Ladies and gentlemen, good morning to those of you joining us from North America and good afternoon and evening to those of you joining us around the world. I just want to need a clear and tinkler, currently a military professor at the Stockton Centre for International Law and a legal officer in the Royal Air Force. Before we begin, just need to make a few announcements. First of all is just to clarify that the entirety of the three-day conference will be recorded and will be publicly made available to people on YouTube after the event. The second thing is to encourage all of you to ask questions of each of our panels and speakers. So if you you can access the Q&A box as part of the webinar and we very much hope that you can ask questions as we go along and feed those through to the panels. Also in that box I will post the link to our website where you can access the program, agenda and fly for this event. I'll now hand over to the Charles H Stockton Professor of International Maritime Law and Chair of the Stockton Centre, Professor James Craska. Thank you Kiran and thank you everybody for participating in this conference. It's my honor to be able to introduce the president of the Naval War College, Rear Admiral Shoshana Chatfield. She is a leader at the pinnacle of military education enterprise in the U.S. Armed Forces. She's also an Navy pilot and operator and was a senior leader in ComNAV Marianas, Commander of Naval Forces Marianas, where she served as the Commander of U.S. Indo-Pay-Com's leader for all of the U.S. forces that are serving in Guam and throughout the Marianas Islands as well as that as a four deployed center for U.S. forces in the Western Pacific. She is educated in international relations. She also studied at the Harvard School of Government and earned a doctorate degree. She has served as a professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy and so she's been a quintessential warrior scholar and the logical choice to lead the Naval War College. The Naval War College educates future leaders from some 60 different countries and we also have a burgeoning research enterprise which includes the world's preeminent war gaming center outfit, a number of other prominent research institutions that focus on cyber operations, Russia maritime operations, and the China Maritime Studies Institute and the Stockton Center is within that research enterprise as well and it's my pleasure to turn the floor over to Rear Admiral Chatfield. Admiral? Thank you so much, Professor Kraska. Good morning to all. I would like to acknowledge some of the many groups and people who are here today beginning with the Yale Law School Paltzai China Center, the U.S. Army's National Security Law Division, the West Point Libra Institute for Law and Land Warfare, and of course my old alma mater for teaching the United States Air Force Academy. I'd also like to offer special thanks to Air Vice Marshal Tamara Jennings and the Royal Air Force Legal Branch for cosponsoring the conference and for sending Squadron Leader Kiernan Tinkler as a professor of international law, two-hour Stockton Center. Professor Kiernan is the director of this conference and has put together such a fantastic schedule of events and has done a terrific job within this Naval War College Center. And I'd also like to give a special thanks to Lieutenant General Charles P.D., 40th Judge Advocate General of the United States Army, and the support that his National Security Law Division has provided to this event. Lastly, I'd like to thank the chair and the entire team of the Stockton Center of International Law. Professor James Kraska and his team have really done a lot for the advancement of research and study in this area. So welcome. Welcome to the Disruptive Technologies and International Law Conference. I'm so glad that you could join us virtually. You know, we'd love to host conferences in person, but this year, like everyone else, we have sought other means to bring together the minds and those interested in these particular topics. And so we can continue our work forward despite the challenges that we've all faced throughout this COVID-19 crisis. Hopefully this conference will provide a bit of a respect, a respite, sorry, and a forum for people within this community of practice to have some opportunity to share ideas with each other and also to socialize across this platform to keep in touch and to advance your networking and relationships. This year, you'll be discussing how technologies are challenging our force structure and military operations across a range of emerging capabilities and those legal implications, such as how artificial intelligence affects the use of force, how sovereignty and neutrality will apply in cyberspace. What's the law of armed conflict going to look like in outer space? And what are the navigational rights and belligerent rights of autonomous surface ships and submarines? International Law governs the use of these capabilities and is already affecting how we operate, transforming our strategy, our policy, and our operations. More changes are certainly to come and through dialogues like this one, you can help to craft these policies and those rules. I'm here today to kick off this very important conference because of the dedicated work that the United States Naval War College has done to understand and answer these questions of international law. The more we prepare and understand each other, the more effective our forces will be when they operate. Our role here at the United States Naval War College is to inform today's decision makers and to educate tomorrow's leaders. In today's dynamic security environment, numerical and technological superiority are no longer enough. Our chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has asserted that we will also need to continue to outthink our adversaries. At the Naval War College, we provide the environment to expand the intellectual capacity of naval, joint, interagency, and international leaders to achieve cognitive advantage. Our objective here in Newport and around the globe is to deliver excellence in education, research, and outreach and build enduring relationships with our alumni and partners. The Naval War College is committed not only to conducting research, simulations, and academic courses in the field of international law when appropriate. We also want to be a leading voice within DOD and among international militaries working to improve all of our abilities to better understand these legal issues. Some of the contributions you will hear during this conference will be published in volume 97 of international law studies, the Naval War Colleges Blue Book, which is the oldest publication at the Naval War College, and the oldest journal of international law in the United States. I'm confident that this week's program will engender a greater understanding of the confluence of technology and the law, providing practical advice to decision makers and shaping and influencing the scholarly debate. My team and I are glad to have this opportunity to further develop relationships throughout the international law community and to amplify conversations between operators and lawyers. My challenge to all of you today is to open up your minds and think outside of your own areas of specialty. Listen and think critically about these important topics, provide feedback to one another to make our discussions as meaningful as possible as we drive toward the exploration of answering these legal questions. Thank you so much again for your attendance today, for being such a wonderful part of this productive and successful discussion and conference, and I'd like to turn the floor back over to Professor Kraska. Thank you again for attending. Thank you very much, Admiral, for that thoughtful introduction to the conference. It's now a pleasure for us to welcome our first keynote speaker, a real thought leader in the field of technology and military operations. It's Paul Shari. He is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. He's the author of the book, Army of None, Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War, which won the 2019 Colby Award and was one of Bill Gates's top five books for 2018. Dr. Shari worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the Bush and Obama administrations. He earned a PhD in war studies from King's College London and is a former Army Ranger with multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. So Dr. Shari, welcome. The floor is yours. Thank you. Thanks for having me here. I'm very excited all these folks could join us today for this discussion and I'm really grateful that we are able to connect and have these kinds of conversations even in the current environment. I'm going to try to keep my opening remarks pretty briefs through plenty of time for Q&A. I just want to give really an overview of the technology in terms of autonomy and autonomy in weapons in particular and then some of the legal debates to maybe frame some of the legal issues surrounding this technology. To start with, I think it's worth pointing out that the use of automated functionality in weapons dates back at least to World War II depending on what types of autonomous functionality that you're looking at. But certainly in World War II we see the origins of the very first precision guided weapons, homing weapons, anti-ship bombs and torpedoes that have sensors on them, simple sensors but that are able to sense an enemy target and then maneuver to hit that target. Now these are of course weapons that you wouldn't really consider very intelligent by today's standards. They're not using machine learning. The term AI hadn't even been invented yet but it's worth pointing out that they have some measure of autonomy and we've seen this technology advance considerably over the 70 years since then and we've seen a tremendous amount of development in not just the sophistication of the role of autonomy in weapons but also the proliferation globally and across different domains of warfare. So we now have widespread use of a variety of different types of functionality of autonomy in weapons whether it's things like homing munitions that have the ability to sense their target and then maneuver to hit that target but the human is still choosing the target or group of targets that being attacked or things like automated defensive systems like modes on the Aegis combat system that at least 30 nations have similar types of functionality that are used around the globe today. So that's a sort of snapshot of where we are today in this moment. We see more and more countries incorporating autonomous functionality in weapons going forward and I would compare the trend to much of what we're seeing in self-driving cars where we see individual tasks being taken over by automation incrementally. So if you buy a top-of-the-line automobile today it's going to have features like intelligent cruise control, automatic braking, self-parking. We're still a ways away from a fully autonomous car that would have no steering wheel like the car that Google has built and can be used in all road environments, all environmental conditions. One of the things that's different though is that for cars there's widespread agreement about what the goal is that in the long run you know it would be ideal to be able to build such a car where the human is no longer involved in the actual physical driving tasks. Humans are not particularly good drivers. There are you know 30,000 or more people killed on the roads in the United States alone every year many more killed globally. So if we could automate that task and we could do so with a high degree of accuracy and we could build more effective cars we could save potentially tens of thousands of lives just in the United States alone. That's at least the goal. Now people want debate on you know where the technology is today when we're going to get there and over what timeline with cars. What's different with weapons is there's a lot of debate about where we ought to even be going. Now to simplify things a great deal you can you can put people into maybe three broad camps about what you do about this technology today. There's certainly arguments coming from humanitarian disarmament groups calling for a preemptive legally binding treaty that would ban autonomous weapons. I'm going to put that in quotes because not universally agreed upon what that term means. It's a topic of a lot of discussion. It's a topic of DOD policy and international debates at least since 2014 at the United Nations but there are no sort of universally agreed upon definitions. There are definitions in DOD policy but those are not necessarily the same definitions that the UK uses so even other allied governments you know don't don't use the same terminology. There's another you know sort of argument or school of thought that says look we have a set of rules governing behavior and what's right and wrong in warfare it's called the laws of war laws of armed conflict and we should trust those and allow those to regulate emerging technologies whether it's autonomous weapons, artificial intelligence, other technologies and simply focus on adherence to these pre-existing rules. We're going to be layering ad hoc regulations on specific technologies and in fact they could maybe warp or distort compliance with the laws of war. So that's another school of thought and then there's a third maybe sort of middle camp if you will that maybe we need some kind of regulation on technologies. Now I'll just point out these sort of differing schools of thought are in some ways actually less about autonomous weapons and more about how people view the laws of war themselves or the law for itself and its ability to adapt to new technology and I suspect that for many of the people in these different camps that if you sort of said look I have mystery weapon X I have a mystery weapon in this box I'm not going to tell you what it is should we ban it right off the gate should we just let the law of armed conflict play out and focus on adherence to it or should we maybe regulate it in some way that people's intuitions about the law of war and its ability to adapt to a new technology might inform where they're coming from independent of what that technology is. So specifically when it comes to autonomous weapons what I'll say is that I think there's also two other two other kind of dimensions to how we might think about this one is what is possible based on the state of technology today and I think that's really important we want to be grounded in the technology what it's doing how it's evolving so one way to approach this would be to say you know what is it capable of doing what are the technology not capable of doing today and then we might craft some kind of regulations that might govern state behavior these could be codified into law or maybe you know sort of non legally binding principles or best practices that's one way to approach it now there's value in certainly doing that and grounding these discussions in the state of technology but there's another perspective that I think is also really valuable which is to say you know if we had all the technology in the world what tasks in warfare require uniquely human judgment if any and why and that's a very different perspective that's one that sort of says instead of looking down at our feet and say you know how do we navigate around the obstacles right in front of us where we are today but let's look out at the horizon is that where do we want to be going and I think that's particularly important for technologies like autonomy and artificial intelligence because they are moving forward so rapidly and there is just a great amount of uncertainty about where the technology is going it's possible that it it peers out in plateaus and we see another AI