Autonomous Warfare Has Arrived African Lion 2026 Exclusive With Gen Anderson And Lt Gasparri

TITLE: Autonomous Warfare Has Arrived | African Lion 2026 Exclusive with Gen. Anderson & Lt. Gasparri CHANNEL: VICE News DATE: 2026-05-28 ---TRANSCRIPT--- What are the biggest challenges facing the US and or military in general in Africa today?

From Africa, the biggest threat that we have right now is the terrorist threat. US and Nigerian forces [music] carried out an operation late last night killing a top ISIS leader. [music] Some of the weapons that we saw today, autonomous cars with the machine guns on top, the only cultural touchstone the majority of people have with this of robot warriors Is the Terminator. Absolutely. The fallacy is [music] that you can stop the world, figure out the way ahead, and then restart the technology because our adversaries [music] aren’t waiting. This is something as a society we need to be working through and [music] helping make these decisions. We’re here in Tan Tan, Morocco, in Camp America. So, as the assaults are coming in, now we have Apaches, M1 Abrams, motorized vehicles coming in. The Air Force had just come in with B-52s, fifth generation fighters. We have drones. We’re going to lighten up the hill over there. I think the interesting thing that I’m thinking about this is this is the first time that AI has been running everything. It’s just happening in real time like it’s in everything. Two years ago that would have been unthinkable and now AI is doing everything [music] including running our wars. Today, you’ll be watching the third of three vignettes for the CTAP app command field exercise. You’ll see the implementation of robotic forces to include two autonomous ground vehicles, one of which is weaponized with a CROWS weapon system. Warfare has changed. Drones, asymmetric warfare, AI, technology, Ukraine, Iran. Actually, we saw some of this stuff today with a young kid who’s actually part of a team that’s doing this stuff on their own. We’re going to go talk to him now and we’re going to see what is the future of asymmetric warfare. Bingo. Hi there. How are you? I’m good. How are you? Pleasure to meet you. How are you? This is some of the team. Would you like to have a seat in our [clears throat] humble abode? The right here? You can just sit on the battery. Yeah. It may explode. It may explode. So. You ready? I’m ready. West Point graduate. Yes. Bright future ahead of you. Potentially. Uh what’s your degree in? Nuclear engineering. There you go. Smart kid. What is it about you that you enjoy porta-potties so much? [laughter] Why would you do this? I I Oh my god. Sure. I I look, I got a flesh-eating stomach parasite in Afghanistan and I still wouldn’t go to that porta-potty. [laughter] Anyway, all right, here we go. We got speed. Boom. Today I saw you and we have you on camera, so you can’t shun us describing what we saw. I think you were probably the only guy who got what was going on. I’m going to be honest. Cuz you were looking over here and everybody else was looking over here. I don’t know if you got that. You were sort of coordinating the attack. What I like about you, I’m going to start from the beginning. We have so Vice was a big news thing. We were sort of native. We came up with all these ways of doing stuff. Already over. All the platforms are different. All the kids who are now native to the technology, AI for example. Right. Right. So, they’re coming up with this stuff. You, correct me if I’m wrong, are young guy on phone televe, we call them. You’re native to the technology and you’re saying, “You know what? I think we should do this. I think we should run with this. We’ve just had maybe the biggest Trojan horse since the Trojan horse with Ukrainian drones being shipped over Russia and then getting the $110 million bombers with $5 million drones. Asymmetrical warfare. Around ta-da. Go. I think the Russo-Ukrainian conflict has provided interesting insight into how the spectrum of the battlefield has changed. Mhm. I think resources and material resources specifically used to be generally correlative to impact on the battlefield. And as a result, we would concentrate a good amount of those resources in the rear of a battlefield. Put them where they could be protected. They were expensive, exquisite systems. And now there’s been quite a paradigm shift as you’ve mentioned. We now have very low-cost solutions that are both precise and effective. Drones. Drones. But Robots. Robots, communications equipment. AI. AI, exactly. And it’s fundamentally changed the way we perceive material concentration across the battlefield and where we should and can now influence the enemy in disproportionately effective ways. A small drone can cause a national or strategic impact and that is a paradigm shift. I feel like we’re kind of in the Mash 4077, but instead of medical unit, it’s technology. Nice. And you have all this stuff in here. You have you’re the young guys, you got all this stuff. Maybe tell me what are the top 10 things you have here and maybe show me some of the stuff that you’re excited in that you’re working on. In the vein of one-way attack this is a Nocturnal Nightmare FPV. Nightmare? Nightmare. Okay. With a Kraken Kinetics e-sad. This is a very interesting problem. Um, the question of how do you safely and and um, kind of reliably arm a system. Right. When there was necessity on the Ukrainian battlefield, I mean, their their solutions were uh, pretty archaic. like dropping grenades and Right. Reasonably archaic, you know, finding solutions quickly. We, like I said, you know, safety is like um, a priority for us. Mhm. So, this is a commercial solution to arm FPV drones with uh, army supplied energetics. This is the What’s an energetic? Like uh, C4 explosives. Um, this is exciting because um, this is our first time to touch and use this e-sad. Uh, again, commercial solution. And it has worked fantastically. So, you’ve tested it here? Tested it here. We we blew up a 11 today with this uh, this arming device. And it was safe, reliable, and the operators are really enjoying using it. This is kind of funny. This is our uh, this is what