Hopes for peace in Afghanistan continue to get delayed, but with a deal
seemly always just on the horizon, the Pentagon is finding new things to
do in Afghanistan. Not trying to win the war, because that ship sailed
long ago.
But 18 years into the war, the Pentagon has found Afghanistan as a nice
proving ground for a lot of different new military technology, hoping to
show that new artificial intelligence efforts and cloud computing can make information-sharing in an occupation more efficient.
The Afghan War has gone really badly, of course, and better than what
they had isn’t a tall order. In addition to the computer upgrades
they’re getting, US Army forces are also being given pocket-sized drones to deploy for the first time.
The drones, like the AI, aren’t meant as a serious bid to turn around
the long lost and almost-over war. Rather, they’re to allow the Pentagon
to say these things have been tested in war conditions, for their
funding going forward and use in America’s presumptive future wars.
Pentagon Looks to Use Afghanistan as Proving Ground for New Tech
Officials hype use of new AI systems, cloud computing
Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.
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