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.

Early in the 2020 presidential campaign, Democratic candidates Pete Buttigieg and Andrew Yang tried to build political momentum around the claim that the United States is losing ground in a new arms race with China -- not over nuclear missiles or conventional arms but artificial intelligence, or AI. Around the same time, former President Trump launched the American AI Initiative, which sought to marshal AI technologies against "adversarial nations for the security of our economy and our nation," as Trump's top technology adviser put it. Buttigieg, Yang and Trump may have agreed about little else, but they appeared to go along with the nonpartisan think tanks and public policy organizations –– many of them funded by weapons contractors –– that have worked to promote the supposedly alarming possibility that China and Russia may be "beating" the U.S. in defense applications for AI. Hawkish or "centrist" research organizations like the Center for New American Security (CNAS), the Brookings Institution and the Heritage Foundation, despite their policy and ideological differences in many areas, have argued that America must ratchet up spending on AI research and development, lest it lose its place as No. 1. Just last week, the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) published a sweeping 756-page report, culminating two years of work following the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, asking Congress to authorize a $40 billion federal investment in AI research and development, which the NSCAI calls "a modest down payment."

A startup emerging out of stealth today wants to help companies understand massive stores of text data using AI. The company is called Primer, and it uses machine learning techniques to help parse and collate a large number of documents across several languages in order to facilitate further investigation. Here's how it works: Users feed Primer's software a stream of documents, and it automatically summarizes what it determines to be the most important information out of that haystack of data. Users are then able to filter by topic, event, and other categories to drill down into the information Primer collected so they can go beyond the automatically generated headlines. The idea is that Primer will augment work done by the human analysts who would ordinarily be tasked with the job of wading through many sources and collating them into a report.

A trio of new investments in Silicon Valley machine-learning startups shows that the U.S. intelligence community is deeply interested in artificial intelligence. But China is investing even more in these kinds of U.S. companies, and that has experts and intelligence officials worried. Founded to foster new technology for spies, the 17-year-old In-Q-Tel has also helped boost commercial products. Compared to a venture capitalist firm whose early-stage investments are intended to make some money and get out, the nonprofit's angle is longer term, less venture, more strategic, according to Charlie Greenbacker, In-Q-Tel's technical product leader in artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, analytics, and data science. "Our model is to put a little bit of pressure at the right spot to influence a company to make sure it develops things that are useful to our customers," said Greenbacker, who estimated that their investments in a given startup generally amount to about one of every 15 dollars the company has.

Geospatial imagery as well as facial recognition and other biometrics are driving the intelligence community's research into artificial intelligence. Other intelligence activities, such as human language translation and event warning and forecasting, also stand to gain from advances being pursued in government, academic and industry research programs funded by the community's research arm. The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) is working toward breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, or AI, through a number of research programs. All these AI programs tap expertise in government, industry or academia. IARPA is one of the biggest financial backers of AI research, states its director, Jason Matheny, and imagery is the biggest growth area for intelligence AI.

Billionaire Steve Cohen has opened a Palo Alto office to invest in early-stage companies focused on big data and machine learning, and he has hired two people who invested on behalf of the CIA. The two men leading the effort are Daniel Gwak and Sri Chandrasekar, who previously worked at In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm that is mostly funded by the Central Intelligence Agency. The pair started their new roles on May 1, according to Matthew Granade, Point72's chief market intelligence officer. The new Silicon Valley office is part of Point72 Ventures, Cohen's venture capital unit, which is legally separate from his $11 billion family office, Point72 Asset Management. Cohen launched Point72 Ventures last year, hiring Pete Casella of JPMorgan Chase Strategic Investments to help lead the effort.

Billionaire Steve Cohen has opened a Palo Alto office to invest in early-stage companies focused on big data and machine learning, and he has hired two people who invested on behalf of the CIA. The two men leading the effort are Daniel Gwak and Sri Chandrasekar, who previously worked at In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm that is mostly funded by the Central Intelligence Agency. The pair started their new roles on May 1, according to Matthew Granade, Point72's chief market intelligence officer. The new Silicon Valley office is part of Point72 Ventures, Cohen's venture capital unit, which is legally separate from his $11 billion family office, Point72 Asset Management. Cohen launched Point72 Ventures last year, hiring Pete Casella of JPMorgan Chase Strategic Investments to help lead the effort.

With the backing of supporters as varied as the CIA, Samsung, Intel, and one of the biggest wireless carriers in the world, MindMeld launched its conversational AI platform today. MindMeld's AI, which has been referred to as "Siri on steroids," is sometimes considered more advanced than other voice-enabled intelligent assistants. The first generation of AI-powered assistants failed to live up to the hype, according to the company. "Deep-Domain Conversational AI promises to power a new generation of AI assistants which can streamline common daily tasks such as placing a take-out order at a local restaurant, booking a flight or hotel reservation, creating a service appointment at an auto repair shop or doctor's office, or finding retail store and product information," the company said in a statement shared with VentureBeat. Voice-enabled intelligent assistants and chatbots made with the platform can go virtually anywhere, from websites, apps, and devices to messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger, Skype, and Slack.