we call the SkyRider, not to be confused with a commercial product the SkyRider. An accidental overlapping in naming. So, this is our FPV that we build back in Vicenza, Italy. This is kind of exciting because we brought these as targets for counter UAS. It’s This is I don’t want to say the first time, but one of the first times that we’ve been able to fly real targets against real counter UAS systems and see if they’re worth their salt. So, explain that. You send that up and have other drones attack or like what do you do? So, there’s a bunch of ways to to detect and defeat uh, UAS. One of the ones that we’ve been training a lot is like augmenting direct fire weapon systems. So, uh, we have a sight that’s called the smart shooter that we put on an M4 and it automatically tracks and shoots a UAS out of the sky. It It’s exciting to be like, “Okay, look, we’re going to fly this at you, just like an enemy would. You have to mitigate the threat, otherwise it’s going to it’s going to reach your formation.” I think it’s making it tangible for soldiers and leaders that this is what’s coming at you is like an exciting thing to be able to do here. We 3D print mostly mounts, um you know, hooks, and things that we need to like arm the system or use it for various purposes. We have a factory set up where we assemble them. They’re mostly commercial products that we add a add a couple things to, um but we yeah, we build these ourselves and train with them. Which has got to be new. You’re doing something in Vicenza, which is an Italian base for the American military. Right. And you’re building counter and and and attack drones. Not necessarily in California or in, you know, Wyoming or whatever you’re doing in in in Italy. Right. Took us a long time to get to the place where we could both purchase and then assemble those and then train people on that system. But we’ve been doing that now for like a year and a half. Um and it’s it’s been a really successful program, and now that we have the ability to arm it and take a system like this out here, we have operators who are ready to fly these things into targets like you saw. That’s great. Um in the vein of communications and uh the difficulty with networking systems, I really like this. This is a an MPU 5 radio. It’s a mobile ad hoc network radio. So, it does self-healing mesh transport of data. So, if I had three of these, I wanted to send a message from me to the third radio, but I couldn’t see him. If I can see the radio in between, the data will get there. You can scale that to hundreds of radios and get data wherever you want. In the resolution vein, if you have these at every sensor and every shooter and every leader, it gives you the ability to actively prior- or actively optimize and resource different problems. So, if I wanted really good comms in an area where there is mountains all around, I can tell robots to move another one of these up to a peak so I can provide the area on the other side good communications. It’s a really robust system and this is what we use to network sensors. And who came up with this one? This is a commercial solution from a company called Persistent Systems. Uh it was originally developed alongside uh United States Army uh forces. Um but since then it’s it’s changed a lot and become what it is today. Uh this is the MP100 5 and uh really like a key unlock for us on this is that it if you network a satellite terminal onto this network, then anyone in the network can access the internet. Um and being able to provide internet uh to even a leader who’s you know, at the platoon level all the way down and is like really powerful. Huge. You see an open area. Yeah. So, you don’t have to carry like heavy or um high power consumption stuff. This uses a normal radio battery and I can get you the information that you need. Now, to be clear, this is a nighttime device that you’re excited about because it can transport uh munitions safely. That one the other one was the target that we can figure we can we can test and train attack drones or anything else to shoot down drones that are coming at us. Yep. Which is now become a huge thing. Right. Okay. Now, tell me a little bit about So, we have a lot of drones coming out of Iran. But Patriot missiles or whatever, they’re too sophisticated and so that they sort of can can slowly and find them. So, you kind of need a specific counter drone attack system. Right. Yeah, you absolutely do. Um and not only do you need a specific type of equipment, you need layered and redundant types of detects and defeats. So, you’ve seen like you mentioned there are fiber optic systems. Uh you can fly this fiber optic Um makes it hard to detect cuz it’s not emitting any RF signature. So, you not only need like detection and defeat, you need like layered and varied detection and defeat. If I were to make that a fiber optic drone, I would need something like an acoustic sensor or a radar sensor to pick up the signature. And most radar sensors and acoustic sensors were built for like you said much larger platforms. So, we’re having to adjust how we detect and defeat uh air threats. And now it’s like you said, you know, you have people essentially managing airspace and mitigating threats all the way at the company or team level. Right. Which was never a part of the equation for a tactical formation. What else you got? What’s this thing here? Uh these are just FPV goggles. So, how you see the video off of uh SkyRider. I don’t have it here because it’s very large, but an exciting thing we’re using kind of uh at this exercise and in general cuz it’s a cool good news story, I think for us, is uh something called the Flying Basket

3. It’s a heavy lift drone system to deliver mail to the Alps. And uh team made of ours saw like, “Hey, that’s that’s pretty good. Like we think there’s military applications.” And we’ve worked alongside that small Italian company in Bolzano to develop a heavy lift system that’s capable of resupplying the formation or um dropping munitions and it can carry up to 200 lb. And that’s pretty significant for a for a quadcopter or I guess an octocopter in the case of the Flying Basket.

