Military commanders have access to so much information, making sense of it is the challenge

Guest:	Ian Kalin
Title:	CEO of TurbineOne
Summary:	The U.S. military has more access to battlefield information than at any point in its history. Yet commanders and their staffs still face limits on time, attention and communication. As AI becomes more common in operational environments, the goal is to help them focus on what matters.

The Federal Drive with Terry Gerton provides expert insights on current events in the federal community. Read more interviews to keep up with daily news and analysis that affect the federal workforce. Reach out to Terry and the Federal Drive producers with feedback and story ideas at FederalDrive@federalnewsnetwork.com.

Interview transcript

Terry Gerton When people talk about military and AI, oftentimes they jump straight to autonomous weapons. What have you seen in terms of the real challenges commanders are trying to solve when they talk about deploying AI?

Ian Kalin Well, thank you for the question and for this opportunity to talk about what’s needed by frontline warfighters. From our experience and what I’ve seen as a veteran, the military commanders are not asking for AI. They have functions that they care about every day, how to take care of their troops, how to accomplish their mission, the resiliency of supply chains, things like that. And so AI can be a tool to support that type of work. But in and itself, AI is not the mission.

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Terry Gerton That’s really an interesting description. So I would take it one step farther, and tell me if I’m right here. The real problem is we have so much information that commanders have to deal with on the ground. Now they’ve got sensors, they’ve drones, they’ve video feeds, they got data, and they don’t have a lot more people to take all of that information and to make sense of it. Is that where the AI might be most useful?

Ian Kalin I think you’re saying it’s so well, you should come to work for TurbineOne. So you said it exactly right. Modern tool sets of today’s business are very relevant to the work of the average work fighter. Everything that happens in the industry is considered a resource that can be used by those serving our country. And so whether it’s better vehicles or better computers, there is also a heavy demand for the best of industry’s AI tools to support the work that they’re doing every day. But here’s the real challenge when you’re bringing those tools to military environments. AI for most people relies on the cloud, relies on internet. And from our experience at TurbineOne, about 80% of today’s national security professionals cannot access those AI tools because it’s so cloud hosted. And the operating environments for our soldiers are so constricted or contested or dangerous, they simply can’t turn on their cell phones and access the internet like we wouldn’t in our personal lives and in our homes. And so that’s the real challenge. How do you bring AI to those war fighters when the very access is so constrained?

Terry Gerton So in a world where those communications chains and assets are limited, how does that change the way both military leaders think about gathering and analyzing and sharing information and how senior officials are thinking about procuring information in theater?

Ian Kalin It’s a great question. I would say that part of the challenge that commanders have when trying to bridge the gap between the requirements of the battlefield and the commercial industry is that they know that they need the tools and systems like this, but they don’t necessarily know how to close the gap. There’s been extraordinary support from congressional appropriators and military leaders with various executive orders. It’s a really interesting time now to be in the space because people recognize the need. And there’s a lot of innovation for how to bridge that gap, whether it be by embedding AI within certain systems, you mentioned some of these autonomous systems that are increasingly prevalent in global conflict. Sometimes it’s just trying to figure out how to get in the Pentagon, either technologically or physically. And so the money’s not the challenge, the law’s not challenge, the data access isn’t really something that’s unsolvable. Sometimes it just comes down to speaking the right language and help the folks understand how to make it simple, how to bring these tools forward, how to integrate it with what they already have, rather than being scared or skeptical about the challenge of integrating new technologies.

Terry Gerton Ian Kalin is the CEO of TurbineOne. So Ian, as a frontline commander, there’s a sense or an assumption maybe that you can never have too much information. But is that really true? Like, if we keep adding sensors and information and don’t provide more processing power, are we really helping that commander?

