Nick Chailan, the former chief of software - who has recently resigned - at the US Department of Defense (the Pentagon), said that China is moving towards global dominance in artificial intelligence (AI) due to the relatively slow pace of innovation in the United States of America (USA), and other Western countries, noting that China has already won the battle of artificial intelligence over the West.
Chailan told the British Financial Times (FT) that the USA doesn't have a chance to compete with China in 15 to 20 years to come.
In his interview with the FT, Chailan pointed out that some of the US cyber defense systems were at the "kindergarten level".
He announced his resignation last month in protest of the slow pace of technology development in the United States, saying that America's failure to aggressively pursue AI capabilities puts the nation at risk.
According to international media reports, Western intelligence reports expect in the next decade that China will dominate many emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and genetics.
He also attributed the slow pace to a company like Google's reluctance to work with the US government on AI and ongoing discussions about the ethics of AI in the United States, while China is moving forward without considering the potential ethical consequences, stressing that the USA has to win by being smarter, more efficient, moving forward through agility and rapid prototyping.
He also criticized the Department of Defense and its decisions to place people with limited IT experience in software leadership roles, suggesting that the Department of Defense should stop pretending it wants industry to come and help them if they won't let them do the work.
The former Pentagon chief warned that while the USA wastes time in bureaucracy, her opponents have moved forward, adding that he feels some guilt or remorse in leaving his post.
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