She’s presently 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 observe protection developments carefully and expresses concern over potential setbacks: “New administrations have new priorities, and that’s fully anticipated, however I do fear about simply stalling out on progress that we have constructed over quite a lot of administrations.”
Over the previous three many years, Hicks has watched the Pentagon rework—politically, strategically, and technologically. She entered authorities within the Nineties on the tail finish of the Chilly Struggle, when optimism and a perception in world 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 affix the suppose tank Heart 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 Evaluate, 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 1000’s of low-cost autonomous methods reminiscent of drones.
You’ve described China as a “proficient quick follower.” Do you continue to consider that, particularly given current developments in AI and different applied sciences?
Sure, I do. China is the largest pacing problem we face, which suggests 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 reaching a sure functionality, they have an inclination to get there, they usually are inclined to get there even quicker.
That stated, they’ve a considerable quantity of corruption, they usually haven’t been engaged in an actual battle or fight operation in the way in which that Western militaries have skilled for or been concerned in, and that could be a big X think about how efficient they’d 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’d by no means need to underestimate their skill—or any nation’s skill—to innovate organically once they put their minds to it. However I nonetheless suppose it’s a useful comparability to have a look at the US mannequin. As a result of we’re a system of free minds, free folks, and free markets, we have now the potential to generate way more innovation culturally and organically than a statist mannequin does. That’s our benefit—if we will understand it.