winter that is one school that's one argument that people make there's people that believe that's where we're headed in fact that the whole current state of affairs in machine learning is misguided that's a that's an argument that we hear from some folks in the AI field there's others on the opposite end of the spectrum that will argue that you know in a few decades we'll see human level intelligence um I my my personal submissions probably both of those are maybe a little misguided but that's a wide range of possible technological futures so I think there is value in asking the question of if we had all the technology that we could imagine building what role do we want humans to play in warfare and why it's an important question to be asking and focusing our attention on um we can we can get into this one in the q and a but actually the duty law of war manual talks about this um and talks about you know this idea that the law of war imposes obligations on persons not machines to comply with law of war rules on attacks like proportionality or precautions in attack I think it's actually an interesting position to take that it's a human obligation to comply with the law of war um and that has potentially implications for how we think about this technology and the role of humans uh so let me go ahead and stop there so we have lots of time for q and a and happy to take the discussion where folks will like to go thank you thank you Paul so much for those great remarks um and you know we'll certainly have some questions rolling in um but at first if I could um the first question is you know you've talked about some um maybe some misrepresentations of these the machines these systems are or maybe some confusion in their use to you what do you think is the biggest confusion or misunderstanding about the technology and their potential uses I think one of the biggest problems here is that the terminology is very it's not confusing perhaps the wrong word it's that it's it's vague and open to interpretation so if I just say you know autonomous weapon that conjures a whole wide range of visions in people's minds so some people are envisioning the terminator other people are envisioning a rumba with a gun on it something very simple uh both of those are probably bad ideas but for very different kinds of reasons and I think that's a real challenge in the space when we talk about autonomy or artificial intelligence some people envision very advanced types of systems that have human-like intelligence things that are coming out of science fiction other people envisioning the kinds of things that exist today um which have a many many limitations even the most advanced machine learning systems today um things like GPT-3 the one of the most advanced um you know language generation systems can produce very realistic or realistic seeming text um that can generate artificial text that's written by an AI that will easily fuel humans at least uh at a first glance you might read it and you might say you know I think maybe a human wrote this but it lacks purpose and lacks intentionality it certainly looks any kind of understanding uh at a deeper level what the text means um and so I think that that's just a real obstacle when we talk about this is um sometimes it's just not clear what people are talking about when they use the terms I've certainly been in a saddened discussion to at the united nations where diplomats are discussing this and people will be making and they're talking about different things one person's making an argument using this terminology talking about things today and the other person's using the argument talking about terminology you know the things that may not exist in 30 40 years if ever um and that's a I think a real hindrance as we try to grapple with you know what should we do about this technology and some of the choices in front of this you know I speaking of terminology I think hope has a that's a good question um kind of to baseline us a bit here she says can you talk a little bit about human in the loop versus human on the loop communication with autonomous systems yes so a real foundational concept when we think about autonomy is um a set of terms about human in the loop on the loop or out of the loop uh are the sort of terms that are used that are used to refer to what you might call semi-autonomous systems where a human is in the loop that means that the system is um performing a task and then it will stop and pause its operation and wait for a human to take a positive action to do something a very simple example of this that that we're all familiar with might be like automated updates on your computer where it's popping up a window and it's asking you to click okay to do the automated update to download something and restart your computer uh there might be situations where that's valuable for example if you were in the middle of a webinar with hundreds of people this would be like a bad time for my computer to decide to do that if it was doing it on its own so that's an example where there's a human in the loop and a human you know maybe it doesn't have to do very much but has to at least make some kind of positive action to authorize the system to continue a a different sort of paradigm for the human involvement in the machine would be a human on the loop system uh where the human is in a role of supervisory autonomy where the system is going to operate entirely on its own and the human has the capacity to intervene but doesn't have to a good example of this that we're all familiar with would be a thermostat in your household right so the thermostat doesn't ask you permission to turn on the heat or the air conditioning uh that would be really burdensome um instead you set this entire temperature and the thermostat will function on its own and then if you're not happy you can get up and you can make modifications or adjustments um and then a fully autonomous system where the human is out of the loop is one where at least for some time duration the human is unable to intervene uh that might be that you're out of your house and you can't intervene in a thermostat's functionality and one of the interesting um elements of how a technology is evolving is it's both building more intelligent systems that we might be willing to hand over more control to machines but also building more connectivity to them right so if you buy a new fangled a thermostat these days you can get one that's online and has a mobile app and you can real monitor it when you're out of your house if you were inclined to do so um so you know that's also the case for weapon systems right we have increasingly smart weapon systems but are also network enabled that enable more ability for human operators to actually be connected remotely and exercise remote control over the system then might have been the case um in in prior years or decades past so those are I think some of the interesting trends for how we think about human control in ways that are enabling both smarter systems but also in some ways greater human control uh even remote so you bring up a great point and something that uh john chan asked and he's our he's our first question um today so we appreciate john from jumping into the void being the very first question in the event um before I ask that I would encourage you you can see on the question and answer function you can see the little thumbs up if you like a question you can click the thumbs up and help bump that question at the top we don't have 10 questions actually told because we have several others coming in from the chat and so please do so if you want to if you see a question you like and you want it to be asked uh let let us know because we probably will be able to get to all of the questions that are asked in every section with that said um well john you talk about human communication john's fear um is that there'll be uh communication from outside and there'll be situation where one of these autonomous systems could be hacked can you talk about that a little bit yeah and let me just add these are great questions so I think very helpful people are you know voting them um this is a great question and I think it cuts to one of the important differences with autonomous systems which is not necessarily that it is more likely to be hacked um you know any anything that's got a computer chip in it uh that's got software is vulnerable to being manipulated and vulnerable to cyber attack even systems that are offline there are all sorts of you know clever ways to find ways to to get in uh you know using humans often as as the weak link however one of the things that's really different is about the effects if you were able to get in to an autonomous system and in particularly about scale and this is an important difference right if the concern is something like an autonomous vehicle is not just that you could hack a car and then use it to carry out you know a terrorist attack and kill someone we've seen of of course unfortunately automobiles used in sort of vehicle ramming terrorist attacks uh both in the u.s and overseas that have killed people um the real concern is that you could do so at scale that using the same cyber vulnerability you could hack an entire fleet of cars that might have that vulnerability and take control of them um you know in it's already been demonstrated certainly that cars today can be hacked you know remotely and the driving features have been disabled um that's several years old that kind of technology um what more autonomy enables is able to actually take control of them um and then you could use them to you know conduct a mass vehicle ramming attack uh or you know in perhaps a less deadly but still disruptive way do things like disrupt traffic or cause you know protests in the military context the really frightening thing is losing control over not a vehicle but a fleet of vehicles um and it opens up the door to a sort of uniquely problematic form of enemy counterattacks like a mass fratricide attack where you can imagine not just sort of a um you know we've certainly struggled in Afghanistan with things like inside earth threats where a friendly turns on friendly forces and attacks them you could imagine through the you know through cyber mechanisms someone taking control of a fleet of autonomous systems and then turning them on friendlies and that's sort of just a whole new or even an accident causing that um and we've seen accidents with autonomous systems like the patriot fratricides in 2003 isolated cases but one could imagine situations where that happens at scale because of flaws in the system and maybe how it interprets friendly forces so there are I think you know a whole range of novel problems that autonomy introduces that we certainly want to think about um and be cautious about as you think about employing the technology so in regards to employment the technology professor Ashley Deese professor Laura Dickinson um each ask a different but similar question and it revolves around the arms race among the U.S. China and Russia with these technologies um and you know Ashley asked if you have thoughts on whether there's a way to slow this arms race and then Laura asked a related question what's the status of the arms race among you know these these three superpowers could you address that yeah so first of all I I don't think there is a quote arms race underway I think that's um that that makes great sensational media headlines um I don't think it's accurate um if we if we think about that arms race what does that term mean um it certainly in the security studies literature it refers to a condition where states are spending significantly above their normal rates of growth of military spending in a way to compete with each other we have historical examples of arms races like the naval arms race uh among great powers at the early 20th century uh and certainly the nuclear arms race during the cold war neither of those are good historical examples for what's happening today with artificial intelligence or autonomous weapons in fact when you look at the amount of money being spent on the technology it's quite small um despite you know claims by DOD senior leaders the AI is their number one priority Secretary Esper uh had said that former Secretary Esper the AI was his number one priority when you look at the spending it's it's not it's kind of a close um so and in autonomous weapons you know I think we can certainly see that countries are investing in more autonomy in their weapons it's not obvious that there is a sort of full out pursuit of fully autonomous weapons um you know I think I think it's more more of the situation of this incremental advancement over time now having said that um certainly we don't hear the same types of um restraint coming out of countries like China and Russia that you hear out of countries like the United States or the UK or other democratic nations that are going to be more concerned with um law and and conformance with you know ethics and and humanitarian behavior on the battlefield and that is certainly concerning um I I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that uh you know we are definitely headed towards a world of you know fully autonomous weapons and the gloves come off I think it's worth exploring whether there's opportunity for any kind of mutual restraint um in this area in agreement among great powers I think the the current UN process is deeply flawed I think it's valuable to do I'm glad you was participating but I think it's frank it's deeply flawed because the conversation is distorted by uh humanitarian groups that are sort of pushing for a ban and then you get you know sort of countries like the US and Russia pushing back against it I think it's like the wrong conversation to be having I would much rather having the conversations among the US China and Russia about look is there any agreement that we can make among us about limits that we want to establish on the technology that's not going to be for legal and ethical reasons those countries don't see those things in the same way they're not having these debates that we're having here um but they do care about control over their own weapons uh they do care about you know not having their systems malfunction on the battlefield they might have different thresholds uh for concerns about things like fratricide than here in the US but I think that's the worthy conversation for us to have uh with other great powers about whether there might be any you know sort of mutual agree upon rules about how we might use the technology going forward yeah and I think the one thing that in discussions that the three states have agreed upon there has to be some level of accountability um but where that accountability lies into what level is is a great debate amongst the states and obviously civil society and in academia um you know both Linda general Dunlap ask questions kind of revolving around that and you know if if the manufacturer of the Roomba um you know puts a Roomba in motion and that Roomba destroys your house while you're out you know shopping um you can turn back to that manufacturer for some kind of accountability and Linda asks you know where that obligation lies in the armed conflict realm and then general Dunlap further asks what level of expertise do our commanders and operators need in relationship to that accountability could you address that yeah that's a that's a great question I think the I think these are good questions that we don't have clear answers to and I think these are the kinds of questions that in fact um the US military itself will be grappling with in the decades ahead as we're fueling more sophisticated automated systems ones that incorporate machine learning um and we'll have to be grappling with these things I will make a couple general points for how