Prominent artificial intelligence research organization OpenAI recently appointed newly retired U.S. Army General and former National Security Agency (NSA) director Paul M. Nakasone to its board of directors.
Nakasone will join the Board’s newly announced Safety and Security Committee, slated to advise OpenAI’s Board on critical safety- and security-related matters and decisions.
Established following an exodus of OpenAI higher-ups concerned about the company’s perceived de-prioritization of safety-related matters, the new Safety and Security Committee is OpenAI’s apparent effort to reestablish a safety-forward reputation with an increasingly wary public.
AI safety concerns are of the utmost importance, but OpenAI should not use them to ram through an appointment that appears poised to normalize AI’s militarization while spinning theever-revolving door between defense and intelligence agencies and Big Tech.
The ‘revolving door’ strikes again
Following his 38-year military career, including over five years headingU.S. Army Cyber Command, Nakasone’s post-retirement OpenAI appointment and shift to the corporate sector mimics the military-industrial complex’s ever-“revolving door” between senior defense or intelligence agency officials and private industry.
The phenomenon manifests itself in rampant conflicts of interest and massive military contracts alike: according to an April 2024 Costs of War report, U.S. military and intelligence contracts awarded to major tech firms had ceilings “worth at least $53 billion combined” between 2019 and 2022.
Quietly lifting language barring the military application of its tech from its website earlier this year, OpenAI apparently wants in on the cash. The company is currently collaborating with the Pentagon on cybersecurity-related tools to prevent veteran suicide.
A slippery slope
OpenAI remains adamant its tech cannot be used to develop or use weapons despite recent policy changes. But AI’s rapid wartime proliferation in Gaza and Ukraine highlights other industry players’ lack of restraint; failing to keep up could mean losing out on lucrative military contracts in a competitive and unpredictable industry.
Similarly, OpenAI’s current usage policies affirm that the company’s products cannot be used to “compromise the privacy of others,” especially in the forms of “[f]acilitating spyware, communications surveillance, or unauthorized monitoring of individuals.” But Nakasone’s previous role as director of the NSA, an organization infamous for illegally spying on Americans, suggests such policies may not hold water.
In NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s words: “There is only one reason for appointing an[NSA] Director to your board. This is a willful, calculated betrayal of the rights of every person on Earth.”
All things considered, Nakasone’s OpenAI appointment signals that a treacherous, more militarized road for OpenAI, as well as AI as a whole, likely lies ahead.
Stavroula Pabst is a writer, comedian, and media PhD student at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Athens, Greece. Her writing has appeared in publications including the Grayzone, Reductress, and the Harvard Business Review.
Director, General Paul Nakasone, National Security Agency, appears before a Senate Committee on Intelligence hearing to examine worldwide threats, in the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, USA, Wednesday, March 8, 2023. Photo by Rod Lamkey/CNP/ABACAPRESS.COM via REUTERS
Since the Ukrainian military’s incursion into Russian territory earlier this month, experts and other observers have been wondering what it might mean for the prospects of a negotiated settlement. Indeed, that may have even been the incursion’s goal. “I think everyone, including our command, thinks this is being done to end the war,” said a drone unit commander who helped plan the attack.
But it appears, at least in the short term, that the offensive has had the opposite effect. According to a report in the Washington Post last Saturday, Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk region of Russia apparently derailed planned indirect talks that were meant to “negotiate a landmark agreement halting strikes on energy and power infrastructure on both sides.”
In fact, according to the Post, some of those involved in the negotiations, which were to be hosted and mediated by the Qataris, had hoped that a deal on the limited infrastructure scope would lead to a more comprehensive agreement.
While one diplomatic source close to the negotiations told the Post that the Russians only delayed the talks and didn’t call them off entirely, Russian officials subsequently denied the entire thrust of the Post’s story.
"No one broke anything off because there was nothing to break off," Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for Russia's foreign ministry, told Reuters. "There have been no direct or indirect negotiations between Russia and the Kyiv regime on the safety of civilian critical infrastructure facilities."
Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials said the negotiations would still take place, instead via video conference on Thursday. Either way, the Post reported that Ukrainians never thought the prospects of reaching a deal were all that favorable, even without the Kursk incursion.
Whether the Kursk incursion itself has potential to give Ukraine leverage in any future talks, the Quincy Institute’s George Beebe wrote on RS this week that so far that seems unlikely.