Right. We were the first people to ever film a Shahed drone. Did you know that? No. In Israel, they attacked Israel and with drones and the Israeli Defense Force shot them down and Bibi Netanyahu showed them to us. And it was the first time they’d been seen on camera. Wow. Now they become front page news because they just keep making more and sending more. To me the two big ones that where drones have been sort of exemplified, we got Ukraine and we got Iran. Pre-Iran, I think we have one paradigm. And then post-Iran, it’s like, okay, we have to come up with drones to fight the drones. Right. I think for us, our kind of limited foxhole, the true stimulus was Ukraine. Mhm. And we were aware of working on and interested in those problems kind of as a result of being so close. We’re based out of Italy. Mhm. Um and our participation in an advisory efforts for that conflict. So, we were aware. We’re very well aware. And and our efforts on this team began more than 2 years ago now. Mhm. So, the Iranian conflict has not really changed our efforts. If anything, it’s kind of intensified our understanding of how it would impact American resources and American assets and interests. But I wouldn’t say that there’s that’s a line in the sand for us. I think those problems and kind of those changes we had previously observed and know that the work we’re doing is important. And if anything, it’s kind of just catalyzed sort of like uh the frozen middle, if if you would, to understand them as well. It seems to me, and this is rudimentary, but I’m going to say it anyway. But Ukraine is like World War I. Why? Trench warfare, static. Right. And you have if you go down the roads, for example, you have, you know, all of the just so that they can’t come on the road. You have all the fields which are are fiber optics because of the jamming. Crazy. So, we’re not moving and we have these entrenched tech, right? Whereas Iran is just waves upon waves, wide open spaces, everybody shooting at everywhere, trying to get other countries involved, right? We’re like a World War scenario. So, when we look at drones, we’re also seeing now not just the ones everyone’s familiar with, the ones that like for example that can stay underwater and be activated. What do we call those? Amphibious. There you go. Sure. And then we also now are marrying that with AI. Right. How big is AI going to be going forward? I think that where AI is is most effective and really kind of like um important in the military context requires that there’s pre-existing architecture to apply it. Mhm. I think the two big ones I’d bring up are just like robotic usage and um data analysis broadly. Those two things require that we have architecture to connect all the things producing data Mhm. and have robots to use. It It is fundamentally important. It can kind of make us more efficient, help us be deeper thinkers about the problems that we face. But in the military, there’s no hiding from your hands-on equipment. Mhm. In the desert using things in an austere environments and in difficult conditions. The technology change for enterprises as an example, right? Like name a business. Um it can be much more rapidly adapted. We have to like really change what we’re holding and using and flying to catch up to how AI can be powerful on the battlefield. So certainly will fundamentally enhance our ability to operate. But I think the work in front of us right now and kind of the work I think most people may not know about is the tangible resource-intensive, training-intensive application of robotics and new communications. Which which which you saw some of today. Yes. What were some of the vehicles you showcased today? So we had two um autonomous ground vehicles based off essentially a Polaris um RZR platform. They’re completely autonomous, [music] which is unique and kind of I think kind of lost on this in this big like vernacular mess that is the current state of technology. So, those two vehicles can pilot themselves without any connection to GPS or any receipt [music] of GPS transmissions um and without any commands from an operator. So, you give it a place to go and it’ll find a way to get there. And on one we had engineer assets to conduct a breach explosives. And on the other uh we had a CROWS system, [music] which is essentially a turret that you can control. So, we can reduce the cognitive load of getting an asset from one place to another by saying, “Hey, go here.” Don’t have to think about it after that. Doesn’t need GPS. Does it all on its own. And then use that in either dangerous situations where you want to get soldiers away from it um or in more tactically advantageous situations where you want to get something closer. Mhm. And we did kind of both those things uh while also integrating like one-way attack or suicide suicide drones, as the case may be. But, [clears throat] the most thing that people are aware of suicide drones, armed vehicles, AI Terminator. Right. So, that’s what’s coming around now is everyone’s going, “Hold on, where are we going?” And it doesn’t even have to be the military. It can be just AI. AI in general. And and Elon used to be anti because he’s like, “Look, if you have AI, the synthesis of AI is going to be well we’re taking up too much energy. [laughter] We’re we’re the cancer of the earth. We’re the bad ones.” But, what do you say to that? I mean, that must be because you’re at the point the end of the spear, the tip of the iceberg, whatever you want to call it, of all of this stuff that’s actually happening in real time. I think um there’s like I I I maybe a misunderstanding or like an a knowledge gap when people bring up maybe the apocalyptic view of AI in the military or like putting autonomy in weapons. Which is that fortunately the United States military is a culturally and structurally principled in some ways slow moving and I don’t mean that in a negative context like principled and deliberate organization. Um I think if we wanted to introduce killer robots to the battlefield, uh we could not do it any other way other than extremely deliberate and and safe. We’re talking about bullets flying, you know, bullets coming out of that robotic CROWS system and every step of the way leading up to that there’s a huge amount of concern about are we