Transforming Canadian National Security for the Digital Era
As recent conflicts in Azerbaijan, Ethiopia and Ukraine demonstrate, a swarm of relatively cheap, autonomous and semi-autonomous drones can be extremely effective in overwhelming conventional military targets. The combination of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and new space-based industries suggests that we have entered a new era in military conflict — one that resembles science fiction more than the mass industrial society of the past century.
Canada’s current defence policy, Strong, Secure, Engaged, partly reflects this understanding in its call to adapt the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) to a changing technology landscape. In fact, the Department of National Defence (DND) has already begun incorporating a range of strategic military technologies into our national defence network. These include remotely piloted drones, cybertechnologies, stealth fighter jets, and space-based surveillance assets with the purpose of evolving the Canadian military for a digital era.
Much as oil and steel set the terms for the Industrial Age, so data and robotics will now set the terms for the Age of AI. These technologies are generating new geopolitical realities and a new global balance of power. As autonomous machines, renewable energy infrastructure, quantum computing, augmented brain-machine interfaces and space-based weapons come to the fore, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) are under pressure to adapt and evolve.
Indeed, what is clear is that we are living through a period of transition between two epochs: an industrial era characterized by the dominance of the United States, and a new digital era characterized by the rise of a multipolar global order. These emerging and disruptive technologies (EDTs) are not only reshaping the nature of national security but also altering the speed and scope of military conflict.
In response to this changing security landscape, the Government of Canada has become increasingly focused on the need for constant and sustained innovation. Given that much of technological innovation we see today is now industry-led, public-private partnerships have become critical to national security planning. For DND/CAF to advance a military tailored to the digital age, government, industry and academia will need to collaborate in a more integrated fashion. What this means is that government processes must adapt to accelerated innovation cycles even as government and industry collaborate across a shared technology ecosystem.
This kind of multi-domain collaboration has historically been defined in terms of a “national system of innovation” (NSI) (OECD1997). Building a robust Canadian innovation ecosystem will mean much more extensive public-private collaboration and the continuous reskilling, training and incubation of knowledge and resources. This will require reciprocal flows of technology and information among people and institutions. Developing this kind of effective NSI necessarily depends on institutional actors working together across shared projects and shared domains.
Of course technological innovation is not enough. Alongside the need for institutional changes, the Canadian government and DND/CAF will need to balance a capacity for hard power with the needs of a changing multilateral landscape. Beyond the era of US predominance, the twenty-first century is now being shaped by a multipolar order characterized by regional competition and a post-Bretton Woods order. Multilateral cooperation will be vital to ensuring peace and security in this uncertain time. Information sharing, academic exchange and multilateral dialogue will be critical to helping the world’s nation-states and their militaries develop a better understanding of one another’s capabilities and intentions. As a global middle power, Canada could be a major partner in driving this effort.
