Friday News Roundup — July 12, 2024
This week’s news was dominated by the ongoing discussions about the future of President Biden’s reelection campaign and by the 75th anniversary NATO summit in Washington, DC. By most accounts, the summit was viewed as a success, and officials were able to avoid the public airing of misgivings that had dominated the news following last year’s NATO gathering in Lithuania when Ukrainian officials criticized what they viewed as an insufficient commitment to their country’s future membership in the defense pact. Although the question remains unresolved, the Washington gathering produced new wording promising Ukraine an “irreversible path” to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership. Though NATO members thus promised Kyiv a “bridge” to admission, the timeline for such a move remains unclear. As nearly all conversations on the sidelines of the summit and during the numerous events surrounding it demonstrated, the future role of transatlantic cooperation and NATO itself remains more uncertain than the lofty summit communiques might suggest, given the U.S. elections in November. On the other hand, the fact that this year’s summit, for the third time, saw the participation of leaders of the so-called Indo-Pacific Four (Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand) also shows that NATO is adapting to a changing world and looking beyond the immediate Euro-Atlantic.
Peter Sparding is the Senior Vice President and Director of Policy.
Rebranding NATO for a smaller world
By Ethan Brown
Plenty of pomp and flair (and slowed public transport) this week as key world leaders converge in Washington D.C. for the NATO summit–a tumultuous and important time for the alliance celebrating 75 years as well as determining the course and structure of international security. “North Atlantic,” should perhaps become a label of the past as non-Atlantic states have once again joined leaders from the Euro-Atlantic cohort as China continues to become a key security concern for the alliance.
Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea have all sent senior delegations, if not their leading statesmen, to participate in the security dialogue. The reason is not a surprise: even though the war on Europe’s Eastern flank dominates the discourse on the role of the security alliance, China’s part in world affairs continues to be an increasingly important subject for Europe, which includes economic, financial, and assorted trade practices, and in the context of NATO, this necessarily adds to the discussion military and security issues to boot.
NATO itself is reinventing its superstructure in real-time, and while Ukraine’s membership is, in all reality, many years off, new member states Finland and Sweden have dramatically expanded the alliance’s capacity in terms of raw military power and geography, as well as calcifying the continents’ unity against Russian aggression. Bilateral partnerships between NATO states and non-NATO beneficiary Ukraine have even become the template for European security partners, showing that NATO is brain-dead no longer, and the facelift I opined years ago is taking on its own self-actualization, albeit forced by crisis. Member states are already talking about upping defense spending, even setting their sights above the 2% minimum mandate (is it likely? No, but is it both theatrical, useful and viable, absolutely). There are of course discussions and promissory statements about more aid headed to Ukraine who is indisputably holding up NATOs right flank, despite not enjoying any sort of concrete membership status. And unique to the summit being held in D.C., there is the uncomfortable backdrop of domestic U.S. politics holding a shadowy malaise over the gathering of leaders as the world’s most important democracy faces a litmus test later this year.
The point being, NATO’s world has gotten smaller, on account of the expansion of partnerships, new members, and the inclusion (by necessity) of those Pacific powers attending this week’s conference. There have been barriers to European-Pacific engagement of this order and magnitude in the past, and it has been a mere three years since South Korea, Australia, Japan, and New Zealand have sent official delegations to participate in the summit, and thus, the world shrinks as NATO should rightly be expected to assume a far greater burden of global security. We (the policy ecosystem) have beaten the dead horse on how the world’s security problems are too complex and assorted for one state–the United States–to handle alone with allies providing a supporting role. The security alliance architecture would be well served if this week ended not with the as-planned rallying cries about how liberal democracy is good, how partnerships matter and the shared values of liberal order are the best path towards global prosperity, or even that there is a renewed sense of collective certitude on threats. Rather, NATO would be best served if a new concept for the alliance emerged, one which potentially shed its limiting conceptual constraints (the “North Atlantic” moniker) and returned to world affairs as a much more comprehensive international security architecture.
That’s the difficult leap which NATO members and national polities have struggled to accept in recent years, especially when “brain death” was the favored insult for the alliance seemingly lost on the path just a few years ago: while the liberal system accordingly favors institutions over isolate nation-states, and in its own right omits sovereignty for the noble concept of the greater good (and suffers from the collective action problem as a result), those institutions fail to address the enduring need for hard power in this chaotic international system. NATO can, and should, be the failsafe in the international system, not merely as a deterrent, but as an overwhelming force (subject to the rules-based society of liberal states), and it needs to be prepared to intervene and execute active, explicit deterrence by engagement.
