Podcast: What Makes a Superpower? with Ash Carter

TRANSCRIPT: What Makes a Superpower? with Ash Carter

Ash Carter:

China has progressively proven itself not to be what Americans, including myself and perhaps naively hoped it would be.

Ian Bremmer:

Hi, I'm Ian Bremmer and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast, an audio version of what you can find on public television where I analyze global topics, sit down with big guests and make use of small puppets. This week I sit down with former Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter. He served under President Obama from 2015 to 2017. Today I'll ask him about how the world has changed since he was in the administration and what the current administration is or isn't doing to address those changes. Let's get to it.

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Ian Bremmer:

Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter.

Ash Carter:

And good to be with

Ian Bremmer:

You. Good to be with you as well here at the Belfer Center, which you direct at the Kennedy School. Also Innovation fellow at MIT. Got the physicist hat, got the public policy hat, lot to talk about. So maybe start with a combination of both, which is the role of technology in national security and a tough question at least for me, which is how aligned do American technology firms need to be with the Pentagon to ensure that we have adequate national security?

Ash Carter:

We in the department, I guess they now, but my beloved department needs the tech community enormously. Remember that there are two things that make us the finest fighting forest the world has ever known. It's our people and it's technology and when it comes to tech technology, we don't do things the Soviet Union way, we don't do things in house. We get our technology by relating to the vibrant external technology base that is largely commercial and increasingly global. And because of that, our relationship to them is very important. But it's changed greatly over the course of my lifetime. And so within my very first few weeks as Secretary of Defense, I went to Silicon Valley. I found that it was the first Secretary of Defense to go there in 20 years. That says a lot about our side of the equation. We weren't there.

Ian Bremmer:

Actually soon set up an office there.

Ash Carter:

I did. I set up some outposts, which were supposed to connect us and also to stand for this relationship and the importance of this relationship. Now, Ian, is you'll appreciate this and this may be also among the things you wanted to talk about today, and it's certainly something you know about. We can learn a lot from the tech community about how to do things in a way that comports with the kind of conduct they want us to have. I'm willing to meet a math way. For example, let's take autonomous weapons. When I was Deputy Secretary of Defense, I wrote a directive, which is still enforced today. This is in 2012. Now, nobody was talking about it, but I was thinking about it. What are we going to do when AI comes to the application of lethal force? And the way the directive reads, and this is your government's policy, I think appropriately so, is that there will be, when it comes to the application of lethal force in the US military, there will not be weapons that are autonomous. There will always be a human being involved in decision.

Ian Bremmer:

So robots can do no harm. It sounds Isaac Asimov.

Ash Carter:

Well, that robots are not going to be allowed to exercise what is an inherently public function, which is the use of violence to defend our ourselves, unless a human being can explain and defend how something like that happened. And here's how I imagined it at the time I did that.

Ash Carter:

Suppose I had ordered an airstrike or a drone strike or a night raid, and it was conducted by an autonomous, truly autonomous weapon and innocent people had been mistakenly targeted. And I come out the next morning and the reporters say, "Why did this happen? How did you let this happen?" I said, "Well, I don't know. The machine did it." You can immediately see that you can't let that happen. I have to be accountable. You would not accept that. And therefore, when it comes to the application of AI in warfare, there has to be enough transparency that there can be accountability.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, when AI gets to the point that you actually have these autonomous weapons that are fighting other autonomous weapons and that's happening faster than a human being would be able to make a conscious decision and intervene, does that mean we go back to the rule set?

Ash Carter:

It's a good question but I didn't say a person in the loop. I said a person involved in decision making. And that frequently means setting the rules by which the machine will then proceed with a set of...

Ash Carter:

Well, it doesn't quite make a decision. Say a guided missile, I write the program by which it will guide itself to its target. I authorize its launch, but I don't do the calculations that the seeker does at every minute to find its way to the target. I'm not in the loop, but I am responsible for the decision making and I'm ethically accountable for the decision.

Ian Bremmer:

But it is a step back from pulling the trigger, obviously from making that direct decision.

Ash Carter:

I think from a moral point of view, we can't ever say we have stepped back from that responsibility. I don't think that's acceptable in that or by the way anything else. I think this is a key question for AI in general. It is okay for AI to assist human decision making. When it comes to supplanting I erect a wall there and that is not a trivial thing to say from a... That's not a regulatory thing to say, that is a technological thing to say. You know something about AI, you know that AI has two parts to it. It has algorithms and it has data sets. The idea that there's going to be transparency and accountability in machine aided human action, it means that the way the algorithms act, there needs to be a design criterion that says you can, after a decision is made, so trace back how the decision is made.