we should think about this um one is that the DOD's law of war manual um takes the position that the it's a human obligation to comply with the laws of war that um the law of war doesn't put obligations on machines that are inanimate objects um rules like uh proportionality or precautionary attack applied to persons um that implies some degree my position right I would argue that the extension of that is that implies some degree of human engagement with the use of force thing not that humans need to be you know maneuvering uh the missile down to the target um that hasn't been the case you know since you know the invention of the catapult um but rather that the humans need to have some awareness over the attack the context the weapon system itself um to understand what's happening on the battlefield what's likely to happen uh so that human can make an informed decision about uh whether this is in fact a lawful attack we don't want a situation where after the fact we're asking the commander you know why did you choose to launch this weapon and the commander says well you know I don't know the machine said it was fine so I just pushed the button I'm just here to push the button I don't have any responsibility that's not consistent with certainly um you know US military professional ethics and how we think about uh the role of military professionals in uh the conduct of our armed force and so that's the kind of thing where um it actually gets I think some really interesting questions about military professional ethics and what we think sort of the role of the military commander is I think there's an important asymmetry here between um those developing the code is one of the questions gets to and uh the military commander on the field who's employing the weapon and that asymmetry exists in a couple of ways one is that um you know there's a uniqueness to the military profession as a profession that's about the exercise of the use of force and there's certain responsibilities that come with that that the civilian programmer doesn't have um but also you know there's some value in being able to you know actually look at particular situations and apply human judgment to those situations how specific you need to get I think is an open question but if you look at something just like the Aegis Combat System today it's highly customized um by the commanders in the field based on the particular operating conditions that they're in it's certainly not you know pre established and then locked in place um ahead of time and I think that's probably the right paradigm that we're going to want for these systems that we're going to want systems that aren't you know um um fully baked in where all of the parameters are set by the designer we're actually going to want things that are understandable to operators but then operators can customize uh based on the particular situations that they're in because ultimately it's those operators responsibility uh what's happening on the battlefield and thank you for that answer you know of course it's a very difficult question and like you said earlier there's no there's no good answer and all the questions that are being asked today are certainly not softballs for you know these are they're being asked for for a reason right um hey I'd also encourage you we have now 16 questions so please continue to hit the upload if you want to see these questions asked um we'll try to get to them as many as possible we have a little less than 10 minutes left in this session um and so you can see that the question from um Tom Choisky to hear your thoughts on you know the social cultural or international asymmetries that influence the discussion on autonomous weapons systems so we've talked about Russia China the US but you know how do what do you see um in the influence of the guards maybe civil society academia or the states yeah I mean I think one of the most um it's a great question and it is I think a really important one when we think about how the technology is going to be adopted going forward because we certainly know um that culture and and societal preferences make a big difference in how militaries adopt technology as a proliferates uh globally um I think you know there's some easy I'll tell you some easy answers that I think are wrong okay um an easy answer that I often hear is you know these other countries China Russia they don't share our values they don't share our ethics and they're just going to fully automate things and so ethics schmethics we need to throw this stuff out the window and we need to do so as well um I think it's wrong for two reasons one I think it's it's accurate that they don't share the same uh concern about uh human rights and compliance with the laws of war I just don't want to talk to say Chinese scholars I don't hear the same emphasis on legal concerns about lower compliance that I hear from US scholars but they do care about control over the military forces so there are other concerns beyond legal and ethical ones um that are also relevant here just about you know retaining effective control of your military forces in the battlefield um and political control that they also are going to be concerned about that um come to the forefront that are actually less dominant in the discussions here in the UN because I think legal and ethical issues sort of take take the four of these conversations here uh in the US context but these other things are important I also you know it's not obvious to me that we should sort of like disregard our own ethical positions or review them as a constraint I often when people talk about ethics and values as something that's handcuffing us in the US context I don't think that's just the right way to think about it I think a better way to think about it is that um we want to act in compliance with our own values that informs how we approach uh the technology or or actions on the battlefield um and it's not a not shouldn't be just sort of a limitation or constraint but rather sort of the frame by which we approach our own actions um another thing that I often hear is that authoritarian regimes will be willing to automate because they don't trust their people um you know there's some elements of truth to this that are certainly much more decentralized authority given to US subordinates in the US system compared to say in China or Russia it's not obvious that I think that the core alert to that is that they're going to then trust autonomy is not clear and I certainly don't hear that necessarily at least when I talk to Chinese scholars um that they say oh you know we're going to trust autonomous systems and in fact there are a lot of the same skepticism about trusting the systems that I hear out of US defense analysts and US legal experts so um I think it's a good question I think we're not it's not clear really how the technology will unfold in different military cultures but I think it's important I think we really want to stay on top of that and look at how others are using it I think you can see some differences now certainly Russia is being much more willing to arm ground robots than the US army is um and deploy them including into contested areas like Syria um that's certainly one important difference when I look at Chinese you know writings on um AI there seem to seem to be a greater emphasis on command and control which is I think an interesting uh finding but I think uh you know we'll have to see as the technology evolves how military culture informs how different countries adopt the technology we have about three minutes left and I'd like to get to two questions if possible first one I'll try to keep it really really sure okay thank you from Professor Lubella and Paul you talked a lot about some of the confusion misunderstanding of terms and of the technologies and of course that first one is it one of the problems that the fact that we keep talking about autonomy rather than AI can you address the autonomy AI debate right okay so um these terms mean different things both of the terms themselves are a little bit contested so even in the technical field there are multiple different definitions but in general we talk about AI we're talking about the intelligence of the system a machine and its capacity to come up with the right course of action in a given situation the right sort of moves to make the right answer in order to accomplish a particular goal when we talk about autonomy we're talking about the freedom of a system to perform that task so maybe to make an analogy with humans that maybe might make the difference I was thinking about Garry Kasparov playing chess you know defeated against by by deep blue the AI system so Kasparov very intelligent at chess we could also imagine situations where Kasparov is sitting on the sidelines watching a chess match he's still maybe the smartest player in the room know the right moves to make but isn't permitted to sit at the table and make moves doesn't have the freedom or autonomy to do so because we've told him you know you're not you're not playing today and so those are sort of different dimensions of machines we could envision very intelligent machines that don't have much autonomy and they're used as decision aids for humans and that could be one application for certain types of AI so thank you for that really brief response it's very efficient well done Michelle asked a question a very specific question about asymmetric warfare and we hear the argument a lot against these types of technologies you know the fear of the killer robot the terminator but specifically to Michelle's question what do you expect asymmetric warfare against the largely robotic force to be it's an interesting question let me just say that to in my disclosure I don't like the term asymmetric warfare just because like it seems like a silly term to me why would you fight symmetrically you're always going to try to find ways to find your enemy's weaknesses and attack them there so I'm actually not a fan of the the pattern in the US defense discourse of coming up with these labels of irregular warfare and hybrid warfare and asymmetric I just think it's actually all war and maybe our concept of war is overly narrow in the first place and we need to broaden it but I think you know one of the things it's interesting about robotic systems like any technology is they have countermeasures they have limitations just like when you move from you know horses to tanks you now are dependent a pound of fuel depots and gasoline you know to fuel your tanks and that might be a way to to go after them and undermine that technology robotic systems are going to have their own they could be communication links if they rely on communication links if they don't there might be other ways of hacking them to manipulate them if they're using you know AI based or machine learning based models of perception there are all sorts of ways to to fool those kinds of systems and manipulate them we don't really have time to kind of get into that but the you know the sort of whole world of machine learning based perception you know identifying objects automatic target recognition has a whole suite of countermeasures to then spoof those AI based perception methods and trick and manipulate them as well as ways to even get in earlier in the learning process to things like poison the data so I think like any technology there's going to be countermeasures and it's going to shift warfare in a new direction over time as we see more competition surrounding robotic systems autonomy and the ways to defeat those thank you so much paul for the questions and answers and as you can see there are 16 questions left that we're not able to get to which indicates how interesting your presentation was and it's a fun topic yeah absolutely um and and and I would tell the audience please don't you know save your questions because we're going to be talking about all these issues that paul just addressed specifically throughout the rest of the day so you can you know ask these questions again to our other panelists and they can answer them from very specific you know legal or otherwise pinpoints but um we're we're about to go into our 10-minute break here but I want to thank paul so much for joining us today as if they have a passing presentation now and we look forward to reading reading here more from you in the future thank you very much thank you thanks for having me take care okay we're going to go on actually an eight-minute break we'll start back up at noon um and so uh we look forward to seeing you then thank you very much again for all those questions welcome back everyone it is my very great pleasure to now um introduce our next speaker Michael Tracy is a physics graduate from Columbia University he is a co-founder of anabase technologies where he leads the image processing development um aspect there and michael i'm really really excited to hear what you've got to say and for sharing um what work you've been doing recently so i'll hand over to you now um yeah thanks oh thanks here really appreciate the the kind remarks today good morning to everyone i'm really excited to uh share with you today to talk about um super identification and artificial intelligence basically how can we use artificial intelligence and um satellite imagery to find and track any ship in the world yeah yeah so um as you can see here so just in the past few months we've had quite a few cases where the issue of ship tracking has come up just last week um we had roger stone where true or not claiming unidentified North Korean vessels off our coast and main influencing our elections we had piracy attack off the coast of angling um we have a ships from a Chinese uh fishing um fishing fleets going to the glop of ghosts um and uh illegally fishing there and we have obviously uh venezuelan iran chronically always um going under the radar and people not knowing where their oil tankers are so why do we still have so many problems in tracking ships in 2020 i mean look at all the options we have we have helicopter patrols we got satellite imagery we got radar we got signals intelligence ais how can these big uh floating tubs of metal go disappear disappear nowadays um when i'm in cv s i can figure out what's the annoying jingle they're playing at cvs pharmacy uh with susanne reliably but we still can't necessarily always say where ship is nowadays um so when we look at these ship tracking options that exist now we can categorize them in um how they collect information like you see here on the slide uh there's manual ship tracking where we use helicopter and ship cruise to monitor ship activity um and then we have also imagery analysts who will hand count the number of ships in satellite imagery photos um you know to figure out how many uh how big a fleet might be or how many ships are at the port right now and the both of both of these provide very high accurate information uh their information quality is great but um they're not real time enough and it's a very tedious and long process for both of these these don't scale well to have a global maritime picture that you want for your naval operations um then we have our automatic techniques right um but they don't exactly provide the same high data quality like direct observation does with uh helicopter patrols and satellite imagery you know radar is limited to the type of boats it can detect um and it's not really global either uh signals intelligence um this is off to the uh electronic equipment that's off of the boats uh some boats just don't have electronic equipment like some fishing boats um and this get on these radio signals or electronic signals can be encrypted and spooked as well and um then there's a premier technique that's usually been adopted as a standard after the um being accepted by the international community which is AIS automatic