EVERYWHERE MAN


“I’m very, very gung-ho of the idea of having more and more of a presence by the Pentagon not just in Silicon


NOT CLAIRVOYANT


Singer talks about the future of technology, cybersecurity and threats in January 2018 during the Maneuver Warfighter Conference at Fort Benning, Georgia. “When it comes to predicting the future, we’re not very good at it,” he said. (Photo by Suhyoon Wood, Fort Benning Public Affairs)


Valley, but these tech clusters all over the nation. It’s incredibly important for them to be out there technology- scouting, finding opportunities.”


NeXTech comprised a series of war games in partnership with the U.S. Army War College, the U.S. Naval Postgradu- ate School and the U.S. Naval Academy, among other organizations, to examine the barriers to use of the technologies as well as their appropriate uses from tacti- cal, strategic, doctrinal, legal and ethical standpoints. Te project focused on five areas of technology with the potential to produce “game-changers”—biotechnolo- gies (e.g., human enhancements), energy (e.g., lasers and superefficient batteries), materials (e.g., 3D printing), hardware (e.g., robots) and software (e.g., electro- magnetic and cyber weapons).


While the outcome of NeXTech was primarily


to shape senior defense


leadership’s decision-making on resource- constrained planning and investment in


100


science and technology, it was a starting point in the slow reorientation of defense priorities toward emerging technologies in a globally competitive environment.


TECHNOLOGY OUTPACING GOVERNMENT In an interview in November 2013 with the late journalist Matthew Power, published on TED Talks’ website, Singer observed that in the four years since NeXTech concluded, the pace of techno- logical change and the pace of government were getting further and further apart. Te difference has only grown, he told Army AL&T.


“It’s getting worse, because in some areas we’re no longer playing catch-up. We’re literally moving in the opposite direc- tion” in terms of defense policy and its


Army AL&T Magazine January-March 2019


people, he said. Singer cited as an exam- ple the Trump administration’s decision last spring to eliminate the White House position of cybersecurity coordinator, a position created under President Barack Obama. National Security Adviser John R. Bolton stated that the post was no longer necessary because lower-level officials had already made cybersecurity issues a “core function” of the president’s national secu- rity team.


“It took us a long time to wake up to the threats and challenges [in cybersecurity], and we started to build organizations,” Singer said. Eliminating the cybersecurity coordinator “left pretty much everyone in the field mouths-open, stunned by that idea that we would no longer try to have strategy and top-level coordination on a topic as important as cybersecurity.”


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