Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
It’s been just over two months since Kathleen Hicks stepped down as US deputy secretary of defense. As the highest-ranking woman in Pentagon history, Hicks shaped US military posture through an era defined by renewed competition between powerful countries and a scramble to modernize defense technology.
She’s currently taking a break before jumping into her (still unannounced) next act. “It’s been refreshing,” she says—but disconnecting isn’t easy. She continues to monitor defense developments closely and expresses concern over potential setbacks: “New administrations have new priorities, and that’s completely expected, but I do worry about just stalling out on progress that we've built over a number of administrations.”
Over the past three decades, Hicks has watched the Pentagon transform—politically, strategically, and technologically. She entered government in the 1990s at the tail end of the Cold War, when optimism and a belief in global cooperation still dominated US foreign policy. But that optimism dimmed. After 9/11, the focus shifted to counterterrorism and nonstate actors. Then came Russia’s resurgence and China’s growing assertiveness. Hicks took two previous breaks from government work—the first to complete a PhD at MIT and the second to join the think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where she focused on defense strategy. “By the time I returned in 2021,” she says, “there was one actor—the PRC (People’s Republic of China)—that had the capability and the will to really contest the international system as it’s set up.”
In this conversation with MIT Technology Review, Hicks reflects on how the Pentagon is adapting—or failing to adapt—to a new era of geopolitical competition. She discusses China’s technological rise, the future of AI in warfare, and her signature initiative, Replicator, a Pentagon initiative to rapidly field thousands of low-cost autonomous systems such as drones.
Yes, I do. China is the biggest pacing challenge we face, which means it sets the pace for most capability areas for what we need to be able to defeat to deter them. For example, surface maritime capability, missile capability, stealth fighter capability. They set their minds to achieving a certain capability, they tend to get there, and they tend to get there even faster.
That said, they have a substantial amount of corruption, and they haven’t been engaged in a real conflict or combat operation in the way that Western militaries have trained for or been involved in, and that is a huge X factor in how effective they would be.
I would never want to underestimate their ability—or any nation’s ability—to innovate organically when they put their minds to it. But I still think it’s a helpful comparison to look at the US model. Because we’re a system of free minds, free people, and free markets, we have the potential to generate much more innovation culturally and organically than a statist model does. That’s our advantage—if we can realize it.
I do think it’s a massive problem. When we were conceiving Replicator, one of the big concerns was that DJI had just jumped way out ahead on the manufacturing side, and the US had been left behind. A lot of manufacturers here believe they can catch up if given the right contracts—and I agree with that.
DJI’s commercial-use drones are affordable and powerful, but their applications in a war zone have raised concerns in the US and beyond.
We also spent time identifying broader supply-chain vulnerabilities. Microelectronics was a big one. Critical minerals. Batteries. People sometimes think batteries are just about electrification, but they’re fundamental across our systems—even on ships in the Navy.
When it comes to drones specifically, I actually think it’s a solvable problem. The issue isn’t complexity. It’s just about getting enough mass of contracts to scale up manufacturing. If we do that, I believe the US can absolutely compete.
When I left in January, we had still lined up for proving out this summer, and I still believe we should see some completion this year. I hope Congress will stay very engaged in trying to ensure that the capability, in fact, comes to fruition. Even just this week with Secretary [Pete] Hegseth out in the Indo-Pacific, he made some passing reference to the [US Indo-Pacific Command] commander, Admiral [Samuel] Paparo, having the flexibility to create the capability needed, and that gives me a lot of confidence of consistency.
Traditionally, defense acquisition is slow and serial—one step after another, which works for massive, long-term systems like submarines. But for things like drones, that just doesn’t cut it. With Replicator, we aimed to shift to a parallel model: integrating hardware, software, policy, and testing all at once. That’s how you get speed—by breaking down silos and running things simultaneously.
It’s not about “Move fast and break things.” You still have to test and evaluate responsibly. But this approach shows we can move faster without sacrificing accountability—and that’s a big cultural shift.