Ian Kalin That’s exactly the challenge that folks have, but there’s good news. Just like the new modern reality, that everything on today’s battlefield is a sensor, there’s also new opportunities to bring the latest and greatest of industry’s tools forward. And so there’s a lot of good news throughout the world. All of combat is a sad and grim dynamic when nations reach conflict, but it also means that it’s accelerating the level of innovation because of the urgency to bring the best capabilities forward. There’s a lot of new tools and places that are doing. Great things, whether it be helping people find threats, to stay safe, to understand their risks. These tools from industry, such as artificial intelligence, are transforming the battlefield today. There’s countless examples of that all across the world. Where there is greater conflict, there is also greater innovation because the soldiers themselves and the war fighters and national security professionals are bringing that expectation forward and changing the way they do business every day. So as much as it is, the industry is moving fast for sure. And there’s different needs in different battlefields across the world. There’s also great good news to celebrate in terms of how well it is actually supporting people in their daily jobs

Terry Gerton As we think about all of these different kinds of tools and sensors that we’re deploying downrange, we are for sure increasing the information processing load on individuals and other systems. How should commanders and military leaders be thinking about addressing that challenge in a combat environment, where as you’ve said, sometimes the communications channels aren’t secure, that the cloud is not available, and we have more information than we can process?

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Ian Kalin The best commanders have great view of putting their own warfighters at the center of everything that they do, and we shared that mission at Turbine One. When you have the person first perspective on those needs to accomplish their mission, to get the job done, to wrangle the explosion of data on the frontline battlefields, then you can set up all the tools and systems that actually help them in ways that fit within their daily work. We can’t ask a soldier to do more if they’re already overwhelmed with the data. So instead, the best innovation and leaders that we’ve seen from military commanders across the world, is to say, hey, you have this challenge, we’re going to help you get the job done today in a way that’s simpler, easier, more digestible so that you can focus more on that mission accomplishment. And that change in architecture can lead to tools like being super simple, like being forward, like being edge-first, like fully interoperable. And when you make that the easy part, then the relief for the soldiers and the war fighters is that they can focus on their actual mission.

Terry Gerton Talking about putting soldiers at the center of these system designs and trying to simplify the work that is in front of them. Do you see a risk of over-reliance then in the other direction, trying to automate too many decisions? And is there an over- reliance on that?

Ian Kalin The lessons of recent conflict have shown that you don’t lose the old requirements when you add new requirements. An example from the Eastern side of Ukraine is that it’s World War I and World War III at the same time. We believe it to be one that the next phase of warfare will reward practical, trusted systems that help small units handle more complexity, not just the flashy technology for its own sake.

Terry Gerton So if you are advising military leaders today, what is the thing they should be most excited about and most cautious about as AI becomes more common in all different kinds of levels and aspects of military operations?

Ian Kalin Every new system introduced to the US military is immediately, or initially, perceived as higher risk because the current operations are seen as a lower risk set of performance against that mission. And so if this new system is coming in, if it’s perceived as high risk, every commander is going to say, wow, I need to test this thing before I trust it. Trust is built with consistency over time. And so with the pace of industry moving so fast, there’s a natural amount of distrust for what AI can deliver. At TurbineOne, we actually celebrate that skepticism. And the way to build that trust is to embed it in the frontline operations, test it out in the environments where it makes sense, improve it for the individuals. In the technology industry, we call it product-lead growth. Test it yourself and see if it can save a life, accomplish a mission. And if so, then ask the challenging questions. Like you, Terry, have asked in this interview, well, how can it be funded at scale? How can it deploy across an entire military branch? That level of organic growth is already starting to happen and the pace of innovation ahead of us is very exciting.

Terry Gerton Thinking back to conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, when there were new threats, like IEDs, for example, the military responded with hardware innovations. And even that speed of innovation was kind of slower than the frontline forces might want it to have been. When the major innovations are software and AI, is the speed of innovations in operations a challenge, or is it a benefit?

Ian Kalin Well, modern warfare is moving faster with more data and new threats, as is often described by many military leaders. There’s a difference in the characterization of warfare versus the operational side. Now, from our perspective of TurbineOne, small drones, loitering munitions, and other low-cost systems are changing the culture of a conflict and putting more pressure to forces to spot, sort, and respond to threats like you described in the history of Iraq and Afghanistan. Drone warfare is showing that a lot of those same threats are now just flying through the sky as opposed to being buried underground. But you still have the threats buried underground and so because the threat profile of what people have to worry about in battlefield is evolving so fast, that is where software can keep up with the speed of hardware. That if you have better information dominance on where the threats are, you can provide that physical support for, unfortunately, the weapon systems that are so common in combat. And I would argue the better the software, the more effective the hardware. If we know more. About those threats and where the challenges are. Ultimately, any nation can be much more efficient in the employment, and not just the hardware systems, but ultimately, and most importantly, the people that are more important than the hardware to ensure that they are kept safe and to accomplish their mission.

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