Ash Carter:

That's not automatic in these multi-layered artificial intelligence algorithms. It needs to be designed. Likewise, you have to have data integrity. And this is a big challenge because in many cases, there's nothing wrong with the algorithm, but the data's garbage and then you're going to get garbage out if you put garbage in. So data integrity and algorithm transparency are the two technical consequences of what I'm talking about, and I by the way, think that's going to be true, whether it's in medical care or policing, sentencing, anything else that is done of consequence that uses AI.

Ian Bremmer:

So then is the primary ethical challenge here, given that rule set, not about a human being making a decision, but rather the comparative insulation of the human being from lethal force. In other words, you're in the trenches. You actually see the person that's direct. It has all of the moral and ethical consequence and immediacy that combat has. You're a fighter pilot, there's a large step that is removed from that and it becomes more video game like. You are actually operating a drone, but you're still actually launching that missile one more step back. You're the person that is creating the algorithm for the autonomous weapon. You're fully responsible, but the level of distance between you as that operator, that coder and those human beings who perhaps were killed by mistake, ultimately that's a pretty significant. What do you do as the person who's ultimately responsible? You or someone in your position to deal with that.

Ian Bremmer:

How do you respond to that challenge, that's only going to get much greater.

Ash Carter:

It doesn't seem from the seat of the Secretary of Defense or I would imagine the president who's ultimately responsible. It's more vivid than you might think, Ian, even in these circumstances where we're not doing the combat, I'm not kicking in the door, but I feel the weight, and right up until the day I left office in the morning, I woke up and James Mattis was in my shoes, a huge weight comes off your shoulder. This isn't a game.

Ian Bremmer:

And I accept that. I'm not pushing back against that. I'm asking you, I mean, we know how visceral it is when we talk about boots on the ground and we know that it's a lot easier to talk about sending some drones over to engage in strikes either ourselves or with proxies, say Saudi Arabia, Yemen as it is to say, we are going to actually send our citizens to fight as we are moving more towards autonomous weapons, in many cases fighting against autonomous weapons. The nature of war fighting is changing, and those decisions of necessity become a little less visceral, become a little easier. What do we need to do to ensure that we maintain the sanctity of humanity as war fighting fundamentally changes and becomes in many ways, dehumanize?

Ash Carter:

Yeah.

Ash Carter:

You simply have to, as a leader, say to yourself, I need to be able to go out and support and defend this. I need to be able to explain it to my people. I need to be explaining it to the President of the United States, and I need to explain it to my children. And I was comfortable doing that with every decision I ever made as Secretary of Defense, even though they had real consequences, and I know that. I believe that those were necessary and responsible decisions, even when they didn't work out perfectly. That's part of life. And if you're going to be in public life and you're going to be doing anything grave in life at all, that's part of the game.

Ian Bremmer:

So let's take that and move it to some geo-strategic questions around the world today, and there are plenty. And as you've said, you look at the priorities, say we got to be, we're America. We got to be ready for all those at the same time, how do you feel just generally about our war fighting capability and preparedness right now? You think it is what it was, where it was when you were Secretary of Defense?

Ash Carter:

Yeah. Things don't change that quickly. For China and Russia, we are still undergoing a transition, which I began and others with me from the era of focus almost exclusively on 15 years of counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism to getting back to full spectrum, what we call full spectrum warfare, which is really about Russia and China. Now, I like you Ian, have dealt with the Russians for a long time, 25, 30 years. For the last 25 years until four years ago when I was Secretary of Defense, we didn't have a comprehensive Russia war plan. We'd always had one when I was growing up in the Cold War days, then for 25 years we didn't have one. And I decided about four years ago when I was Secretary of Defense, we got to do that again. And I asked our commander or instructed our commander in Europe put together a comprehensive war plan.

Ian Bremmer:

So one more big hotspot. We haven't talked about China yet. And I mean here, not only do we have a military that is growing substantially from a pretty low base, but also technological capabilities that are seen as increasingly, at least at parity with that of the United States. If you were Secretary of Defense today compared to just a few years ago, how does your view on China evolve?

Ash Carter:

China has progressively proven itself not to be what Americans, including myself and perhaps naively hoped it would be, which is a country that would always be Chinese and would always be, but would increasingly conduct itself in a way that was broadly compatible with the way that we find it appropriate and necessary to conduct ourselves.

