The Centre Cannot Hold: Rethinking Defence and Security for the mid 21st Century

Only a quarter of the way into the 21st century, our modern defence and security establishments appear to be under unendurable strain. As Yeats said as World War 1 raged, the centre cannot hold[1]. Today, we need to completely rethink defence and security for the modern world and the new challenges we face now, and in future[2].

What is the role of today’s defence and security?

Protecting our people, our homeland and our democracy is the first duty of any government[3]. Defence and security organizations are meant to bring order, enforce the rule of law, and safeguard our citizens against threat. But the modern world presents challenges our traditional defence and security organizations were never set up to face. They were created in a former era, where warfare was relatively simple and carried out broadly as it had been for thousands of years (give or take improvements in kit), and with much the same mindset and culture. For hundreds of years, conflicts have been executed overtly by the military, and covertly by national security services. In the 2020s, we are falling fast into a future where these spheres of responsibility are near meaningless.

What are these new challenges? In some ways they are an evolution of the old ones – state threats, terrorists, organized crime groups, and criminals – sometimes operating in the usual ways, and at other times taking advantage of newer technologies to achieve their aims. It would be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that more of the same answers will serve, albeit ramped up and with bigger budgets and more kit. However, we are reaching an invisible tipping point caused by macro trends – the accelerating exploitation of space, the huge geopolitical shifts and ascendence of the East, migration driven by climate change, the technological transformations into an arguably post-human era – which have expanded the surface area of conflict so much that no single State can secure it.

This is the reality I have observed in years of working across defence and security organizations. Yes, we have stopped terrorist attacks that might have killed innocent people; and I have no doubt we are responding to global aggressors in the best ways we can. This is important and meaningful work. But we cannot carry on over the coming decades wedded to traditional ways of working and organizing ourselves, and still hope to have any kind of effective defence and security. ?

Rethinking mid to late 21st century defence and security solutions

To reimagine defence and security for the future, we need to start with the context in which a future defence and security organization might be operating. From there we can go on to design the functions – and thus, form – that defence and security will need to be effective. I believe this will be governed by three key themes, the seeds of which we can already see:

• Interconnectedness – everything and everyone will be connected through data and information, the virtual will have physical effects and the physical will be mirrored in the virtual
• Ambiguity – super-complexity across multiple nodes, perspectives, and activities will make it near impossible to have a fully informed view at any one time – clarity will be a thing of the past
• Human redundancy – as robotics, automation and AI develop, real people will become a drag on systems, slowing things down and becoming increasingly pushed into those few activities where humans may still have an edge. ?

Interconnectedness – why operational silos will need to be dismantled

Because of interconnectivity, the distinction between land, air and sea, space and cyber (and newly emerging domains like people, psychology/ neuroscience, immersive virtual realities and fake realities) will no longer be meaningful; neither will threats at home or abroad make any difference in a globalized world. The very basis by which various organizations (Army, Navy, Air Force, intelligence agencies) have been founded, funded, and organized is a barrier to dealing with security in this new world. Everything will seamlessly flow into and affect everything else. The very names ‘defence’ and ‘security’ describe outdated divisions that will be irrelevant. The military are starting to think about Multi-Domain Integration as a concept, but this is not going nearly far enough or fundamental enough – yet. If a new defence and security ecosystem were to be designed to manage in this era, starting with a blank sheet of paper, then we wouldn’t have what we have now. Failing to face this fact leaves thousands of people trying to operate in suboptimal siloed systems, trying to collaborate and share at a huge cost of wasted effort and ineffectiveness.

Ambiguity – battling through the fog

Ambiguity arises as a result of extreme complexity. We will have to get used to operating in a fog where nothing is really clear, no decisions are uncontested, and there are no certainties – indeed some of this fog will be deliberately generated by our adversaries, as well as by ourselves[4]. Understanding the ‘true’ threat landscape will only become ever more difficult, as will maintaining ethical standards. Many people undertaking many different activities will have some degree of relevance to defence and security – from a hobby someone is undertaking in their shed through to a countermeasure dreamt up by an AI – and new threats may arise unpredictably, through error just as much as terror. We already rely on deep specialists and trust them to know what they are doing – this situation will get more acute so that key responsibilities are held by people so specialized only a tiny number of people in the world could know what they are doing.

