As with most every other aspect of modern society, computerization, augmentation and automation have hyper-accelerated the pace at which wars are prosecuted -- and who better to help reshape the US military into a 21st century fighting force than an entire industry centered on moving fast and breaking things? In his latest book, War Virtually: The Quest to Automate Conflict, Militarize Data, and Predict the Future, professor and chair of the Anthropology Department at San José State University, Roberto J González examines the military's increasing reliance on remote weaponry and robotic systems are changing the way wars are waged. In the excerpt below, González investigates Big Tech's role in the Pentagon's high-tech transformations. Excerpted from War Virtually: The Quest to Automate Conflict, Militarize Data, and Predict the Future by Roberto J. González, published by the University of California Press. Ash Carter's plan was simple but ambitious: to harness the best and brightest ideas from the tech industry for Pentagon use.

Two start-ups leading the race to build the first self-flying taxis are using money from the US military. Last year, Kitty Hawk and Joby Aviation received a total of nearly $2m from the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx), a Pentagon organization founded to help America's military make faster use of emerging technologies. Neither company, nor the DIUx, disclosed the funding at the time. The website for Cora, Kitty Hawk's experimental air taxi, emphasizes its role in solving urban transportation challenges: "Cora is about the time you could save soaring over traffic. The people you could visit.

Two start-ups leading the race to build the first self-flying taxis are using money from the US military. Last year, Kitty Hawk and Joby Aviation received a total of nearly $2m from the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx), a Pentagon organization founded to help America's military make faster use of emerging technologies. Neither company, nor the DIUx, disclosed the funding at the time. The website for Cora, Kitty Hawk's experimental air taxi, emphasizes its role in solving urban transportation challenges: "Cora is about the time you could save soaring over traffic. The people you could visit.

To help close the gap, one Pentagon unit is now offering $100,000 in prizes to develop algorithms that can interpret high-resolution satellite images. The contest is called the xView Detection Challenge, and starts next month. Entrants will use a trove of hand-annotated satellite images released by the Pentagon to train algorithms to identify details relevant to disaster relief or humanitarian missions. Objects of interest include damaged buildings, utility trucks, and fishing boats. The project is being run by DIUx, an organization started by former Defense Secretary Ashton Carter to make it easier for his department to work with technology companies, particularly startups.

Defense Secretary James Mattis has a lot on his mind these days. Mattis admitted to that concern Thursday during the Silicon Valley leg of a West Coast tour that includes visits to Amazon and Google. When WIRED asked Mattis if the US had ambitions to harness recent progress in AI for military purposes like those recently espoused by China, he said his department needed to do more with the technology. "It's got to be better integrated by the Department of Defense, because I see many of the greatest advances out here on the West Coast in private industry," Mattis said. Mattis, speaking in Mountain View, a stone's throw from Google's campus, hopes the tech industry will help the Pentagon catch up.