Former Senior Pentagon Official Says China is Kicking Our Butt in Artificial Intelligence

A former senior Pentagon official recently quit his job over frustrations with the government’s obvious incapability to make significant headway on artificial intelligence and cybersecurity—two areas he says China will probably surpass us in if we don’t get our shit together.

Nicolas Chaillan, who previously worked as the Air Force’s first Chief Software Officer, says that America is setting itself up to lose the tech war. Chaillan took on the position in 2018, hoping to assist the government implement new cybersecurity and cloud initiatives. Nevertheless, he claims that government red tape, bureaucratic negotiations, and a  strategy to implementing solutions annoyed his efforts—and that similar issues are stalling America’s ability to remain competitive.

In consequence, Chaillan quit his position last month, subsequently penning a in which he basically accused the Department of Defense of tripping over itself and hindering its own progress. In a recent with Financial Times, Chaillan similarly stated that he feared for his children’s future and that Americans needs to be “angry” concerning the state of their country’s defense capabilities: “We’ve got no competing fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years. Right now, it’s already a done deal; it’s already over in my opinion,” he grimly informed the outlet, while additionally commenting that China was headed for “global dominance.”

Chaillan, who currently runs a private cybersecurity practice, additionally blamed debates on the “ethics of AI” for slowing down U.S. progress, and informed the outlet that he plans to testify to Congress in coming weeks concerning the importance of prioritizing cybersecurity and AI development.

In his remarks, Chaillan joins a growing chorus of tech and national security professionals who claim that China is basically set to via its superior technological capacity and rising economic power. There’s some debate as as to whether these issues are legitimate .

There definitely appears to be proof for Chaillan’s assertions about U.S. cybersecurity—indeed, America’s failures ought to be self-evident by now. If nothing else, that saw droves of federal agencies compromised by foreign hackers confirmed that America’s security standards have to be vastly improved.

As to the whole artificial intelligence thing, the competition between the U.S. and China points to a grim for who could make the best killer robot first—the likes of which appear to make a -like future all but inevitable. It’s additionally worth noting that for this arms race are currently Google, Amazon, and other tech giants, which stand to make truckloads of money if the government decides to splurge on new AI investments.

Admittedly, there is likely to be other ways America may curb China’s ascent to the status of evil, world-clutching technocracy other than simply attempting to beat them to the punch (the concept of and a system of sanctions for non-compliant nations comes to mind). If Chaillan’s assertions are true, nobody in Washington considers these feasible, realistic, or profitable solutions.