putting people at risk? Are we um doing something that could potentially cascade into an uh unforeseen outcome? I don’t have the same concerns being on the proverbial cutting edge, I guess, uh as maybe an out outsider looking in because A, those resource gaps that I talked about, we’re not even close to implementing them at a wide scale. Um And and two, because we are extremely deliberate. The interesting thing about you is native young people are sort of figuring out new ways to use technology, figuring out new ways to sort of adapt technology, existing technology to the battlefield or whatever you’re you know, you’re interested in. Are you allowed to do that in the army today? Like do they let you run with technology? Do they come you come up with ideas and say, “Hey, I think this would be a great thing to do.” and and and you can test things and do things and you know, stuff like that? It is definitely a new thing. I don’t think that that would have happened maybe 5 10 years ago. But it’s it’s also kind of the foundation of us being able to do that were a couple of current and previous prior leaders um looking at the current situation of technology or the current capabilities that exist and saying like we need to do something ourselves. Um no one’s coming to do it for us. And we’ve kind of taken that that risk acceptance that leaders are still providing us and and we’ve been able to run. Now, at the time, I guess, and really where the change comes from, at the time when we started, something may have taken us 10 steps based on policy and administration to purchase a drone, arm it, and fly it into a target. Mhm. I think we mapped it out once, something like 15 different approvals and 15 different systems. Right. And now that’s been cut down dramatically by policy changes. And it’s it’s very unique to be in a position, especially at a tactical brigade, where federal policy is directly impacting the way that I can do things. There’s been a change in in policy, concretely, that’s allowed us to like you said, run. And that’s what we need to do, and that’s what we try and do. I say try because, you know, there’s blockers everywhere, but try and run. Um cuz no no one’s coming to do it for us. We we own our war-fighting tasks, and we own the protection of this brigade. I I own it just as much as everyone walking around the camp. Um it’s it’s on us to figure out what we need and to make it happen. Fortunately, some changes in federal policy have enabled us to do it. You recently took a plane from California to uh Utah, which was the first C-17 or or ever any plane. Was it a C-17 that took a atomic reactor, correct? yeah, they were atomic. I was on that. No way. Yeah. Cool. Um I want to talk to you about the future of energy. How important do you think energy is going forward? And then the sort of portability of atomic energy? Yeah, it’s it’s really interesting cuz like I bring up those material constraints. When you look at uh large-scale combat operation battlefield, there’s a decline as you go toward the flat or the forward line of troops in accessibility of energy, the space that you have available, and like the weight you can carry. So, that’s always the spectrum against which we’re optimizing. If you go closer to the battlefield, in a soldier’s hand, they’re sitting there. They got to carry it, power it, and use it. Mhm. So, power, accessibility of computation resources, server stacks, etc. Um and like how much you can carry is a constantly constrained variable for us. Different from like a tech company that could like easily adapt a bunch of AI into their systems and processes. That’s always our constraints. So, power in- incredibly important and and a it’s a limited resource on the battlefield. Moving it around is still very difficult. I mean, you’re sitting on a giant battery that we put in the back of Humvees to power computers. It’s probably giving me cancer, right? Yeah, probably. Yeah, probably. Um so, that’s always our constraints. There’s things that we’ve done to try and like solve those gaps. Um but it’s something we’re always fighting. Right now, we move energy in the form of usually liquid Mhm. um to the battlefield. Also a really hard thing to move. Mhm. Resource intensive, uh large, heavy, etc. The unique thing about nuclear energy, and I think, you know, in my time studying nuclear nuclear engineering, there’s always been a really um kind of neat application to to the military context. Um is that it can solve a lot of that, right? And the question of you know, where it’s best suited or or how we would use it, I think it’s almost not an obvious one, but like our Atomic says noted, like we need to get this into a military context and show its show its value. Um I think the the one thing that I found interesting when I was studying it and kind of seeing those reports, is that once again, the military environment can serve as a test bed and proof of concept for the small modular reactor form factor, Mhm. because we have the need. I’m excited by that paving the way for small modular reactors and really just reactors in general to become a part of the American psyche and American energy production. Uh continuum like once again. So you see them coming back A and coming back as sort of modular or mobile etc. Right. I think um modularity is is helpful for the military and I I see that being a part of kind of our our trajectory. The modularity is also helpful for like grid resilience for the United States uh you know in the homeland. Um but even just paving the way from a regulatory perspective to allow for like more efficient and larger reactors to to um come online as well. Quantum computing has proven that quantum physics is correct, right? So all this dark matter, dark energy. Basically uh we’re redoing math as we go. We’re redoing physics as we go. How big is quantum going to be in tomorrow’s military? I I I think I think the best answer that I can give is is is huge. I mean so much of what we do is built on some amount of network resilience and security. It’s becoming even more fundamental to the way we operate. And non-quantum resilient computing uh or encryption is certainly vulnerable. Yeah, there’ll be no more encryption. Right. So I I think really like the easiest answer is is huge, but I I think