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
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s recently unveiled his “victory plan,” which is meant to give Western leaders a strategy for how Ukraine can defeat Russia and defend against Moscow moving forward.
While U.S. officials were reportedly “unimpressed” with the proposal when Zelenskyy presented it to the Biden administration last month, the Ukrainian president presented details publicly for the first time on Thursday at an EU summit in Brussels. At the top of Zelenskyy’s plan is an unconditional invitation to join NATO.
“It is important for us that we are strengthened, and the first step should be an invitation,” Zelenskyy said. Zelenskyy’s plan also calls for Western assistance to strengthen Ukrainian defenses, including the allowance for Ukraine to use Western-supplied long-range missiles deep into Russian territory. The missile-use request is not new, and the United States and United Kingdom have been previously reluctant to provide this permission.
Zelenskyy is also asking the EU and the U.S. to protect Ukraine’s natural resources and to position Ukrainian troops in Europe, with the goal of replacing the presence of some U.S. troops on the continent, which have been there since the end of World War II.
Zelenskyy didn’t offer much by way of pathways to peace or ceasefire and even said the plan could go into place without Russian cooperation at all. And it has so far had a lukewarm reception from Western leadership. “We are not at the point right now where the alliance is talking about issuing an invitation in the short term,” said U.S. Ambassador to NATO Jullianne Smith, referring to formally inviting Ukraine to join the alliance. She added however that, “as always, we will continue conversations with our friends in Ukraine to talk to them about ways in which they can continue to move closer to this Alliance.” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte did not outright accept the plan either, saying that he would welcome the day that Ukraine joins the alliance, but that “doesn’t mean that I here can say I support the whole plan.”
Meanwhile, President Biden took what’s been billed as a “farewell trip” to Berlin on Thursday to make up, in part, for the Ramstein meeting that was canceled due to last week’s hurricane in Florida. Despite the meeting’s cancellation, Biden still pledged an additional $425 million in defense aid to Kyiv as support for a continued war is shifting both among Western leaders, and members of the Ukrainian military and public.
“Biden’s trip to Germany represents a last-ditch effort to corral flagging trans-Atlantic support for Ukraine,” said Mark Episkopos, Eurasia research fellow at the Quincy Institute. “But there is every indication that European partners will continue slowly peeling away in the absence of a viable strategy, articulated and pursued by the White House, for bringing the war to a close on the best possible terms for Ukraine and the West.”
Other Ukraine war news this week:
Nearly half of the land taken by Ukraine in the Kursk region of Russia has been retaken, according to The Telegraph. Two months ago Ukraine captured the lightly guarded territory just over the border and Putin has vowed to retake all of it.
Reuters is reporting that Zelenskyy has called on his Western allies to further sanction North Korea following reports of Pyongyang’s direct involvement in the war. According to Ukrainian intelligence, the Kremlin is preparing to receive 10,000 soldiers from North Korea, lining up with earlier reports of North Korea assisting Moscow both with soldiers and advisers, as well as with weapons.
Levadne, in the southern Zaporizhzhya region of Ukraine, has been taken by Russian troops. The Associated Pressreports that the city was retaken on Monday, which adds to the increasing number of cities which Russia has taken or retaken in recent months.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller was asked about reports that North Korean troops were assisting Russia with its war against Ukraine. Miller said that if the reports were true, “it would also indicate a new level of desperation by Russia, as it continues to suffer significant casualties on the battlefield.”
When asked about a senior Russian official’s claim that the U.S. would face a “head-on collision with a nuclear power” if American weapons are used deep into Russian territory, Miller said, “I think it’s inappropriate for Russia to continue to make these kinds of statements, as we’ve said for some time.”
Asked about Zelensky’s victory plan, Miller said, “I’m not going to get into the various details other than to say that we continue to engage with the government of Ukraine about that plan.”
Miller also said he was confident France and Germany would continue military support for Ukraine when asked about reports that they would scale down.
When asked again about the cooperation between Russia and North Korea, he said that the administration “continues to have great concerns about the growing security relationship between Russia and North Korea.”
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Top image credit: screen grab www.youtube.com/@60minutes
During a recent interview with 60 Minutes, Vice President Kamala Harris said that Iran is the United States’ greatest adversary. “Iran has American blood on its hands, okay?” she said, adding that Iran also attacked Israel with 200 ballistic missiles.
