That was the open call for submissions about emerging technology's role in global order put out last summer by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI). RAND researchers stepped up to the challenge, and a wide range of ideas were submitted. Ten essays were ultimately accepted for publication. The NSCAI, co-chaired by Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Alphabet (Google's parent company), and Robert Work, the former deputy secretary of defense, is a congressionally mandated, independent federal commission set up last year "to consider the methods and means necessary to advance the development of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and associated technologies by the United States to comprehensively address the national security and defense needs of the United States." The commission's ultimate role is to elevate awareness and to inform better legislation.

This article was submitted in response to the call for ideas issued by the co-chairs of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, Eric Schmidt and Robert Work. It addresses the first question (parts a. and b.), which asks how artificial intelligence will affect the character and/or the nature of war, and what might happen if the United States fails to develop robust AI capabilities that address national security issues. In the 1983 film WarGames, Professor Falken bursts into the war room at NORAD to warn, "What you see on these screens up here is a fantasy -- a computer-enhanced hallucination. Those blips are not real missiles, they're phantoms!" The Soviet nuclear attack onscreen, he explained, was instead a simulation created by "WOPR," an artificial intelligence of Falken's own invention.