HELLO FUTURE: AI, Global Conflict & Economic Shifts Reshaping Tomorrow

Speaker 1 (00:08):
The conflict in Iran has sparked a lot of dialogue
over the future of military conflict. Hello Future, it's me keV.
This is a dispatch from the Digital Frontier the planet Desert.
The year is twenty twenty six. My name is Kevin Surreally.
You can be sure to download all of the latest
episodes of Hello Future on your iHeartMedia app. Be sure
to subscribe to our newsletter at MTF dot TV. My
guest today is the science and Technology editor at Defense One,
Patrick Tucker. Patrick, I have been following you a reporting
and there's really nobody else better to talk to you
about everything that's happening on the digital frontier side of
things with the conflict with Iran, and I want to
begin first and foremost with the new capabilities that the
US deployed in the conflict that have never been done before,
as it relates to artificial intelligen the dismantling of cyber
systems in Iran so that their missile defense capabilities wouldn't
be able to be utilized. And then this idea of
hacking into Iranian applications and communications systems put it in
context for us, right.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
So thanks for having me.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
First of all, I'm glad to have readers.

Speaker 4 (01:21):
What you're seeing right now is a convergence of two
very sort of like big trends, and that is the
US now.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Deploying at scale via Palenteer.

Speaker 4 (01:32):
But also this is a capability they've had for a
while that's now really seeing a new era, and that
is artificial intelligence applied to target acquisition, appried to surveying
a landscape in order to.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
Come up with solutions for.

Speaker 4 (01:47):
Like connecting the right whether it's drone, whether it's a jet,
whether there's a standard missile coming off of a ship,
the right target with the right missile launcher, if you will,
and doing that a scale and at a pace that
hasn't ever been seen in warfare ever before, and also.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Leveraging their tailored.

Speaker 4 (02:09):
Access tools offensive cyber in order to create a massive
gap in Irani and what's called C two. So that's
command and control over their forces. But having said that,
this is also not exactly a war that is entirely
Every war has two sides, and you see Aaron also
developing a lot of adaptive means to fight the type
of war that they would like to be fighting. And
where this goes, I think It's an interesting question because
the US, well, we'll get into a little bit. I
think there's a possibility a danger of the US relying
a little bit too much on some of these.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Very spectacular tactical.

Speaker 4 (02:55):
Innovations in using AI and also using tailored access operations
offensive cyber to achieve battlefield effects without.

Speaker 3 (03:05):
Creating the situation on.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
The ground and around that will allow.

Speaker 4 (03:09):
For the meeting of long term political objectives and in
the war. So there's a lot to get in there.
And there's echoes of this that you see both in
the way Russia approached Ukraine and Ukraine's resilience in the
face of Russian attacks, but also actually the Israeli response
to the Hamas attacks of October seventh and ten and
twenty three.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
So there's dimensions of all of.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
That that you now see playing out in the new chapter.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
So Patrick Tucker, a scientist technology editor for Defense One.
If the Iranians digital systems digital infrastructure was built on
the backs of Chinese and Russian technology, this would have
to signal to other countries that are doing digital infrastructure
deals with those entities that they're not safe I mean,
and that they fail. I mean. This is I can't
really look at this in any other way. Even if
there were some bright spots where the Iranian defense capabilities
held up, It's been a total disaster for them. It's
been a total disaster for the Venezuelans. And they're all
using digital infrastructure that's being pushed by the Chinese and
the Russians. So why would another country want to use
that digital infrastructure or use those systems if it's cheap,
it doesn't work, and it fails.