I don’t pretend to know what this new NATO would call itself, “North-South” or “East-West Treaty Organization” is a little tongue-in-cheek, and Atlantic-Pacific Treaty Organization (APTO) seems derivative, but perhaps rightly alludes to what a future-looking, far more capable alliance would represent: the military deterrent and intervention superstructure that the world is presently missing. If there were any doubts that NATO remains as viable today as it did during the height of the Cold War–the impetus for the creation of the democratic Atlantic bloc–those should be put to rest. But leaders from across the world this week would do well to shepherd in NATOs next 75 years with something profound, something definitively expansive, and something which indisputably demonstrates a new level of resolve and capability.
The world has grown smaller as years go by, which means those states who uphold the ideals of liberal democracy are inherently charged to assume greater responsibility to protect it. The world we live in is increasingly complex in terms of threats and malicious actors who would subvert that best chance for humanity’s continued prosperity: cooperation and individual rights. As such, while the states whose institutions of liberalism which favor diplomacy and soft power remain as critical as ever, and at great risk in a super election year, we would do well to recall that the hard power structure of institutions like NATO must necessarily expand and evolve to address those threats and safeguard those other institutions as well.
Ethan Brown is a senior fellow at CSPC.
Hokkaido’s Evolving Geopolitical Landscape
By Hidetoshi Azuma
A satellite view of Japan with Hokkaido situated at top right with white clouds hovering over it (Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost prefecture, is the country’s foremost agrarian stronghold which evolved from an uncultivated frontier beginning in the 1870s. Previously home to the Ainu minority population for centuries, it is a product of economic development led by the central government in Tokyo for the last 150 years. This is evident in Hokkaido’s enormous budget size, the third largest in Japan only after Tokyo and Osaka, although the prefecture only ranks eighth in terms of GDP as of 2022. Its relatively small GDP is due to the enduring underdevelopment of its secondary sector of industry, including manufacturing, in stark contrast to its primary and tertiary ones, most notably agriculture and tourism, respectively. Hokkaido’s agrarianism has historically favored big government politics pouring subsidies into public works projects across the prefecture, leading to entrenched special interests held by both Tokyo and Japan’s northernmost prefecture. In other words, Hokkaido’s fate is inextricable from Tokyo’s policy, and this peculiar inter-prefectural relationship also shapes the political dynamics of the prefecture and its largest city, Sapporo, especially as the global geotechnological competition intensifies.
Hokkaido’s rapid transformation from a frigid frontier to Japan’s foremost agrarian bastion in 150 years was largely a product of Tokyo’s economic development policy revolving around massive government subsidies for public works projects. This has spawned a special relationship between Japan’s capital and its northernmost prefecture driven by politicians overseeing special interests in certain industries, especially agriculture and construction. Inevitably, Hokkaido became the breeding ground of modern agrarianism, attracting like-minded politicians from both the LDP and the Opposition in their opportunistic pursuit of special interests backed by big government politics. For example, the historical leadership of the now-defunct Hokkaido Development Agency (HDA) boasted such politicians as Muneo Suzuki and Toshihiro Nikai, two of the LDP’s most influential rural hands. Likewise, the post of the Governor of Hokkaido has historically been filled by implants from the mainland Honshu with strong ties to rural hands in the LDP and the Opposition, such as the former governor Harumi Takahashi.
While the Tokyo-Hokkaido relationship appears to be mutually-beneficial at first glance, it is fundamentally biased in favor of Japan’s capital, or, more precisely, the LDP. This is due to Hokkaido’s enduring potential of falling in the hands of Japan’s neighboring geopolitical rivals, especially Russia. Indeed, the rise of the Hokkaido Governor Toshibumi Tanaka of the Japan Socialist Party in 1947 led to the veritable possibility of Japan’s northernmost prefecture seceding from Japan to join the Soviet Union, prompting General Douglas MacArthur to pressure Tokyo to create the HDA to curb unchecked regionalism. The creation of the HDA allowed Tokyo to impose its will on Hokkaido by manipulating government subsidies for regional economic development. As a result, Tokyo’s influence became so predominant in Hokkaido that it abolished the HDA in 2001 following the perceived disappearance of the Russian threat after the end of the Cold War. The LDP has since controlled Hokkaido’s politics by heavily investing in public works projects and supporting party members or LDP-aligned independents for the prefecture’s gubernatorial races.
