Key points
- The current war in Ukraine is very much a drone war already: Musk
- He says the US is supposed to invest in drones and produce them domestically
- Musk made these remarks in a conversation with General Shane Reeves
ISLAMABAD: The chief executive officer of SpaceX, Elon Musk, said that the future of warfare lies in artificial intelligence (AI) along with drones in a recently released video of his conversation last summer at the US Military Academy in West Point, New York.
“The current war in Ukraine is very much a drone war already,” said Musk, 53, who also heads up Tesla Inc and the X social network. “If there’s a major power war, it’s very much going to be a drone war,” according to Bloomberg.
Musk, who now plays an important role in the US government through his close relationship with President Donald Trump, said the US is supposed to invest in drones and increase the rate of producing them domestically.
Fireside conversation
He was speaking in a fireside conversation with Brigadier General Shane Reeves, the Military Academy’s dean of the Academic Board, on August 16.
Musk posted a link to the 40-minute conversation with X late on Thursday.
The billionaire, who said he most of the time goes to sleep while listening to audiobooks of military history, warned against complacency by national leaders. “Countries pretty much are geared up to fight the last war, not the next war,” he told an audience of armed forces personnel.
The West Point appearance in the summer occurred shortly before Musk fully threw himself into Trump’s re-election campaign.
Scrutinising spending
After that, the South Africa-born tech chief has become an important player in Washington, where he is leading an effort to “right-size” the federal government. Teams from his Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge, have visited several federal agencies, where they are investigating data systems and scrutinising spending and contracts.
SpaceX is an important part of what the late former US president Dwight Eisenhower notoriously called the military-industrial complex.
Besides launching rockets for partners such as NASA, its famous satellite system known as Starlink is available in over 100 countries and territories.
Starlink military services
“Starlink is the backbone of the Ukrainian military communications system, because it can’t be blocked by the Russians,” said Musk. “On the front lines, all the fiber connections are cut, the cell towers are blown up, and the geostationary satellite links are jammed. The only thing that isn’t jammed is Starlink.”
Musk also talked about something he called his first-principles algorithm, the ethos that he utilises to run his overlapping empire of half a dozen companies: Step one is to make the requirements “less dumb”, step two is to delete excess parts or process, step three is to optimise, and step four is “go faster”.
“Military procurement goes wrong right at the outset with excess requirements,” said Musk.
