Christopher Kirchhoff on Military Innovation and the Future of War (Ep. 225)

Thank you to listener Timothy Kubarych, writer of financial and economic poetry, for sponsoring this transcript.

感谢听众、金融和经济诗歌作家蒂莫西·库巴里奇 (Timothy Kubarych) 赞助这份文字记录。

To give you a full biography of Chris, he is an expert in emerging technology.

为您提供克里斯的完整传记，他是新兴技术领域的专家。

He helped to create the Defense Innovation Unit, and he also has worked as an assistant to Eric Schmidt.

他帮助创建了国防创新部门，并担任埃里克·施密特的助理。

Earlier, in the Obama administration, he was the director of strategic planning for the National Security Council and also the senior civilian adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

此前，在奥巴马政府中，他曾担任国家安全委员会战略规划主任以及参谋长联席会议主席的高级文职顾问。

Chris, welcome.

克里斯，欢迎。

Now we see the full coming of the circle of the future that some people in the military saw then, which is that, just last month in Ukraine, the US military has had to ask the Ukrainians to remove from the front all 31 of the M1A1 Abrams battle tanks that we gave the Ukrainians because a quarter of them had been destroyed by Russian kamikaze drones.

现在我们看到了军方一些人当时看到的未来循环的全面到来，那就是，就在上个月在乌克兰，美军不得不要求乌克兰人从前线撤走我们提供给乌克兰人的所有31辆M1A1艾布拉姆斯主战坦克，因为其中四分之一已被俄罗斯神风特攻队无人机摧毁。

So, not only is it the ascendancy of an era of drone warfare, but it’s probably the end of man-mechanized warfare, as well, on land.

因此，这不仅是无人机战争时代的崛起，而且也可能是陆地上人力机械化战争的终结。

We can also talk about similarly epic changes at sea, in the air, and in space.

我们还可以谈论海上、空中和太空中类似的巨大变化。

If you go to the front lines today in Ukraine — I got a chance to visit there in October with my co-author, Raj Shah — you’ll find predominantly Ukrainian drones operating.

如果你今天去乌克兰的前线—— 我有机会在 10 月份与我的合著者 Raj Shah 一起访问那里—— 你会发现主要是乌克兰无人机在操作。

The reason why is that they’re literally able to go back to garage shops all over the country and overnight change the algorithms in the drone to respond to rapidly evolving Russian electronic warfare tactics that change from day to day.

原因是他们实际上能够回到全国各地的车库，在一夜之间改变无人机中的算法，以应对快速发展的俄罗斯电子战战术，这些战术每天都在变化。

But an important caveat to that — this is an initiative that was announced more than a year after the start of the Ukraine war, which tells you we’re playing catch-up.

但需要注意的是，这是一项在乌克兰战争爆发一年多后宣布的举措，这表明我们正在迎头赶上。

And because it was announced outside the budget cycle, they’ve had to go around and bureaucratically pull money from other programs, which is a whole extra step.

而且因为它是在预算周期之外宣布的，所以他们不得不四处走动，以官僚方式从其他项目中提取资金，这是一个额外的步骤。

And if you add up all the money that the Pentagon is spending on a Replicator, it’s less than a percent of the procurement spend of the Pentagon.

如果你把五角大楼在复制器上花费的所有钱加起来，它还不到五角大楼采购支出的百分之一。

I think the question is, that program is directionally right, but it certainly is not right in size or scale in comparison to the changes we’re seeing, not just in Ukraine, but in the Middle East and other places around the world with autonomous weapon systems.

我认为问题是，该计划在方向上是正确的，但与我们所看到的变化相比，它的规模或规模肯定是不正确的，不仅在乌克兰，而且在中东和世界其他拥有自主武器系统的地方。

On top of this, you have people using open-source software to build fusion systems that take sensor data from EW detection systems’ live feed from drones and put them all together on a controller that an operating unit, going forward, actually uses to mount a coordinated attack using multiple drone systems.

最重要的是，人们使用开源软件构建融合系统，从无人机的电子战检测系统实时反馈中获取传感器数据，并将它们全部放在一个控制器上，操作单元实际上使用该控制器来使用多个无人机系统发起协调攻击。

This is to say, in effect, Ukrainian start-ups have replicated the entire battle management system of the US Air Force.

这就是说，乌克兰初创企业实际上复制了美国空军的整个战斗管理系统。

They have, effectively, AWACS drones, attack drones.

他们实际上拥有预警无人机、攻击无人机。

It’s quite remarkable what they’ve done with open-source software and hardware that is pennies on the dollar compared to any system in the Western arsenal.

与西方军火库中的任何系统相比，他们在开源软件和硬件上所做的事情非常引人注目。

Similarly, the Houthis have effectively harassed shipping now with a combination of loitering munitions, cruise missiles, and autonomous drones.

同样，胡塞武装现在通过游荡弹药、巡航导弹和自主无人机的组合有效骚扰了航运。

Then, in northern Israel, perhaps most strikingly, Hezbollah has depopulated the first 10 miles of northern Israel using loitering munitions and cruise missiles because the IDF can’t effectively defend their northern border, and that has displaced 85,000 Israeli civilians.

然后，在以色列北部，也许最引人注目的是，由于以色列国防军无法有效保卫其北部边境，真主党使用徘徊弹药和巡航导弹在以色列北部前 10 英里内消灭了人口，导致 85,000 名以色列平民流离失所。

And the IDF is a very modern military.

以色列国防军是一支非常现代化的军队。

Drones are small.

无人机很小。

We don’t have early warning radars — in the same way that we missed the Chinese spy balloon — that are tuned to detect drones.

我们没有预警雷达 ——就像我们错过了中国间谍气球一样——可以用来探测无人机。

Now people are asking questions: Can you use cell phone tower transmissions and use AI algorithms to process from that and detect flying small drones that we don’t expect to be there?

现在人们在问：你能使用手机信号塔传输并使用人工智能算法进行处理并检测我们不希望出现的小型无人机吗？

Yet we don’t have a mechanism in the government that can take these long-term looks at spectrum.

