An Undisclosed AI Arms Race: The Mother of Modern Global Conflict.
The Conflicts we are now seeing in Israel, Ukraine, Nagorno-Karabakh, Taiwan, and at America’s southern border all share a common thread.
They are all connected, both to a changing “multipolar” world order and, more ominously, to an undeclared AI Arms Race between the U.S. and China.
American hegemony, and with it the “old world order” is disintegrating. America is no longer the preeminent world power it was following WWII. Over the last twenty years (a remarkably short period), relaxed global trade policies, and China’s centralized planning and control, have allowed China to emerge as a viable threat to U.S. global dominance.
And the U.S. is clearly threatened. Why is the U.S. so nervous? Why send Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan? Why the abrupt departure from a 50+ year relationship with China? Why the the passage of the Chips Act? Why the U.S. appeals, to Japan and Finland, to prevent China from having any access to advanced chip manufacturing technology?
Here’s why.
In 2017, Vladimir Putin declared, that the leader in AI “will be the ruler of the world”. That same year, China declared its intention to lead the world in AI by 2030. The CHIPS and Science Act, signed into law by President Biden on August 9, 2022, provides roughly $280 billion in new funding to boost domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors in the United States. It also prohibits the transfer of chip technology to China.
What should alarm all of us - is that the cascading impact of this AI arms race is just beginning. More global conflict now seems inevitable.
And the nature of war, including the suffering and trauma it inevitably creates, will make it increasingly difficult to avoid global catastrophe.
Today, the world is focused on the tragic loss of innocent life in Israel. Yesterday it was Ukraine. Tomorrow it will be an even greater number of countries that are savaged by the horrors of war.
The closer we are to the suffering and injustice, the more it effects us. But we are not alone in our suffering.
7 million Syrians and 10 million Ukrainians have become refugees, and 7 million migrants from Mexico, South America, and Africa, have poured across America’s southern border.
The innocents in Israel who have been slaughtered and kidnapped by Hamas; the innocent Armenians who were recently slaughtered in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict; the innocents in Ukraine and in Russia who have died in mud and blood soaked fields of Ukraine, and the 7 million migrants flooding America’s southern border, are all sacrificial pawns in a global chess game.
And in responding to these attacks and acts of aggression, many more will die. In Israel, in Palestine, in Ukraine, in Russia — all over the world.
Today, we are witnessing a clash of Titans not seen in over 70 years. We are literally on the verge of WWIII — a war between the U.S. and China — and all their proxies.
The strategy of choice for today’s super powers is the “proxy war”. A veiled attempt to disguise their respective involvement in the carnage. The benefits of which are what — a postponement of U.S. lives being added to the list of casualties, implausible deniability?
To think that this proxy strategy will somehow shields us from responsibility is naïve. Everyone knows who is allied with all the great superpowers. Ukraine is our proxy. Iran is Russia’s proxy. North Korea is China’s proxy. And the list goes on. And make no mistake. America is well known, around the world, as the “merchant of death.” A title we richly deserve - because 6 of the top 8 global weapons manufacturers are American companies. Does anyone believe that the world will forget this? Or fail to ultimately hold us responsible? I certainly don’t expect we’ll receive a pass.
The superpowers will continue to use this proxy strategy in an effort to avoid direct conflict, because direct superpower conflict creates an immediate existential threat for all of us. But that thin pretense of a buffer is illusory. It won’t hold.
We saw the war come to America at Pearl Harbor and it can very easily visit us again. In NY, Chicago, Los Angeles, virtually anywhere in the U.S. and we are witnessing the beginning of that kind of global conflict today — it’s already escalated from Ukraine to Nagorno-Karabakh, to Israel, to our southern border. These conflicts are all connected. They’re all the cascading consequences of our failures in communication, our unwillingness to create shared understanding, and our inability to facilitate compromise, and foster collaboration.
We need to stop and ask why we’re behaving as we did more than 100 years ago? And how we can stop it from happening. That needs to be our #1 priority. That needs to be our focus.
Some say “end them”. End who? End Hamas, end Iran, end Russia? This is clearly not the answer. You can’t end a virus of the mind that has been growing for centuries by killing people. This only increases the growth of the virus. And far too many are already infected with this virus of the mind. The historical hatred’s that permeate the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and Africa represent a global plague. A threat to the very survival of humanity
What we need to END is WAR.
Since man first emerged as the dominant species we have solved our conflicts with aggression — rather than agreement. We’re hardwired to act as we do. It’s become ingrained in our DNA.
Only now, the stakes are much higher than the isolated consequences of attacking a village. Today, in a post-nuclear environment, and especially in an AI environment, we need to evolve mentally so that we can find the means to end all war, or our ultimate fate will be self-inflicted extinction.