that would extend beyond just the military context and to many other places. Close your eyes and I want you to give me uh your utopia. What do you think the best and most exciting things you’re working on now and what are the things that scare you the most? Um I I think the the most exciting thing that we’re working on right now, I’m going to open my eyes. [laughter] Um I think I think the most exciting thing we’re we’re working on right now is really like our one-way attack capability. I’m really proud of how far we’ve come and kind of how far we were ahead of uh some other conventional units. We’re all doing awesome stuff. Um where I see us going and kind of hopefully hopefully leading the way for the army is by reducing the cognitive load and equipment load on those soldiers who are operating them. I think we’ve learned a lot. Also saving lives, no? Saving lives, yeah. Yeah, the drones then people don’t have to do it. Of course. So you kind of brought up an interesting thing like where maybe the Russo-Ukrainian conflict similar to World War I or trench warfare. I think that’s a pretty analysis and a lot of people not naysayers per se, but like maybe negative versayers in the army would say like, “Oh, you can’t take too many lessons from that. That’s like not the way we fight.” I agree with that. The United States Army and joint force does not fight like the Ukrainian ground forces. However, there’s a lot to learn from there. What we’re learning and like actively on the cusp of is how do you use one-way attack or robotics to shape and support maneuver warfare, which is what the United States is uh trains and and does. We saw today 11 FPV strikes hitting a target at a company commander’s disposal. It’s like precision fires at a level we’ve never seen before and it’s supporting maneuver. So, if I can reduce the cognitive load on the operator, make it easier for him to pull out a tablet, tap a target, and fly it straight into it, um that is a really exciting space to be working in. And and you know, if further extending that like getting to a place where the where drones one way attacking robots are working together to actively optimize problems is is really exciting. I was very impressed. So, why we’re sitting down with you. Very impressed with the presentation today. It was great to see you up there. It’s great also talking to you and hearing that you’re very thoughtful about these things and that there’s a lot of, you know, uh uh in my ontological thought that goes into sort of uh you know, what you guys are doing and it’s great to see, you know, the the younger uh members coming out of school and saying, “Hey, this is what we’re going to do with tomorrow’s military.” We’re doing our best. There you go. All right. Thank you, buddy. Thank you for your service. you. [music] VICE News uses PDF spaces from Acrobat to research and plan our reporting, including from here on the ground in North Africa. We’re deep in the desert of Southern Morocco for African Lion [music] 26. It’s a multi-country joint military exercise and there’s been a different focus each year. This year, it’s really heavily on AI and tech. Today, we met some guys from a company called Overland AI. They have an autonomous off-road vehicle that has [music] multiple mounting points that the military can use for any sort of situation that they want. Tomorrow, we’re going back north to Agadir and I just want to check my PDF space here for all these documents we have about African Lion. Before coming, we got multiple documents, maybe 20-some-odd PDFs that are all multi-page documents [music] and they have all kinds of information about who’s here and the schedule and what’s going on. So, I can do some additional research and plan logistics for the rest of the shoot. I can just sort of ask the questions I want and get them [music] in real time without having to dig through all of this paperwork. And our audience can dig in, too. With PDF spaces, they can read our sources, check the facts for themselves, and use [music] AI assistant to chat with the documents behind our work. You ready? We got speed? All right, here we go. General Anderson, thank you for taking the time. I know you’re busy. You’re the commander of AFRICOM, the African Command. Is that correct? Correct. US AFRICOM. US AFRICOM. Okay. What are the biggest challenges facing the US and/or military in general in Africa today? As with every combat command our military, we are charged with protecting the homeland first and foremost, defending the US, our people, our interests. From Africa, the biggest threat that we have right now is the terrorist threat. This is the new face of Al-Qaeda, and its fighters are now on the doorstep of this capital. The terrorist threat has migrated from the Middle East into Africa, so Africa’s become the epicenter of global terrorism. ISIS leadership is African. US and Nigerian forces carried out an operation late last night killing [music] a top ISIS leader. Al-Qaeda’s economic engine is in Africa. So, these combined to make Africa of great interest to us. While maybe not a direct threat emanating from all of these locations across Africa, [music] they’re either supporting or funding those who want to do harm to the United States still. Al-Qaeda and ISIS are both present and both active, and I [music] both still have the will and intent to attack America. So, the finances are coming from Africa for Al-Qaeda. Where where are they coming from? So, they’ve got several franchises, but the [music] two that come to mind is in the Sahel, AQIM’s associated with JNIM, another terrorist threat. They generate a fair amount through illicit activities, whether that’s kidnap for ransom or smuggling. [music] And then Al-Shabaab is also affiliated with Al-Qaeda in Somalia, and they are by far the most lucrative terrorist franchise in the world, generating well over a hundred million dollars a year in various types of illicit activity, but also through taxation in the territories that they hold. So, they generate a fair amount of revenue as well. We don’t know how much exactly, but we do know some of that money then goes back to the al-Qaeda enterprise. So, it’s interesting you say terrorism. When we were here four years ago, it seemed to me more like the great game. It was