corroborating evidence nonetheless did just that in simulations. (Furthermore, they told experimenters that there had in fact been corroborating information, when there hadn\u2019t.)<\/span><\/p>\n University of Pennsylvania political science professor and Bulletin<\/em> columnist Michael Horowitz<\/strong>, who researches military innovation, counts automation bias as a strike against building an artificial intelligence-based nuclear command, control, and communications system.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cA risk in a world of automation bias is that the Petrov of the future doesn\u2019t use his judgment,\u201d he says, \u201cor that there is no Petrov.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The algorithms that power artificial intelligence-systems are usually trained on huge datasets which simply don\u2019t exist when it comes to nuclear weapons launches.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThere have not been nuclear missile attacks, country against country. And so, training an algorithm for early warning means that you\u2019re relying entirely on simulated data,\u201d Horowitz says. \u201cI would say, based on the state-of-the-art in the development of algorithms, that generates some risks.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Mostly, Horowitz thinks the United States wouldn\u2019t develop an artificial intelligence-based command, control, and communications system because, even if there may be less time to react to an attack in this era than in earlier decades, the government is confident in the military\u2019s second-strike capability.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAs long as you have secure-second strike capabilities, you can probably absorb some of these variations in speed, because you always have the ability to retaliate,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n Lowther and McGiffin point out that a second strike means there\u2019s already been a first strike somewhere.<\/span><\/p>\n Peter Sellers in Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n There is some precedent for the system proposed by the War on the Rocks <\/em>authors, who have served in government or in the military in nuclear-weapons-related capacities. In the fictional world of Hollywood, that precedent was established in Stanley Kubrick\u2019s nuclear satire Dr. Strangelove<\/em> and called the \u201cDoomsday Machine,\u201d which author Eric Schlosser<\/strong> described this way for The New Yorker<\/em>:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe device would trigger itself, automatically, if the Soviet Union were attacked with nuclear weapons. It was meant to be the ultimate deterrent, a threat to destroy the world in order to prevent an American nuclear strike. But the failure of the Soviets to tell the United States about the contraption defeats its purpose and, at the end of the film, inadvertently causes a nuclear Armageddon. \u2018The whole point of the Doomsday Machine is lost,\u2019 Dr. Strangelove, the President\u2019s science adviser, explains to the Soviet Ambassador, \u2018if you keep it a secret!\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n About two decades later, satire became closer to reality with the advent of the Soviet Union\u2019s semiautomated Dead Hand system<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, formally known as Perimeter. When that system perceived that the Soviet military hierarchy no longer existed and detected signs of a nuclear explosion, three officers deep in a bunker were to launch small command rockets that would fly across the country initiating the launch of all of the Soviet Union\u2019s remaining missiles, in a sort of revenge-from-the-grave move. The system was intended to enhance deterrence. Some reports suggest it is still in place.<\/span><\/p>\n The possibility that taking humans out of the loop might lead to an accidental launch and unintended nuclear war is a main element in US Naval War College Prof. Tom Nichols\u2019 harsh characterization of the Dead Hand system in a 2014 article<\/a><\/strong><\/span> in The National Interest<\/em>: \u201cTurns out the Soviet high command, in its pathetic and paranoid last years, was just that crazy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n But Lowther and McGiffin say a hypothetical US system would be different than Dead Hand because \u201cthe system itself would determine the response based on its own assessment of the inbound threat.\u201c That is to say, the US system would be better, because it wouldn\u2019t necessarily wait for a nuclear detonation to launch a US attack.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a>