She’s at present taking a break earlier than leaping into her (nonetheless unannounced) subsequent act. “It’s been refreshing,” she says—however disconnecting isn’t straightforward. She continues to watch protection developments carefully and expresses concern over potential setbacks: “New administrations have new priorities, and that’s utterly anticipated, however I do fear about simply stalling out on progress that we have constructed over quite a few administrations.”
Over the previous three many years, Hicks has watched the Pentagon rework—politically, strategically, and technologically. She entered authorities within the Nineteen Nineties on the tail finish of the Chilly Struggle, when optimism and a perception in international cooperation nonetheless dominated US international coverage. However that optimism dimmed. After 9/11, the main focus shifted to counterterrorism and nonstate actors. Then got here Russia’s resurgence and China’s rising assertiveness. Hicks took two earlier breaks from authorities work—the primary to finish a PhD at MIT and the second to hitch the suppose tank Middle for Strategic and Worldwide Research (CSIS), the place she centered on protection technique. “By the point I returned in 2021,” she says, “there was one actor—the PRC (Folks’s Republic of China)—that had the potential and the need to actually contest the worldwide system because it’s arrange.”
On this dialog with MIT Expertise Overview, Hicks displays on how the Pentagon is adapting—or failing to adapt—to a brand new period of geopolitical competitors. She discusses China’s technological rise, the way forward for AI in warfare, and her signature initiative, Replicator, a Pentagon initiative to quickly discipline hundreds of low-cost autonomous techniques reminiscent of drones.
You’ve described China as a “gifted quick follower.” Do you continue to consider that, particularly given latest developments in AI and different applied sciences?
Sure, I do. China is the most important pacing problem we face, which implies it units the tempo for many functionality areas for what we want to have the ability to defeat to discourage them. For instance, floor maritime functionality, missile functionality, stealth fighter functionality. They set their minds to attaining a sure functionality, they have a tendency to get there, they usually are likely to get there even quicker.
That mentioned, they’ve a considerable quantity of corruption, they usually haven’t been engaged in an actual battle or fight operation in the best way that Western militaries have educated for or been concerned in, and that may be a large X consider how efficient they might be.
China has made main technological strides, and the outdated narrative of its being a follower is breaking down—not simply in business tech, however extra broadly. Do you suppose the US nonetheless holds a strategic benefit?
I might by no means need to underestimate their capability—or any nation’s capability—to innovate organically after they put their minds to it. However I nonetheless suppose it’s a useful comparability to take a look at the US mannequin. As a result of we’re a system of free minds, free folks, and free markets, we’ve the potential to generate rather more innovation culturally and organically than a statist mannequin does. That’s our benefit—if we will understand it.