Human redundancy – the robots are here!

Sweeping technological developments will transform every aspect of our lives. From the rise of quantum supercomputing to augmented reality to new sources of power and novel materials, new technology threats and opportunities will emerge, merge, evolve and be replaced, out of the control of states or state-owned institutions. These innovations are in the hands of industry, startups, and anyone with a great idea. From all this great technological innovation, I believe the development of robots and artificial intelligence, along with automation, have perhaps the greatest potential to revolutionize defence and security. How? Because it is in these areas that the greatest potential for human harm (and hopefully, good) lies. Sending a robot to war brings an asymmetry with a disposable (if expensive) killing machine on one side and no risk to life (on the ‘home’ side). Artificial intelligence (once it grows beyond the level of a toddler and becomes truly intelligent) is likely to be the only way to make the best possible decisions in a fast-moving battlefield (notwithstanding arguments about keeping a human in the loop). And automation will allow us to operate at scale, freeing up valuable resources and making defence and security no longer a primarily human enterprise, but one carried out mainly by machines.

The best defence and security organizations will be those able to adapt most quickly and utilize the opportunities of these trends.

So, we can start to draw some sketchy conclusions about what functions and form a redesigned defence and security ecosystem may take (perhaps, even more broadly, encompassing everything we do, including in migration and borders, police, and preventing financial crime).

Using data to power the ‘Protect’ organization

How would we protect our people in this modern era? We’ll need to operate seamlessly ourselves across domains from the physical to the virtual, from undersea to space, and make the best possible use of machine and people co-dependency – building the trust, culture, and policies to support our widespread use of machines and automation. Data will be the lifeblood of what I now term our ‘Protect’ organization (in lieu of either ‘defence’ or ‘security’) and everything will be designed around the ready flow of data and insight to build and power AI models. And effects will be informed by psychology, from subtle nudges through to full-power lethal impact.

The human element of Protect might look very different to what we have now. We could be much less reliant on human frontline forces – replacing them with robots – but will need an army of data scientists, coders, and all sorts of new kinds of roles to develop and maintain the Protect functions envisaged. But these might be a much smaller number, co-located out with industry or wherever they are needed, and operating together online. In fact, a modern Protect organization might be singular, highly distributed, primarily virtual, and operate more like a high-tech business in pace and agility.

Many of the enabling functions of the new Protect organization will be designed once, for everyone – giving us great clarity and simplicity and reducing the grit in the wheel – so one organizational function for knowledge and research, for learning and training, for security (including cybersecurity), for HR, recruitment, and careers, one procurement and commercial, one IT services, one vetting and clearances, one strategy. The ‘digital backbone’ of IT architecture will be designed to scale, to add modules, and to be updated – with one secure cloud able to operate at all security classifications. We will need to rethink careers entirely, making it easier for people with the right skillsets to come in and out as needed, and to create career pathways that are interesting, rewarding and life-enhancing. The clarity over how to work, and supported by the right functions and the right level of responsibility, will empower people to innovate as they see how they can have impact.

Creating a new paradigm so that the ‘centre holds’

There are many aspects of a future Protect policy that we haven’t touched on in this article, such as the use of nuclear deterrence, geopolitical stance, investment in science and technology innovation, or how to build equality, inclusion, and diversity into everything that we do. These can all be developed while we are creating this new paradigm. But first we need to build the right framework, which will enable us to engage seriously with these key policy decisions.

In summary, I revert to my opening gambit from WB Yeats’ poem ‘The Second Coming’, in which he wrote ‘the centre cannot hold’. I believe that our defence and security organizations are under existential threat, not from an adversary, but from the changing context we face. We need to let go of the old order and create a new one, designed to deliver in the context we are facing now (and will face in future) to ensure the centre holds.

[1] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming

[2] Although this article is primarily focused on military and national security organizations, many of the themes apply also to the police service

[3] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/global-britain-in-a-competitive-age-the-integrated-review-of-security-defence-development-and-foreign-policy

[4] https://www.gchq.gov.uk/speech/director-gchq-global-security-amid-russia-invasion-of-ukraine