nation-states, let’s say Russia, you know, America, maybe China, bigger, let’s say, confrontations. Now, it’s moved to more asymmetrical drones, counter-drones, um robots, robotics, AI, things that didn’t weren’t even on the the sort of horizon four years ago. A, how did we get here? And B, what do you see happening at African Lion next year? Well, I think how we got here is just watch seeing how technology’s evolved. Mhm. It’s just it’s been But, the what’s I think what’s caught people by surprise is this technology’s been moving this way for quite a while. It’s the exponential growth we’ve seen in the last few years. That has just literally been a knee in the curve that has become very close, seems like vertical at least. And so, it’s not so much as the technology surprising, it’s the speed at which it’s evolving. And that’s become more evident, I think it became more evident after Ukraine when we saw how that technology rapidly changed warfare. That a large conventional army was not necessarily all you needed when you faced a very combined, a concerted, asymmetric threat. And so, the combination of drones, of artificial intelligence, of processing, and of electronic warfare has come together to change the battle space in a way that I’m not sure everybody fully understood, right? And so, this is a I guess if you would indulge me for a second here with a little bit of uh history here. We’re at the maturation of the digital age. It’s changing everything. It’s changing our finances, it’s changing our society, it’s changing information, which means it’s changing warfare. The last time we saw something similar to this was the maturation of the industrial age in the early 20th century where mechanization and industrialization changed everything to include warfare. Look at what happened in the first outbreak in World War I. Everybody knew what airplanes were and submarines, radio, machine guns, but nobody understood how to put them together. That slowly evolved in the interwar period. Not everyone got it right, but pieces of it were put together and the Wehrmacht figured out how to maneuver and how to move at speed. And so, despite the Maginot Line being a technological marvel of its time, and never being taken, the Germans understood a different type of warfare, one around it, and that maneuver warfare allowed them to move at a speed that the French just couldn’t comprehend and adjust to where they we call it Blitzkrieg in hindsight. But, that was a different type of warfare. And so, this is what I think we’re seeing right now is these elements are coming together into a different type of warfare. We don’t know quite how they’re going to fit. We don’t know quite what it’s going to be. But, we do know if we just try to apply them to the old way of doing business, of strong point defense and building a Maginot Line to hold the border, it’s probably not going to be sufficient. So, how do we start combining these technologies in new and novel ways? And what does that mean for the future of war? And we don’t know yet. We’re in the we’re finding out as we see conflicts erupt around the world or how we see what happens in Ukraine or Iran or other places. So, we take that information as part of the joint force, we ingest that. We’re a learning organization. And then we use places like African Lion to test some of those capabilities, not all of them. Sure. But, what are those ones that apply to Africa? Were the ones that apply to our partners? And how do we bring it out here and how do we innovate with that? How do assess that? And look at how does that apply to our war fighting? And maybe we start looking at fighting a different way. One of the biggest takeaways for me from African Lion today was actually getting to talk to some of the young soldiers out there. 18, 19, 20-year-old kids on their first assignment, some on their first operational deployment. And they’re out there telling me about how they’re using this semi-autonomous capability and they’re going out there and I was like, “How long did it take you to learn to use that?” Well, to learn the actual devices is He’s one guy said, “Well, 5 10 minutes for this one.” Others were like, “Well, it took me a little while to master. It took me about 2 days.” Yeah. So, it’s not the technology that’s complex here. It’s how you combine it. But, what was really interesting to me was when one of the young men said, “Oh, sir, don’t mind all the duct tape on this uh device. We’re just trying different configurations to see what can get through the concertina wire easier. And so, we’re just modifying it as we go and each time we try something differently.” I was like, “That’s exactly what I want you to do.” Yeah. Because that is exactly how we’re going to learn and how we’re going to evolve. So, being able to learn from this next generation who understands technology differently than I do. I understand how the technology works. Mhm. But, I didn’t grow up with it like this and I don’t necessarily see how it can be applied to someone who it’s in their native. Native, yeah. And so, this is where I think we’re at. We’re at this inflection point. And how is this How is this capability going to evolve? And we need to make sure we are evolving with it. And that’s why exercise like African Lion and being able to innovate with some of this capability here in an operational environment is so critical because this is our future uh defense and our future security. We can’t afford to be behind. We uh we met some of those uh kids, a young soldier named uh Lieutenant Gaspari, and he uh was with his uh buddies in the in the tent. And they were literally doing what you’re saying. They were making drones and fixing drones and whatever. And and in the middle of a tent that you know you you you think that Here’s the other powerful thing is that we brought folks from industry here. And the the reason that is so powerful is that these young kids look at it go hey this didn’t work or I need it to do this. And they’ve got the engineers from the manufacturer right here and they’re actually making modifications in stride. So there were capabilities that were improved during the exercise based on that close interaction between the user and the engineer. A lesson from Ukraine is they’re embedding those in their