identification system but before um we talked about these problems we should have tried to understand what is AIS so like I said AIS stands for automatic identification system and basically what AIS is is GPS but for boats so a transponder a little black box on the ship signals out is location with the ship's identity for everyone with access to an AIS data feed uh to see so like you see here in the bottom right here's a popular AIS provider marine traffic where um you can see all the boats in the world that are giving off these locations but that's the key um it's the ones that are giving up these locations if some boats are able to turn this off so what do I mean by this um AIS has three chief concerns right there's limited detection there's unreliable detection and voluntary detection so when I talk about limited detection as you can see in the map here um it can get definitely very crowded in certain areas especially around when you're near the Singapore Straits or the Straits of Dover all these signals coming from there they can um cause interference which can uh we see some uh the location signal lose the location signals of nearby ships and then we have unreliable detection um right um we have unreliable detection where uh these uh signals they can be easily spooked or hacked so like for example you see here um this is a this was an example this isn't um but where some hackers were able to manipulate an AI signal coming from a ship and uh choose a very non-natural um manipulated vessel route that spelled out the the hacker term called PON which basically means you've done goofed um so as you can see it can be very insecure and this is um definitely very scary and so far that the maritime industry in general or shipping electronics can be pretty insecure um the maritime cyber attacks have increased by over 900 and the last three years so this is definitely something to be very concerned about that where we know our boats are can um just be manipulated by you or someone on the boat itself to so somewhere else there's been cases where people have been very flagrant and they sold the ships location um in the the middle of the Sahara Desert where there's obviously no water or the middle band arca where is this ice um so yeah this is a very important problem and then we have the worst problem though voluntary detection right AIS requires ships to voluntary disclose their position for everyone else to see that means um a ship can just stop sewing uh showing her location at a switch of a at the flip of a switch right on or off and this makes it very impossible to track vessels engaged in illegal activity right like piracy illegal fishing um Iranian tanker's evading the same since uh because they'll have their AIS off um this also makes it extremely difficult to know where uh boats are uh when you're navigating dangerous waters like the Gulf of Aden because they have their AIS hidden hidden from pirates um so it's very obvious that AIS is not likely tracking ships when they're violating international law and committing crimes um so what what does this mean only the manual methods are able to provide the data quality we need to know where um the ships are but how do we get around the time constraints of collecting data from satellite images we need to automate this process somehow if there's one thing AI is extraordinarily good at despite all the the clamor for the past decade is doing highly repetitive tasks like counting the number of ships and the satellite image that's why we do facial recognition for ships just like how facial recognition algorithms are able to identify and track um people in highly complex crowds and environments we can do the same for ships and highly complex satellite images like we did here on the the right image here um and then with facial recognition um like they do we're able to build a database for these ships so for example uh like a normal driver's license database you have a person's uh face you have a photo of them then you have where they reside and then you have some physical characteristics describing where they are with um our algorithm we're able to actually capture a photo of ships where they are in real time and then we can update where their current location is without having to rely on them reporting it and um like you see here with the location the latitude and longitude of the Merlion M and then we can also um actually estimate uh certain physical characteristics for it for example like the length and width we're able to do this by uh the different pixels they are um like you can see here I haven't detected that's what we estimated and then the axle length and width is reported on the AIS so we're actually able to make comparison but this is just an example of like a scorecard or a driver's license we will have for a ship that we're developing so we'll allow us to build a database for uh ships now why is this only now possible right um so it's two major reasons two major trends that allows it to be possible right so number one is for uh high frequency satellite imagery as you can see in the chart on the bottom left hand corner um the the payload uh to launching of uh rockets to um uh the space has just dramatically decreased that's a logarithmic rack there too and you can still get a linear trend on there nearly linear trend so as you can tell it's like exponentially dropping there um so lots of satellites are now going up so we're really able to do global covers especially over to ocean's work it's just not realistic to have big uh coast guard patrols going out there in the ocean it's like finding a needle in a haystack uh with high uh high amount of satellites in the sky this becomes a thing of the past and then two is just that um the actual algorithms have become really good um and actually counting stuff like I was saying earlier just five years ago like you can see in this need article um Microsoft and Google um announced that uh their AI algorithms are able to be humans at image recognition so it's a given now that all humans are machines are very good at recognizing uh stuff and also this is just partly because of just how cheap the processing power has become that is affected to do in real time now too um yeah so um the overall process of building this actual database and this insights is seen here and I'm going to walk you through it you know um we'll go through the ingested imagery then we'll go to detect ships then how we identify and track them and how we can use this to generate insights to help us solve and uh enforce inter maritime international law so here um on ingest imagery slide AI algorithms live or perish by data that's how they grow that's how they uh become effective if you have bad data you're gonna have a bad algorithm it's that simple so it's very critical from the essential states that you have good data what's the data we're using here to um identify and track uh these ships so we're using open source data um with optical satellite imagery and then we're using uh synthetic aperture radar imagery as our main imagery sources then we use other ones to try to narrow down what uh physical unique characteristics to these ships so um the satellite imagery is uh is fairly well common that's what you see on optical that's what you see on your google earth um but like one of the problems here like you can see here and this is a photo of singapore is uh clouds clouds can block and they can block any ships that might be underneath there like you see here um there could be ships underneath that that we just want to see even if we were able to uh preprocess it away um while sar is able to see through clouds so that's really helpful and actually seeing uh boats that might be underneath the clouds you don't have to be necessary if you have concern that you have light or um you know daytime conditions or uh if there's clouds you don't necessarily have to do that the downside is that it's not as frequent um uh sar imagery exists right now like it does with optical so after selecting our data and putting together as a data set um we the next step we have to do is basically um get our algorithm to train uh to detect the ships so the type of algorithm that we're using this is based off it's called a neural net algorithm right and neural nets are based off of the idea like um how you teach a child is how um based on information you expose them to and help them uh learn through labels right like if you were to uh teach your five-year-old kid um some stuff you would give him some books but what you teach him and how you uh make him grow us up probably that uh depends on what type of books you expose him to right and this is the same with data how we expose the types of data we expose him to and how we break it down to them it's going to influence how well they're able to pick up certain things right so like that big uh satellite image you saw here we're not just feeding that to them straightforward it's like if you were to uh give a little child try and teach them to read you give them the dictionary that's just not going to work you got to give them some size pieces right so um what we do there is that we divide the that image there that we see there into a little tiny squares pixels by 45 pixels by 45 pixels and then um we geolocate these image squares right we uh we take the location where these squares are and then um so we can figure out when we detect the stuff that's in there like the ships we know where it is that's how we're able to have the location of these uh ships without needing them to report it and then uh we train it to detect ships land water and cloud so for example these are like the four types of um labels we're basically working with here so you know if um if our algorithm saw an image like this a square like this it's so recognized this is a cloud this is not a ship if you saw this um this is water this is not a ship okay then there's land this is land and then when you get here uh recognize all your ships and then it should be and then it will be able to count how many ships there are in this photo too right so one two three four five six um seven ships here and then from that we can understand the actual vessel activity like how how many vessels there are and um where they are in general um so once we have fingerprinted the ship um yeah so after we detected the ship right we located from satellite imagery we already uh did when imagery analysts uh did we automated that part where they would try to look in satellite images and figure out oh how many boats there are in this uh near the port of Tartarus in Syria right now right we've done that that's great um how can we get more useful information because it's one thing to just know oh this is a ship okay that's great uh what's the name of the ship where can it be going uh you know how can we backtrack the location of it so uh how do we do this we make available of ships you know broadcasting their AIS data so usually we'll have a ship that will detect a ship and then usually we'll also find an AIS signal also being broadcasted from that position right so we cross-referenced it with it and then we basically fingerprinted then we know later on whenever we see a ship and another satellite image so like we saw a ship in Singapore but then we saw it in a Shanghai uh a week later we'll know this is probably the same ship even if it's not broadcasting its AIS signal um and we know its name because we have a photo of it previously and we're able to match it with this one it's kind of like a mug shot right um so that's how we fingerprint the ships um yeah so at the end uh we're able to take a very complex image like this right looking at this you know you can just imagine there's roads there's airplanes there's a bunch of clouds uh different uh water colors here um it's very complex image this uh and uh you know you guys zoom in and out to find all the different ships we're able to put this into our algorithm and then it can spit it back out to us it's uh right away um how many ships there are right so we're able to say there's on May 5th of 2021 that uh that uh boat was that a satellite image photo was taken um we can see how many ships are working there were 230 223 ships off of our training data here what we got um and these blue red dots what does this stuff mean so like I said we basically locate um when we took that photo based off of the AIS signal that was coming in within the five-minute period of time um and the blue dot shows that these are ships that have their AIS signal being shown uh being displayed and then the red ones were just weren't still at the time of your driver offered they just weren't being broadcasted um right right away because AIS signals aren't always being broadcasted instantaneously repetitively yeah so uh for example here uh for comparison here we have like a I believe like an oil tanker of some type um actually this is cargo vessel this is development but like you can see we have the latitude and longitude the name and we have the time where it was at this exact location then we have here on the right looks like a small watercraft um we're able to identify that partly small size like this was just 10 meter resolution um partly because we uh look at the weights of your right the from the movement of the uh boat we're able to detect that and we have the location port but we don't have the name port but we are at least able to identify look there was this small boat activity happening in this area which can become obviously very useful if you're trying to monitor drug trafficking near your borders or whoever because obviously those people are trying to be discreet and they might be using small cigarette boats or something like that yeah so um the big takeaway oops um so the big takeaway from that last section about facial recognition persists is that because of the disruptive technology of AI we have never before um a um capability to actually uh figure out where uh certain fleets are how how how they're coalescing in certain key regions like uh around the South China Sea we're able to um figure out how popular certain ports are in real time we don't have to rely on AIS data that's being generated from there because sometimes the ships they just uh kind of languish there and they never have their AIS on I mean we just saw that with the the Beirut explosion right there was that ship there that's just kind of no one uh really talked about that was just there for seven years off it wasn't obviously showing this AIS signal and the next thing you know you have an accident there so um that's another thing and we can also get real-time ideal the commodity movement that's going on there because uh one thing that we're also expanding this to is to do satellite imagery of the port areas themselves of how um uh certain material like iron ore is dumped in the Rotterdain to uh measure that and also just to figure out how many ships are moving in and out to get a real accurate granular look of the commodity movements in the areas like you see here in a western australian port so um like i was saying um the big takeaway uh in the slack section about facial recognition for ships is that because of the disruptive technology of AI um we can basically capture any ship in the world and um like DNA opened up a whole new possibility in criminal law about um uh you know capturing criminals and enforcing them and breaking open code cases this opens up a whole new possibilities in maritime international law cases and enforcing maritime international law too not only are we able to see uh see where real and real time where ships are but we can analyze satellite images of um for events in years past you know this becomes really important you know if you want to analyze past oil spills to figure out who's really guilty of it but um before we get into that like for example in