Ian Bremmer:

So to be clear on this, you think that China presently is behaving in ways that are incompatible with American national interests?

Ash Carter:

Yes. They, first of all...

Ian Bremmer:

So decision to call them a fundamentally strategic competitor in the new National Security document, you would agree?

Ash Carter:

I don't object to that. I don't object to that. I think that's just telling it like it is.

Ian Bremmer:

So what's most incompatible? Give me sort of your top three things China need to change [inaudible 00:14:09].

Ash Carter:

I think their trade practices have been predatory. And remember as a communist dictatorship, China is able to bring to bear on our companies and on other countries a combination of military, economic and political power that societies like ours and governments that operate in a system like ours cannot match. And so that is an uneven playing field. And we have not persuaded China. And by walking away from things like TPP, we have in fact seeded the field to them.

Ian Bremmer:

The transpacific partnership.

Ash Carter:

Yes, have seated the field to them so that they can use where they're strong, which is not trade based on principle, but trade based upon coercion. And so trade, first of all, I would say.

Ash Carter:

Secondly, I'm happy to have China conduct its affairs within its country the way it is but I can't admire what they're doing in Singh Jang to the Uyghurs.

Ian Bremmer:

With over a million in detention camps.

Ash Carter:

Yes, nor can I suggest that our good friends and allies begin to doubt the western system of political and economic, which is capitalism and political liberalism. I think those are better ways of running human societies. We're not proving that particularly right now, and the Chinese are using that to kind of undermine our system and suggest their system is better.

Ian Bremmer:

A relativist.

Ash Carter:

I don't agree with that. And on the military front, I think they're increasingly expanding their reach in ways that are quite coercive. And certainly that's the way a lot of countries around the Asia Pacific Theater feel that the Chinese are behaving. So in all of those ways, Ian, I think you have to say there's a competitive situation going on. Now I think you have to do everything you can to diffuse that. I don't want that to get out of control and I'm not for trying to put them out of business, but I don't seed our values and I don't want to seed our position in the world.

Ian Bremmer:

So I mean, these are three pretty heavy things. We're talking about the fundamental economic relationship between the two largest economies in the world. We're talking about their human rights and their domestic political system as it's structured, which is a top priority for them if they say is a red line when they negotiate with us and their military force posture and the coercion that you say that they use against other countries, allies of the Americans in the region and increasingly more broadly. Does that imply that we are moving inevitably towards a policy of containment towards the Chinese? Does that imply that we're moving inevitably towards a policy of Cold War?

Ash Carter:

Well, I don't like to use words like that because they take us back to an era, Ian, that you and I remember, but was a very different situation so I'd rather say something about a pushback and being realistic. The reason I don't like to liken it to the Cold War of the Soviet Union is this, yes, we had many decades in duration, fundamental ideological and geo-strategic competition with a communist dictatorship, but we didn't trade with it. Remember how we dealt with the Soviet Union? We put a membrane between us and them and nothing could get through. That's not the case with China and I'm not suggesting it should be the case with China. The trade with China and China trade with the rest of the world is inevitable and is on balance or can be on balance a positive thing. So we're not going to have the kind of containment we had when we was a Soviet Union. We need an economic playbook from our [inaudible 00:18:19].

Ian Bremmer:

For the technology piece increasingly sounds like containment. When we talk about 5G, rollout.

Ash Carter:

Well, we have to be realistic about protecting our advantage and recognizing that it is an uneven playing field when they can bring the tools of dictatorship to make an uneven playing field.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, people used to salute you when you were Secretary of Defense. You are now running a center at Harvard. Academics are, that's herding cats. Having fun?

Ash Carter:

I am and nevermind the egg heads. The students are the key.

Ian Bremmer:

Ash Carter, Professor Ash Carter, good to see you, my friend.

Ash Carter:

Good to be with you, Ian.

Ian Bremmer:

That's our show this week. We'll be right back here in next week. Same place, same time unless you're watching on social media, in which case, wherever you happen to be, don't miss it. In the meantime, check us out gzeromedia.com.

Announcer:

The GZERO World is brought to you by our founding sponsor, First Republic. First Republic, a private bank and wealth management company. Imagine a bank without teller lines where your banker knows your name, and its most prized currency is extraordinary client service. Hear directly from First Republic's clients by visiting firstrepublic.com.