然而，我们政府中没有一个机制可以对频谱进行长期研究。

Spectrum is an example of where we’re failing strategically.

Spectrum 就是我们战略失败的一个例子。

As a result, if you go to Beijing, 5G speeds are what?

那么，如果你去北京，5G速度是多少？

Fifty times faster?

快五十倍？

A hundred times faster?

快一百倍？

Because they’re on a completely different part of the 5G spectrum.

因为它们位于 5G 频谱的完全不同的部分。

On hypersonic weapons

关于高超音速武器

Oh, by the way, there’s no way to defend against them, so forget the fact that they’re nuclear capable — if you want to take out an aircraft carrier or a service combatant, or assassinate a world leader, a hypersonic weapon is a fantastic way to do it.

哦，顺便说一句，没有办法防御它们，所以忘记它们具有核能力的事实 ——如果你想干掉一艘航空母舰或现役战士，或者暗杀一位世界领导人，高超音速武器是一个绝佳的方法。

Watch them very carefully because more than anything else, they will shift the balance of military power in the next five years.

非常仔细地观察它们，因为最重要的是，它们将在未来五年内改变军事力量的平衡。

On AI as an arms race

将人工智能视为一场军备竞赛

By the way, when I was a Pentagon employee, through the — I think it’s called the Combined Federal Campaign — we could donate a portion of our salary to a number of nonprofit charities.

顺便说一句，当我还是五角大楼雇员时，通过“——我认为这被称为联合联邦运动”——“我们可以将部分工资捐赠给一些非营利慈善机构。

One of the charities I donated to was Human Rights Watch, which is wonderfully subversive for a Pentagon employee because they actually produce incredibly great research about what’s happening on the ground in conflict areas around the world that every national security official, I think, should be reading.

我捐赠的慈善机构之一是人权观察组织，这对五角大楼的员工来说具有极大的颠覆性，因为他们实际上对世界各地冲突地区正在发生的事情进行了令人难以置信的伟大研究，我认为每个国家安全官员都应该阅读这些研究。

Out of Human Rights Watch and another community of computer scientists led in part by Stuart Russell, there is this movement called Stop Killer Robots that emerged about 10 years ago, foreseeing the shift in AI, foreseeing the shift in the rise of smart micro drones, and asking us not to go down that path.

在人权观察和另一个由斯图尔特·拉塞尔（Stuart Russell）领导的计算机科学家团体中，大约十年前出现了一场名为“停止杀手机器人”的运动，它预见了人工智能的转变，预见了智能微型无人机崛起的转变，并要求我们不要走这条路。

I actually got to sit in a couple meetings with Stuart at the White House, and it was interesting to watch him make his argument.

实际上，我在白宫与斯图尔特参加了几次会议，观看他的论点很有趣。

Although I respect him incredibly as a technologist, what was interesting to me about the way he made the argument — it was without any sense of the literature on strategic stability.

尽管我非常尊重他作为一名技术专家，但令我感兴趣的是他提出论点的方式——它没有任何关于战略稳定的文献意义。

Out of the Cold War, we have this fascinating part of political science that has studied, what is the consequence of the spread of nuclear weapons among states?

冷战结束后，我们有了政治学这一令人着迷的部分，它研究了核武器在国家之间扩散的后果是什么？

To the best that you can study this question in the world, the consensus in the literature is, nuclear weapons have actually lessened great power conflict in the modern world.

尽你所能研究这个问题，文献中的共识是，核武器实际上减少了现代世界的大国冲突。

There’s nobody who actually wants —

没有人真正想要 ——

The question about killer robots is, I think, very similar.

我认为关于杀手机器人的问题非常相似。

If we were to, for instance, unilaterally disarm in a field of technology where you really can’t have verification that the other side is also disarming.

例如，如果我们要单方面解除某个技术领域的武装，而你确实无法核实另一方也在解除武装。

You can do this with nuclear weapons because of the specialized technology that goes into them.

你可以用核武器做到这一点，因为核武器采用了专门的技术。

You can do it a little bit with chemical and biological weapons.

你可以用化学武器和生物武器来做到这一点。

You certainly cannot do it with software.

你当然不能用软件来做到这一点。

It’s just too difficult.

太难了。

So, I think, had that group of people been successful in, for instance, pausing military development using AI, I think we would be even more imperiled in Ukraine today.

因此，我认为，如果这群人成功地暂停了使用人工智能的军事发展，我认为我们今天在乌克兰会面临更大的危险。

China as a state, of course, is making enormous investments in AI through the doctrine of Military-Civil Fusion that Xi announced.

当然，中国作为一个国家正在通过习近平宣布的军民融合理论对人工智能进行巨额投资。

He has essentially directed any technology company in China to ensure its technology is open and available for use for the People’s Liberation Army.

他基本上指示中国的所有科技公司确保其技术开放并可供中国人民解放军使用。

You have a lot of things happening in China that are a deliberate strategy to make them the most competitive nation they can be on technology on a variety of fronts.

中国发生了很多事情，这些事情都是经过深思熟虑的战略，目的是使他们在各个领域的技术方面成为最具竞争力的国家。

Yet today, particularly with generative AI, the United States does seem to have a breakout advantage.

然而今天，特别是在生成人工智能方面，美国似乎确实拥有突破性优势。

My best guess for that is, in the end, we have structural advantages in a far freer market, far more freedoms, and none of the suppression that Xi has exerted over the tech industry at, arguably, his political peril the last few years in his quest to suppress dissent China-wide.

我对此的最佳猜测是，归根结底，我们在更加自由的市场、更多的自由中拥有结构性优势，并且不会受到习近平过去几年在中国范围内镇压异见的政治风险而对科技行业施加的压制。

There are also large institutions in China that are focused on solving military problems and advancing AI in the military that are not operating under those constraints.

中国也有一些专注于解决军事问题和推进人工智能在军队中发展的大型机构，但它们的运作不受这些限制。

So, it’s important to split off what we see happening with the Chinese government’s attempt to control its own populace and what they’re doing to try and make the PLA a fighting force that can meet the military objectives that Xi has set for them.

