Mobile Technology and Military Preparedness

My readers probably noticed I mostly vanished from this blog for about a month. Part of the reason is that I've been busy programming. At the start of the summer I decided I wanted to buy a new cutting-edge cell phone. After a month of agonizing over whether or not I should buy an iPhone, I ultimately decided to gamble on its alternative: the HTC Hero, which is built on Google's Android operating system. Most people don't even know what Android is--my tech-savvy father hadn't heard of it--and it only controls about 2% of the US market. But with around 20 new Android phones entering the market this year (including the Hero, which is the first Android phone elegant enough to rival the iPhone), Android has the potential to become a major player in the cell phone market.

What makes Android distinctive is Google's radical commitment to open source. Apple tightly controls the iPhone and has a rigid, multi-step process to deploy software applications, which includes Apple personally reviewing and authorizing each app. Google takes the opposite approach; anybody who wants to can download free open source software development tools and the Android SDK and get to work. Programmers have access to all Android's hardware. They can distribute their apps however they want--through Google Market, through third party markets, or by directly sending their apps to customers. It's an attractive business model for information junkies like me, who have grown up in a digital world committed to the free flow of information. Android is a platform for innovation. It opens up mobile development to the masses.

To foster innovation and build support for the platform, Google has held a contest for the last two years with $2 million in prizes. Winners from the first year are showcased here. The deadline for the second annual contest was August 31st. My phone arrived around August 20th, so I made a last-minute decision to enter the contest. I spent a frantic two weeks teaching myself Java and the Android Software Development Kit, then developing a flashcard program designed for language learners. The process culminated with a three-day programming binge where I scarcely saw my family. At 3:00 am on the final night (a few hours before the deadline in this time zone) I fired off the app.

So what does Android programming have to do with war and peace? Mobile phones have already transformed societies across the world. The rapid technological advances brought by the iPhone and Android are changing it even more. And the next-generation devices I expect to see within a few years will have ramifications we can scarcely imagine. For those who care about issues of war and peace, this technology will bring important opportunities--and significant challenges. The high velocity of change will require rapid organizational learning. Organizations that learn quickly will reap immense rewards; organizations that don't learn will fall rapidly behind.

Discussions in the military about cyberspace tend to focus on securing existing networks against existing vulnerabilities, but I don't ever hear much about how organizational preparation to integrate and exploit new technology. I hope these discussions are happening somewhere; if not, we are in serious trouble. I've written several times about about the declining utility of military networks (here and here for example, particularly in the wake of the thumb drive ban. Military networks are so severely curtailed that I prefer to avoid them entirely, if possible. Since the ban was imposed, I've come to appreciate the severity of the security threats that US military networks face. I don't know what the right balance is between openness and security, but the current security posture is squelching capabilities that I rely on every day in my civilian life: for example, reading blogs, copying data, synch'ing my e-mail on a mobile devices, and using Google to quickly and easily find answers to questions.

So what new technologies do I think the military unprepared to integrate? Mobile devices, for starters. It is conceivable that, in our lifetime, nearly every person in the world could have access to all the world's information on a handheld device. Even more significant innovations are around the corner. A few days ago I read that researchers have found a way to project data onto contact lenses. A video game company is developing a game controller that reads your thoughts (yes, it actually works). You can already find clothing that has memory sewn in. This combination of techology means we could soon be "wearing" our Internet instead of carrying cell phones. By the time my infant son is a teenager, I fully expect the Internet will be the natural medium in which he lives, socializes, and works--and it will mostly be in his head. These developments will happen organically in civilian society as technology improves. In the military, however, integrating each new technology will require extensive debate, policy changes, and bold leadership from the top. Look at how long it has taken the military to adopt blogs and social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter--and even now, some services are still blocking access. Same thing with cell phones. Unless you are one of a handful of commanders issued a Blackberry, you probably can't connect your phone to a military network (and look what at the battle Obama had to fight just to use his Blackberry). If twenty years from now the average American is walking around permanently wired to the Internet, our military members will be at a significant disadvantage if they have to sit down at an ancient, boxy computer to do business.

A second area the military lags is simple information sharing. Thanks to the civilian world's commitment to openness, most major web applications allow easy exchange of information. My new phone has an innovative user interface that pulls information from Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Outlook, and Gmail into one set of contacts. When I view a friend in my contact list I can call him, write him an e-mail, view his Flickr photo albums, and see his Facebook status and any recent Twitters. A lot of the winning Android apps from last year's contest mash together data from a variety of sources to produce new results. Consider "CompareEverywhere"--you just scan a product barcode with your phone's camera, and the program lists prices, reviews, and local stores carrying the product. Government programs and databases, however, are rarely designed to cooperate together. This may be changing, fortunately. I read a fascinating article today about a Silicon Valley startup that is designing search tools that pull data from a variety of intelligence databases (How Team of Geeks Cracked Spy Trade). It's noteworthy that this technology comes not from a traditional government contractor, but from a quirky tech company resembling Google.

The third area I see a lack of military foresight is augmented reality. I expect to see a major shift in the next few years; instead of viewing data on computer or mobile screens, most people will view data overlaid on top of the real world. The iPhone and Android have already give us some amazing applications showcasing the possibilities. With a video camera, a GPS, a magnetic compass, and inclinometers, you can use a cell phone as a heads-up display. My favorite augmented reality program is Google Sky. I can point my phone up at the stars, and the program shows me exactly what I'm looking at. If I want to find Mars, I can do a search. The phone will show arrows to guide me in towards the planet. Other programs like Layar overlay all kinds of information over the daily world. I could conceivably point my phone at a restaurant, and see contact information, hours, and customer reviews. Or if I'm touring a historical site somewhere, I could look through my phone and see tags overlaid on key objects with links to Wikipedia articles. This technology will become even more significant once displays move to glasses or contact lenses. The author of this article has this dream: "[I want] to be able to walk into crowded cocktail party, and know exactly who I am looking at -- names, last time we met, and other pertinent information like names of spouses or kids. I want that information beamed into my field of vision, in text floating over their heads, like the health indicators over the bad guys in a computer game." The technology is not that far off. I'll leave the military applications to your imagination, but this technology will only work when mobile and wearable devices are fully integrated into military networks. You can imagine the disadvantage American troops would be at when they don't have access to these technologies, and when their enemy does.

Want to know more about this technology? Put down those military reports and go buy something by science fiction authors Cory Doctorow or Vernor Vinge. Vinge's book Rainbows End shows high school life in 2025--complete with augmented reality overlays, silent messaging between students, and crowdsourced national security. After that, go read Doctorow's Big Brother (available legally for free at the link), where a group of teenagers operating on a networked of hacked X-Boxes go to war with an Orwellian Department of Homeland Security. Finally, subscribe to Ray Kurzweil's mailing list here. You'll get an e-mail once a day with five or six paragraph-length stories on technological breakthroughs that have important ramifications for our future.