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ABSTRACT
Contemporary warfare is increasingly shaped by the complex relationship between the privatization of security and technologically driven automation. On the one hand, there is a growing tendency to employ private military and security companies for a range of military support tasks. On the other hand, the growing automation of security technologies is bound to make war less manpower intensive. Combat systems will have much more autonomy and humans will be working more closely with machines than they do today. The article provides an original analysis on the interplay between the privatization of security tasks and technologically driven automation and investigates their impact on the defence industry and the armed forces. These two sets of actors are arguably among the most impacted by the multi-faceted relations between privatization and automation. Technological progress creates the need for contractors to maintain and operate platforms that militaries do not have expertise to run. However, technologically driven automation - often developed in value chains far removed from the military-industrial pipeline - might also replace private contractors in non-core security tasks. The possibility to employ automated and autonomous systems will hence impact on the already delicate balance between private contractors and publicly-funded armed forces.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Krishnan, War as business.
2. Singer, Corporate Warriors; Avant, The Market for Force; and Cusumano & Kinsey, Bureaucratic Interests.
3. Cusumano, “Bridging the Gap,” 110.
4. Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, “At What Risk?”.
5. Mahoney, “United States Defence Contractors,” 4.
6. Peltier, The Growth of ‘Camo Economy’.
7. Marten, Russia’s Semi-State Security; See Østensen, Private Military Companies – Russian great power politics on the cheap? on this special issue.
8. Swed and Crosbie, Private Security Military Contractors; see Yuan, China’s Private Security Companies and the Protection of Chinese Economic Interests Abroad on this special issue.
9. Krahmann, States, Citizens and Privatization; Cusumano and Ruzza, Piracy and the Privatisation.
10. Avant, The Market for Force.
11. Leander, Commercialising Security in Europe.
12. Percy, Mercenaries; see Olsen, The Social Construction of Mercenaries.
13. Singer, Corporate Warriors
14. Schwartz, Department of Defense Contractors.
15. La Porte, Balancing Act; Krieg, “Defining Remote Warfare.”
16. Moore, “US military logistics,” 9.
17. Singer, Corporate warriors, Avant, The market of force; and Erbel and Kinsey, “Think again–Supplying War.”
18. Calcara, European Defence Decision-making.
19. Bury, “Conceptualising the Quiet Revolution.”
20. Krahmann, States, citizens and privatization; and Leander, Commercialising Security in Europe.
21. Erbel, Underlying causes Military Outsourcing, 137.
22. Moore, “US Military Logistics.”
23. La Porte, Balancing Act.
24. Cusumano, “Bridging the Gap.”
25. Krieg and Rickli, Surrogate Warfare
26. Marten, Russia’s semi-state security, see Krieg, Call in the Mercenaries – Externalizing Warfare to Corporate Warriors in the Middle East on this special issue.