因此，重要的是要区分我们所看到的中国政府试图控制本国民众的情况，以及他们为使解放军成为一支能够实现习近平为他们设定的军事目标而采取的战斗力量的做法。

What most people in America don’t realize is that these technologies are produced from completely separate technology ecosystems, and they work very differently under very different incentives.

大多数美国人没有意识到，这些技术是由完全独立的技术生态系统产生的，并且它们在截然不同的激励措施下发挥着截然不同的作用。

The design of the F-35 was actually frozen in 2001 when the Pentagon awarded the production contract to Lockheed Martin.

F-35 的设计实际上在 2001 年被冻结，当时五角大楼将生产合同授予了洛克希德·马丁公司。

It didn’t become operational until 2016.

直到2016年才投入运营。

That’s a long time in technology years.

这对于科技时代来说已经是很长一段时间了。

Look at the iPhone.

看看iPhone。

Its processor is changed every year.

它的处理器每年都会更换。

Now we’re in a situation where a $2 trillion program of record is producing jets whose processors are slower than what we’re all carrying around in our pockets.

现在，我们正处于这样一种情况：一项耗资 2 万亿美元的创纪录项目正在生产的喷气式飞机，其处理器的速度比我们口袋里随身携带的处理器还要慢。

This matters because if it turns out that 2027 AI is going to beat 2026 AI on the battlefield, then you would better be getting your AI from the commercial system of production, not from the bespoke military-industrial-complex system of production.

这很重要，因为如果事实证明 2027 年的人工智能将在战场上击败 2026 年的人工智能，那么你最好从商业生产系统中获得人工智能，而不是从定制的军工综合体生产系统中获得人工智能。

Now we’re in a situation where a $2 trillion program of record is producing jets whose processors are slower than what we’re all carrying around in our pockets.

现在，我们正处于这样一种情况：一项耗资 2 万亿美元的创纪录项目正在生产的喷气式飞机，其处理器的速度比我们口袋里随身携带的处理器还要慢。

This matters because if it turns out that 2027 AI is going to beat 2026 AI on the battlefield, then you would better be getting your AI from the commercial system of production, not from the bespoke military-industrial-complex system of production.

这很重要，因为如果事实证明 2027 年的人工智能将在战场上击败 2026 年的人工智能，那么你最好从商业生产系统中获得人工智能，而不是从定制的军工综合体生产系统中获得人工智能。

Guess what?

你猜怎么着？

Initially, none of the operators of that infrastructure and none of the CEOs and CTOs of those cybersecurity companies even had security clearances.

最初，该基础设施的运营商以及这些网络安全公司的首席执行官和首席技术官都没有获得安全许可。

They couldn’t talk to the parts of our intelligence community who knew about the kind of exploits that our adversaries were fashioning to go after our infrastructure.

他们无法与我们情报界的部分人员交谈，因为他们知道我们的对手正在策划什么攻击我们的基础设施的行为。

Now, eventually, we solved that through, among other things, a really extraordinary public-private cooperation mechanism called the Enduring Security Framework, where we got everybody clearances, and we met and information was exchanged.

现在，我们最终通过一个名为“持久安全框架”的真正非凡的公私合作机制解决了这个问题，在这个机制中，我们让每个人都获得许可，我们会面并交换信息。

There’s one example that’s been declassified that’s extraordinary, that I’d be happy to talk about, that made safe US computers from an attack an adversary had ready.

有一个已经解密的例子，它非同寻常，我很乐意谈论它，它使美国计算机免受对手已准备好的攻击。

The argument I would take a shot at, though, is: There is this sense that the AI models that are being produced today by the frontier labs are so important that somehow the government should nationalize them.

不过，我想尝试的论点是：有这样一种感觉，即今天由前沿实验室生产的人工智能模型是如此重要，以至于政府应该以某种方式将它们国有化。

There have been some arguments made in the last couple of weeks by people that have been employed at places like OpenAI that perhaps the national labs should step in and take a role.

过去几周，OpenAI 等公司的员工提出了一些论点，认为也许国家实验室应该介入并发挥作用。

I think that’s a mistake.

我认为这是一个错误。

Our national labs do some things very well.

我们的国家实验室在一些事情上做得很好。

On the other hand, they’re a place where good science goes to die.

另一方面，它们是优秀科学消亡的地方。

If you want to see the difference between the tech sector and the national labs, drive from Lawrence Livermore to the campus of Google and see what’s going on.

如果您想了解科技行业和国家实验室之间的区别，请从劳伦斯利弗莫尔开车前往谷歌园区，看看发生了什么。

They are very different ecosystems.

它们是非常不同的生态系统。

One is ruled by the Civil Service Act; the other is ruled by the free market.

一是受《公务员法》管辖；另一个是由自由市场统治。

I think we have to be very careful exerting government control over breakout technology, but that doesn’t mean that the law enforcement agencies like the FBI and our intelligence agencies can’t cooperate very closely to help protect certain private firms from the nation-state threats they are most certainly facing.

我认为我们必须非常小心地施加政府对突破性技术的控制，但这并不意味着联邦调查局等执法机构和我们的情报机构不能密切合作，以帮助保护某些私营企业免受它们肯定面临的民族国家威胁。

On security clearances

关于安全许可

The security manager in the secretary of defense’s office, where I was managing, got all flustered because my partner at the time .

我所管理的国防部长办公室的安全经理非常慌张，因为我当时的搭档。

.

。

.

。

First of all, we were a gay couple, so that was one issue for him.

首先，我们是一对同性恋伴侣，所以这对他来说是一个问题。

Then the second, my partner at the time was an Indian economist, and he did not like the fact that I was “cohabitating,” as the security clearance form calls it, with a foreign national.

然后是第二个，我当时的合伙人是一位印度经济学家，他不喜欢我与外国人“同居”（正如安全审查表格中所说的那样）。

He decided that I should have a polygraph test, which is very unusual, a counterintelligence polygraph — which, by the way, don’t work.

