every military force on the planet. Leading the charge is artificial intelligence.  

A technology with the power to upend  everything about human conflict.  

Including whether humans are involved at all. 

And simmering beneath… is a global cyberwar  that has already started and may never end.

Digital technology is transforming all our lives,  

so no wonder it's also changing how we  fight. It's making militaries smarter,  

faster, more efficient. But it's also opening up  the prospect of serious dangers in the future.

There's a third revolution of warfare  after gunpowder and nuclear weapons

There will be more unpredictability in  how we get to armed conflict, and that  

will make the whole world a more dangerous place.

Here in Berlin, Germany's foreign minister warns  us: a full-scale tech arms race is underway.

We're right in the middle of it. That's  the reality we have to deal with. 

Wir sind schon mittendrin… das ist die  Realität, mit der wir es zu tun haben.

In fact critical technologies are  developing so fast that SOCIETIES  

can barely keep up… and ask themselves  the question, is this what we want? So  

in this video we're going to zero in on two  risks that are not getting enough attention.

First, we'll see how a cyber intrusion against the  command and control systems for nuclear weapons  

could set off a terrifying chain of events.

You have to worry that it's going to  escalate into something that's like  

truly apocalyptic -- civilization ending.

Then we'll examine how a recent  war in an obscure part of the world  

provided a taste of things to come…  accelerating a race for autonomous weapons.

And how the artificial intelligence behind them  

could lead to conflicts that  move at horrifying speed.

All of a sudden you have a have  a war that no one really started,  

and which could spiral out of control.

We'll catch glimpses of a future  where wars can start more easily, 

where they can escalate faster,  and where humans can't stop them.

Machines are dictating the  conduct on the battlefield.  

Machines are making the ultimate  decisions about life and death.

The good news is: it's not too late to make  critical choices. And in the final part  

we'll look at what political leaders could be  doing NOW to prevent the worst from happening. 

But first… we begin with a scenario that is  not from the future. It could happen today.

We're going to England's north York Moors, near  the coast and the windy North Sea. Here we find  

what could be the most important places in the  world -- that you have probably never heard of.

Its name is Fylingdales, a British air force  base that's notable not for its planes, but for…

…this grey edifice, jutting out of the ground.  

They call it the pyramid. But  in fact, it's a giant radar.

It's not the only one.  

There's something similar on the other side of  the world, at Clear air force base in Alaska.

And there's another far to the south at  Beale, in the heat of the California desert…

There's one hidden in the forest on Cape Cod,  

Massachusetts – where America  nudges out into the West Atlantic.

And in the frozen north of Greenland,  far above the Arctic Circle,  

you'll find that another pyramid looms.

These installations are all part of America's  early warning system… powerful radars built to  

detect attacks on the US homeland or American  allies. Above all – incoming nuclear missiles.

It's a system that reaches out into space, where  dedicated satellites keep watch from high orbit.  

Constantly feeding back to the  "command-and-control" apparatus  

in charge of America's own nuclear weapons.

This is the nervous system of the western  military alliance. It dates back to the Cold  

War but in today's geopolitical tensions, it's  as crucial as ever. Disrupting it could leave  

the alliance blind – prone to attack. That was made clear in America's latest  

nuclear posture review – essentially the  instruction manual of its most powerful weapons.

This infrastructure is so  important, the review said  

that if it were attacked, the US might  respond by using nuclear weapons.

As we're going to find out – despite their  critical position at the heart of Western  

security, these systems are vulnerable  – to new and unpredictable threats.

The first early warning systems were built decades  ago, at the height of the Cold War. Their job:  

detecting nuclear missiles coming in from Russia. As they've been updated over the decades,  

two crucial things have changed  that make them more exposed.

First -- many are no longer focussed only  on nuclear threats. They're multi-tasking.

"None of the big command and control  systems whose existence has been  

acknowledged by the US government are used  exclusively for non-nuclear operations."

James Acton is one of the world's  leading experts on nuclear security.