It’s central. The future of warfare will be about speed and precision—decision advantage. AI helps enable that. It’s about integrating capabilities to create faster, more accurate decision-making: for achieving military objectives, for reducing civilian casualties, and for being able to deter effectively. But we’ve also emphasized responsible AI. If it’s not safe, it’s not going to be effective. That’s been a key focus across administrations.
As DOGE throws out the rule book for government tech, it’s time we plan for the worst—and look to each other for courage and support.
It does have significance, especially for decision-making and efficiency. We had an effort called Project Lima where we looked at use cases for generative AI—where it might be most useful, and what the rules for responsible use should look like. Some of the biggest use may come first in the back office—human resources, auditing, logistics. But the ability to use generative AI to create a network of capability around unmanned systems or information exchange, either in Replicator or JADC2? That’s where it becomes a real advantage. But those back-office areas are where I would anticipate to see big gains first.
There’s a long history of innovation in this country coming from outside the government—people who look at big national problems and want to help solve them. That kind of engagement is good, especially when their technical expertise lines up with real national security needs.
But that’s not just one stakeholder group. A healthy democracy includes others, too—workers, environmental voices, allies. We need to reconcile all of that through a functioning democratic process. That’s the only way this works.
I believe it’s not healthy for any democracy when a single individual wields more power than their technical expertise or official role justifies. We need strong institutions, not just strong personalities.
I think you have to be confident that you have a secure research community to do secure work. But much of the work that underpins national defense that’s STEM-related research doesn’t need to be tightly secured in that way, and it really is dependent on a diverse ecosystem of talent. Cutting off talent pipelines is like eating our seed corn. Programs like H-1B visas are really important.
And it’s not just about international talent—we need to make sure people from underrepresented communities here in the US see national security as a space where they can contribute. If they don’t feel valued or trusted, they’re less likely to come in and stay.
I do think the trust—or the lack of it—is a big challenge. Whether it’s trust in government broadly or specific concerns like military spending, audits, or politicization of the uniformed military, that issue manifests in everything DOD is trying to get done. It affects our ability to work with Congress, with allies, with industry, and with the American people. If people don’t believe you’re working in their interest, it’s hard to get anything done.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Frosty Piss on Saturday April 12, @09:35PM (2 children)
. . . And our inevitable fall as commerce and brain talent flee the country.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday April 12, @10:59PM (1 child)
Inevitable is correct, but it doesn't need to be fast. It has been for the last few months, but different policies could alter that.
(Do I predict that a set of correct policies will be enacted? No. But it's possible.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday April 13, @09:01AM
In East Germany they used to shoot people [youtube.com] trying to leave the country. For our young readers, there used to be an Iron Curtain in Europe and an East and West Germany. The East side was a communist dictatorship under the control of Russia. Berlin was divided and the East German government built a wall to "keep the West Germans out."
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Saturday April 12, @10:15PM (15 children)
Since 2010, and even before, US regulations on drone development let the rest of the world run free in drone development while restricting domestic drone development to devoted hobbyists and companies supplying the military ONLY.
It's no wonder at all that DJI ran away with the market, US regulations told US drone companies to not bother they wouldn't be allowed to sell drones for any domestic commercial purposes.
I worked with a (fixed wing) drone development company from 2010 to 2013, why did I leave in 2013? Because after the Afghanistan pull out our (Canadian) military customers quit paying for stuff, they talked like they wanted more even after the war was over, but the money never came. We did a little "drone piloting as a service" work for local SWAT raids, but with all commercial operations basically illegal (and, yes, lots of commercial operators did things like shoot real-estate photos "as a hobby") running a real business in the space was financially doomed.
Meanwhile at the time, Iran was running University contests with big cash prizes for the teams that pushed the envelope of drone performance the most.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 12, @11:43PM (7 children)
Honestly, this applies to the entire country.
In Yellowstone National Park, "It is a violation of federal law to leave the path," you can't camp in the park, etc. If something you're doing could *conceivably* inconvenience someone, it's illegal -- crossing tracks, entering the area around tracks, using a park at night, failing to have ID on you, etc.