他决定对我进行测谎仪测试，这很不寻常，是一种反情报测谎仪——顺便说一句，它不起作用。

Polygraphs are demonstratively — you can’t put them in court.

测谎仪具有示范作用——你不能将它们告上法庭。

My chief of staff gets upset and says, “Why are you polygraphing my political appointee just because he’s in a same-sex relationship with a foreign national?” So, she calls the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency responsible for granting our security clearances.

我的幕僚长很生气地说：“你为什么仅仅因为我的政治任命者与外国人有同性关系就对他进行测谎？”因此，她致电负责授予我们安全许可的国防情报局局长。

He ruffles around a bunch of papers and looks my file up and says, “Well, his girlfriend is a dual citizen.” Sandy said, “Excuse me, boyfriend.” Right?

他翻阅了一堆文件，查阅了我的档案，然后说：“嗯，他的女朋友是双重公民。”桑迪说：“对不起，男朋友。”正确的？

No. Our security clearances will pick up very obvious irregularities.

不会。我们的安全检查会发现非常明显的违规行为。

If you have extreme debt issues, if you have mental health issues, the system will pick that up.

如果你有严重的债务问题，如果你有心理健康问题，系统会发现这些问题。

But it probably won’t pick up much else.

但它可能不会有太多其他的东西。

So, we’re caught in these dilemmas which are common, actually, with technology.

因此，我们陷入了这些实际上在技术中很常见的困境。

Is it better?

是不是更好了？

Is the net assessment of technology — encryption is one of these — to just let it out there because we know, on the whole, it makes the world a better place, even though we know, with encryption, there are going to be moments when terror cells or nation-states are going to take advantage of it to successfully prosecute a small attack.

是对技术的净评估吗？——加密就是其中之一——只是将其公布出来，因为我们知道，总体而言，它使世界变得更加美好，尽管我们知道，通过加密，恐怖组织或民族国家有时会利用它来成功发动小型攻击。

This is the dilemma that we face with AI on a grand scale.

这就是我们在大规模人工智能方面面临的困境。

These arguments are going to have to be fought out in the situation room with a variety of expertise.

这些争论必须在战情室中通过各种专业知识来解决。

Having sat in both places, on the National Security Council and in the Pentagon, I am firmly in favor of dual use to the absolute extent we can because I think the net assessment of that is for the best.

我在国家安全委员会和五角大楼这两个地方都任职过，我坚决支持尽我们所能的双重用途，因为我认为对此的净评估是最好的。

It essentially created five large companies that are so burdened by the system of requirements and the auditing and accounting requirements that go in with them to produce modern weapons systems, that the way to think about large defense primes is more akin to a utility company than it is a private-sector company.

它本质上创建了五家大公司，这些公司背负着生产现代武器系统的要求系统以及审计和会计要求的重担，以至于考虑大型国防产品的方式更像是公用事业公司，而不是私营部门公司。

The result of that, of course, has been very slow innovation, a culture of cost overruns, even as some phenomenal technology is produced.

当然，其结果是创新非常缓慢，成本超支文化，即使产生了一些非凡的技术。

What’s really important is a rise, thanks to Ash Carter’s starting Defense Innovation Unit and starting off a whole new cycle of venture capitalism — you have companies like Anduril and Shield AI and other defense start-ups that are joining Palantir and SpaceX, that are becoming a new breed of product-oriented defense companies that are not burdened by the system of requirements that have turned our defense primes into electric utility companies, to be honest.

真正重要的是崛起，这要归功于阿什·卡特 (Ash Carter) 成立的国防创新部门，并开始了一个全新的风险资本主义周期 —— 像 Anduril 和 Shield AI 这样的公司以及其他国防初创企业正在加入 Palantir 和 SpaceX，这些公司正在成为新一代以产品为导向的国防公司，老实说，它们不受将我们的国防主要企业转变为电力公司的要求体系的负担。

I think the real strategic question now before the nation is, how quickly can we swing more of the weapons systems we build to this new generation of product companies that are better at it, or faster, and are far less expensive to the taxpayer?

我认为现在摆在国家面前的真正战略问题是，我们能以多快的速度将更多的武器系统转移给新一代的产品公司，这些公司在这方面做得更好，速度更快，而且对纳税人来说便宜得多？

Over the years — at least since I’ve dealt with them starting in 2009 — they have been right way more than they’ve been wrong.

这些年来 ——至少自从我从 2009 年开始与他们打交道以来—— 他们正确的次数远远多于错误的次数。

But very few of their visions of operational concepts and the technology to back them have moved to the center of the systems that the services have adopted, so there’s a giant adoption program going on.

但他们对运营概念和支持它们的技术的愿景很少转移到服务所采用的系统的中心，因此正在进行一个巨大的采用计划。

This has to do with the fact that DARPA is a separate institution from the Pentagon, and its focus is on creating new technology.

这与 DARPA 是一个独立于五角大楼的独立机构有关，其重点是创造新技术。

There has been a leadership failure going on for years along the E-ring that has prevented more of the technology DARPA and other of the leading labs have produced into the mainstream of the military.

多年来，E 环领域一直存在领导失败，导致 DARPA 和其他领先实验室生产的更多技术无法进入军队主流。

For a billion dollars, you can seed programs for long enough to not only demonstrate their success, but to ensure a high likelihood that they will successfully transition into one of the services.

只需花费 10 亿美元，您就可以在足够长的时间内为项目提供种子，不仅可以证明它们的成功，而且可以确保它们很有可能成功过渡到其中一项服务。

You can, in other words, create a springboard for new technology.

换句话说，你可以为新技术创建一个跳板。

But we do need some of those resources shifted to this new defense ecosystem that’s very experimental, that’s building swarming weapons.

但我们确实需要将其中一些资源转移到这个新的防御生态系统，这是非常实验性的，正在建造集群武器。

The Air Force is very commendable, under the leadership of Secretary Frank Kendall.