maritime boundaries um you know there's a it's very uh there's no actual the the market there's no maringot line out there in the the big ocean the pacific ocean to know where not a ship is trespassing or not this this doesn't exist and it's usually pretty hard to uh patrol the borders um you know there's obviously the south china sea example but one case where our algorithm is really helpful is actually in the arctic ocean why um one this is another very intensive air uh contested area where uh there's battle for resources between uh the likes of russia canada usa norway etc etc but um also what's really interesting is that um gps up there there's a lot of navigation issues up there because of how a satellite's orbit across the the earth um it can be pretty difficult to actually use gps up there so having an actual way to pinpoint um uh the ships and the paneling satellite imagery is immensely helpful um and the south china sea is just a great to see the the field fleet build-ups and the eegs is to really monitor who's violating whose eegs actually in real time you have actual data to support um these claims now and not just eyewitness reports um and then environmental like i mentioned with china i youth this usually these uh big trawlers and stuff they'll they'll just turn off their ais and no one knows where they are and they're going to other people's eeg zones and um you know just uh take this illegally from there and then uh and then uh yeah then for oil spills right um just uh the largest oil spill in brazil off the uh coast of brazil no one still actually knows who was the ship that did it because they had the ais off there's some suspicions who it is but nothing uh verifiable yet and then for fuel mission regulations like uh has been planned for by the imo this year to reduce uh sulfate uh sulfur content from the fuel oil we're able to actually monitor that individually from um the satellites themselves and then with piracy um just like before we have a big fleet patrols and just like uh kind of reports on how active their uh the waters are but now we can actually forecast like how many uh small Somali bullets or Gulf of Guinea boats there are to get an idea like how risky actually the waters might be in the next 24 hours or so and um if you would like to talk more to me about this feel free to reach out to me um mst214 at colombia.edu and uh my co-developer mitzel as well as his email address and i'll turn it over now um two questions thanks michael lots of exciting opportunities there um as you kind of gone through so this is there's a couple of good questions i think that have come in already and um the first one i'm going to go with is from john chan which is how would your algorithm deal with bad after changing the look of the ship to hide you know the nature of its some of um character as it were um sorry i i didn't understand the question can you repeat that yeah so if if someone were looking to um outfox your algorithm uh and there is you know and they changed the sort of the look of the uh of the ship or vessel how would how would it overcome that yeah so if they did like a paint job or something like that um yeah so that's i mean partly what we're doing is that we're also using a the geometry of the ships which is uh as far as i've seen with a ship uh disguises they're not really able to change uh i've seen like you know changes of the whole but we're not looking at the whole so we have a geometry characteristics and that probably brings up the question what about sister ships right um we're able to kind of like sort that out by uh basically of the location and predicting what vessel routes it will be kind of like how a bank um the terms of just fraud or not by basically on the location of where you're wiring your money in from or how quick you hit the stock market right um there's just like starting a these uh just there's just a certain um limit about where you can physically be with a boat you know it's pretty easy to uh figure out all the boat will probably be here in x amount of time um this is like regressing analysis stuff thanks so and then the next question um what is the possibility uh of what you've talked about in terms of underwater vessels and kind of and and if there is scope for that and what kind of what kind of depths if you're able to get to get into the details yeah um that's a great question um the surprising thing is actually we this hasn't been a primary area of research but it is actually um someone possible to detect underwater vessels after not going too deep um from underwater um i'll give one example because this is a publicly known some of this from like the thermal characteristics of the vessel like just from a massive heat engine there um you can detect this from satellite imagery um there's other physical characteristics that we've uh found but um that's a proprietary too great okay so um so ships manipulate their ai's transmissions to master location um and then they're simulated to stateless vessels um how would you use this technology to kind of would you be able to have that sort of granularity of identifying you know what state this is this vessel belongs to or you know or is it just a case of we know where it's come from we think we know where it's going so if i understand the question correctly it sounds like you're saying oh what if they spooked their ais uh ais location and then you're trying to cross-reference it with that is that what it is i don't see the question i guess i guess the core the core of the question is um you would be able to identify you know have a strong idea for kind of the the nationality of the vessel um as opposed to just where it's physically located in the world so like a what flag is registered under or something like that yeah something like that okay yeah so um no we uh the thing about the shipping right is that it's a notorious for uh flags being uh uh pretty easily uh switched around um so we can't necessarily directly say oh is this is a Chinese vessel right um we can probably say that by following it and tracking it over time right um by seeing how frequently a bit of certain ports um but yeah we can't necessarily just say off of the ais signal or that is somebody a signal but by the satellite image alone we can't necessarily say oh it belongs to this uh country great so another question is is is this technology is this algorithm is it either able to or is it is it easy to transfer to for example looking to find people stranded at sea or is or is it just the fact that um you know you're relying on satellite imagery for completely different kind of data set yeah so um that's a great question we haven't exactly worked towards that but um with the current resolution we're working at with 10 resolution i guess we're working with others but um that would uh we think it would be possible we haven't worked on that but with like when you get to like one meter three or three meter five meter resolution satellite imagery uh we believe that could be possible uh to detect people at sea or at least a locate where a crash uh a sunken vessel was to narrow that search area in a critical time that it takes to find a person like that thanks so i'm going to ask the question that peter's posed on the q and a which is um the maritime industry has resisted autonomy and maritime regulation um for a uniform ai strategy is that a problem in implementation of your approach yeah great great observation um that's the good part of our approach is that it doesn't rely on them it's non voluntary relying people are reporting their locations so we don't rely on these sensors on these boats to give up their locations we independently uh detect them um from the skies from the satellites uh themselves okay and then the the next one if i may use alvaro who says um who asked the question how can this be compared to uh how can this be conferred sorry compared the firmorship obtained from satellite images from the same firm obtained from other sources does that translate does that make sense um no i'm sorry i don't exactly understand it how does um how does it compare to other satellite image sources or i think i think so how how does this system differentiate itself from perhaps other other methods out there for just you know analyzing satellite imagery okay i get what he's talking about then um yeah so uh two key things um ours is a really a data fusion source we're using a bunch of different uh data sources we're not just using optical satellite imagery um we're also using star imagery and other uh satellite sensors to track and detect ships to develop new fingerprinting uh remarks um the other thing is that we really from the ground up tried to build it um a completely uh using AI and satellite imagery alone um if you look at uh companies like airbus or something the closest they have to this is they have like a help desk where you if you wanted to find a lost vessel at sea you would call them and then you would look through uh the satellite images and apply them over a selected area some of their algorithm and some human uh looking at this ours is uh from the ground up really uh in the autonomous uh AI approach to uh doing this so i'm gonna ask my own question so in terms of uh using satellite imagery um and you said it was all open source like have you sort of explored avenues for getting sources from you know because there's a proliferation of satellite companies uh going up into space with electro optical sensors synthetic aperture radar um presumably you're quite excited about the scope of additional data you'll get from that yeah exactly um yeah that's what we're actually currently exploring at you know with planin and uh maxar and those types of companies who are who have really led the the whole satellite revolution that's happened in the past decade um yeah we're definitely trying to uh make use of that right now also right so just having a quick flip through the questions that are outstanding so one of the ones here is what about the possibility to track fast boats and drug related traffic can you speak to that so like uh speedy boats right um yeah so that's what drug cartel you know yeah yeah both and that type of stuff yeah um so like i was showing here earlier here just looks like a small uh uh motorcraft i mean as long as it's captured in a satellite image we're able to detect it um you know the the possible uh downside would be that as a sped across just a small channel that we just didn't get a satellite image photo in time but we see that um how frequently uh the satellite image satellites are going up in space and just how more and more frequent the sketch that's just we're doing keep on getting higher and higher frequency of satellite images as this is just not going to be as much of a problem in the future especially get uh near the coastal areas there's usually pretty frequent uh satellite imaging near these areas um that uh where these uh boats are transversing you know it's usually a pretty short distance these cigarette boats um that's not as big of a problem the image frequency like some people might imagine thanks so um jeff biller at the us air force academy asks um as this technology advances could this approach be potentially applied to aircraft um yeah so uh if i understand the question correctly um you kind of want to use a image sort image provided from aircraft like aerial photography from uh airplanes i believe that's what you're asking um yeah that's definitely something we would love to uh do because you know just higher uh data so like one thing we're working right now is that we're working through uh different images sizes and image resolutions um we're trying to use as much possible data because like any uh big data algorithm the more data you get as long as you know you sort through it properly the better your algorithm is going to be uh so yeah aerial photography or dash sorts would be uh definitely very helpful um now i'm thinking about the second possible thing well he's asking to detect aircraft from like hangers um yeah it could definitely be applied towards that um the problem with that is that like a common way to hide uh aircraft like anyone who's uh familiar with repo people is just to put in a hanger you know so it can't be necessarily detected uh we're not able to right now necessarily see through a hanger and actually detect aircraft there but yeah it's definitely possible if you want to figure out like how uh big um uh enemies uh air forces you can try to figure that out so long it's open um where you're stored you can automate automate that process great and then um i'll close with one last question which i think is is worth emphasizing is um so the output from from your algorithm and your you know your company's work is this going to be available open source or you know how are you um how are you dealing with kind of the product that you produce yeah um we're looking at multiple avenues right now of like uh sharing this type of information um we're right now focusing on working with projects with certain people um on who are interested in this type of data but we would uh really like to i think uh at least have an open source version just to see uh in certain ports areas where uh how often the the boats are appearing there but we're currently working on that okay michael i'm going to call it there um all right cool thanks dear yeah thank you very much for your time and for presenting on what's a really interesting topic and one that's going to be more prevalent in in the future as well um thank you to all of those who joined us so far we're going to break for lunch now or whatever i'm here is appropriate in your part of the world and we'll be back at uh 13 10 um eastern savings time that's um 10 minutes past 1 p.m eastern saving time thanks well thank you all all of you for joining us this morning uh for the first session we we appreciate that and we look forward to a really exciting session this afternoon or this evening wherever you may be uh you know we heard um paul charret and michael tracy talk about some advances in technologies and how they can impact normal conflict on land that and sea and we're going to hear from four separate panels this afternoon that are going to address some of those issues specifically you know autonomous vessels and ai and loaq and the potential question of accountability and of course you know futures command and technology on the battlefield and those four panels are sponsored and and manned by some of our great partners and colleagues here at the war college uh navy code 10 the army's national security law division um the paul side china center at the law school and then of course the lieber institute at the united states military academy at west point um but first we're going to talk about uh unmanned vessels and for that we would like to turn to of course our code 10 representatives and i'd like to introduce our moderator margaret materna um margaret is the deputy director at the national security law division code 10 with the office of the judge advocate general the navy uh margaret take it away good afternoon and thanks very much lieutenant colonel cherry for that introduction so as mentioned this panel will focus on autonomy in the maritime context specifically on unmanned or autonomous vessels autonomous vessels are currently envisioned for both government and commercial use and in a variety of combat surveillance law enforcement in general support roles but they weren't really contemplated by international law their use raises some issues common to all systems that employ autonomy especially if they are designed to exercise belligerent rights but whether armed or not they also raise questions unique to the maritime domain and how they will operate in compliance with navigational rules of the road and the technology is advancing very rapidly