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The dystopian future of military AI (VIDEO)

The dystopian future of military AI (VIDEO)

Swarming drones promise to be the latest unfulfilled and over-expensive weapons 'revolution' at the Pentagon

Analysis | QiOSK


The Dystopian Future of AI Warfare

From the electronic battlefield in Vietnam to network centric warfare that was developed in the late 1990s and used in Iraq and Afghanistan, every new generation and every new war brings with it the promise of a new kind of technology that will change the nature of warfare forever.

In most cases, these technologies fail.

Today, the weapons industry is selling the American people on the Replicator Initiative as the way for Washington to gain a military edge against China.

“Replicator will begin with all-domain, ‘attritable’ autonomy to help overcome China's advantage in mass: more ships, more missiles, more forces," according to the Pentagon. These capabilities “can help a determined defender stop a larger aggressor from achieving its objectives, put fewer people in the line of fire, and be made, fielded, and upgraded at the speed warfighters need without long maintenance tails," says Kathleen Hicks, the Deputy Secretary of Defense.

If history is any guide, there is good reason to believe that these suggested technological advancements could fail, or worse.

“If we look at how AI is being used so far, it’s a very, very bad sign,” William Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, says in a new video produced by Khody Akhavi and Steve McMaster. “Either they’re going to sell us a bill of goods. It’s all going to fail. We’re going to waste a lot of money and create a lot of tension. Or they’ll integrate it into the war machine and then we’ll have disastrous results. The time to worry about that is now.”


The Dystopian Future of AI Warfare
Analysis | QiOSK
US Navy Arctic
Top photo credit: Cmdr. Raymond Miller, commanding officer of the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Bainbridge (DDG 96), looks out from the bridge wing as the ship operates with Royal Norwegian replenishment oiler HNoMS Maud (A-530) off the northern coast of Norway in the Norwegian Sea above the Arctic Circle, Aug. 27, 2025. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Cesar Licona)

The rising US-NATO-Russia security dilemma in the Arctic

North America

An ongoing Great Power tit-for-tat in which U.S./NATO and Russian warships and planes approach each other’s territories in the Arctic, suggests a sense of growing instability in the region.

This uptick in military activities risks the development of a security dilemma: one state or group of states increasing their security presence or capabilities creates insecurity in other states, prompting them to respond similarly.

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Top image credit: President Donald Trump meets with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance before a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Monday, August 18, 2025, in the Oval Office. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)

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The U.S. military recently launched a plainly illegal strike on a small civilian Venezuelan boat that President Trump claims was a successful hit on “narcoterrorists.” Vice President JD Vance responded to allegations that the strike was a war crime by saying, “I don’t give a shit what you call it,” insisting this was the “highest and best use of the military.”

This is only the latest troubling development in the Trump administration’s attempt to repurpose “War on Terror” mechanisms to use the military against cartels and to expedite his much vaunted mass deportation campaign, which he says is necessary because of an "invasion" at the border.

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Top photo credit: President Donald Trump speaks with members of the media at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland on Sunday, September 7, 2025. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)

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President Donald Trump told reporters outside a Washington restaurant Tuesday evening that he is deeply displeased with Israel’s bombardment of Qatar, a close U.S. partner in the Persian Gulf that, at Washington’s request, has hosted Hamas’s political leadership since 2012.

“I am not thrilled about it. I am not thrilled about the whole situation,” Trump said, denying that Israel had given him advance notice. “I was very unhappy about it, very unhappy about every aspect of it,” he continued. “We’ve got to get the hostages back. But I was very unhappy with the way that went down.”

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