在弗兰克·肯德尔部长的领导下，空军非常值得称赞。

They now have what’s called the Collaborative Combat Aircraft.

他们现在拥有所谓的协作战斗机。

This is a 10,000-aircraft buy of supersonic stealth drones who will fly alongside manned fighters in the largest change of Air Force doctrine since, really, the Wright Military Flyer.

这是一笔 10,000 架超音速隐形无人机的采购，这些无人机将与载人战斗机一起飞行，这是自莱特军用飞行器以来空军条令的最大变化。

Oh, by the way, guess who the two finalists are for the production contract for this massive program.

哦，顺便猜一下，这个大型节目的制作合同的两个决赛入围者是谁。

They’re Anduril on the one hand, and another nontraditional defense contractor, General Atomics.

他们一方面是安杜里尔公司，另一方面是另一家非传统国防承包商通用原子公司。

The traditional primes lost to those two companies for this revolutionary contract.

传统质数公司在这项革命性的合同中输给了这两家公司。

On accountability and bureaucracy

关于问责制和官僚主义

So, we organized a phenomenal trip for him to Silicon Valley that really shaped how he, as he was taking over the chairmanship, shaped his agenda as chairman.

因此，我们为他组织了一次非凡的硅谷之旅，这确实影响了他在接任董事长期间如何制定董事长的议程。

We get back from that trip, and I get a phone call from General Dempsey's EA (Executive Assistant), and it says, “Chris, can you write me a couple of pages of justification for the Silicon Valley trip we just took?” I thought, “Oh my gosh.” Sure enough, somebody had filed a complaint with the inspector general that we had spent government dollars to take a boondoggle to California, and the IG was deciding whether or not to investigate.

我们从那次旅行回来后，我接到登普西将军的 EA（执行助理）打来的电话，电话里说：“克里斯，你能为我写几页关于我们刚刚参加的硅谷之行的理由吗？”我想：“天哪。”果然，有人向监察长投诉说我们花了政府的钱去加州搞了一场无意义的事情，监察长正在决定是否进行调查。

Here’s a much more serious example.

这是一个更严重的例子。

Mike Brown, the second director of Defense Innovation Unit, the former CEO of Symantec, the largest cybersecurity in the world — somebody who really understands software, which is now the most important element of any military weapons systems — was, in a remarkable act of leadership and foresight, nominated by President Biden to become the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, the lead weapons buyer in the Pentagon, somebody responsible for driving how nearly $300 billion of the Pentagon’s budget is spent on weapons.

迈克·布朗（Mike Brown），国防创新部门的第二任主管，赛门铁克公司的前首席执行官，世界上最大的网络安全公司 ——“真正了解软件的人，软件现在是任何军事武器系统中最重要的元素”—— 以卓越的领导力和远见卓识，被拜登总统提名为负责采购和维护的国防部副部长，五角大楼的主要武器买家，负责推动近 3000 亿美元的武器采购。五角大楼的预算都花在武器上。

Just days before his confirmation hearing was scheduled, in the news, bubbled up this whistleblower complaint that had been filed at Defense Innovation Unit weeks or months earlier, maybe even years earlier, alleging that he misused hiring authorities to try and pay engineers in Silicon Valley close to market rate so they could come to work for the government — which, by the way, was the mission of Defense Innovation Unit, to bring technologists into the government.

就在他的确认听证会预定的前几天，新闻中报道了几周前、几个月前、甚至几年前向国防创新部门提出的举报人投诉，指控他滥用招聘当局，试图向硅谷的工程师支付接近市场水平的工资，这样他们就可以为政府工作——顺便说一句，这就是国防创新部门的使命，将技术专家带入政府。

It also alleged, among other irregularities, that the office snack fund called Snacko had an insufficient basis of cash accounting.

除其他违规行为外，该公司还声称，名为 Snacko 的办公室零食基金的现金会计基础不足。

The person writing the complaint was a former Comptroller employee.

撰写投诉的人是一名前审计员雇员。

Receiving this complaint that their director had potentially violated Department of Defense policy, the Defense Innovation Unit general counsel undertook an exhaustive investigation, published an 82-page report, found no substance to any of the allegations that had been met.

收到有关其主管可能违反国防部政策的投诉后，国防创新部门总法律顾问进行了详尽的调查，发布了一份 82 页的报告，没有发现任何已得到满足的指控的实质内容。

You would think, case closed.

你可能会想，案子结束了。

At that time, the inspector general decided not to investigate.

当时，监察长决定不予调查。

The Pentagon’s general counsel said, “Fine, you’ve looked into it.

五角大楼总法律顾问说：“好吧，你已经调查过了。

There are complaints all over the place.

到处都有抱怨声。

Case closed.” On the eve of his nomination, this surfaces again.

案件结案了。”在他获得提名前夕，这种情况再次浮出水面。

The whistleblower goes to the media; again, it surfaces in a couple of articles; and he had to end up withdrawing.

举报人向媒体举报；它再次出现在几篇文章中；他最终不得不退出。

He had done nothing wrong, but somebody weaponized the inspector general system against him.

他没有做错任何事，但有人利用监察长制度来对付他。

We’re in the situation where good-minded public servants who are doing the right thing, who have done nothing wrong, are caught in this just bizarre process of persecution that runs at its own civil-servant speed.

我们正处于这样的境地：那些善良的公务员，他们在做正确的事，没有做错任何事，却陷入了这种以公务员自身的速度进行的奇怪的迫害过程中。

I think that’s one of many factors, including, frankly, the Civil Service Act, that is making the talent base of the US government erode.

我认为这是导致美国政府人才基础受到侵蚀的众多因素之一，坦率地说，《公务员法》也是其中之一。

Why is it that governments like Singapore are so much further ahead of the United States in terms of the talent that they’re able to bring to their governments?

为什么像新加坡这样的政府在为政府带来的人才方面远远领先于美国？

It’s not just salaries, although that’s a big part of it.

这不仅仅是工资，尽管这是其中很大一部分。

It’s part of the burden that you undergo by becoming a public servant.