"That's one example of this phenomenon that I term  

the growing entanglement between the  nuclear and the non-nuclear domains."

This idea of "entanglement" is important. It  means that the incredibly sensitive area of  

nuclear weapons is no longer separated off in its  own bubble. It's become mixed in with matters of  

conventional warfare. And that multi-tasking  means they're more likely to be a target.  

In a crisis or a conflict, adversaries could have  a potential incentive to attack these dual-use  

command and control assets, these assets that are  used for both nuclear and non-nuclear operations.  

Potentially, they're doing that in order to  disrupt US conventional war fighting…but that  

would have the effect of degrading the US  nuclear command and control architecture.

So there are more reasons to attack these targets.  And on top of that comes the second big change:  

they've entered the digital age, opening  them up to the prospect of cyber-attack.

Systems are now relying on digital signals  as opposed to analogue signals, increasingly  

relying on things…like IP based operating systems IP-based operating systems: Internet Protocol 

that means computer operating  systems with networking capabilities 

which creates vulnerabilities, for  example, in the form of cyber-attacks.  

Very old-fashioned nuclear command and  control systems that didn't use digital  

systems were invulnerable to cyber-attacks.  There was no code there to do the attacking."

Today, cyber-attacks are an everyday event -  we often hear about them on the news. In fact,  

some say we've entered a low-grade  cyber-war that will NEVER stop.

"You have a mix of state level and non-state  actors constantly probing and attacking  

networks around the world. That's just the reality  

of 21st century life and something  that we'll have to deal with."

Just about everything and  everyone can be a target.  

Recent attacks have hit the US  government, the German parliament,  

and Iran's nuclear programme. And  they're just the ones that we know about.

Some of the most serious cyber-attacks  have hit public infrastructure  

like those against Ukraine's power grid –  attacks blamed on Russia. That was so grave  

that the United States stepped in to press  charges against the alleged perpetrators.

No country has weaponized its cyber capabilities  as maliciously and irresponsibly as Russia."

Attacks like that on civilian infrastructure  have become a major public concern.  

But only a small circle of experts are  thinking about how a cyber-attack on  

nuclear command and control systems might play  out. Here, the stakes could not be higher.

To see what could happen, let's go back  to the English coast and Fylingdales,  

the early warning system peering  across the North Sea towards Russia.  

In a crisis situation with the  Kremlin, this could be a prime target.

"That's so significant because  that radar is the closest US  

radar to Russia's biggest concentration of  its nuclear forces. It's the one that would  

get the quickest warning of a Russian nuclear  attack. It's also the most entangled one."

Remember that idea of "entanglement" between  the nuclear and the non-nuclear realms

Fylingdales is a key example of this, watching  out not just for big nuclear missiles,  

but also for conventional weapons.

If Russia was firing short-range ballistic  missiles at Europe, Fylingdales could see  

those missiles in a way that other US radars  that are further from Europe couldn't. 

So of all the US early warning radars, Fylingdales  is the one that has the biggest Russian incentives  

to attack in a crisis or a conflict. And it's the  one that attacks could have the biggest effect  

on in terms of degrading US  strategic early warning capabilities.

And a scenario where exactly that  happens is all too easy to imagine.

It's the near future. We're in Latvia, a  former Soviet republic, now a member of NATO.

Protests have broken out among  ethnic minority Russians,  

who are accusing the government of discrimination.

As the protests turn violent, Russia  begins amassing troops along the border.

Western leaders accuse Moscow  of orchestrating the unrest  

as a pretext to invade this  tiny NATO member state.

Neighbouring Estonia and Lithuania  – also former Soviet republics  

and also now members of NATO,  report a surge in cyber-attacks.

Fear spikes across the region.  

For the first time since the Cold War, NATO  and Russia are on the brink of direct conflict.

As the crisis deepens, the US detects  malicious computer code planted in its  

early warning networks at Fylingdales. In the  heart of a system that is on ultra-high alert.

James Acton explains what happens next.

