China has won the artificial intelligence (AI) battle with the US and is moving towards international dominance due to its technological strides, the Pentagon’s former software chief told the Financial Times.
China is the world’s second-largest economy and is expected to dominate many of the important emerging technologies, particularly AI, synthetic biology, and genetics within a decade, according to Western intelligence assessments.
Nicolas Chaillan, who was the first chief software officer of the Pentagon to resign in protest against the slow speed of technological transformation in the US military, said the failure to respond was putting the US at risk.
“We have no competing fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years. Right now, it’s already a done deal; it is already over in my opinion. Whether it takes a war or not is kind of anecdotal,” he told the newspaper.
A spokesperson for the Department of the Air Force said Frank Kendall, secretary of the US Air Force, had discussed with Chaillan his recommendations for the department’s future software development following his resignation and thanked him for his contributions, the FT said.
