The Future of Warfare

How Big Data and AI Will Change Warfighting Forever

Panel:

Jimmy Squib, Executive Vice President of Operations, Sybyl Corporation

Alexa Willison, CEO of Raycom Technologies

Setting

At EXPOFuture 2038, two powerhouse executives sat together to discuss the future of society as it relates to AI and Warfighting for an integrated future. The conversation took place on a stage at the Westboro Convention Center in Synditech city, in front of 2,300 corporate leaders across the defense and technospace sector.

The stage featured two perfectly bright white armchairs, in which Jimmy Squib and Alexa Willison sat facing eachother. You could tell from their body language that the two were quite comfortable with eachother, likely owing to their extensive history as corporate colleagues.

Jimmy Squib sat to the audience's left side of the stage. He was certainly an eccentric character, a man in his late 40s, who despite his eccentric appearance maintained a commanding presence on stage. He wore a light pink suit jacket, with matching pants, and an elegant necktie with a glittering silver shine. He was undoubtedly the most well-dressed man in the room, owing to his immense wealth which he had no reservations about flaunting. His hands were adorned with the finest of gold jewelry, with a wristwatch and several bejeweled rings of sapphire, diamond, and pink topaz. His hair was brown and full, combed neatly back over his ears, and he distinctly wore clear aviator-style glasses: an ironic decision for a man peddling technological advances on society and pledging donations to universal corrective eye surgery.

To his left, and on the audience's right, sat Alexa Wilson, a brilliant technologist in her mid-30s, who was known for her role in the hostile takeover of Raycom Technologies, the world's leading defense and aerotech company. She sat, neatly composed, with straight black hair wearing a futuristic but plain dark gray outfit. Her aura of seriousness was matched by her simple "straight to business" attire, juxtaposed jarringly against her counterpart's laid-back and carefree attitude likewise matched by a gaudy appearance. You could see, as she held the microphone, her high-tech and sleek digital wristwatch, which she surely depended on for every need of communication.

The conversation today is about the future of warfare, and today we will learn how these two companies work together to change our world, by witnessing them pretending to learn from eachother.

Transcript:

ALEXA: Jimmy, you and I have worked together for some time now, and it's been a pleasure to see how Sybyl and Raycom have come together to solve some of the most complex problems of modern warfare.

JIMMY: Yes, it has, and let me say, that this partnership would not have been possible without your vision and passion for technology, which you bring to Raycom under your leadership, knowing that Aerospace warfare and Technospace warefare are cut from the same cloth.

ALEXA: Quite true. As you know, big data and cloud analytics tools have made it possible for our supply chain to improve by 300% in the past decade, and Raycom now represents over half of Sybyl's entire compute workload. As I understand it, recent developments in the compute density of Sybyl's processing cores will allow for us to continue pushing our needs to higher limits, with less energy requirements, allowing greater performance on our previous-generation combatant detection models.

JIMMY: You're spot on there, Alexa. Spot on. The key thing that we want all stakeholders to take away is that accelerated processing cores absolutely CAN supercharge last-gen models to net performance levels comparable to current-gen models on the same infrastructure, which means that we can enable Raycom's autonomous drone police and military forces to make informed targeting decisions on the fly, in higher numbers, while still powering the more critical functions such as the Raycom logistics, supply chain, and financials.

ALEXA: That's so critical that you've put a spotlight on that, Jimmy. The reality is, if the entire supply chain were to fail, Raycom's entire network of defense and enforcement would not operate at all, and that would be a critical disaster to civilization. We are, quite literally, too big to fail. The fact that our partnership with Sybyl has enabled us to make such a small compromise to targeting accuracy without sacrificing our financial back-bone is crucial.

JIMMY: Thank you, Alexa. I understand that Raycom had some serious issues managing stakeholder expectations and regulatory matters concerning the accuracy of targeting systems. How did you navigate that?

ALEXA: The first thing is to keep our expectations grounded in reality, Jimmy. Before Raycom's sophisticated AI targeting systems ever came into play, collateral damage in warfare was three times higher per-kill than it is today. This means that not only are our models more effective at differentiating between enemy combatants and noncombatants, our models are more effective at identifying and engaging combatants in general.

JIMMY: That's true, you can't deny facts, people.

ALEXA: Correct. Because our model is so effective, this is really a non-issue. As you know, politicians and lawmakers are concerned with maximizing their own image in the public discorse, and so they are inclined to focus on the facts from a perspective that is as provocative as possible. As I have just explained, our model is already demonstrably more effective than conventional human military and law enforcement tactics. We just have to demonstrate and explain this to lawmakers so they can be aware of the real factors that should affect their decision making.

JIMMY: Do you believe that they will come around?

ALEXA: I believe they will come around, very soon. As I said, it's just a matter of putting the facts in order, so they have the proper perspective. At the end of the day, Raycom's mission is to build a better future for humanity, and the best way to do this is to maximally use the technology that we all know will inevitably be developed.

JIMMY: Well said, Alexa. Well said. And, if I may add, as warfare becomes increasingly autonomous, likewise will targets become increasingly autonomous. Targets as they appear now may be human, but targets of the future will be autonomous systems. Your models will be ready to make that adaptation, and our infrastructure ready to host it. No more human combatants means no more human casualties.

ALEXA: That's true, and really that highlights something I wanted to ask you about. As warfare becomes increasingly autonomous, how do you see Sybyl's data centers' role in other areas of society that are adjacent to warfare?

JIMMY: Ah! Now we're talking about the future! Up until present, we've merely spoken of the present and the past, but this is where Sybyl and Raycom will continue to drive us evermore into the future. Raycom has complete telemetry of all hosted systems, including those of Raycom and other systems. We are working on new frontiers of multimodel artificial systemic intelligence that will bring together all of these resources. Financials, personnel, supply chain, warfare, enforcement, surveillance, and more. We call it: "MasterFORCE!"

Suddenly, Jimmy stood up and a magnificent show of fireworks overtook the scene as upbeat music started playing over the loud speaker. A quadcopter drone flew into the room and picked up Alexa by her shoulders and flew her off into the wild blue yonder, breaking the window as it flew her away.

Jimmy got up and ran, started doing somersaults until he landed on an unmanned ground drone and ran off into the distance. The crowd was left amazed and wondering what they just witnessed.

Perhaps... the final fake interview?

/writings/fakefake/