Speaker 5 (04:32):
Yeah, that's a very good question. It would be the
first part. It would be the operative rationale. It's the
cheapness of it that's the main thing. And this is
part of the reason why China and Russia attempt to
sow so much distrust of the United States internationally, particularly
across African nations and also many South American nations. So
that the premium that US technology comes with the internationals ands, etc.
That looks to be overly expensive compared to cheap Chinese
telecommunications equipment like Huawei. And if you don't trust the
United States as any sort of rational partner, then you're
thus taught not to trust their equipment. China is not
offering something that is more secure Chinese telecommunications equipment that
goes to other nations as well as much of their
internal equipment. Well, the stuff that goes to other nations
is insecure as a function for them, it's a feature
because that allows the Chinese government continued access to the
inner workings of that organization. They exfiltrate a ton of
data from other governments, even supposedly allied governments, all the time,
and internally it's not supposed to be a feature, but
Chinese telecommunications equipment is still something that can be accessed.
And we have ATSA at Cybercom and also through our
partner in this conflict, Israel, tailored access skill that can
brush aside certainly what we're seeing in Iran. This is
speaks something to the massive difficulty of cybersecurity in general
in this era. Defense has to be one hundred percent.
Offense can be spot offense can be quick, high maneuver.
And this was an overwhelming show of force, not just
you know, de doss attacks and things to take things,
but also showed tremendous understanding of Iran's telecommunications and security
command and control system that was yeah, as you point out,
basically disabled almost instantaneously, but at the same time, Iran
still has a variety of tactics and tools that it
can use to continue some form of command and control,
sometimes very much like Hamas was operating in Gaza prior
to October seventh. And you know, this is just something
when you look at this, years of Mosad relying on
satellite communications and cyber intelligence gathering resulted in Hamas adapting
to new tactics where they actually would go sort of
door to door and mount them mouth sort of like
you know when you look at those old videos of
like the Gambino family or John Gotti when they're holding
place up to the mic so that they can't be seen.
So we must anticipate continued adaptation on both sides. But yes,
this is not a commercial for Chinese consumer technology by
any needs, nor is it a good commercial for Russian
anti aircraft aerial defenses. There's what we can get more
to that in the moment, because the drone aspect of
this is I think perhaps the most interesting.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
I think finally, to some extent, people in Washington are
starting to wake up to understanding that the digital sphere,
what happens in URL impacts IRL and that we need
to be thinking about the digital cyber space as if
it's a type of of geography, the same way that
my grandfathers would say that America is safe because there's
an ocean separating us from the conflict in Europe. Well,
now the conflict is quite literally in the palms of
all of our hands and our smartphones. And so this
digital security, this digital cyber space is so interconnected to
the future of conflict. And Patrick Tucker, Senior editor of
Science and Technology at Defense wand really capturing that as
he's equating the fact that countries like Russia and China
and dictators like Vladimir Putin and Shujiping, they don't have
to send troops necessarily to Iran. They can just send
their digital infrastructure. But their digital infrastructure has been mediocre
at best to all of the countries that are partnering
with them. So if you are thinking of whether or
not to align with the West or with China, you've
also got to be looking at the lack of security
you're getting from the cheap technology. I mean, who cares
if it's cheap, but if it doesn't work, you know
who wants it. You mentioned drones. I do want to
talk about drones because this was really an example where
the drones operated quickly, cheaply, but in many ways successfully.
What's your analysis on the drone usage of the US
and how the US deployed drones.