27. Krishnan, War as business; Kinsey and Patterson, Contractors and War
28. Mahoney, “United States Defence Contractors.”
29. Chin, “Technology, War and the State,” 767.
30. Horowitz, The Diffusion of Military Power.
31. Jervis, Meaning of Nuclear Revolution.
32. McAfee and Brynjolfsson, Human work Robotic Future.
33. Schwab, The Fourth Industrial Revolution.
34. Sechser, Narang and Talmadge, “Emerging Technologies and Strategic Stability”; and Brose, The Kill Chain.
35. Horowitz, Artificial Intelligence, International Competition.
36. Calcara, Csernatoni and Lavallée, Emerging Security Technologies.
37. Rossiter, “The impact of robotics.”
38. Scharre, Opportunity and challenge autonomous systems, 10.
39. Cummings, Artificial intelligence, 3.
40. Scharre and Horowitz, Introduction Autonomy Weapon Systems, 5.
41. Horowitz, “When speed kills.”
42. Gibney, “Google AI algorithm.”
43. Scharre and Horowitz, Introduction Autonomy Weapon Systems, 16.
44. Altmann and Sauer, “Autonomous weapon systems,” 118.
45. Brose, The Kill Chain.
46. See note 41 above.
47. Ayoub and Payne, Strategy Artificial Intelligence.
48. Scharre and Horowitz, Introduction Autonomy Weapon Systems; Cummings, Artificial intelligence.
49. See note 47 above.
50. Boulanin and Verbruggen, Mapping Development of Autonomy, 26.
51. Leys, “Autonomous Weapon Systems.”
52. Haas and Fischer, Evolution of targeted killing practices, 289.
53. Zegart, Cheap fights.
54. Gartkze, “Blood and Robots.”
55. Calcara, European Defence Decision-making.
56. Krishnan, War as Business, 4.
57. Gholz, Systems Integration.
58. See note 28 above.
59. Bellais, “Technology and the defense industry,” 73.
60. Schilde, Political Economy European Security.
61. Molas-Gallart, “Which Way to Go?”; and Krishnan, War as business.
62. Verbruggen, The Role of Civilian Innovation.
63. Cronin, Power to the People.
64. Brynjolfsson, Rock and Syverso, Artificial Intelligence.
65. PWC, “Defence trends 2020.”
66. Taubman, Defense Industry’s Brain Drain; and PWC, Defence trends 2020.
67. Mahoney, “United States Defence Contractors,” 2.
68. Chan, Palantir US army.
69. See note 28 above.
70. Gould, “Arms Trade Momentum.”
71. Chin, “Technology, war and the state.”
72. Geist, AI arms race
73. Calcara, Csernatoni,, and Lavallée, Emerging Security Technologies.
74. Molas-Gallart, “Which Way to Go?”
75. See note 62 above.
76. Bellais and Guichard, “Defense Innovation, Technology Transfers.”
77. Carpenter, “Rethinking the political/-science-/fiction nexus.”
78. Bode, Norm‐making Global South.
79. Tilly, National states in Western Europe.
80. Cusumano, “Private military and security companies’ logos.”
81. Mahoney, “United States defence contractors,” 2
82. Krieg, UAE’s dogs of war.
83. Mason, “Breaking the mold,” 101; and Stinchfield, Small groups, 119–122
84. Stinchfield, Small groups.
85. Dunigan, Future US military contracting, Petersohn, “Private military and security companies.”
86. Cusumano, Contractor Support Economic Perspective.
87. Krieg, “Defining Remote Warfare”; and Marten, Russia’s semi-state security.
88. Mahoney, “United States defence contractors,” 7–9; See Weiss, A ‘brave new industry’: From civilian service provider to cybersecurity warriors? on this special issue.
89. Cusumano and Kinsey, Diplomatic Security.
90. Lobato, Unraveling cyber security, 104–105.
91. Bing and Schectman, Secret Hacking Team.
92. Jasper, Russian Cyber Operations.
93. Egloff, Cybersecurity and Non-State Actors; Maurer, Cyber Mercenaries.
94. Egloff and Smeets, Publicly, Attributing Cyber Attacks.
95. See note 1 above.
96. Bellais, Combat Air Systems.
97. Dickinson, Drones Automated Weapons.
98. Gartzke, “Blood and robots”; and Williams, “Asymmetric Arms Control.”
99. See note 37 above.
100. Gartzke, “Blood and robots,” 7.
101. Lindsay, Information Technology and Military Power.
102. DeVore, “Reluctant innovators?”.
103. Fino, Tiger Check.
104. Tarraf, Defense Posture for Artificial Intelligence.
105. Posen, The sources of military doctrine.
106. Cusumano, Scope of Military Privatization; and Cusumano and Ruzza, Piracy and Privatisation.
107. Frey, The technology trap.
108. See note 103 above.
109. Ibid.
110. Konaev, “U.S. Military Investments in Autonomy.”
111. Harrison, Remotely Crewed Systems
112. Asoni et al, Mercenary army of the Poor.
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Antonio Calcara
Antonio Calcara is Post-Doctoral Researcher in the Department of Political Science of the University of Antwerp, Belgium