“Had Ukraine managed to capture the Kursk nuclear power plant, one of the largest in Russia, its bargaining power over the Kremlin might have grown quite substantially,” he said. “The Russian military would have been hard-pressed to dislodge forces holding the plant without damaging or destroying the facility, and Ukrainian occupiers could have wielded the threat of releasing radiation as leverage over Putin’s demands in any negotiations.”
While the Kursk nuclear plant is within range of Ukrainian artillery, a fact that has the International Atomic Energy Agency very concerned, ultimately, Beebe notes, “Ukrainian forces have fallen far short of reaching that objective and have little prospect of attaining it now that Russia has mobilized forces defending the plant.”
In other Diplomacy Watch headlines this week:
— A dispute between German and Polish officials has emerged in the wake of news that a German investigation found that a team of Ukrainians blew up the Nord Stream gas pipeline in September 2022, according to the Wall Street Journal. Officials from each country are blaming the other for letting one of the alleged perpetrators escape Poland before an arrest could be made, leading Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk to lash out at the Germans. “The only thing you should do today about it is apologize and keep quiet,” he said.
— The military juntas of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger are asking the United Nations Security Council to denounce Ukraine for allegedly providing aid to regional rebel groups, according to Reuters. The groups, which have ties to terrorist organizations like local al-Qaida affiliates, killed nearly 200 Malian troops and mercenaries from Wagner, a Russian-backed private military group. The junta in Mali subsequently cut diplomatic ties with Ukraine, which denies it backed the rebel groups.
— During a visit to Poland this week, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged Russia and Ukraine to come to a diplomatic resolution to the conflict and pledged India’s support. "We support dialogue and diplomatic effort" for the restoration of peace and stability "as soon as possible," Modi said according to the Associated Press.
"I am very glad that the prime minister has confirmed his readiness to personally engage in bringing about a peaceful, just and speedy end to the war," Tusk said.
keep readingShow less
Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI) walks through the U.S. Capitol, in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, February 6, 2024. (Graeme Sloan/Sipa USA) via REUTERS
Confirming that he has, indeed, taken a top job at Palantir, a $72 billion high-tech weapons firm and military contractor, former Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) is publicly acknowledging that he is looking to trade on his government contacts to create profits in his new role overseeing Palantir’s defense business.
In other words, he didn’t just go through the revolving door. He’s proud of it.
Gallagher, who oversaw the hawkish House Select Committee on China and led the congressional push for a bill requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent company to divest or face a ban on the app in the U.S., is directly cashing in by going to a company whose CEO, Alex Karp, told The New York Times that the U.S. will “very likely” end up in a war with China, Russia and Iran and endorses “scar[ing] the crap out of your adversaries.”
Having spent much of his time in Congress doing exactly what Karp describes — Gallagher also pushed for Taiwan to be armed “to the teeth in the cyber domain” and supported massive military aid packages for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan — Gallagher says he’s looking to enrich his new employer, Palantir, using the connections in government he formed over seven years as the representative from Wisconsin’s 8th congressional district.
In an interview published this morning by Defense One, Gallagher said::
"I've spent almost a decade now immersed in that world, from the perspective of a legislator. But a lot of my work on the [House] Armed Services Committee was focused on defense innovation, how we create an ecosystem where more companies can succeed. And so my hope is to leverage the network that I built for a decade and apply it to my work at Palantir."
Gallagher concluded the interview by emphasizing that he sees a natural progression from his work as a public servant to his new role, on the other side of the revolving door, working for a multi-billion-dollar weapons firm.
“I just look forward to working with the Defense Department to strengthen and grow the work that's already underway with Palantir,” said Gallgher. “And so it's a really exciting opportunity again, as I said at the outset, a way in my mind to continue the mission that's guided my service in the Marine Corps and in Congress.”
On October 26, 2001, Jim Roche, the then Secretary of the Air Force, stood behind the podium in the Pentagon briefing room to announce that Lockheed Martin had won the competition to build the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Joining him on the stage, were Edward Aldridge, the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology, and Gordon England, the Secretary of the Navy.
All three took turns at the microphone to tout the Joint Strike Fighter’s anticipated virtues. “The Joint Strike Fighter is a family of highly common, lethal, survivable, supportable, and affordable next generation multirole strike fighter aircraft,” said Aldridge.