这是成为公务员所承受的负担的一部分。

My co-author, Raj, and I found that out firsthand in trying to start up Defense Innovation Unit.

我和我的合著者拉杰在尝试创办国防创新部门时亲眼目睹了这一点。

On our first flight to Washington, our government credit cards got shut off out of spite because somebody wanted to slow us down.

在我们飞往华盛顿的第一趟航班上，我们的政府信用卡出于恶意而被关闭，因为有人想让我们慢下来。

We had to rebook our hotel reservations and pay out of our pocket.

我们不得不重新预订酒店并自掏腰包。

That was just one of many small examples of much larger political attempts to stop DIU.

这只是阻止 DIU 的更大政治尝试的众多小例子之一。

I think anybody who is working against the grain institution to build something new should be given a lot of authority to prosecute that mission, to make that mission a success, and held accountable if they don’t.

我认为任何反对粮食机构建立新事物的人都应该被赋予很大的权力来执行这一使命，使这一使命取得成功，如果他们不这样做，就被追究责任。

Getting wrapped up in IG investigations that end seven years after the fact is not going to make our system of public administration any more effective.

陷入在事实发生七年后结束的监察长调查并不会让我们的公共管理系统变得更加有效。

On Unit X

在 X 单元

By the time he arrived into office — and he forecast this in his 2001 article — the market capitalization of all the major tech companies — Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon — were each themselves individually bigger than the entire defense industry combined.

当他上任时——他在 2001 年的文章中预测了这一点——所有主要科技公司的市值——苹果、微软、谷歌、亚马逊——每家公司的市值都比整个国防工业的总和还大。

What does that tell you?

这告诉你什么？

That tells you that the locus of innovation has shifted away from military labs, away from DARPA, which used to be generations ahead in technology, to the commercial technology ecosystem.

这告诉你，创新的焦点已经从军事实验室、曾经在技术上处于领先地位的 DARPA 转移到了商业技术生态系统。

The problem is that the entire defense procurement system and the Pentagon’s line of vision are tuned in to the military R&D labs and to the defense primes.

问题在于，整个国防采购系统和五角大楼的视线都集中在军事研发实验室和国防基础设施上。

But if they’re no longer the ones coming up with the leading-edge technology, the Pentagon is not structured to become, in Ash’s words, “a fast follower of the commercial market.”

但如果他们不再是尖端技术的提出者，那么五角大楼就不会成为用阿什的话来说的“商业市场的快速追随者”。

Defense Innovation Unit, the Pentagon’s first-ever Silicon Valley office, started by Ash, the first secretary of defense to visit Silicon Valley in over 20 years, was an attempt to pivot the entire US military to be able to more quickly adopt commercial technology, which was clearly starting to outpace the technology being built by the defense primes.

国防创新部门是五角大楼在硅谷设立的第一个办公室，由 20 多年来第一位访问硅谷的国防部长阿什创立，其目的是让整个美国军队能够更快地采用商业技术，而商业技术显然已经开始超过国防巨头正在开发的技术。

I had to buy more pairs of jeans.

我不得不买更多牛仔裤。

I had one pair of jeans and five suits.

我有一条牛仔裤和五套西装。

I went out and bought five more pairs of jeans and was ready for Silicon Valley.

我出去又买了五条牛仔裤，准备去硅谷。

Starting in 2016, I began a really exciting couple of years at the helm of the Defense Innovation Unit, where we, among other things, pioneered a new way to buy technology that was much faster and proved, through a number of very successful pilots, that you could actually use technology on the battlefield in decisive ways.

从 2016 年开始，我在国防创新部门掌舵，开始了非常激动人心的几年，除其他外，我们开创了一种更快地购买技术的新方式，并通过许多非常成功的试点证明，你实际上可以在战场上以决定性的方式使用技术。

Oh, by the way, we’ve pioneered a way to buy technology at Silicon Valley speed.

哦，顺便说一句，我们开创了一种以硅谷速度购买技术的方式。

If you want to go buy a fighter jet or an aircraft carrier or a military radio, you’re looking at using the federal acquisition rules, this Old Testament–like system of regulations.

如果你想购买一架战斗机、一艘航空母舰或一台军用无线电，你正在考虑使用联邦采购规则，这种类似于《旧约》的法规体系。

Negotiating a contract typically takes 18 to 24 months.

合同谈判通常需要 18 至 24 个月的时间。

If you’re a start-up, that simply doesn’t work because you have to show profitability before your next round of venture investment, which you’re going to raise inside of that timeline.

如果你是一家初创企业，那根本行不通，因为你必须在下一轮风险投资之前展示盈利能力，而你将在该时间表内筹集资金。

Which is why, when we arrived in the Valley in 2016, venture capitalists would actively pull funding from start-ups that tried to go after government contracts because they knew, in the end, it wouldn’t be profitable.

这就是为什么当我们 2016 年到达硅谷时，风险投资家会积极从那些试图寻求政府合同的初创企业那里撤资，因为他们知道这最终不会盈利。

So, DIU had to figure out a way to break through that.

所以，DIU必须要想办法突破。

We did it through the ingenuity of a single person.

我们通过一个人的聪明才智做到了这一点。

This is a heroic story of how one person can really effect change in the Department of Defense, a three million–person organization.

这是一个英雄故事，讲述了一个人如何真正影响国防部这个拥有 300 万人的组织的变革。

Her name was Lauren Dailey.

她的名字叫劳伦·戴利。

We met her when she was 29 years old.

我们认识她时她29岁。

She’s an acquisition specialist, stays up all night reading the newly released National Defense Authorization Act, another dictionary-size tome of law.

她是一名采购专家，经常熬夜阅读新发布的《国防授权法》，这是另一本字典大小的法律巨著。

Our fourth day on the job, she comes to Raj and me and says, “Hey, I found this sentence in section 815, and I think it’s a giant loophole we can use to create a whole new system of contracting.”

我们上班的第四天，她对 Raj 和我说：“嘿，我在第 815 条中发现了这句话，我认为这是一个巨大的漏洞，我们可以利用它来创建一个全新的合同系统。”

Raj and I say, “It sounds fantastic.” This is the biggest problem.

