I’ll talk about Anthropic in just a moment.
First, a true story. When working for a defense contractor in the early 2020s, I was assigned to work on a system (name redacted for obvious reasons) that had been designed in the early 1990s and then fully rolled out in the mid 1990s after multiple successful tests. The system has been in the field since then and had established a superior achievement record. It did its job so well that several allied nations wanted it, bought it, and installed it.
Sometime in the early 2020s, that defense contractor became aware of issues with the test platform – the thing the weapon system plugged into for testing. Both the weapon system software and its test platform software had been developed under Microsoft Windows 98 and then later ported to Windows XP.
Over time, the test platform’s software had been ported from Windows 98 to Windows XP to Windows 7, but with increasing difficulty. When the defense contractor installed Windows 10, the test platform software simply stopped working. Getting it to work again was difficult, but the defense contractor’s customer – the company that sold the system to allied nations – would not permit downgrading the test platform back to Windows 7.
Along with the test system software, the weapon system’s operating software had also been built with software tools originally designed and working on Windows XP. Due to the same required updates to Microsoft Windows, those software tools no longer worked on Windows 10 and there were no other software tools available.
My effort on the program was to practice “software archaeology” and find a method to allow using those obsolete software tools under Windows 10 to build software to test the weapon system. I was successful – but the original test interface (the thingy that plugs into both the weapon system and test platform) no longer worked under Windows 10. Another team found an alternate device to allow the test platform to operate.
The defense system is still in place and still works – almost 30 years later.
The company that built the integrated circuit chips used by the weapon system no longer exists. It was purchased by another company over a decade ago. The original software developers for the development tools and proprietary test devices are long gone. Arrangements were made to have a different manufacturer provide additional integrated circuit chips to continue production.
The system is still in the field, and apparently still works as designed. For that matter, there is an effort to totally replace some parts of the weapons system to upgrade it to use modern tech, and allow defense against future threats to be incorporated into its operating software.
What’s my point?
My point is that military weapons systems last far longer than most people realize. Thus, it is necessary for the military to control every aspect of the weapon system, from its basic design and blueprints to metallurgy to electronics to software – and everything needs to be documented so that future systems maintainers can repair, modify, and upgrade the system as long as it is in the field.
Anthropic is merely the latest of a crop of companies angling for a lucrative defense contract. I don’t have any problems with that. If the software is that good, provides that much more utility, and provides capabilities that other defense systems lack, I’m all for using it.
But I’ve seen what happens when a supplier to a defense contractor goes belly up, or is fully absorbed by another company, or when the product is deemed to be less capable than competitive products and needs to be upgraded to defend against new and emerging threats.
The management of Anthropic wants to maintain complete control over their product and maintain it as a “closed system”. This could lead to a disaster if the product is incorporated into a defense system as a “black box” component. There would be no way to know whether the product is working as designed or whether it isn’t indicating operating failures that could affect a mission. There would also be no way to know whether the product is (or worse, isn’t) preventing break-ins by “bad actors”, whether inside or outside the Defense Department.
That is why it is vitally important that any component used in a defense system must be fully open, both hardware- and software-wise, and why design and operating documentation must fully reflect the entire state of the system when delivered after full acceptance.
I worked on a system that was over 30 years old if you consider when it was first conceived, designed, built, tested, and accepted. And I know how difficult it is to maintain that kind of system even when the designs, software, and current hardware are fully open and available to those who are tasked with maintaining and improving it.
One other thing.
Anthropic is merely another “flavor of the day” AI product. There will be others that will provide improved capabilities, and still others that may use entirely different architectures that could be easier to maintain, easier to develop, and far more capable.
And I won’t even begin to speculate on what quantum computing can provide as far as defense capabilities go…