operational units engineers in those units. So that’s another key element of why these exercises so important and how we have to think about doing them differently. Yeah, so if you go back to the World War I and World War II analogy it seems like Ukraine is a World War I and that it’s a stalemate and they’re sort of sending things back and forth it’s sort of trench warfare but with you know, fiber optic cables instead. And then in Iran we’ve already adapted to World War II where they’re sending out drones after drones after drones waves into different countries. You mentioned something very interesting industrialization and how huge of an upheaval that was and maybe you know a lot of people are saying that this technological revolution is going to be even larger of an upheaval. I have two points on that. One is that the uptake of uh AI for example with no cultural lag is remarkable. It’s just we went from zero to like everyone’s is doing from writing letters to you know making movies to you know personal assistant to everything and now in in in our warfare. Um do you think that this if we look back and you know let’s say in 10 20 years we’re writing the history of the age that this is day one of the sort of you know AI, robotics, drones, autonomous warfare. Is this the day one? Is this the dawn of it? I would say we’re shortly after dawn. I think it’s already dawned. Right. And so if you were actually to peel that back we’d probably go back a few years and if in hindsight I’d say we were already seeing that daybreak. Uh so now how much daylight are we going to burn figuring it out? Mhm. So, how much time do you spend thinking about this? Like, for example, what we saw today and over the past week of, you know, the use of AI, the use of robotics, the use of drones. Um how fast is that going to go forward and how, you know, is is this the future of warfare? Absolutely. It’s the future of our society. Like you just said, the uptake of AI has been so ubiquitous and so natural. Of course, this is going to be part of our future war fighting. And so, I think what we need to be more cognizant of is how is that going to change and how is that going to be different? And again, it goes back to how do these elements come together to create something new? That’s what is yet to emerge and that’s what we need to be watching for. Whether or not these technologies are going to be there, absolutely they’re going to be there. Are we going to be able to actually adapt to them? Well, there’s my next question. Is, you know, we are running sort of headlong into this technological revolution. Of course, we’re going to adapt these technologies. The only cultural touchstone the majority of people have with this of robot warriors is the Terminator. In the 21st century, a weapon will be invented like no other. This weapon will be powerful, versatile, and indestructible. You know, it’s a culture it’s part of the cultural fabric. Absolutely. And you’ve got AI and you’ve got some of the weapons that we saw today of of uh you know, autonomous cars with the machine guns on top. How do we not go How do we go for a more utopian future rather than a dystopian future? Sort of Star Trek versus Star Wars, if you will. Uh so, yes, some of those weapons are quite quite frightening and they seem like they should be still yet in a science fiction movie. Uh but here they are. And so, to your point, I don’t think either of those extremes is neither utopian nor dystopian. Right. They’re somewhere in between and that’s for us to decide right now. And this is something as a society we need to be working through and helping make these decisions. The The fallacy is that you can stop the world, figure out the way ahead, and then restart the technology because our adversaries aren’t waiting. And we can’t afford it. It’s a moral imperative for us to make sure our young men and young women are sons and daughters have the weapons they need to be successful in warfare. That we have the tools we need to protect our nation, our way of life. And so, that’s an equal moral imperative to how do we employ these and how are they used? And so, I think this is what we need to do right now and is think through how do we employ these. And again, this is where exercises like African Lion are so important because it allows us to start employing them and start thinking through those ethical concerns. It also allows us to bring multiple nations together. We’re 40 nations from all over the world, from as far away as Japan and Brazil, European, African nations to get their perspectives. How do they see this? How do they view it? Have they even started thinking about this? And then start at least bringing in those different views so that we have an understanding of how is this going to start affecting future warfare. But we have to start thinking about that now as a society. And it’s not just the military. This is across our entire society. Which leads me to a lot of questions, but first maybe a technical question. Um when you deal with this a lot of these moral imperatives, when you talk to the your guys, the American military, uh there’s a there’s a human sort of on the loop or in the loop or you know, maybe you could discuss the terminology. Yeah. What it means. And then I’ll get to the second part of my question, but I I think in the simplest form, human in the loop means you take information, doesn’t matter where it comes from, machine, human, every but it requires a human to make a decision before action. A human on the loop means there’s a human monitoring the parameters, but much of that data gathering to execution with the effector, that’s all automated in that you don’t need a human to actually push a button and make it go, but you’ve got a human managing the constraints and the parameters to keep them where you want them. So, I think that’s how I would look at the two differences. We’re not looking at a human out of the loop or off the loop because that means we just automate it and walk away and no one’s interested in that aspect. But if you’re in the Ukraine, for example, and you know, there’s a superior force from Russia coming in and you can let’s say sending drones and you can have a, you know, like we saw here to which is impressive, the McDonald Douglas laser anti-drone