拉杰和我说：“听起来棒极了。”这是最大的问题。

We have to come up with a bigger system of contracting, and if we can’t do that, DIU will fail.

我们必须想出一个更大的承包体系，如果我们做不到这一点，DIU就会失败。

Lauren says, “Great.

劳伦说：“太好了。

Here’s the 20-page white paper that I wrote about it.” Quite literally the next day, Lauren and I got on a flight to Washington, and we met in rapid order with the head of acquisition policy for the department, with the head acquisition lawyer for the department, and with the Department of Defense general counsel.

这是我写的关于它的 20 页白皮书。”毫不夸张地说，第二天，劳伦和我登上了飞往华盛顿的航班，我们快速会见了该部门的采购政策主管、该部门的首席采购律师以及国防部总法律顾问。

And they all agreed, and Secretary Carter blessed, a whole new regime of using other transaction authorities, this Apollo-era little-used contracting mechanism to let contracts in between 30 and 60 days.

他们都同意，并且卡特部长祝福，建立一个使用其他交易机构的全新制度，这是阿波罗时代很少使用的签约机制，可以在 30 到 60 天内签订合同。

In two weeks, we got the department to declare DIU could use this new method.

两周后，我们让部门宣布 DIU 可以使用这种新方法。

In the eight years since Lauren had that idea, $70 billion of technology has been acquired by the Department of Defense using the method that she pioneered.

自从 Lauren 提出这个想法以来的八年里，国防部利用她开创的方法已经获得了 700 亿美元的技术。

Perhaps a PLA officer will come and join your board to watch that technology advance.

也许一名解放军军官会加入你的董事会来观察技术的进步。

If they see a use case, they might decide to pull that technology into the military.

如果他们看到一个用例，他们可能会决定将该技术引入军队。

So, in the sense of their command economy, that is how they are deciding to adjust technology.

因此，从他们的计划经济的意义上来说，这就是他们决定调整技术的方式。

Today, similarly, the entire complex of Chinese universities that study national security and military institutes are looking very closely at Ukraine.

如今，同样，中国所有研究国家安全的大学和军事机构都在密切关注乌克兰。

By the time the book was published, I think we had caught something like 120 academic papers being published in the Chinese literature about the Ukraine war, very clearly seeing the decisive use of Starlink, calling for a Chinese version of Starlink, calling for Chinese kinetic and nonkinetic means of jamming low-earth-orbit space technology.

到这本书出版时，我想我们已经在中国文献中发现了大约 120 篇关于乌克兰战争的学术论文，非常清楚地看到了星链的决定性用途，呼吁建立中国版的星链，呼吁中国使用动能和非动能手段来干扰近地轨道空间技术。

What’s different about their procurement system is, however good or bad it is, it’s geared at producing the exact kind of technology that will find the chinks in our own armor and could, if we have to go to war in a Taiwan scenario, in another scenario, prove to be a potentially catastrophic awakening to the US military.

他们的采购系统的不同之处在于，无论好坏，它都旨在生产能够找到我们自己装甲上的漏洞的技术，并且如果我们必须在台湾的情况下发动战争，在另一种情况下，这可能对美军来说是一个潜在的灾难性觉醒。

On military office norms

关于军事办公室规范

So, I thought, here we are in Silicon Valley.

所以，我想，我们现在是在硅谷。

We’re supposed to come up with an office with a different culture.

我们应该设计一个具有不同文化的办公室。

Let’s make our office dog-friendly.

让我们的办公室变得对狗友好。

We did, but we had to go to war to do it.

我们做到了，但我们必须发动战争才能做到这一点。

We were in a National Guard building, and there was some colonel there in charge.

我们在国民警卫队大楼里，那里有一位上校负责。

He was our landlord.

他是我们的房东。

Even though there’s no regulation against having a dog-friendly office in the Department of Defense, and we had published our dog policy, he threatened to evict us unless we ended our policy.

尽管国防部没有禁止养狗办公室的规定，而且我们已经公布了我们的狗政策，但他威胁要驱逐我们，除非我们结束我们的政策。

His last name started with F, so we referred to him as Colonel Fear.

他的姓氏以 F 开头，所以我们称他为恐惧上校。

Boy, it was fun to watch Secretary Mattis come in, who himself loves dogs, and be greeted by my golden retriever.

天哪，看着马蒂斯国务卿进来，他本人很喜欢狗，并受到我的金毛猎犬的欢迎，这真是太有趣了。

Boy, was it even more fun to see crusty three- and four-star generals that were very skeptical that Silicon Valley had anything to offer, to first see my golden retriever, and then see the woman who briefed our software demos whose hair was blue, and by the end of the day, nonetheless, be really impressed by the technology we were putting in front of them.

天哪，看到那些脾气暴躁的三星级和四星级将军对硅谷能提供什么东西非常怀疑，首先看到我的金毛猎犬，然后看到那位头发是蓝色的向我们介绍软件演示的女人，尽管如此，到了一天结束时，我们对我们展示在他们面前的技术印象深刻，这不是更有趣吗？

Boy, it was fun to watch Secretary Mattis come in, who himself loves dogs, and be greeted by my golden retriever.

天哪，看着马蒂斯国务卿进来，他本人很喜欢狗，并受到我的金毛猎犬的欢迎，这真是太有趣了。

Boy, was it even more fun to see crusty three- and four-star generals that were very skeptical that Silicon Valley had anything to offer, to first see my golden retriever, and then see the woman who briefed our software demos whose hair was blue, and by the end of the day, nonetheless, be really impressed by the technology we were putting in front of them.

天哪，看到脾气暴躁的三星级和四星级将军对硅谷能提供什么表示怀疑，首先看到我的金毛猎犬，然后看到那位头发蓝色的向我们介绍软件演示的女士，尽管如此，到了一天结束时，我们对我们展示在他们面前的技术印象深刻，这是不是更有趣呢？

On government commissions

关于政府委员会

I ended up studying breakdowns in the national security state.

