Geostrategic Media Political Commentary, Analysis, Security, Defense
Giancarlo Valori
The incoming US Secretary of the Air Force said that China was winning the battle of Artificial Intelligence over the United States. He admitted that China would soon defeat the United States in this high-tech field.
Although the Secretary of the Air Force appointed by President Joe Biden has not yet taken office, he publicly replied to the biggest recent controversy in US political and military circles: the Air Force Chief Software Officer, Nicholas Chaillan, who resigned on October 11 last, said that China had already overtaken the United States and won the battle of Artificial Intelligence against it.
Kendall III said he agreed with the statement made by Chaillan. Nicholas Chaillan told the media that the United States not only made slow progress in the field of Artificial Intelligence, but that the said progress was also limited by various rules. China is already far ahead. Kendall III did not contradict Chaillan as some people did, but offered to invite the former employee to continue participating in the relevant discussions.
US Air Force spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Justin Brockhoff announced: ‘Secretary Kendall thanked Chaillan for his contribution to the Air Force. The two discussed the suggestions made by Chaillan for the future development of the DOD software. Secretary Kendall and Chaillan reserved the possibility of future discussions.”
Artificial Intelligence is currently a highly competitive field in Chinese and US science and technology circles. Its uses include the design of computer technologies that can think and act like humans to perform various complex tasks. Both the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America compete for dominance in this field.
Artificial Intelligence technology has penetrated all areas of each country’s corporate and national security sectors and is used to plan, design and implement specific actions for complex affairs.
Chaillan had previously told the media that after Kendall had contacted him personally and confidently, he agreed to serve as an unpaid consultant for the Department of Defense. Chaillan believes that Kendall’s connection demonstrates that the Secretary is determined to make changes to support the US government to excel once again in the competition for Artificial Intelligence.
Chaillan said: “The facts are very simple. Kendall contacted me soon after I had announced my resignation, and most experts and managers would not have been interested in me and would not have continued to work hard to remedy this handicap. This meant to me that Kendall really wanted to do something”.
There is no specific information yet on whether the US federal government will respond positively and quickly to Chaillan’s warning.
Chaillan said he was willing to attend the hearings held by Congress, but hoped that some of the hearings would not remain confidential so that the public could hear his views.
Some experts outside the US Administration said that the issue of who would win the Artificial Intelligence competition was still unresolved. Jim Waldo, an IT scientist and Chief Technology Officer at Harvard University, said he was not as pessimistic as Chaillan about the US chances in the Artificial Intelligence battle against the People’s Republic of China. Waldo pointed out that most of the US investment in technological innovation came from private companies, rather than government-funded university research.
Waldo wrote in an email: “The idea that this research will be driven by the military is a bit ridiculous…. The Department of Defence, however, should enhance the use of this technology and government funding should also increase to encourage an open development of the sector. We have not failed yet, but if we do not invest in the future it will end badly.”
Some media reports also pointed out that, in fact, Chaillan’s original statement was that if the United States did not increase investment and make plans and projects advance, it would lose in the field of Artificial Intelligence. His speech, emphasised by third parties, has become a further hotly debated topic in US politics. Some Republicans use it as an argument against Biden’s Administration, and other members of the US military forces are quick to exploit it to ask for more government funding.
Over and above the controversy and disappointment prevailing in the United States, the news has gone around the world. Reuters reported: “China has won the Artificial Intelligence battle with the United States and is on its way to global domination thanks to its technological advances, as the former Pentagon Chief Software Officer told the Financial Times“.
Furthermore, the British news agency reported other serious statements by Chaillan: “We have no chance of fighting China in 15 to 20 years. Right now, it is already a done deal; in my opinion it is already over. […] Whether it takes a war or not is something of an anecdote”.
“China is destined to dominate the future of the world, controlling everything from media storytelling to geopolitics,” he said.