just last month one of the us navy's overlord unmanned surface vessels conducted a first-ever transit of the panama canal sailing from alabama to california which is over 4700 nautical miles 97 of this travel was completed in autonomous mode so we are moving quickly but there are still numerous legal questions left to be addressed some of which are currently being considered by the imo and we'll hear a little bit more about that to start us off our first speaker will be lieutenant commander joel qui-do who currently serves as a judge advocate in the office of maritime and international law at us ghost card headquarters in washington so lieutenant commander qui-do uh over to you for your pre-recorded remarks good afternoon friends and colleagues like to start by thanking fresher james kraska and the stocking center for inviting me to be here today to be a part of this distinguished panel my remarks on autonomous vessels today will cover three main topics first i will talk about the coast guard's international work on autonomous vessels of the international maritime organization next i'll shift shift to a domestic perspective including the coast guard's engagement with the maritime sector as well as the public regarding autonomous vessels and finally i will talk about the impact on autonomous vessels across three coast guard mission areas like to also quickly note that my comments today do not necessarily reflect the visual policy or position of the u.s coast guard the department of homeland security or the u.s government to my first topic an international perspective on the coast guard's autonomous vessel work the coast guard is actively engaged in vessel autonomy issues both as a regulator of the maritime industry and as a user of the technology itself cyber-enabled systems allowed coast guard operations to better accomplish their mission allows industry to innovate but at the same time raises new concerns as the coast guard is acutely aware of and cyber wrong the coast guard's regulatory approach to vessel autonomy is necessarily informed by the discussions and decisions taken at the international maritime organization in recent years the imo has embarked upon a regulatory scope exercise for the use of maritime autonomous surface ships or mass scoping exercise seeks to determine how safe secure and environmentally responsible autonomous vessel operations might be addressed in imo instruments the coast guard leads us delegations to the imo and has been an active participant in this work the framework for the regulatory scoping exercise anticipates a spectrum of autonomy across four different levels in degree one a ship with automated processes and decision support degree two a remotely controlled ship with seafarers on board degree three also remotely controlled but with no seafarers on board and finally in degree four a fully autonomy ship the four degrees of autonomy underscore the complexity of the multi-tier analysis required to determine if and to what extent the existing suite of imo conventions might preclude mass operations allow them with certain amendments or clarifications or simply inapplicable to autonomous vessel operations as an illustrative example the international convention on standards of training certification and watchkeeping for seafarers or the stcw convention defines the master of the vessel as the person having command of a ship in degrees one and two with seafarers on board it is much easier to conclude that there is indeed a master board however in a degree three remote controlled scenario with no seafarers on board one must address the thorny question of whether a remote operator perhaps thousands of miles from the ship that he or she controls can fairly be considered the master of that ship similarly for a fully autonomous vessel in degree four commentators have queried whether a vessel programmer or a machine learning vessel itself might be considered the master of a vessel while these issues suggest no easy answers the imo's work has moved us importantly towards asking the right questions in addition to its international work at the imo the coast guard is also considering important domestic legal and policy developments related to autonomous vessels the coast guard is increasingly seeing owners and operators experimenting with autonomous systems these small-scale operations are generally coordinated with the local captain of the port to ensure the safety of the experimental vessel the op the waterway in which they operate and other vessels that are in the area to ensure the continued safety of such activities the coast guard will leverage leverage its vessel inspection expertise as well as its unique authorities through the ports and waterway safety act the coast guard also knows the importance of public engagement as well as engagement with the maritime sector to that end in august the coast guard published in the federal register a request for information regarding the integration of automated and autonomous commercial technologies into the maritime transportation system among other topics the coast guard sought feedback on existing regulations that may present a challenge to the development or implementation of autonomous technology potential new regulations that will provide more clarity for the maritime industry as well as the anticipated impacts of autonomous vessels on the maritime workforce the coast guard received over 40 insightful comments in response to this request as these numerous responses would suggest the coast guard does not presently have all the answers regarding autonomous vessel technology rather the safe development and adoption of autonomous technology will require constructive collaborative efforts between the coast guard as regulator and the owners and operators deploying these new technologies finally the coast guard is very much aware that the integration of autonomous technology presents new cybersecurity threats as noted in the recently released national academy sciences study entitled leveraging unmanned systems for coast guard missions unmanned systems can quote present cybersecurity vulnerabilities from network based network based attacks as well as from attacks that directly affect the behavior of the vehicles or other physical assets unquote to mitigate such threats the coast guard has recently issued guidelines for commercial vessels and waterfront facility operators on how to identify cyber vulnerabilities and has prioritized cyber operations and cyber strategic planning I want to conclude my remarks today by highlighting new possibilities and new challenges that are raised by autonomous vessels across three core coast guard mission areas search and rescue counter drug operations and navigational safety first search and rescue the duty to render assistance of sea is deeply embedded in the nautical tradition as well as in customary international law as reflected in article 98 of the law the sea convention that article while directed at the flag state requires the master of a ship flying the flag to render assistance to any person in parallel at sea thus in the context of search and rescue the question of who if anyone is the master of an autonomous vessel takes on special significance indeed if one reaches the conclusion that there can be no master of a mass it is necessary to ask whether the legal duty to render assistance persists for our purposes today it is enough to say that there have been no definitive answers as to who is the master of an autonomous vessel particularly at levels three and level four in the iron mode taxonomy as these advanced at these advanced levels of autonomy where no seafarers are present I would suggest that the key inquiry becomes if and when an autonomous ship has so improved in understanding of and capability to render assistance that it becomes obligated to do so next drug interdiction among the challenges of interdicting narcotics traffic at sea is the vast operating area often described as the tyranny of distance indeed the western hemisphere transit zone a known corridor for drug production and delivery spans some seven billion square miles for some perspective that's about twice the size of the continent on the United States because these vast distances strain finite enforcement assets and close illicit activity leveraging autonomous technology is essential to enhance their time domain awareness autonomous vessels might someday offer the following potential advantages greater presence and endurance on the water resulting from reduced fuel consumption and the elimination of crew rest requirements enhanced detection capability through an optimized sensor technology or integrated audio or visual communication system and third overall reduced operating costs unfortunately law enforcement and naval forces are unlikely to be the only customers in the autonomous vessel market indeed the evolution of maritime drug trafficking from the repurposed trawler to the present-day narcotics submarine has consistently leveraged technology this history suggests that the advent of autonomous vessels will in order to the benefit not only of coast guard and naval forces but also to the criminal entities they seek to interdict finally navigational safety as the federal government's designated center of excellence for navigation safety the coast guard will play a pivotal role in shaping navigational rules and policies in an increasingly automated world a crucial part of that work will involve the convention on the international regulations for preventing collision that see better known as the coal rigs however certain coal rigs raise apparent issues for mass compliance including rule five which states in relevant part that every vessel shall at all times maintain a proper lookout by sight and hearing the ability of an autonomous vessel to comply with rule five turns on what is meant by sight and hearing for example whether a sufficiently robust suite of audio and visual sensors could serve as the functional equivalent of a lookout relatedly rule two notes that responsibility within the meaning of the coal rigs includes any precaution which may be required by the ordinary practice of semen is noted by the imo intersessional working group on mass these provisions are imbued with quote human centric wording unquote not obviously applicable to autonomous systems moreover is noted by professor craig allen of the university of washington school of law unlike the solace or stcw conventions the coal rigs do not include provisions with a substitution of equivalence for its requirements in conclusion while the above questions have no easy or settled answers the u.s coast guard is committed to ensuring the safety of navigation and the protection of life and property at sea including the safe operation of both manned and unmanned vessels i want to thank you for your kind attention today and i look forward to your questions thanks very much lieutenant commander quido really appreciate hearing the coast guard perspective and that update on imo discussions our next speaker will be dr anna patrick who is the chair of international law and public law at the university of basal in switzerland dr patrick thanks very much for joining us i believe you're overseas so we particularly appreciate it over to you i would like to welcome you to my presentation on autonomous vessels and maritime security regulatory challenges in the context of the suha convention and i would like to express my warmest thanks to the organizer for the opportunity to present at this very interesting conference there are two reasons that led me to focus on the suha convention first the suha convention is subject to the regulatory scoping exercise conducted within the imo the previous v-crogation overview about this exercise second autonomous systems that can be used for enforcement purposes are announced at ever shorter intervals and at the same time unmanned vehicles are already being used to commit acts that could amount to suha offenses i'm thinking of attacks in the style of those carried out by hoodie rebels with explosive laden remote controlled crafts well considering the full spectrum of anticipated ship automation technology we're arguably still at the very low end of the scale at the worthless carriage stage of this emerging technology remote controlled offender ships for example are not very very far away from the invention made by the scientist tesla in 1898 who presented a remote controlled toy boat with flashing lights during the electrical exhibition on new york's medicine square garden pond technology said to make a giant leap in the near future however already quite rudimentary technology challenges the foundations of the law because the law rests on the assumption that ships carry an onboard crew responsible for navigation and the ship's task and mission and with unmanned ships this assumption is thrown overboard the question whether the law is fit for purpose already arises with remote controlled boats and we do not need to wait for more advanced technology let me provide you with some examples of the suha convention where it is unclear whether the law is fit for purpose in the age of autonomous ships i start with suha offences with your fence definitions suha offences can be roughly categorized in three types of offences first there are offences prohibiting to harm another ship the working of these offences does not specify the means by which a victim ship is harmed so you could technically use an unmanned ship to cause harm however do remote operators fall under the provisions to those launching a system pre-programming a system fall under that provision this is less clear second there are offences prohibiting to use a ship as a weapon here again we are quite lucky that the suha convention defines ships in a very broad manner as a vessel of any type whatsoever not permanently attached to the seabed the definition may cover ships without crew however use among states may differ third the transportation offences prohibit using a ship to transport illicit cargo again the term transport is defined very broadly as a means to exercise effective control over the movement of an item so with remote controlled vessels this notion could be fulfilled however whether the same holds true for fully autonomous vessels is less clear overall the definitions may encompass the commission of suha offences through the use of autonomous ships however states may interpret provisions differently and there is a need for clarification second the suha defines who is authorized to enforce suha offences and there are essentially two conditions first the craft must qualify as a worship or a state craft marked identifiable as being on government service and authorized to enforce the law i will not further elaborate on that issue because the next speaker will cover it in depth second the suha convention explicitly mentions that only an official from such craft is entitled to enforce the law can a remote controller be deemed to be an official from such crime what if a person launches a fully autonomous system is that an official from such craft such questions arise in the context of the suha convention interpretative issues also arise in the context of safeguards they rest on the premise that enforcers and suspects meet at sea in theater they are tailored to human human interaction further they often refer to physical documents to prove a specific fact like id cards of officials or ship papers to provide you with examples the suha stipulates that officials must produce an id card for examination by the master when taking enforcement action what is the meaning of this provision in case there is not a human human but rather a human machine or even a machine machine interaction what does it imply for interaction and communication what is the functional equivalent to a physical