The whole country is locked down into a set of prescribed actions that the populace is allowed to take. Fleece the poor is one, and work-harder is the another. Sit and watch TV, or play computer games, and eat-at-restaurants are among the few remaining options. Ensure you don't give any food to anyone unless it was made by a trained chef in a certified, registered, inspected kitchen! Don't replace an electrical outlet without hiring a certified electrician! Skate parks are *dangerous*, only other countries can have those!! (I saw a real nice one in Chili, about half a city block in size, probably 200 people in it - 50+ skaters)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Sunday April 13, @12:45AM (5 children)
I have always felt that American cities put far more effort into providing public areas to spend money than they do providing public spaces for people to enjoy being out of their private homes.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by pTamok on Sunday April 13, @09:29AM (4 children)
I have always felt that cities put far more effort into providing
publicprivately-owned areas to spend money than they do providing community-owned public spaces for people to enjoy at low-to-zero cost out of their private homes.The USA is just further along that process than many.
But it is obvious why that is: local government administrations make more tax-income from private businesses using land. Community parkland is a revenue sink, not a revenue source. Most of it does not bring in enough income to cover its costs.
I have family who live in places where the local multi-use sports halls are free to use. The swimming pools are extraordinarily cheap. Local clubs and societies can get grants from the local council. Local cultural events are subsidised. The quality of life is high, even if you are reliant on state benefits. The health system is near enough free to use - you don't need to worry about being bankrupted by a trip to the 'emergency room'. The tax-to-GDP ratio is about 2.5 times higher than the USA (the USA pays about 12% of its GDP in taxes).
If you want good free/low-cost community services, they need to be paid for/subsidised by taxes. It's up to the community to decide: my family live in places where the local culture is based upon equality and sharing (and no, it is not communist). Taxes are high. But most people pay them happily for the societal benefits. They tend not to vote for lower taxes.
There is surprisingly little freeloading where my family live. Of course some people 'take advantage of the system', but as an overall percentage of total system turnover, it's at the level of (in accountancy-speak) not being material. Put people in a stable and supportive environment, and they tend to do well. Who knew?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday April 13, @03:07PM
I may be wrong, but while I was walking around Rome I noticed something: the ancient private estates all seemed to be far up hills, well above the streets.
My theory about this is that the private estates excluded access, so they had very little traffic as compared to the thoroughfares passing by them. Before roads were paved, they tended to wear down with traffic. You can see this on dirt roads in the US, if they're not regularly maintained with additional gravel or other material, they will wear into the earth, maybe just a cm or so per year, but as the years roll on you can see where the surrounding un-trafficked land elevates and the roadways sink, sometimes several feet between the two.
So, in Rome, with thousands of years of private ownership alongside a (for centuries) unpaved road, you could get this "house on the hill" effect.
Our city extends along both sides of a large river, for all the miles and miles of riverfront, there are precious few public spaces for any kind of waterfront enjoyment - either from the land or water side. When the private owners run a restaurant with a boat dock or something similar, at least there is still for-pay access available. The city has over 120 miles of various kinds of waterfront - the 20+ miles on the ocean are nominally public access, but in practice parking is quite limited and boat access to the beach is all but forbidden. That leaves 100+ miles of river and other waterway waterfront, which is over 90% privately owned. There might be one restaurant or other place with a practically accessible boat dock for every 10+ miles of waterfront. The downtown area has a few miles of public riverfront, but it has been mostly under demolition and reconstruction for the majority of the past 20 years. Then you have the 100-ish miles of privately owned waterfront. Thousands of docks that mostly go unused, I mean - I'm glad the docks are there if we ever get into trouble while boating we'll just zip right up to one of them and tie off illegally and deal with it if there is a problem - which mostly there won't be, mostly the owners aren't even present, but you never know when a 2A enthusiast might feel the need to repel pirates by force from their private property, so sorry, didn't see the smoke rising from your outboard engine there, oh well, dead men tell no tales.