Chaillan blamed slow innovation and the reluctance of US companies, such as Google, to work with the State on Artificial Intelligence, as well as extensive ethical debates on technology.
Google, instead, was not immediately available for comments outside of business hours.
As Chaillan said, Chinese companies are obliged to work with their government and are making “massive investment” in Artificial Intelligence without regard to ethics. Indeed, the so-called ethics would be respect for privacy which, as demonstrated in my article of October 7 (https://formiche.net/2021/10/internet-privacy-whatsappa-facebook/), is just a chimera.
He said that the US cyber defences in some government departments are at “kindergarten level”.
On October 10 – the same day on which Chaillan made his statements – the People’s Republic of China published a scheme to promote nationwide standardised development in its quest for high-quality development and modernisation.
The document – published jointly by the General Offices of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council – provides details about the measures to ensure that the country achieves its long-term development goals until 2035.
With the improvements to be made to the standardised management system, a government- and market-driven, business-oriented development model, characterised by mass participation, openness and integration, will take shape in China by 2035.
As noted in the document, by 2025 reforms will be made to the standardisation work. Both the government and the market will contribute to the standard-setting process. All economic sectors will be covered by industry standards, and international cooperation on standardisation work will be widely deepened.
Echoes of the statements made by Chaillan and the recent Chinese successes have recently led some of Wall Street’s biggest names to say that China’s economic prospects “look brighter than ever”. China is “too big to ignore”, as recently reported by The New York Times.
Indeed, fully understanding and correctly forecasting the Chinese economy has always been a topic to which the world pays great attention.
During China’s economic take-off in recent decades, rumours predicting China’s collapse have been almost absent. The Chinese economy, however, continues to grow and improve, and its development record has been unquestionably impressive. Those who often spoke ill of the Chinese market were often contradicted by reality.
Actions speak louder than words. China has its own way of developing its economy and has gained valuable experience over the years. If the Western economic and political communities still try to interpret the Chinese economy without thinking outside the old box, or give up their preconceived idea, the Chinese economy will continue to be a myth for them.
In view of making its economy grow effectively, China has been able to maintain consistency and adapt to change.
While the world is going through transformations rarely seen in a century and, at the same time, is grappling with the Covid-19 pandemic, China has not only kept its macroeconomic policies stable, but has also prepared to build a new development model and promote quality development.
As a result, China was the only major economy in the world that recorded positive growth last year and its economy grew by 12.7% in the first half of this year. These results demonstrated the strong resilience of the Chinese economy and injected confidence into the global economic recovery.
China has also been willing to use policy instruments to push forward reforms, stimulate innovation and give new momentum to development.
China has continuously improved its scientific and technological innovation ability, optimised government services and stabilised industrial supply chains so that the real economy could be better served.
As commented in an article published by Singapore’s leading daily Lianhe Zaobao earlier this year, “China is focused on doing its job. This is not only the right choice, but also the source of strength for China to continue resisting pressure”.
In this highly interconnected world, China believes that playing the “zero-sum game” is not in the interest of the international community. China has always been firmly committed to openness and cooperation and has always tried to promote its own development by stimulating the common development of the entire planet.
Although economic globalisation has been put to a hard test, China has continued to join with others around the world to build an open global economy, with an even stronger commitment to openness.
It has implemented the Foreign Investment Law, further opened up its financial sector in an orderly way, and created platforms such as China International Import Expo and China International Fair for Trade in Services to share its development opportunities with everybody.
More importantly, the Belt and Road Initiative-Silk Road-has been increasingly seen everywhere as a path to prosperity, innovation, health and green development.
All over the world, there are currently ever more people who have begun to deeply recognise that China’s vigorous economic development has a positive meaning for the global economy, and it is unpopular to play the game based on the theories of “decoupling” and “China’s threat”.
As long as in the West there are those who are still obsessed with a downward view of the future of China’s economy, and rely on their old way of thinking and deep ideological bias, they will be proved wrong again and again.