laser system, which is incredible. Um I’m going to turn that on if it means saving my troops. Absolutely. Yeah. But there’s a human on that loop, right? They’re still monitoring to make sure it’s not shooting down airliners or other things that it shouldn’t be doing. So, it’s not just turn it on and walk away. It’s turn it on and continue to monitor and understand what are those parameters and are they still executing within the parameters that you are comfortable with? But what happens if we share or sell our technology to someone partner, for example, and they’re I mean, if they’re getting attacked? All bets are off? Well, I think we deal with that every day today with all the weapons that we provide and that we work with multiple nations. So, we’ve been working with this for years both with the ROE, rules of engagement for employment, but also for the rules that we put for, you know, use of our equipment and there’s all kinds of end-use agreements that we already worked through this. So, this is not anything new. It’s just a pace with newer technology than we’re we’re used to. But this is not a new process as far as it what comes to what you just said. This is something we’ve been dealing with for decades. Now, if you you’re sort of you’re one of the most sort of advanced thinkers in this kind of stuff. Um if you close your eyes and say, “Okay, this is what I think is going to happen in the next 2 years, in the next 3 years, in the next 5 years.” I know 5 maybe maybe I won’t say 5 is too far out. But crystal ball for a second, where are we heading? Like you know, if you close your eyes 2 years from now, 3 years from now, what are the surprises? Yeah, so unfortunately my crystal ball’s got a big crack in it and it’s cloudy and just like everyone else’s is, right? So the ability to predict the future is the only place you can be 100% is 100% wrong. Now, that said, what I can say is we can see trendlines. So we can see trends towards more automation. We can see trendlines towards more collection of more data and having to process that data. In order to process that data and and be able to target we have to do that not within days as we did just a few years ago. We have to do that not within even hours. We’re going to be able to do that within minutes and seconds. And we’re going to have to do this at a scale that is beyond anything that we’ve seen I think today even. Look at the number of low-cost drones that can be generated and the number of targeting packages that then that we would traditionally have to generate to do that. Uh that’s coming now that’s going to have to be automated. And so we’re going to be able to process thousands of targets in very short order. And we’re going to have to do that repeatedly. And so that that creates not just a individual weapon system. So people think about these systems as being that robot is autonomous and goes out. That is part of a larger network, it’s part of a larger data gathering network, sensing network, effector network that comes together and then it’s the processing that goes behind it. And this is why large language models and artificial intelligence are so critical is because you’re going to need that to process that amount of data. It’s just beyond what a human can comprehend on its own. But then take that data when you process it and put it in a a form and this is the other thing that technology allows us put that in a format that we can process and understand so then we can monitor what’s happening and we can direct how those effects actually take place. That’s the the system that we are in the process of building and it’s not easy it’s very complex and our adversaries are after it as well. On a more metaphysical level what happens when you marry AI with quantum because that’s another the big pick up of AI when you add quantum to it with decryption and all that you know. Yes I don’t know entirely but you hit to the point I made earlier is as these different technologies combine that becomes the question what does that mean and I don’t know entirely but the the key things that come to mind is the amount of processing you can do through AI and the encryption you can put that under with quantum. That’s creates a really difficult problem now because you can take these exquisite artificial intelligence engines that you create and train and then protect them and encrypt them. Mhm. All the more reason I want to make sure we get there first. Mhm. How do we get there first? Continue to invest in it. Continue to invest in it and protect the data. Right we can’t we can’t just assume everyone’s our friend and that they’re going to treat that data equally. We also need to understand that data is national security. It’s it’s not something that’s just don’t worry about it won’t be relevant in a few years. All of that matters and we have to look understand how do we protect that better. And give me the top four countries in the world who are the the sort of leading technological edge of where we are going in warfare. Well I think right off the top of the head it would be United States and China are really pushing the envelopes here. There’s multiple other countries that are working this at different levels you know just look at what the Ukrainians have been able to do. The Russians have learned a ton in the last few years. Israel obviously has invested a lot in this. You’ve got technological partners like Japan, Germany, UK, Korea that are also all very technologically savvy that are moving towards this. So again, important for us, how do we harness our alliances? How do we harness those that we know have shared values to work this together? To go out to get ahead of those that we don’t necessarily share the same values with. All right, General, thank you for your time. Thank you for your service and uh congratulations on a successful day today. Well, I really appreciate you guys coming out here. I thanks for being here. And the fact that you came out and are willing to talk about this means a lot to us cuz a lot of people won’t even [music] come to Africa. Very important. What you do is very important. I appreciate it. Thank you. All right. 10 out of 10, sir. Uh you know, that’s got to make me nervous when [music] the reporter says 10 out of 10. You up bad. [laughter]