If you find malicious code in your networks.  It's very hard to know what that code does. It  

takes a long time to analyse the code and  understand what the other side is doing.  

And this makes it very hard to know whether  this malicious code is just for espionage,  

or is also for offensive operations as  well. And in this fast-moving crisis,  

the US doesn't know what the code does. It  hasn't yet had a chance to analyze it even  

if that code is exclusively for espionage  purposes. There is a danger that the US  

might conclude that it's preparations for  an attack on an early warning system."

As the malware spreads, the US also has to work  out who planted it. That's a process called  

attribution. It takes time, and it is NOT easy.  Adding pressure to the fear and deep uncertainty.

There's various countries that could have  incentives to launch cyber espionage or prepare  

for cyber attacks by inserting malware  against the U.S. early warning system.  

You know, North Korea would have an  incentive for doing it. China would have  

an incentive for doing it. Russia would have  an incentive of doing it, maybe others, too.

Amid all that uncertainty, with the Latvian crisis  ongoing, Russia becomes be the obvious suspect.

"I think there is potentially an  assumption in that crisis to assume  

that Russia implanted the malware. Even if you  don't know for certain who did it -- Chinese  

implantation or North Korean implantation --  again, in a fast moving crisis in which you  

don't have time to do the attribution properly,  may be misinterpreted as a Russian intrusion."

So in the heat of this crisis,  

under intense pressure, the US has  some enormous decisions to make.

Its most sensitive nuclear weapons  infrastructure is under cyber-attack.  

It doesn't know what the code  is doing, or who planted it.  

But the circumstances suggest it's a Russian  attack. So the Americans decide to respond  

in kind -- with a cyber-attack of  their own against Russia's systems.

It then does the same thing against Russia…not  necessarily for an attack at this point, but for  

espionage and for signalling purposes and saying,  you know, anything you could do, we can do better.  

The problem is that Russia is very worried  about the survivability of its nuclear forces.

Now Russia fears that the US is trying  to mess with ITS nuclear weapons.

Discovering cyber intrusions in your  command-and-control system can exacerbate  

those fears. You could believe the US  is preparing to attack, preparing to  

eliminate the nuclear forces pre-emptively.

The two sides are entering a spiral of escalation  

that leads towards disaster with a relentless  logic. Russia makes the first move.

A lot of their nuclear weapons or missiles  are based on trucks which they would have  

to disperse to make them survivable  so that the US couldn't destroy them.  

So they may do that because they're  worried about a US nuclear attack. 

But that kind of action could confirm the US fear  that they're preparing for nuclear weapon use…  

and that that's the kind of scenario that I  think could catalyze nuclear weapon use directly.  

The US then disperses its nuclear forces  that confirms Russian fears that the US  

is thinking about using nuclear weapons and  that leads to Russian limited nuclear use.

Limited nuclear use. We've gone from a piece  of mystery code in the wrong place to a nuclear  

missile launch. Let's do what the  governments can't in this situation - and  

slow right down to pick  apart what's just happened.  

Because this is how a regional crisis  can turn into a catastrophic war.

In the heat of a crisis with Russia, the US  detects malware in its early warning networks.

Fearing it could be Russian code  aimed at disabling its systems,  

it retaliates with a cyber intrusion  of its own into Russia's networks.

Russia now fears its nuclear  capabilities are being threatened,  

and scatters its land-based weapons  to avoid possible attack. When this is

picked up by the US, Washington disperses  its own nuclear forces for the same reason.

Fearing an imminent nuclear attack, Russia fires  the ultimate warning shot - a small nuclear  

missile against a target that would result in  minimal casualties, like a naval ship out at sea.

You can conceive of first use of nuclear weapons  that literally kills no civilians and only a small  

number of military personnel. The use of nuclear  weapons against a ship at sea, far from any land,  

a military vessel -- you might only kill the  sailors on board that vessel and no civilians."

While the immediate damage may be limited, this  crosses the threshold called "nuclear first  

use. Whichever side does this, they've  made the situation deadly serious.