Tokyo’s inescapable influence on Hokkaido was most recently evident when the LDP’s emerging kingmaker politics directly affected the local politics in Japan’s northernmost prefecture in 2019. In 2019, two consequential events related to Hokkaido occurred. First, the Japanese Diet passed the controversial so-called Ainu Policy Promotion Legislation in April 2019 following its cabinet approval by the then-Abe administration. The new law led to the Japanese government’s official recognition of the Ainus as an “indigenous people” of Japan, despite its highly questionable interpretation of their heritage. As a result, Tokyo poured enormous subsidies into questionable public works projects, such as the controversial 20 billion JPY National Ainu Museum and Park in Shiraoi, Hokkaido, in the name of indigenous reparation. The then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga was the chief architect of this controversial Ainu law. In fact, this was the culmination of his growing influence on Japan’s rural politics, including Hokkaido, revolving around his special ties to prefectural governors, such as the then-Hokkaido governor Harumi Takahashi, who spent her 16-year gubernatorial term mostly on expanding Ainu-related special interests. The rise of the Ainu Promotion Act signified that even the most dubious political agenda could be conceived and implemented in Hokkaido with Tokyo’s approval.
Second, Suga’s protégé, the incumbent Hokkaido Governor Naomichi Suzuki, won the April 2019 Hokkaido gubernatorial election by a landslide at the tender age of 38. His sudden ascendancy from a relatively obscure, non-Hokkaido background to governorship was largely thanks to Suga’s unrivaled rural influence across Japan. Indeed, Suzuki, originally a Saitama native, was previously the mayor of Yubari, Hokkaido after transferring from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. While his rise to mayorship at the age of 30 was certainly remarkable, he was largely unknown, let alone powerful, in Japan’s political establishment until he met Suga in the early 2010s. Suzuki caught Suga’s attention largely because of their shared alma mater of Hosei University. Their mutual Hosei University background led them to another Hokkaido stalwart and Suga’s key ally, Muneo Suzuki, who used his peerless local connections to support Suzuki’s gubernatorial race in 2019. In other words, Suga essentially installed Suzuki as his point man to lead the Government of Hokkaido, underscoring the growing influence of emerging kingmaker politics on the prefecture. Unquestioningly loyal to his master, Suzuki went on to implement the controversial Ainu policy immediately upon taking office.
Figure 1. The Official Portrait of the 7th Governor of Hokkaido Naomichi Suzuki (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
The meteoric rise of Suzuki’s governorship even led to fundamental changes in Hokkaido’s internal political dynamics on Suga’s watch. In fact, China’s economic presence in Hokkaido surged under Suzuki’s governorship, reflecting Suga’s pro-China agenda for rural Japan. Indeed, China, not Russia, was the largest foreign direct investor in Yubari under Suzuki’s mayorship, and the country’s influence only expanded across the prefecture after the former mayor became the governor in 2019. To be sure, China’s growing economic presence in Hokkaido preceded Suzuki’s governorship with the then-Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang visiting the prefecture in May 2018. However, Suzuki largely welcomed China’s aggressive economic penetration of Hokkaido as the governor, leading him to receive the then-Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan in December 2019 and requested the Chinese President Xi Jinping’s official visit to the prefecture. Remarkably, Suzuki pursued a pro-China policy for Hokkaido just as his patron, Suga, and his key LDP ally, Toshihiro Nikai, courted China’s deeper economic engagement with Japan, which culminated in the controversial signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in November 2020 during Suga’s premiership. This underscored the advent of China as one of the key drivers of the politics of Hokkaido.
Suga’s untimely exit from premiership in September 2021 and the rise of his rivals, the incumbent Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his patron, the former prime minister Taro Aso, since then have fundamentally changed Suzuki’s relationship with Tokyo. First, Suga’s waning influence in Tokyo, especially ahead of Nikai’s upcoming departure later in 2024, has forced Suzuki to increasingly align himself with the Kishida administration. To be sure, Suga’s influence in rural Japan, including Hokkaido, still remains relatively robust and was evident in Suzuki’s gubernatorial reelection in 2023. Yet, Suzuki can no longer rely on Suga’s patronage alone for survival, especially after the former Japanese prime minister’s key Hokkaido ally, Muneo Suzuki, was ousted from the Japan Innovation Party following his controversial visit to Russia in October 2023. This also implied that Suzuki could no longer promote an outright pro-China policy for Hokkaido, especially at a time the Kishida administration seeks to boost Japan’s economic security in its geoeconomic competition with China. In other words, while Suga’s patronage of Suzuki may continue, Suzuki increasingly looks to diversify his policy for Hokkaido to ensure that his relationship with Tokyo remain solid.