All these claims have proven to be spurious to a greater or lesser extent in subsequent years as the F-35 program limped through a seemingly endless development process, but none so much as the “affordable” claim. At the time of the announcement, the F-35 was supposed to enter active service in 2008 and the program was expected to cost $200 billion.
Nearly 23 years later, the F-35 is officially the most expensive weapon program in history clocking with an anticipated total program cost of $2 trillion and engineers continue to struggle to make the jet work properly with development and procurement costs having more than doubled.
The three men who made that announcement were nearing the end of their long careers. Aldridge retired from the government in 2003 and went on to serve on the board of Lockheed Martin. Jim Roche left the Pentagon in 2005 and became the director of Orbital ATK. Gordon England eventually became deputy secretary of defense before retiring in 2009.
Through their Joint Strike Fighter decision, these three men committed the United States to spend hundreds of billions of dollars for a program that has proven to be an unmitigated disaster. They created a massive financial obligation that future generations of taxpayers must bear, without the much-touted program having produced any of the actual security benefits it was supposed to bring to the U.S. armed forces.
By the time the program’s conceptual flaws became obvious, all three individuals had long since left government service and it was left to an entire generation of their successors to salvage something from the mess they left behind.
It is that last point the individuals who temporarily occupy offices vested with such authorities need to keep front of mind. They have the power to commit future generations to truly massive amounts of spending. All three of the prime F-35 decision-makers were born in the 1930s making them part of the Silent Generation. Generation X, the Millennials, and Gens Z and Alpha must bear the burden of their decisions.
The power to spend such generational wealth should not be wielded in a perfunctory manner. Those with the power of the pen should be far less credulous when people pitch them on pie-in-the-sky programs based on unproven technological promises and assumptions.
Amid growing concerns over the perceived threat of great power conflict and nuclear confrontation, the national security establishment and policymakers have relied upon misguided lessons about how the U.S. maintained the peace and won the Cold War to resurrect the hubristic reliance on expensive technology to provide, at least on paper, a military superiority that we hope will preserve the preeminence of our military.
Prominent figures in Congress have called for a “generational” investment in U.S. defense spending that would see defense spending rise to 5% of GDP by 2030 with little regard for those who will ultimately have to foot the bill. While it is hypothetically possible to reach this goal it does not mean we should.
Take for example the decision to modernize all three legs of the nuclear triad simultaneously, a monumental (and likely self-defeating) undertaking estimated to cost a staggering $1.7 trillion over the coming decades, a figure that mirrors the totality of student debt!
The issue is that the individual components of this effort have proven to be unanticipatedly more complicated and expensive than originally projected. For instance, the Air Force’s Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program has overrun its budget projection by more than 81%.
Regardless of policymakers’ justification for this irresponsible use of taxpayer dollars, there has been a complete lack of accountability within the defense procurement apparatus. The forebears of tomorrow are failing to use this moment as an opportunity to avoid repeating the mistakes of the F-35, Littoral Combat Ship, Ford-class Aircraft Carrier, and Zumwalt-class Destroyer programs all while undermining the ability of the average American to achieve the quintessential goals of the American Dream.
Pouring funds into the abyss, or simply the pockets of defense executives who then initiate stock buy-backs while enjoying record profits for the defense industry quarter after quarter, ensure that future generations will be forced to make sacrifices on other national security priorities like infrastructure, the power grid, national debt, student debt, the economy, education, supply chain resiliency, healthcare and more to comply with the commitments made by our political leaders who are consigning future generations to insurmountable debt in the name of an illusory concept of “national security.”
Since the year 2000, the U.S. increased its defense spending by at least 48% when adjusting for inflation. So, how can it be that after ending the longest wars in our nation’s history, and already spending more on our national security than at peak times during the Vietnam and Korean Wars, we still need to spend more money on defense?
The security and economic well-being of future generations will not be manifested through the myopic decisions to increase defense spending in the name of more security. Continuing to print money for the development of new weapons programs that will likely be outmoded by the time they are ready for a hypothetical war will keep weapons contractors and shareholders happy, but it will do little to actually make Americans or our allies safer amidst a rapidly changing world.
It is time for policymakers in Washington to realize that there is more that goes into our national security than just spending more money on the military, and devote real time and energy to a realistic and sustainable strategy that builds confidence, readiness and stability into our national security.
Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.