An interim report compiled by a national security panel warns the U.S. government of falling too far behind China and Russia in the AI arms race, while calling for new investments to foster innovation. Released yesterday, the November interim report from the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) advises the U.S. government to get its act together on the development of security- and defense-related AI, lest it fall behind its adversaries, namely China and Russia. Failure to do so would relinquish America's role as a primary player in AI, while exposing the nation to serious new threats, including a diminishing of U.S. military advantage, unchecked disinformation campaigns, increased cyberattacks, and the erosion of democracy and civil liberties, according to the new report. "We are concerned that America's role as the world's leading innovator is threatened," wrote commission chairman (and former Google CEO) Eric Schmidt and vice chairman Robert Work in the report's introduction. "We are concerned that strategic competitors and non-state actors will employ AI to threaten Americans, our allies, and our values."

Over the past several decades, the United States has been an aggressive first mover in a war-fighting regime centered on guided munitions and integrated battle networks. These innovations have allowed U.S. forces to operate relatively uncontested in space, in the air, and on and under the sea, and to dominate conventional force-on-force land combat. For a variety of reasons – the geopolitics of rising powers, the global diffusion of technology and counter-reactions by its adversaries chief among them – the preeminence enjoyed by the United States in this regime is starting to erode. It's an amazing document for which this first sentence barely does justice for what is revealed throughout. So, once again we are given a DARPA press release of sorts that covers a program supposedly in development.