Second, the US is emerging as a major foreign factor in Hokkaido politics. This is due to the Biden White House’s evolving policy for Japan following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine beginning in February 2022. Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost frontline directly facing Russia, has become a key strategic focus for the US Forces in Japan (USFJ). While the USFJ currently has no military presence apart from the Camp Chitose, a tiny communications facility staffed by a few US Army soldiers, Washington’s renewed focus on Hokkaido has led to the growing frequency of joint military exercises with the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) in the prefecture in recent years. There is also a plan for the potential permanent stationing of US Marine Corps (USMC) personnel at the size of 1,500 marines in the Yausubetsu Maneuver Area administered by the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) in Hamanaka Town located almost across from the Russia-occupied southern Kuril Islands known in Japan as the Northern Territories. By treaty, the US military can establish its presence, including new bases, anywhere in Japan anytime without approval from Tokyo. As a result, the US military’s presence is surging in Hokkaido and will likely continue to increase as America’s great power competition with Russia and China intensifies.
Figure 2. The United States Marine Corps conducts an annual joint military exercise, Resolute Dragon, with the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force at Yausubetsu Maneuver Area, Hokkaido (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
This new geopolitical reality overshadowing Hokkaido has forced Suzuki to increasingly court US favor in boosting his governorship. Suzuki has forged a solid relationship with Biden’s top diplomat in Japan, Ambasador Rahm Emanuel, especially after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022. In October 2023, Hokkaido began supplying the USFJ seafood sourced from the prefecture. Emanuel touted this as a symbol of bilateral friendship amidst Beijing’s economic coercion on Japan with the introduction of a ban on Japanese seafood imports to China and reiterated Washington’s renewed focus on Hokkaido. In February 2024, Emanuel visited Suzuki in Sapporo and commended his leadership in promoting the prefecture’s efforts in “making headways in clean energy, semiconductors, tourism, and pushing back on PRC economic coercion.” Biden’s ambassador to Japan then credited “US-Hokkaido cooperation” for boosting the US-Japan alliance. Suzuki has thus increasingly been deepening his engagement with the US and has emerged as Hokkaido’s foremost pro-US governor in history.
Figure 3. The US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel confers with the Hokkaido Governor Naomichi Suzuki in Sapporo, Hokkaido in February 2024 (Source: X)
Having earned US credentials under his belt, Suzuki has also succeeded in courting support from the Kishida administration in recent years. Suzuki has astutely aligned his governorship in Hokkaido with Kishida’s signature economic security policy. Kishida’s economic security policy largely revolves around reducing supply chain dependence on China, especially that of semiconductors. One of Kishida’s semiconductor agendas is the promotion of domestic chip manufacturing capabilities, leading to the creation of a state-sponsored joint venture, Rapidus. Rapidus seeks to produce cutting-edge chips of 2 nanometers or less in Japan and began the construction of its manufacturing base in Chitose, Hokkaido in early 2023 to be completed by April 2025. The Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) views Rapidus as a key strategic priority for Tokyo’s economic security policy and has recently decided to invest an additional 1 trillion JPY into the emerging chip plant in Hokkaido, leading to a total of 5 trillion JPY to be invested over the next 10 years. The sudden emergence of a 5 trillion dollar project adjacent to the New Chitose Airport has been Suzuki’s single most significant achievement so far due to its enormous economic potential for Hokkaido, including the creation of a highly-touted Hokkaido Valley, a science and technology hub spanning across Ishikari, Sapporo, Chitose, and Tomakomai.
Figure 4. The Hokkaido Valley Concept (Source: Nikkei)
Suzuki’s alignment of Hokkaido with Kishida’s economic security policy and his successful attraction of Rapidus have fundamentally changed his relationship with the LDP. Apart from Suga, the young Hokkaido governor virtually has the backing of some of the LDP’s most powerful politicians, including Kishida and Aso as well as Akira Amari, who recently earned an appellation, “the Godfather of Japan’s economic security policy” in the US. Hokkaido’s geopolitical importance for Japan and even the US signifies that Suzuki looks to enjoy support from both the LDP and Washington. In other words, the incumbent Hokkaido governor is arguably the most powerful regional leader in Japan and will likely remain so at least until the end of this decade, regardless of politics in Tokyo. Apart from Hokkaido’s enormous budget, the coming surge in investments in the prefecture from Honshu and overseas would also bolster Suzuki’s growing clout.