document an id card well uncertainties of this type raise the question about the appropriate level to clarify these issues to regulate autonomisms is it domestic or international and i guess a combined approach is necessary the suha convention belongs to the so-called suppression treaties the mechanics of this type of convention is the following they are rooted in the idea of harmonizing domestic criminal law in order to pave the way for at sea enforcement and interstate cooperation criminal matters if we do not want to prejudice the harmonization idea i guess there is a need to renew our common understanding what the suha provisions mean in the context of autonomous ships in mind you the common understanding of what suha provisions mean do not need to be entrenched in a new treaty provision i very much share the concern concern of opening up this treaty rather it seems to suffice to issue a unified interpretation or a similar type of document without such common interpretation or understanding however i doubt whether the idea behind the suha convention harmonization of domestic law to enable international criminal cooperation can be realized in the future the aim all regulatory scoping exercise is to be commented because it's a it notably raises awareness among iama member states about autonomous ships and it also allows for a first inventory of legal challenges however it also has some limitations and i would like to mention three of them first the scoping exercise entails a provision by provision examination there has not been much room to consider the entire mechanics of the treaty and to discuss whether it is disturbed through the use of autonomous ships as regards the suha this may be the case because the treaty's functioning is predicated on suspects being at sea there is a ship boarding procedure it is foreseen that suspects are arrested at sea with cruelness of fenderships arrest at sea will be not possible in most of the cases and this entails a shift a shift to land based enforcement measures which the treaty does not authorize so offenders vessels without crew may impact the entire mechanics and efficiency of the suha convention a second limitation accrues from the focus of the scoping exercise it only reviewed existing law such narrow focus does not provide a full picture of the regulatory challenges posed by the introduction of autonomous ships since new technologies will bring up entirely new issues not regulated in the existing law some of these issue can already be anticipated for example there is the issue of machine based decision making the law defines various thresholds notably the threshold of reasonable grounds of suspicion these thresholds were so far subjected to human judgment the question is therefore can a machine engage in such assessment another non-regulated aspect is how uh what is the value of machine generated evidence is it possible to base a criminal prosecution on machine generated evidence solely evidence not corroborated by human perception and how would you challenge this type of evidence in court and i guess here the discussion is a bit more advanced in us criminal law doctrine than it is in europe then there are the known unknowns and unknown unknowns i guess today we simply lacks experience and imagination to predict the legal challenges new pieces of technology will bring hence the situation needs to be continuously assessed ideally lawyers work closely together with experts in technology and the fact that this will be an ongoing exercise brings me to the last limitation of the aim of scoping exercise the methodology of the aim of scoping exercise was such that states could only choose among three options as regards the way forward interpret these amend treaties and create new treaty rules hence the focus is very much on hard law treaties traditional forms of lawmaking however is treaty making really a suitable method to regulate emerging technologies i have some reservations because of the speed of the technological development there has always been a pacing problem throughout history technology has always outpaced law however the rate of technological change accelerated quite dramatically and innovation cycles become shorter and shorter this accessor based the pacing problem and also the regulatory challenge it is against this background that there is need to discuss on how to best regulate emerging technologies is for example soft law better suited than hard law and should we move from a rule-based approach to principle-based regulation i gave you the example on the rule that the officials need to produce an ID card for examination upon the master maybe in the future it suffices to have the ruling hard law which states that we need legal certainty when enforcing the law but then the specific details would be regulated through soft law which can be adapted more easily well these are some of the challenges which are involved in the regulation of autonomisms and which pertain to the suave convention specifically and i would like to thank you for your attention thank you very much dr petrick we really appreciate hearing your remarks our final speaker this afternoon on the panel will be professor pete padroso who is the howard s levy chair on the law of armed conflict and professor of international law at the stockton center at the us naval war college he's also a retired captain in the us navy jag core professor patroso over to you for your remarks thank you margaret and thanks to everyone for participating today good day to all of you wherever you may be have the next slide please and the next slide okay i'm going to be talking as was mentioned primarily about autonomous or unmanned systems in a naval warfare construct but why are we talking about this we've already have seen over the last 20 years of warfare in in the middle east that unmanned system do provide some advantages and have been proven in combat they because of their mobility and their ability to loiter on on station for extended periods of time they enhance situational awareness for missions such as intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance they also reduce human workload you know we have a p8 aircraft that has nine crew members on board with a unmanned aerial vehicle doing surveillance you're going to have one one joystick operator back at creature force base or somewhere else you also the unmanned systems also improve mission performance because of the stealth technology that they employ which makes them much more survivable than a manned platform and it minimizes overall risk to military civilian personnel by allowing for remote operation away from the battlefield and enhance targeting capabilities and all of this is at a reduced cost which is important in today's budgetary world you can get six reapers for example for the price of one f-35 aircraft next slide please so these unmanned systems are ideal for dull missions as i mentioned like ISR which is very mundane requires long duration on station they're also well suited for dirty missions like detection of chemical biological and nuclear materials and by reducing the exposure to personnel that would be exposed to these hazardous conditions on the battlefield and finally they can also conduct inherently dangerous missions such as mine clearing operations or deactivation of improvised explosive devices we saw in the recent covid outbreak when it first started to move on the chinese were using unmanned systems to develop i do their first responders rather than send man personnel with into the area next slide please as margaret already mentioned these things are coming and they're coming fast overload was tested in september of this year on a six-week cruise departed moviel alabama conducted some operations in the Gulf of mexico then transferred to the panamal canal and arrived at port wine Amy six weeks later as she mentioned 4700 nautical miles 97 percent of which was in an autonomous mode next slide please now the vision for these systems are going to be under the command of the surface development squadron one based out of san Diego california the vision is to establish a command and control node a shore that will be man 24 7 as a unmanned operations center by surface warfare all office surface warfare officer qualified personnel as well as senior enlisted personnel trained in the collision regulations and ship and next slide please so what are these things are they a ship are they a device if you look at the number of the imo documents that define ship or vessel they all have one thing in common none of them say that you have to have a person on board so that's I think that's an important point that as they go through this scoping exercise that needs to be considered and not be overly conservative and try to say that you have to have person on board a device or a conveyance in order for it to be considered a ship or a vessel next slide please now article 94 of unclaw does seem to indicate of a manning requirement again it talks about that each ship should be under the charge of a master they should have a crew on board that the master the officers and the crew should be conversant and applicable in international regulations in regard to safety at life at sea the coal rag the prevention reduction control of marine pollution etc again there's nothing in unclaw however that says that the master or the crew have to be on board the vessel next slide and as Joel already mentioned we've got this the mass of work is being done at imo that eventually the the projection is that at some point we will have remote and autonomous ocean going vessels in the not too distant future next slide please next slide we already covered that okay one of the things that ongoing in conjunction with the imo work we have this non-governmental organization that is participating in the work at the imo and a survey that they sent out to a number of states 17 out of the 19 states that responded indicated that unmanned maritime systems could be considered ships under their domestic laws so that's an important point that needs to be taken into consideration as the imo goes through its stoping exercise next slide please so again what are they ship device not everything's going to be considered a ship or a vessel it let me make sure I'm not running over time here okay not everything's going to be a ship or a vessel if you sit look at the on the left there that the ocean glider probably is not going to be considered a ship or a vessel however the the sea hunter that's on the right side certainly looks like a ship smells like a ship and probably at some point in the near future it's going to be considered a ship next slide please again the navy for purposes of navigational rights we consider that these unmanned underwater and unmanned surface vessels all enjoy the same navigational freedom that man vessels can exercise including innocent passage archipelagic sea length passing transit passage through international state and high seas freedom beyond the territorial sea and again the NGO would agree with that that maritime unmanned vessels do enjoy the same navigational rights as man ships again assuming that they can comply with the the applicable regulation such as coal rates next slide please the you see the definition of warship first originating in the 1907 hay convention it talks about the ship has to be under the director authority or control of the flag state it has to be have external markings you've got to be commanded by a duly commission officer and it has to have a crew subject to military discipline next slide please that definition has carried over into the both the 1958 high seas convention as well as in article 29 of the 1982 un convention on the law of the sea next slide please and in our military manuals we see that the DOD law war manual as well as the commander's handbook in the law of naval operation also adopt the same definition that you find in unclos again i would suggest that none of these documents require that the commander or crew beyond board the vessel next slide please why is this important well we go back to 1856 the declaration of paris abolished privateering that was advanced then in the in the hay convention of 1907 that talked about converting merchant ships into warships the naval the Oxford manual same thing privateering for forbidden and it was all getting down to the point that only warships can engage in belligerent acts during an international armed conflict and you can see that both the DOD law war manual and the commander's handbook on the law of naval operations adopt this this position even though the united states is not a party to either the paris declaration or to vague eight seven next slide please but as you can see on this slide there are a number of mission sets that are being identified for unmanned maritime systems that are going to require that they engage in belligerent acts which means that some of these unmanned systems are going to have to be designated warships if we want to be in compliance with with the uh with with international law next slide please and again not all these systems need to be declared as a warship because you can see that the common usv that's deployed from the littoral combat ship uh it conducts uh it can conduct belligerent acts that it will do so as an extension of the of the warship not in an inherent right in and of itself next slide however if you see the seahunter or the large orc underwater vehicle these things are not going to be launched from a from a warship they're going to be launched from the land base somewhere and then they're going to proceed uh several thousand miles to their to their uh destination and they're going to engage in belligerent acts therefore these types of vessels at some point are going to have to be designated warships under the under us uh process next slide please and that process begins with the chief of naval operations uh article four zero four zero six navy regulations identifies the chiefs of naval operations as a person responsible for the naval vessel register and assignment and classification uh waterborne craft and designation of status of the ship and the service and then there's some additional uh instructions that uh that apply that and and the US laws apply that would uh that would require uh that that would allow for the designation of an unmanned system to be a warship but the the issue is this has to be done sooner rather than later and the the navy has to get uh get off the ball and start uh um designating these uh these larger type vessels as warships so that we can establish state practice uh to go into the future and thank you very much hey margo you're muted my apology uh thank you very much professor pedrozo and thank you to all of our panelists this afternoon for their thoughtful contributions on this topic uh we're now going to open it up to questions from the audience and i would ask all of our speakers to turn on their mics and cameras if they haven't already um and we'll go from there uh so one of the first questions which kind of dovetails nicely with some of the work that we're doing right now in the navy um is distinguishing between what is a weapon system and what is a warship uh and so this question was specifically for professor pedrozo but we certainly welcome any thoughts on the subject uh from any of our panelists so can an autonomized weaponized vessel be considered a very big torpedo and treated as such well i guess it could be considered a torpedo but um we have torpedoes uh so i would uh i would suggest that uh why call it a torpedo if it's not a torpedo uh they there are some of these systems that uh some of this emerged that the underwater uh unmanned underwater vehicles are very well could act as a torpedo uh but that's not how they're designated um so i would i would suggest that the answer to