There was a nice restaurant at the end of our street on the (boatable) creek, for decades. But, owners retire, children who inherit run the business into the ground, and now it has sat basically abandoned for the last 7 years. At least we still have the boatramp there, but the nice place to go sit for drinks and / or dinner on the water is gone, and the nearest one is a 10 minute drive, and not nearly as nice - it looks out over the marina our boat is docked in - the only public marina for 10 miles of riverfront on this side of the river, half of which is being re-developed and likely under construction for the next 5+ years the way they seem to be going.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday April 13, @03:16PM (2 children)
Re: taxes. I lived in a part of Miami populated by professionals in their 20s-40s, with kids. They voted to raise taxes for schools. It can happen, even in Florida, but there's lots of selfish communities who don't value the up-coming generations - after all, these are the parents who left their children 'up north' to retire to Florida, away from them.
Our neighbor relocated to the mountains of the Carolinas, he's a contractor. After working there for a year his observation was: everyone up there (who hired him to work on their homes) is on disability. That's the problem with "welfare" in the US, you have to show need, so people persist in their disability states to keep the checks coming. My contention is: if you didn't have to be disabled to get the check, a lot of those people _would_ find productive (income producing) things to do, but it's hard to find work in the Carolina mountains, so rather than put their disability check at risk, they just stay disabled.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Sunday April 13, @03:37PM (1 child)
Of course, if having an income didn't remove the disability support, more people would work.
Many people are ill enough to not be able to work full time/full speed. The work environment is not structured in a way to support such people, so they are being rational. If somebody who worked 50% still got 50% benefits, rather than 0%, the incentive would be there for someone on benefits to work, especially if the 50% wages was materially more than the benefits it replaces.
If employers (warning DEI coming) were required to have the same demographics among their employees as the general (working age) population, things would get a lot better, fast. People can't magically lose their disability, but employers can magically lose their discriminative practices - especially when they see it does not affect their competitiveness.
From the government's point of view, they still reduce the benefit bill, and get 50% taxes on the wages the people do get. Employers only pay for the work people do, so whether it is 1 person working full time, or two people working 50%, they pay the same. Everyone wins.
The issue is getting rid of the idea that only people who work full time are worth recruiting: and allowing people to keep benefits for the time they do not work. The current tax and incentive structures actively prevent this.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday April 13, @07:25PM
>If somebody who worked 50% still got 50% benefits, rather than 0%, the incentive would be there for someone on benefits to work, especially if the 50% wages was materially more than the benefits it replaces.
In theory, that's how the legislation is written.
In practice, the administrators of the system make it a chaotic, unpredictable living hell to interact with the system, so once you've got your benefits dialed up to something liveable most people back away and collect the check as long as they can.
> employers (warning DEI coming) were required to have the same demographics among their employees as the general (working age) population, things would get a lot better, fast.
In legislation, the US has had this since at least the 1970s, when my father was being turned away from jobs he was more qualified for with "more diverse" women and people of color with lower qualifications taking the positions to help the institution balance their then-called Affirmative Action quotas. 50+ years, and it sort of helped, but didn't really make things better fast, it never really reached parity with the general population and was nowhere near "equity" - the "glass ceiling" remained for women and minorities into upper management until maybe 15-20 years ago, and again now that they're passing those thresholds they're still not equally represented, and in the case of our local grocery chain I believe they intentionally promote bad female managers to store managers just to "prove a point."
The company I work for seems to have taken diversity to heart and really embraced it up to all but maybe the top two levels of management. They've globalized operations and are actually reaping the benefits of hiring all kinds of people who are representative of all their customers. In my experience, this is very rare.
>People can't magically lose their disability, but employers can magically lose their discriminative practices - especially when they see it does not affect their competitiveness.
It doesn't take magic, it takes an open mind. In our case it actually enhances our competitiveness.
> Employers only pay for the work people do, so whether it is 1 person working full time, or two people working 50%, they pay the same. Everyone wins.
In the optimized world of corporate management, it's not so simple. 2 people working 60% still have 2x the management and HR overhead of 1 person working 120%, so guess what most companies lean toward? Also, in the US every single employee is a lawsuit waiting to happen, more employees is very bad on that front, especially more employees with spare time on their hands...
>The issue is getting rid of the idea that only people who work full time are worth recruiting: and allowing people to keep benefits for the time they do not work. The current tax and incentive structures actively prevent this.
Our current tax and incentive structures are deeply flawed in so many ways. They protect big business as barrier to entry for smaller business. They reward the career worker and the 100% disabled, but abuse everyone inbetween.
