A complex-systems view on military decision making

Military decision-making institutions are sociotechnical systems. They feature interactions among people applying technologies to enact roles within mission-oriented collectives. As sociotechnical systems, military institutions can be examined through the lens of complex adaptive systems (CAS) theory. This discussion applies the CAS perspective to reveal implications of integrating newer artificial intelligence (AI) technologies into military decision-making institutions. I begin by arguing that military adoption of AI is well-incentivised by the current defence landscape. Given these incentives, it would be useful to try to understand the likely effects of AI integration into military decision-making. Direct examinations of the new affordances and risks of new AI models is a natural mode of analysis for this. I discuss some low-hanging fruit in this tradition. However, I also maintain that such examinations can miss systemic impacts of AI reliance in decision-making workflows. By taking a complex systems view of AI integration, it is possible to glean non-intuitive insights, including, for example, that common policy concerns like preventing human deskilling or requiring algorithmic transparency may be overblown or counterproductive.