Iran of course does have American blood on its hands. The Iranian leadership helped kill hundreds of American service members who were sent to a ruinous war in Iraq that sprang from the fever dreams of Harris supporter Dick Cheney. But beyond that morally righteous but strategically irrelevant point, Harris’s argument is absurd.
As to the threat posed by Iran, let’s begin with the basics. Iran has no missiles that can reach the United States. It has no ability to project conventional military power outside its borders. Its military doctrine is based on defense-in-depth, which involves slowly ceding ground to an aggressor while seizing on opportunities to counterattack. As the last Defense Intelligence Agency report on Iran’s military capabilities put it, “Iran’s ‘way of war’ emphasizes the need to avoid or deter conventional conflict while advancing its security objectives in the region, particularly through propaganda, psychological warfare, and proxy operations.”
This is not the Wehrmacht in 1940. Avoiding or deterring conventional conflict while pursuing security objectives in your region through propaganda, psychological warfare, and proxy operations isn’t the path to dominating the Middle East, much less becoming the greatest threat to the United States.
If you wanted to posit any Middle Eastern power as being the United States’ greatest adversary, you’d have to portray it as a country that could at least dominate its region. From well before the Carter Doctrine, U.S. defense planners have worried that a hegemon in the Middle East would have outsized influence over oil markets and could wreak havoc on the world price for oil.
Iran has no shot at dominating the Middle East because its outdated and under-maintained armor, its towed artillery, and its lack of experience with offensive combined arms preclude it. Were Iran crazy enough to try to invade a neighbor, stand-off air power could destroy the attacking force without much struggle.
These massive conventional military weaknesses — which are not fixable in the policy-relevant future — preclude Iran from trying to dominate the region. And an Iran that cannot dominate its region cannot constitute the biggest threat to the United States.
Iran does, of course, have a vehemently anti-American ideology, and does support an array of proxies across the region that stymie U.S. objectives. In that sense, dotting the region with defenseless U.S. deployments that do not contribute to achievable military objectives, serving only as triggers for war with Iran and facilitators for Israeli strikes into Syria, seems foolhardy.
The closer the United States gets to Iran, the more Iran can hurt Americans. Iraq was a trivial threat to the United States until we invaded it, which made it into a much bigger problem. Bashing a hornet’s nest or dancing around a pit of quicksand pose real dangers, but as in those cases, the best option vis-à-vis Iran is to simply stay away.
The best defense that can be mounted of Vice President Harris in this context is that she seemed to be groping around for an answer with the least political downside and the least offense to the foreign policy Blob, and she probably found it. The problem is that she is wrong on the substance. Should her extemporaneous remark influence her policy, it could push the United States further down the road to ruin in the Middle East.
The Biden administration says it is giving Israel 30 days to address concerns related to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
In a letter to two senior Israeli officials dated Oct. 13, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said, “We are now writing to underscore the U.S. government’s deep concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, and seek urgent and sustained actions by your government this month to reverse this trajectory.”
But critics are panning the letter, calling it a political gambit that’s too little and too late.
“I don’t know whether I'm terribly naive, I still have the capacity to be shocked, but the degree of cynicism required to set a 30 day limit … which coincidentally, gets you past the election date,” said Daniel Levy, president of the U.S./Middle East Project. Levy spoke about the letter Tuesday during a panel discussion on Israel’s war in Gaza hosted by the Quincy Institute.
The letter warns that a “failure to demonstrate a sustained commitment to implementing and maintaining these measures may have implications (arms embargo) for U.S. policy under NSM-20 and relevant U.S. law.” The problem with this is that “the Biden administration hasn’t done this (ultimatums) throughout” the last year when it could have, according to Levy.
Others wondered, given atrocities are playing out in real time, whether the Biden administration would act on its ultimatum.
“The U.S. giving Israel 30 days to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza or face cuts in weapon shipments is the most dishonest and morally bankrupt announcement I've seen for a long time,” said former UK diplomat Ian Proud on X. “Surely U.S. voters aren't so stupid they won't spot a big can of worms kicked down the street until after the elections?”
Blinken and Austin say that a minimum of 350 aid trucks per day need to enter Gaza through the four major crossings, as well as a fifth crossing that must be opened. Additionally, they want to ensure that Israel is not preventing essential items from entering Gaza by listing them as “dual use.”
They also insist “that there will be no Israeli government policy of forced evacuation of civilians from northern to southern Gaza.”
Dr. Annelle Sheline, Middle East fellow at the Quincy Institute, said that the letter appears to be a “clear acknowledgement” that the Biden administration knows that Israel is flouting laws governing U.S. military assistance.
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