UCLA professor Prineha Narang joined Monday’s RealClearPolitics podcast to discuss her recent RCP article on artificial intelligence, the Pentagon, and the future of American military technology: “America’s Technologists Face a Defining National Security Moment.” Narang, a professor in physical sciences and electrical and computer engineering, said the public often misunderstands what military AI means. She explained how the key military applications involve sensors, edge computing, quantum technology, and the ability to fuse large streams of battlefield data quickly enough to support human decision-making — not tactical ChatGPT or an autonomous “Skynet” system. Conventional large language models are not sufficient for this type of information, she said. You have sensors, all different kinds. How do you fuse that data? It could be a classical sensor. It could be a quantum sensor. How do you take that information, very quickly crunch it, and act on it? If AI and quantum technology can really speed up battlefield decisions, the United States cannot afford to treat the race as optional, she said. This is a technology that we want to get to first, she said. This is not something where the second-place prize is going to be sufficient. This is an area where, of course, we’re not talking about taking people or the human decision out of the equation. This is supplementing that, she said. Think of this as a very complex dashboard that takes all of the information and makes it available to people so that you can make the best possible decision. “In AI, in quantum, we see China – the PRC – as a near peer, as an adversary that’s right there, she said. A nanosecond behind is the most generous assessment that we get, at least on the quantum side of things. She added: This is a technology, and I put quantum and AI into one bucket here, talking about next-gen compute, next-gen sensing – we can’t come in second. I make athletic analogies frequently, but I’ll say that no running analogy is good enough here, because there is a second-place prize when you run the 800, Narang said. There isn’t one in this tech race.
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