CHAPTER 1
The Dawn of Irrelevance

FOR THE OUTSIDERS IT was an uneventful cloudy October Sunday in Washington, DC. Over the weekend, the Washington football team had lost to the New Orleans Saints. Baltimore, another local team from the DMV area, was supposed to play on Monday. No earth-shattering news was making the headlines. Ten months after what some media outlets termed the "insurrection," American media was still obsessed with the domestic ideological wars. Sound bites from politicians were making rounds. Fights over to mask or not to mask were erupting all over the country. Despite a new wave of Covid claiming thousands of lives daily, traffic in restaurants and shopping areas was increasing. Amazon had started its Black Friday sales early. America had adjusted to a new normal. But unknown to most Americans, a fateful event had transpired that weekend. In contrast with the obliviousness of the American media, foreign media had a field day with the news about that story. As the history of this event will be written half a century from now, it would go down as probably the most solemn and depressing weekend for America. That was when Nicolas Chaillan, former chief software officer for the US Air Force and who oversaw the Pentagon's cybersecurity efforts, announced, in no uncertain words, the surrender of the United States in the artificial intelligence (AI) war against China. He gave an interview to the Financial Times-his first after his sudden resignation in September of 2021-and stated, "We have no competing fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years. Right now, it's already a done deal; it is already over in my opinion" (Manson 2021). Chaillan's statement did not appear as a warning, or a battle cry, or some inspirational slogan to rise and claim back America's AI leadership. It was a cold, matter-of-fact, and outright acknowledgment that it was already too late to have any hope for sustained American leadership in AI.

Chaillan's capitulating comment came after he had expressed his frustration about the inertia in the government and had resigned by submitting a fierce resignation letter. His tenure with the government had lasted barely three years. Chaillan is a naturalized citizen and had become a US citizen in 2016. That didn't stop him from getting a top position with the government. Upon joining, Chaillan was shocked over the state of technology and saw that as an opportunity to bring about a cultural change. Strong-willed and inspired by a vision of transformation, he began acting as a change agent. But he recognized that the problems were far deeper than what he had thought. AI was being approached as any regular technology. Chaillan gave an account of what was transpiring. The organizational dynamics represented a bureaucratic nightmare. Unskilled people were made in charge, and while money was being spent, the procurement costs were high and funds were being allocated in the wrong areas. Most importantly, AI was not being viewed as a national priority. Before resigning from his position with the government and during a CyberSatGov conference, he had claimed that American national security satellite providers were unable to develop "at the speed of relevance" as they were stuck in the Pentagon's ecosystem. In other words, getting unstuck from the Pentagon's ecosystem implied achieving the speed of relevance.

On Monday morning after the Chaillan news hit the international press, Tom Albert, a friend of the American Institute of Artificial Intelligence and an AI entrepreneur (founder and CEO of MeasuredRisk), video called Al Naqvi (one of the authors), and expressed his frustration. Tom is passionate about creating and mobilizing American intellects to rise and fight back against the Chinese dominance in AI. He is putting together a major initiative to inspire American investors and entrepreneurs to develop more advanced AI capabilities. Tom carries a genuine smile and has a great sense of humor. He jokes frequently and laughs loudly. But his voice changes and his face turns red when he starts talking about the lack of visionary leadership for AI at the helms in America. With his fists clenched and teeth gritting, he complains about how America is self-inflicting this catastrophe upon itself. Several minutes into the conversation, he asked Al Naqvi the name of the book that Naqvi was coauthoring. Al Naqvi responded that the name of the book was At the Speed of Irrelevance, and that made Tom smile and he said, "It would have been immensely funny if it wasn't so tragic." Tom and Al talked for over an hour, and Tom felt this book will be critical to drive hope and to inspire the nation. Tom is among a small number of Americans who understood what the term "speed of relevance" meant and its profound significance for AI and for the United States of America. America's last hope to maintain its global leadership position-the American AI-was in jeopardy. The great experiment was at risk.

AT THE SPEED OF RELEVANCE

Four years before Chaillan threw in the towel, then secretary of defense General James Norman Mattis issued a document in January 2018. This document was the first open and clear expression of a strategy to confront China's growing power. Titled "The National Defense Strategy" (NDS), it refers to the delivery of performance at the speed of relevance. That was the time when General Mattis and President Trump were still on good terms and President Trump bragged about his secretary of defense. The honeymoon didn't last, as a year later General Mattis resigned and gave a two-month notice. Feeling rejected and ignoring the notice, President Trump ended General Mattis's tenure immediately. Shortly after that, President Trump said that he "essentially fired him" and then in June of 2019 went after General Mattis again and said that he felt great about asking General Mattis to resign and that he didn't like General Mattis's leadership style and was happy that General Mattis was gone (Shane III 2019).

Regardless of President Trump's view about him, what is generally acknowledged about General Mattis is that he was trying to change the culture of DoD. The report signed by him said:

Deliver performance at the speed of relevance. Success no longer goes to the country that develops a new technology first, but rather to the one that better integrates it and adapts its way of fighting. Current processes are not responsive to need; the Department is over-optimized for exceptional performance at the expense of providing timely decisions, policies, and capabilities to the warfighter. Our response will be to prioritize speed of delivery, continuous adaptation, and frequent modular upgrades. We must not accept cumbersome approval chains, wasteful applications of resources in uncompetitive space, or overly risk-averse thinking that impedes change. Delivering performance means we will shed outdated management practices and structures while integrating insights from business innovation. (Mattis 2018)

While work on the American AI had begun before 2016, it was General Mattis's recognition that developing a technology first is not what will lead to America's victory; rather, what is critical is adapting and integrating new technologies. General Mattis was trying to evangelize the term "speed of relevance" to imply a more responsive way of delivering results and eliminating red tape and the typical government inefficiencies. Joe Dransfield analyzed the use of the term in an article that appeared on "The Bridge," an online publication of The Strategy Bridge, a nonprofit organization focused on the development of people in strategy, national security, and military affairs. Dransfield pointed out that Mattis had also used the term in his written statement to the House Armed Services Committee on February 6, 2018, and described it as his aspiration to move the Department of Defense to a "culture of performance and affordability that operates at the speed of relevance." In another document, Dransfield explains, Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford also used the term, but his usage seemed to imply improving the decision cycle, prioritizing and allocating optimal resources, and enabling better decision-making. Both Mattis and Dunford, Dransfield contends, used the term "as being an adaptation and an aspiration that is fundamental to gaining competitive advantage" (Dransfield 2020).

The term was instantaneously picked up by other agencies, the DC analysts, and supplier communities and quickly became a buzzword. Dransfield (and Chaillan's later statement) clarified that the US Air Force used it to signify technological transformation. The US Army interpreted it as human aspects of the speed of relevance. "The US Navy," Dransfield claimed, "tended to use former Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson's preferred nomenclature of 'high-velocity outcomes' to cover similar aspirations regarding the speed of relevance" (Dransfield 2020). The Department of Defense referred to their cloud-based computing as an example of speed of relevance. Raytheon placed it in an ad. Government contractors included it in their RFPs. And as often happens with buzzwords, they get talked about so much that they lose their higher meaning.

General Mattis is not an AI expert. Neither is General Dunford. But what was profound in their vision is the power of mission relevant and integrated...