Figure 5. The Hokkaido Governor Naomichi Suzuki receives an official endorsement from the Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida ahead of his April 2023 gubernatorial race (Source: X)
Under Suzuki’s governorship, Hokkaido’s largest metropolis, Sapporo, looks to evolve in line with the prefecture’s ongoing transformation. Sapporo has recently abandoned its longstanding pursuit of designation as a host city for the 2030 Winter Olympics. The Sapporo Mayor Katsuhiro Akimoto, an independent who won his third reelection in April 2023, was forced to discard his city’s bid for the Winter Olympics shortly after his new term began. His difficult decision reflected the declining influence of the LDP leaders who backed the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics, including Suga and the former Abe-faction kingmaker, Yoshiro Mori, in Hokkaido. In other words, Akimoto can no longer rely on Suga and other like-minded rural hands for local political influence. As if to recognize this emerging reality, the Sapporo mayor teamed up with Suzuki in 2023 to court Kishida’s support for the city’s and the prefecture’s green transformation (GX) agenda. The proposed GX agenda was perfectly in line with Kishida’s economic security policy, and even the US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel paid a visit to Akimoto in Sapporo to express his support for the initiative in February 2024. As a result, the Japanese prime minister officially designated both Hokkaido and Sapporo as the “GX, Financial, and Asset Management Special Zone” in June 2024. This designation would further deepen Hokkaido’s and Sapporo’s budding relationship with the Kishida administration as well as even the US. Meanwhile, the regional influence of Suga and other like-minded rural hands in the LDP will likely continue to decline, especially if Kishida secures his reelection as the prime minister in the ruling party’s presidential election in September 2024.
Having already demonstrated a series of achievements merely a year into second term, Suzuki is rapidly rising as one of Japan’s most successful regional leaders and increasingly looks to consolidate his power in and outside of Hokkaido for years to come. Indeed, his astute positioning in the age of kingmaker politics in Tokyo has elevated him to an unassailable position which will likely endure well into the 2030s thanks to the advent of the 5 trillion JPY Rapidus semiconductor plant and other economic opportunities. While he may as well aim for a Diet seat in Tokyo in the future given his undeniable success as the Hokkaido governor, he will likely remain at the prefecture’s helm at least until the end of this decade with the possibility of another term starting in 2027. Suzuki is committed to Hokkaido’s regional politics and will likely seek to consolidate the prefecture’s ongoing transformation in the age of economic security for another term. Moreover, Suzuki himself is a product of the LDP’s kingmaker politics and will likely remain in an uncomfortable position caught in the raging Aso-Suga rivalry in Tokyo. As a result, he will find himself struggling to consolidate his core support group led by Hokkaido’s big business, especially the Hokkaido Economic Federation (HEF) and the Sapporo Chamber of Commerce (SCC). Akiko Nitori (似鳥昭雄), the Chairman of Nitori Holdings, in particular would play an indispensable role in backing Suzuki’s rise into his possible third term as his most important patron and bridge to Tokyo and Sapporo. Barring acts of God, the incumbent Hokkaido governor will most likely run for another term in 2027 and remain devoted to the prefecture’s historic evolution which he has been leading ever since he successfully attracted Rapidus to Chitose.
Hokkaido’s growing ascendancy in recent years is inextricable from the Kishida administration’s economic policy. Long gone are the days when Hokkaido’s only contribution to Japan was jokingly said to be potato chips due to its frigid climate favorable for potato cultivation. Recently, Japan’s northernmost prefecture looks to become the country’s foremost manufacturing hub for the other kind of chips, semiconductors. The incumbent Hokkaido Governor Suzuki has astutely recognized opportunities for his prefecture derived from the changing global geopolitical environment and Tokyo’s emerging economic security policy. Just as he revived Yubari from bankruptcy in the 2010s, he has put Hokkaido back on the world stage as Japan’s leading emerging technology bastion in today’s global geotechnological competition and is bent on maximizing the prefecture’s economic potential by boosting its relationship with Tokyo and even Washington. Bustling with youthful energy, Suzuki will most likely accomplish many of his agendas for Hokkaido, including the highly-touted Hokkaido Valley Concept, and will almost certainly receive support from his local allies, such as the Sapporo Mayor Akimoto, cementing his power for years to come. To be sure, Suzuki’s fate is now largely dependent on the success of the state-run Rapidus venture. While questions inevitably arise with regards to Rapidus’ actual competitiveness as it enters the global chip market, Suzuki’s vision for Hokkaido provides Japan’s northernmost prefecture with an unmistakable sense of optimism. To borrow the LDP kingmaker Taro Aso’s recent remark on Suzuki’s accomplishments: “Hokkaido is leading the new era.”