Make me king, I'll fix it so that I am happy. I bet I could get at least 40% of the population to agree that I'm making things better, but the tops of big business wouldn't like seeing the little people getting things that might have been handed to the corporate owners - even if the tops are doing better than ever they always seem to want to ensure that the underlings can't climb to their level.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Disagree) by epitaxial on Sunday April 13, @07:30PM
The park isn't your personal living room you slob. Assholes like you trampling over everything and trying to pet wildlife are why these rules exist.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 13, @12:36AM
This. US regulation of the industry was spectacularly bad.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 13, @12:51AM (5 children)
With us, what used to be a major aerospace contractor, the whole plant was sold off, the equipment liquidated, and the employees laid off.
Hundreds of highly trained engineers, technicians, machinists, and production assemblers were dumped en masse into a community now having employment for entertainment, hospitality, and owning rentals.
Most simply retired, their accumulated knowledge now inaccessible to the next generation.
I received a lot, but I never got the opportunity to give back. That MBA craze of the 80's wiped us out. By the 1990's, all the aerospace companies and their supporting subcontractors were gone.
Now, offshore companies carry the technological torch and the knowledge now belongs and is used by them, while the people here draw their retirement pension and pay tax to support the homeless, whether it be in prisons or welfare payments so they don't have to steal to eat.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Sunday April 13, @02:02AM (4 children)
In the 2006-2013 timeframe I lived in a large University small town... the college level tech know-how was still being taught at the time, and that drone company was run and 70% staffed by recent/soon graduates in the 2004-2014 range. After they went under, I moved to a video surveillance company which had about a dozen people working in the tech development of video management / processing, and two or three of them were serious drone-hobbyists - had built quad-copters for their BS senior projects, etc. The problem is: without real commercial activity, those "drone heads" eventually get married, settle down in a job that earns steady income and has nothing to do with the Kallman filters and PID control loops they used to play with. It stays at academic levels, which aren't nothing, but these things can be developed much further.
In 2011 it was obvious to me, working in a fixed wing drone company, that multi-rotors (mostly quad-copters) were the future. We were doing mobile ground station operations with our fixed-wing, having an operator in the backseat running the plane and collecting video while on the move in a truck (with somebody else driving.) An example of things that could be developed, and largely have by others in the past 10-15 years, would include: takeoff and landing of a multi-rotor drone from-to the bed of a pickup truck, a moving pickup truck, auto-charging of the drone after auto-landing (the big swarms have demonstrated this for a while now), and my favorite: because multi-rotor flight time is limited, having a team of quadcopters where the operator is only tasked with operating the "active" vehicle, and when it's time for a recharge the system can auto-launch a replacement vehicle, autopilot it near the active, then switch the active to the new vehicle with fresh batteries and autopilot the drained one back to the charging station (which might be on a moving pickup truck). Charging could be a battery pack swap with a large number of packs doing the recharge. These are very do-able things, but development takes time and you learn thousands of little things that the academic courses gloss over.
Dumping engineers on the market is a time-honored tradition in the US, every 4-8 years it seems that budget shifts send a wave of experienced engineers out the door, competing with fresh graduates. It's why I went back into academia for a MS.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by anubi on Sunday April 13, @02:25AM (3 children)
The dreams of the "drone-heads" seems alive and well... In China!
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=youtube+1500+drone+light+show [duckduckgo.com]
So many I just linked a DDG query.
Geez! And our government actually paid executive salary+benefits+perks for the leadership skills to send our engineers onto the streets, then wonder why we have failing stuff.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday April 13, @06:54AM (2 children)
Interesting query results, that leads to a pile of videos, the US ones are static or semi-static images, the Chinese ones are full 3D motion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 14, @08:55AM (1 child)
The US does have dynamic ones too. I think many of the Chinese videos are sped up so the dynamic bit is more obvious.
On a related note: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPul9WKQ6oQ [youtube.com]
Explosives, bullets, etc optional.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday April 14, @10:11AM
Interesting, I wonder how transferrable to general woodlands this is? What they're shown flying through is essentially a series of clearly delineated vertical lines, even if the description is "forest".