Speaker 5 (09:23):
Yeah, so this is a fascinating phenomenon occurred at the
outset of the conflict where you saw US deploy a
experimental system is called the Lucas and that is a
drone that is actually modeled after the Shahad one three
six drones, so it is modeled after you an Iranian drone.
The US developed it to emulate the threat, and then
they decided, hey, instead of just emulate the threat, why
don't we start scaling these out. They have I'm told
several squadrons of these in the Middle East right now.
And I've been also explicitly told by Sentcome officials that
a squadron doesn't have to mean like if you're squadron,
they're not telling you the number. They're defining squadron in
a new way. But it's modeled after an Iranian drone
that now Russia produces en mass and tremendous volume. Russia
uses them against Ukraine. The ability of Iran to mass
produce their own cheap drone is incredibly constrained by sanctions
against component parts and the fact that their facilities for
doing so are easily targetable. But when you look at
the Iranian attacks on US forces, they are drone let
so these things are outperforming their ballistic missile stockpile incredibly well.
And to this point, the US has deployed this Lucas drone,
So you're seeing a US clone of an Iranian drone
going back and forth over the Red Sea. Fascinating. But
to intercept these Iranian drones, we rely on many things,
but a lot of it ten million dollar standard missiles
coming out of the like coming off of ships packed
three missiles, which we have in limited supply. This really
highlights something that folks have been talking about now for
a while, for the last couple of years, which is
that we can't be relying on ten million dollar missiles
to shoot down eighty thousand dollars drones because the economics
of that is going to suck for us. So the
longer this goes on, the more those economics suck for US,
and that creates potential strategic vulnerabilities elsewhere, particularly in terms
of the Pacific, where if we don't have enough of
these interceptors at this high cost, then that position looks
incredibly reek, which is why the US began to experiment
with these large numbers of low cost drones. And now
the question is how many of them can be brought
online by either side. That's what we're waiting to see.
ARAM is very limited in what it can produce now
on the ground, and it was even before this, but
Russia is not. And how that technology transfers, if it
should transfer, is kind of be kind of a critical question.
President of Ukraine Vlodimerzelenski, announced that the US has contacted
him to help the US stand up a regime of
interceptor drones. Ukraine developed a drone that is cheaper than
the Shahed to take out Shaheeds, which really makes you
wonder how the Patriot missile system is going to be
valued in the future too. So exactly to your point,
we have incredibly effective, exquisite systems for putting a warhead
on somebody's head and intercepting these drones. But if you're
shooting ten million dollars into the sky every time Iron
launches something that's eighty thousand dollars, then you give your
adversaries incentive to keep kind of waiting you out.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
It's really fascinating to hear how the inexpensive capabilities of
Iran have impacted just strategy from it's like a drone
street fight for lack of matter analogy, just the ability
just to kind of do that so quickly and cheaply.
And I guess just final question for you, thank you
so much for your time, is what does the current
conflict to Iran as well as Venezuela side step politics
because this is not a political show, but what does
it show us about the future of conflict.

Speaker 5 (13:09):
There's always a political dimension to do everything, but I
think it does showcase the value of the importance of
having allies and partners that you can operate with. And
it definitely showcases the value of Ukraine as a partner
in the United States. It's hard to understate that they've
been fighting the drone street fight the longest and they
have a tremendous capability to bring there and a lot
of insight to share. Well, here's the thing, drone on
drone warfare looks really fast.

Speaker 3 (13:37):
On the frontline.

Speaker 5 (13:38):
You have like Ukraine, you sell this in Ukraine, You're
seeing it here where in Ukraine, they would develop a
drone that could hit Russian targets. The Russians would adjust
their electromagnetic warfare tactics, they would develop a new drone
that can take down that drone. The Ukrainians would then
go back and within a week basically redesign the thing
it took us ten years to make the F thirty five.
They are like actually inventing in the mud, you know,
with three D printers aided by artificial intelligence, and you
see new drones come out of that like almost every
other week. So on the front line, when you're looking
at it, it looks like innovation is happening incredibly fast,
and it is, but the lines have stayed the same.
So when you decrease the advantage of the larger incumbent,
when you equalize it, which is what information technology is
now doing in the physical.

Speaker 3 (14:28):
Space with these drones, what you get.

Speaker 5 (14:31):
Is actually longer and more static conflicts. But when you
look at it through the narrow lens of any tactical achievement,
or through social media or or any like headline, you
see things moving fast, but you don't see large changes.
And this is the thing that I think is to
take away from this, we have to figure out a
new means to have real declarative advantage, because there's no
conflict that's simply going to be one on the basis
of the advantage that existed at decade ago.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
Awesome, Well we're gonna have to look at their Patrick.
I really appreciate senior defense editor for Defense One. Thank
you so much for all the great coverage you're doing.
And you'll have to come back on soon. Thank you.