我最终研究了国家安全状态的崩溃。

What do you do after a catastrophic breakdown that the regular political system can’t contain?

在常规政治体系无法遏制的灾难性崩溃之后，你会做什么？

I ended up studying government commissions, in part because I had had the chance early in my career to serve around a couple after-action reports and investigations.

我最终研究了政府委员会，部分原因是我在职业生涯早期有机会参与一些事后报告和调查。

My first job out of college in 2003 was for the Space Shuttle Columbia accident investigation, a look at NASA’s safety culture.

2003 年，我大学毕业后的第一份工作是对哥伦比亚号航天飞机事故进行调查，了解 NASA 的安全文化。

Not only what was the physical cause of the Columbia disaster, but what was the organizational cause behind the physical cause?

不仅哥伦比亚号灾难的物理原因是什么，而且物理原因背后的组织原因是什么？

My second job was a chance to go to Iraq and work on a team of historians that was writing an official history of the reconstruction, another major breakdown in American foreign policy.

我的第二份工作是有机会前往伊拉克，与一个历史学家团队一起工作，该团队正在撰写重建的官方历史，这是美国外交政策的另一个重大崩溃。

In fact, I’ve gone on to specialize in disaster in a few other areas.

事实上，我还专门研究了其他一些领域的灾难。

I wrote the Obama administration’s after-action report of Ebola.

我写了奥巴马政府的埃博拉事后报告。

I used to joke that if I showed up in your office, you were really having a bad day.

我曾经开玩笑说，如果我出现在你的办公室，你的日子真的很糟糕。

What I learned is that expertise is often wrong, and settled notions of how business should be done is also often wrong.

我了解到，专业知识常常是错误的，而关于如何开展业务的既定观念也常常是错误的。

Those settled notions often kill people, and especially when they kill people, that’s a strong signal that it’s time to go back and take a fresh look at everything, to always be curious, always be skeptical, and always be as rigorous as you can because established ways of thinking don’t often evolve in ways fast enough to accommodate changing circumstances.

这些固定的观念常常会害死人，尤其是当它们害死人的时候，这是一个强烈的信号，表明是时候回去重新审视一切了，要永远保持好奇，永远保持怀疑，永远保持尽可能的严谨，因为既定的思维方式通常不会以足够快的速度发展来适应不断变化的环境。

The hardest commission to be on is an agenda commission.

最难参加的委员会是议程委员会。

An agenda commission, like the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, wasn’t created after a 9/11 or a catastrophic breakdown, but nevertheless is a body that is going to have the bipartisan insights and support and the expertise to tackle AI, a really complex issue that spans government that, at least when the AI commission was created, the government wasn’t in a position to itself take on in a really rigorous way.

像国家人工智能安全委员会这样的议程委员会并不是在 9/11 或灾难性崩溃之后成立的，但它仍然是一个将拥有两党见解、支持和专业知识来解决人工智能问题的机构，人工智能是一个跨越政府的非常复杂的问题，至少在人工智能委员会成立时，政府本身无法以真正严格的方式来应对。

The most effective commissions are what are called crisis commissions.

最有效的委员会是所谓的危机委员会。

The 9/11 Commission is a classic example.

9/11 委员会就是一个典型的例子。

They happen in the aftermath of a giant political rupture, when everybody knows there’s been a huge breakdown, where there’s more openness to look freshly.

它们发生在一场巨大的政治破裂之后，当时每个人都知道发生了巨大的崩溃，人们有更多的开放性来重新审视。

I’m a strong believer in commissions as a form of government.

我坚信委员会是一种政府形式。

The British government has it much more frequently than we do.

英国政府比我们更频繁地这样做。

They don’t always work.

它们并不总是有效。

An interesting historical anecdote — the first commission in the US was actually the Whiskey Rebellion Commission.

一个有趣的历史轶事——美国第一个委员会实际上是威士忌叛乱委员会。

It didn’t work.

它不起作用。

George Washington had to get on his horse and ride west before the rebellion in Pennsylvania broke up.

在宾夕法尼亚州的叛乱爆发之前，乔治·华盛顿不得不骑马向西行进。

But as a form of gathering concentrated expertise for a short problem to dive deep on a topic, I think they’re very powerful instruments.

但作为一种针对一个简短问题收集集中专业知识以深入研究某个主题的形式，我认为它们是非常强大的工具。

So, I look at AI as a technology that is not at all like nuclear.

因此，我将人工智能视为一种与核技术完全不同的技术。

I never think it’s going to achieve this zero-to-one-point technology, as we would call it, that nuclear is today, where you either have a bomb or you don’t.

我从来不认为它会实现这种零到一点的技术，正如我们所说的那样，今天的核技术，要么有炸弹，要么没有。

It’s going to be much more diffused.

它将更加分散。

It’s going to be much more a part of the commercial economy.

它将更多地成为商业经济的一部分。

It’s going to be much more a question of, do you have an iPhone 15 versus an iPhone 12?

这将是一个更重要的问题，你拥有 iPhone 15 还是 iPhone 12？

Do you have the most advanced AI versus AI that’s a little bit older or maybe from an open-source model?

您是否拥有最先进的人工智能，而不是较旧的人工智能或可能来自开源模型的人工智能？

Because of that, as an international relations theorist and as the literature would suggest, it’s not going to be like nuclear weapons.

正因为如此，正如国际关系理论家和文献所暗示的那样，它不会像核武器那样。

It’s not going to create sudden disequilibria in the international system.

它不会在国际体系中造成突然的不平衡。

It’s going to be much more shades of gray, I think, and gradations.

我认为，将会有更多的灰色阴影和渐变。

That’s good because it means that we will have time among nations to find new equilibria without hopefully finding ourselves in sudden disequilibria that could create an incentive for one nation to start a war against another.

这很好，因为这意味着我们将有时间在各国之间寻找新的平衡，而不希望发现自己陷入突然的不平衡，从而刺激一个国家对另一个国家发动战争。