AI below the waterline

Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology

斯特罗布塔尔博特安全、战略和技术中心

Undersea operations are vital to contemporary American strategies for power projection, sea control or denial, and for naval war against rivals.

水下作战对于当代美国的力量投送、海上控制或拒止以及针对对手的海战战略至关重要。

Undersea platforms also carry the majority of America’s deployed nuclear warheads, providing an essential, secure second-strike capacity.

水下平台还携带美国已部署的大部分核弹头，提供必要的、安全的二次打击能力。

And as surveillance and precision-strike regimes have matured and globalized, the stealth advantages of the undersea realm have grown in salience.

随着监视和精确打击制度的成熟和全球化，海底领域的隐形优势日益凸显。

What’s more, seabed data cables now carry more than 90% of U.S. command-and-control communications, making a robust undersea presence essential for military operations, as well as for the digital economy—and increasingly for artificial intelligence (AI) itself.

此外，海底数据电缆目前承载着美国 90% 以上的指挥和控制通信，这使得强大的海底存在对于军事行动和数字经济至关重要，而且对于人工智能 (AI) 本身也越来越重要。

The centrality of secure, capable subsurface forces is widely recognized by strategists.

战略家们广泛认识到安全、有能力的地下部队的核心地位。

1 Much murkier, however, is whether and how the innovations of AI—and complementary technologies, such as robotics—could affect or even transform the subsurface environment.

1 然而，更加模糊的是人工智能（以及机器人技术等补充技术）的创新是否以及如何影响甚至改变地下环境。

Most commentary about AI’s impacts on warfare reasons by analogy.

大多数关于人工智能对战争影响的评论都是类比的。

Above the waterline, these innovations seem poised to enable “kill webs” of interconnected devices, with many automated functions that traditional, entirely human-controlled forces can’t match—changing the battlefield and the nature of threats.

在水线以上，这些创新似乎有望实现互连设备的“杀伤网”，具有传统的、完全由人控制的部队无法比拟的许多自动化功能——改变战场和威胁的性质。

Much commentary postulates that similar AI-driven transformations will make the undersea realm increasingly “transparent” and permit system-wide awareness and AI-assisted or even automatic, highly skilled decisionmaking below the surface.

许多评论认为，类似的人工智能驱动的变革将使海底领域变得越来越“透明”，并允许全系统的意识和人工智能辅助甚至自动的、高技能的海底决策。

We are skeptical.

我们对此表示怀疑。

Undersea information webs and autonomy are severely limited because communication and sensing at a distance are physically much more challenging underwater than above the waterline.

海底信息网和自主性受到严重限制，因为远距离通信和传感在水下比在水线以上更具物理挑战性。

We offer a different vision, anchored in those physical limitations and focused on the core missions of the undersea forces: survivability and force projection through stealth.

我们提供了不同的愿景，以这些物理限制为基础，专注于水下部队的核心任务：生存能力和通过隐形进行兵力投射。

Rather than global kill webs, AI-enhanced undersea platforms and sensors are much more likely to operate as a mosaic of loosely coupled local networks, constrained by the difficulty of seeing and communicating across long distances without revealing presence.

与全球杀伤网不同，人工智能增强型海底平台和传感器更有可能作为松散耦合的本地网络的马赛克来运行，但由于难以在不暴露存在的情况下进行远距离观察和通信，因此受到限制。

Small pods of linked crewed and autonomous vehicles, supported by local AI and connected at the edges of wider networks, are the likely future of AI undersea.

由本地人工智能支持并在更广泛的网络边缘连接的载人和自动驾驶车辆的小型吊舱，可能是海底人工智能的未来。

In some specific places, such as constrained waterways and chokepoints, rich networks of sensors and communications may allow for more web-like systems.

在一些特定的地方，例如受限的水道和阻塞点，丰富的传感器和通信网络可能允许更多的网络式系统。

One implication is that solitary, stealthy submarines—both nuclear-armed and fast attack—will continue to have extremely high value for a survivable and capable underwater force.

其中一个含义是，单独的隐形潜艇（无论是核潜艇还是快速攻击潜艇）对于一支生存能力强的水下部队将继续具有极高的价值。

Another is that in assessment, physical proximity to the theatre of operations is more important than the traditional distinction between offense and defense.

另一个是，在评估中，与战区的物理接近度比传统的进攻和防守的区别更重要。

All else equal—a condition that is hard to measure and assess with precision in the middle of a technological revolution—AI will create an advantage near home shores and near a subset of allies who are physically proximate to the operating frontier and integrated into detection and communication systems compatible with those of the United States.

在其他条件相同的情况下（在技术革命中很难精确衡量和评估这一条件），人工智能将在本土附近和部分盟友附近创造优势，这些盟友实际上靠近作战前沿，并集成到与美国兼容的检测和通信系统中。

For the United States, realizing the full potential of AI-assisted systems will require theatre-proximate allies able to lay and secure cables and offer secure communication.

对于美国来说，要充分发挥人工智能辅助系统的潜力，需要战区附近的盟友能够铺设和保护电缆并提供安全通信。

AI will also transform oceanography, a field that the United States has long led, by improving pattern recognition, guiding underwater uncrewed vehicles in collecting ocean measurements, and integrating key insights from science and the environment into naval operations.

人工智能还将通过改进模式识别、引导水下无人航行器收集海洋测量数据以及将科学和环境的关键见解整合到海军行动中，从而改变美国长期领先的海洋学领域。

U.S. advantages in this field are eroding as China rapidly invests in oceanographic science and, especially, data-collection platforms.

随着中国快速投资海洋科学，特别是数据收集平台，美国在这一领域的优势正在削弱。

Finally, AI systems themselves are becoming highly dependent on seabed data cables.

最后，人工智能系统本身正变得高度依赖海底数据电缆。

This infrastructure is vulnerable to disruption, and current U.S. doctrine and capacity for defending that infrastructure are insufficient, particularly as Russia and China build tools to detect, track, cut, or interfere with them.

这些基础设施很容易受到破坏，而美国目前捍卫该基础设施的理论和能力不足，特别是在俄罗斯和中国开发工具来检测、跟踪、切断或干扰这些基础设施的情况下。

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The AI revolution is real.

人工智能革命是真实的。

But below the waterline, the laws of physics, for now, make the seas far from transparent, render undersea kill webs infeasible, and make planning for such webs dangerous.

但在水线以下，物理定律目前使海洋远非透明，使海底杀伤网变得不可行，并使此类杀网的规划变得危险。

The uncertainty surrounding how these technological revolutions play out has big implications for force design and reinforces age-old insights about Pentagon procurement.

这些技术革命如何发挥作用的不确定性对部队设计产生了重大影响，并强化了有关五角大楼采购的古老见解。

Investments should emphasize shortened procurement cycles, rapid experimentation, and adaptation while being guided by a clear understanding of the difference between AI above and below the waterline.

投资应强调缩短采购周期、快速实验和适应，同时以对水线以上和水线以下人工智能之间差异的清晰理解为指导。