the question is no that these should not be considered large torpedoes thanks very much and our next question is probably best for lieutenant commander quito as you were discussing some of the cyber issues uh with unmanned systems so some of the checks and balances that might be envisioned to overcome you know the vulnerability to hacking and cyber crimes with autonomous vessels uh so one of our audience members has asked if you could elaborate a little bit on that sure i'd be happy to and i'd say the the coast guard's increased focus on cyber threats is certainly not unique to the autonomous vessel context we're looking at cyber risk across waterfront facilities and ports um so this uh the context of autonomous vessels is really one example among many of um the sort of risks inherent with um increasing the automated technologies um remote capabilities across a number of networks so i would say that to answer that question the the coast guard's really looking uh not just at kind of the the navigational issues that i referenced during my preparatory remarks as far as navigational safety in a narrow sense just the you know the safe navigation of the vessel through the water but what that vessel might be subject to in terms of uh cyber intrusions so it's um it's really cyber cyber risk or not something that can be narrowly tailored i would say to one context but we're taking a much broader view if that helps if i may add during the regulatory scoping exercise the problem of autonomous ships being hacked has been identified as a transversal issue and one of the core issues and the CMI has even suggested whether we need to introduce a new offense which would be a cyber crime against ships and others argue that the Sua convention already includes such an offense there is this crime which says that a person who places on a ship by means whatsoever a device which can cause harm to the ship um is liable to punishment so if we interpret that broadly it could also be placing a malware on board ships so this is certainly one of the keys key issues to be discussed within the scope of the regulatory scoping exercise great thank you both very much uh and dr petrick i think you kind of alluded to this in your remarks uh we have you know an ongoing struggle between whether a new legal framework is needed or whether existing legal frameworks are sufficient to address autonomous vessels and their use and the variety of potential uses for them and so and you know along with that are the coal rags which as joel mentioned uh some of those requirements might be a little bit difficult to comply with such as the one for a lookout so i open this question to all of our panelists uh do we need a new legal regime our existing uh laws sufficient um and if they are sufficient do they need to be amended or is it just a matter of interpretation and application i think i can start taking uh a stab at that one thing that i wouldn't know you mentioned specifically the coal rags um the way that the coal rags are currently drafted the concept of responsibility uh actually makes it a requirement uh that you the mariner would know not just when to follow the rules but when collision avoidance might actually require a departure from the rules so one thing i think i'd like to note at the outset is there's still you know we've mentioned that the technology is progressing quickly but you know is there is there an algorithm that's been developed yet uh that cannot only show an autonomous vessel how to follow rules but also know when to break them and i think uh until that level of technology uh has been reached or has at least been approached we're still going to be in a a process where developing guidelines and best practices are going to be necessary before we can definitively start marching out on regulatory changes if we look at the results of the the interim results of the regulatory scoping exercise it's quite clear that um the appetite to have new treaties or amenities is not very big and states at the current structure they favor interpretations and if the imo or um a conference of state parties issues guidance that could also amount to a subsequent agreement regarding the interpretation of these treaties and that could be then an important element for the interpretation of these treaties maybe there are limits to interpretation um some issues may be solved you can find a functional equivalence for many uh things i guess uh this term has been used by trial coito in his presentation in my presentation um but i guess there are also some new issues which are not yet addressed in the uh the existing law as i stressed in my presentation because the issues are new uh non-existing and not regulated and there i guess um it will be difficult to just um operate uh through interpretation reinterpretation of the law and we will have um new rules but i doubt whether uh formal or treaty law is the best way to proceed because it's very slow whereas technology is very fast and so i guess um soft law guidelines will uh be better suited to develop the law it also allows for a trial and error approach we can adjust to new technology because to some extent we regulate the unknown and um i don't know whether treaty is not um to reach it for this type of fast evolving technology on the other hand um treaties provide you with much more certainty uh not only the enforcers or those subject to enforcement but also the industry is clear what is expected from them whereas if different actors issue guidelines you guidance you may also have a situation where it's not quite clear what's the authoritative rule is i would agree that uh we don't need the new legal regime i think we need some creative interpretation um with regards to coal rigs uh look out i would suggest that a that a sensor system can be every bit as uh as competent as a person living through a pair of big eyes um that and probably probably do a better job than a than a man look out could do but again it's going to all depend on how technology develops and once if we can't develop the technology to the level of satisfaction to that we can that we can say it can comply with the existing legal regime then they shouldn't be done but i think at some point in the near future uh they are going to come up with the technology that's going to allow these unmanned systems to operate it see just like a man ship that okay thank you everyone uh we only have about three minutes left uh but we do still have a couple of questions uh so one question has a lot to do with attribution and responsibility uh so autonomous platforms may display unpredictable behaviors uh so how much control should a remote master have over the platform to still be considered responsible for its behavior uh so maybe if we could kind of talk even a little bit more broadly about responsibility in that context professor Pedro perhaps i'll start with you since you're still up on my screen okay um yeah i mean the uh i think that as long as the uh the the person that is remotely operating the vessel um is going to be the person that's going to be held responsible for any uh transgressions at that the unmanned vessel may may perform now if you're talking purely autonomous vessel uh then you're you're not going to have anybody that's operating them theoretically it's if it's purely autonomous then you have no one in control so the flight state is going to bear responsibility uh as it should um if it's flagged under a certain country then the flight state bears responsibility for any uh transgressions that that ship may uh may commit i agree that um remote controlled ships are arguably not very problematic in terms of attribution at least in criminal law you still have a human being who takes decisions and continues to be responsible for the effective control of uh the ship or the device however if it's a pre-programmed or even if it can learn en route it becomes more difficult to attribute the more distant the human involvement is the more difficult attribution is I think from the the Coast Guard perspective from a navigational safety point of view uh degree two you know the remote controlled operation with a master still on board actually um is quite interesting in that it raises some questions about what is what is the level of intrusiveness so to speak of that on board backup person i think the touchstone for safe navigation has always been fundamentals of prudent seamanship so do we worry about a scenario where uh that backup on board a degree two type of autonomous system is not performing to an adequate degree that that safety backup functions so i think that's even where you have the quote unquote safety of someone aboard i think there there's more work that needs to be done to define the scope of their responsibility or oversight of that autonomous system so maybe to build on that a little bit we have a question about whether if a vessel is cyber attacked and the attacker takes control of it your calculus changes at all so who then has the responsibility and it appears we have stumped the panel with that question i guess it depends the responsibility for what for the safe navigation or is it about like if there is a damage caused for the damage i guess the question is too complex too for an easy answer okay well that brings us to 2 p.m. which is the end of our time uh so i really want to thank all of our panelists for their excellent comments this afternoon uh and i see lieutenant colonel cherry is online uh so i'll turn it over to you to wrap it up thank you thank thank you very much margaret that was a fantastic panel um thanks you to our three panelists uh certainly interesting and uh as we go into our break um we will next hear from uh the army so we'll be going from the navy to the army and going from the water to the land uh as a marine i'm a good person to transition us there so i will come back in about 10 minutes uh and we will see you then for our next panel thanks again margaret and thanks to our panelists ladies and gentlemen uh hello and welcome back from the break uh our next panel titled artificial intelligence in the law of armed conflict is co-sponsored today by the army's national security law division and uh from that division our moderator is mike mayer and mike is the special assistant to the judge advocate general of the army and for law war matters um with that mike i'll turn it over to you great thank you john and um welcome everyone to our panel uh good morning good afternoon good evening depending on where you're at um we as john said our panel is going to be entitled artificial intelligence and the law of armed conflict uh certainly i want to express my thanks to the stockton center for the invitation to participate here today we have seen over time the increasing use of autonomy in weapons systems new innovations and technology such as the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning have the potential to dramatically transform how the u.s military fights and how do d will operate in the future to date we've seen some of the benefits of autonomy and the motive to increase levels of autonomy in weapons systems can yield even greater benefits greater operational effectiveness increased safety of one's own forces decreasing the need for personnel and financial savings with respect to the law of armed conflict we have seen that autonomy can improve accuracy of weapon systems provides better is that allows commanders and operators to make better better targeting decisions technologies have shaped warfare in the past and these new technologies make proved to be even more dispensable parts of the military arsenals in the future a wide variety of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies are currently pursued by governments worldwide certainly the united states is not alone in this endeavor according to president russian president vatimir putin artificial intelligence is the future not only for russia but for all humankind it comes with colossal opportunities but also threats that are difficult to predict whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world similarly china's new generation ai development plan states that ai is strategic technology that will lead the future and in relation to military applications it is said that artificial intelligence will lead to profound military revolution these new technologies provide great promise but they also prevent many challenges and our panelists will discuss those today i'm pleased to be joined by two distinguished panelists on this panel our first one is ashley orens who is the chief of intelligence system centers at john hopkins applied physics laboratory ashley is the founding director of the intelligence system center uh where he directs research and development activities in machine learning robotic and autonomous systems and applied neuroscience he's been with apl since 2003 and his background is in machine learning and signal processing applied to autonomous systems and this is ladies and gentlemen one of the perils of making your uh linkedin page open to everyone in addition to his careers and engineer ashley has also pursued a parallel career as a hip-hop artist and a producer and serves as a voting member of the recording academy so with that let's please run ashley's presentation good afternoon my name is ashley lorenz i'm with the john's hopkins applied physics laboratory and my remarks this afternoon will focus on perspectives on intelligent systems so i'll caveat right away by saying that uh i'm not a lawyer i'm not a scholar of law rather i'm a technologist and my aim will be to bring a technology perspective to hopefully ground some of the discussion today um and let me just say a quick thank you to the us naval war college stockton center for the opportunity to participate in this important discussion all right i'm going to try to make three points today and i'm going to use uh examples from research and development underway at the john's hopkins applied physics lab to try to illustrate these three points the first being intelligent systems and power people uncertainty is hard for humans and machines and the third is that intelligence is contextual and hopefully it'll be clear uh by the end what i mean by these and why they're relevant to today first point intelligent systems empower people so let's take a look at this at this diagram we've got uh johnny in the foreground uh he who's an amputee wearing a very advanced robotic prosthetic this was developed by a a program called darpa revolutionizing prosthetics it was led by apl um and many different collaborators over a number of decades and i call this an ai-assisted handshake and so johnny is using this prosthetic to shake hands um with jen through the robot that's also in the foreground robo sally okay so so how is you know how is artificial intelligence helping to empower uh this ai-assisted handshake so it is helping um it is perceiving and understanding its environment it's making decisions on how to act according according to the intent of these two individuals it's carrying out that intent with some degree of autonomy and it's doing so as part of a team in the case of johnny's prosthetic it is perceiving its environment its environment is johnny's nervous system uh it's got to interpret the motor intent that's the state that's the perception aspect it's got to um decide on how to actuate itself according to that intent carry it out with some autonomy okay and then you've got jen in the background and actually instead of measuring her intent directly as the system is doing with johnny it's observing from afar uh just a little bit of a distance there through an infrared sensor it's got an internal model of hand movements uh and it's reasoning about how sally should move itself um according to that intent all right so in each case uh these intelligent systems are p