Hidetoshi Azuma is a Senior Fellow at CSPC.
The UN and Artificial Intelligence
By Blaine Ravert and Matt Trout
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping the world in many ways. A wide variety of actors and institutions in both the public and private sector are incorporating AI into their systems. Precise definitions of AI have varied greatly, but the US State Department has identified that AI “means a machine-based system that can, for a given set of human-defined objectives, make predictions, recommendations or decisions influencing real or virtual environments.” While AI possesses immense potential, it also comes with potential risks.
Earlier this year, the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution on AI. As the first of its kind, the resolution declares that states should “refrain from or cease the use of artificial intelligence systems that are impossible to operate in compliance with international human rights law or that pose undue risks to the enjoyment of human rights.” States further agreed to bridge the gap between developed and developing countries, creating “safe, secure, and trustworthy” AI systems, as well as to put forth “fair, inclusive, responsible, and effective data governance.” While this resolution is a step in the right direction, it is only the first step in effective AI governance.
This declaration serves as an important starting point for future agreements. However, by itself, it is a limited document that is much more aspirational than practical. Achieving the resolution’s objectives will require extensive collaboration between state and private actors to reckon with the extremely complex issues regarding fairness, equality, and equity issues which AI poses. The inherent uncertainty of AI’s future creates the additional challenge of future proofing these regulations.
In order to achieve broad support, the resolution neglected to include enforcement mechanisms, regulations addressing specific areas of AI, or any of the military applications of AI. Future regulation should directly address these gaps.
One such area which the US could lead is the realm of predictive policing. This type of policing uses algorithms to predict when and where crimes are most likely to occur, along with who is most likely to commit these acts. Additionally, algorithms are becoming incorporated into sentencing guidelines. There is currently no federal-level regulation of predictive policing, which has been the subject of intense debate. Predictive algorithms can and have been shown to be potentially flawed in a variety of ways, along with producing constitutional concerns. The Biden administration and Congress should cooperate to create federal guidelines that promote increased effectiveness, accuracy, transparency, and community oversight of these practices. Further, the US should work with allies to increase the scope of these regulations. By taking these steps, the US could directly apply some of the stated values of the UN resolution domestically.
Now that there is broad agreement, on paper at least, to common concerns regarding non-military use of AI, these foundations should be expanded upon to address military uses of AI. There are multiple high stakes, uniquely concerning elements of AI in the military realm, which are in the mutual interest of states such as the US and China to cooperate on. Gaining agreement on these issues could enable broader cooperation in both the military and non-military realms.
For one example, all nuclear powers should commit to not using AI as a decision-maker in nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3). Specifically, these states should commit to not utilizing dead-hand-based AI systems, which could trigger nuclear action if they do not receive a signal from the command structure. Nuclear weapons are simply too destructive to be left in the hands of AI alone. However, this is not to say that AI should not be used in NC3 systems at all. While it carries risks, AI could play an important role as a decision-making assistant during crisis situations, along with improving early warning capabilities and enabling robust NC3 systems.
Overall, the UN AI resolution is a positive development in the world of responsible AI policymaking. At the same time, it is not a silver bullet and will not be sufficient for obtaining the goals outlined in the resolution. The goals and aspirations outlined in the resolution need to be backed up by substantive actions, including by the UN, member states, and the private sector. Now is the time to take the momentum generated from this resolution and translate it into substantive, effective action. AI poses a wide variety of challenges to governance, and the world must rise to face these challenges together.
The authors are alumni of CSPC’s Presidential Fellowship program.
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US intervened in Congo mine sale to Chinese arms group
By Daphne Nwobike
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Daphne Nwobike is a CSPC Intern.