Will AI eat the world and America’s defense budget? I think of those who toil at the intersection of AI and national security as being divided into three camps: Sprinters hold the most aggressive assumptions and believe profound disruption via artificial general intelligence is imminent; marathoners believe the technology will diffuse selectively, sector-by-sector; and skeptics draw analogies to the dot-com bubble.
America’s near-term AI strategy should align with one of these three approaches. If the sprinter scenario holds, the United States should go all-out to rapidly acquire artificial general intelligence — defined here as human-level intelligence. If the skeptics are right, however, then the United States should do virtually the opposite and avoid overbuilding and overextension. If the marathoners are most correct, then the United States will conduct a complicated, long-term technological competition with a country four times its population.
Adopting the skeptic approach is risky: AI is already a powerful tool. In addition to applying best AI competition practices, policymakers should adopt the marathoner approach for now but maintain flexibility. The marathoner approach will allow Washington to adjust AI efforts as conditions warrant, minimizing the risks of both overreach and underinvestment. Trade-offs between AI and other priorities are already necessary: U.S. private sector investment in 2024 totaled $109 billion, and aggressive estimates hold capital spending could reach $2.35 trillion by 2030.
Mapping the three AI camps helps policymakers determine whether Washington’s $3.3 billion Fiscal Year 2025 spend on AI research and development merits a sharp increase or a cautious pause. This camp believes that AI is on a rapid trajectory toward artificial general intelligence. They foresee world-altering and nearly immediate consequences: initial advantages will unleash enormous and self-reinforcing productivity gains. In this view, the country that first obtains artificial general intelligence will secure enduring — and likely permanent — geopolitical advantages. Similarly, artificial general intelligence’s “inventor” could become the world’s first trillionaire.
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