Greater Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce Business Journal Q1 2015 | Page 47

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report on those futuristic technologies that are already over the crest
of the hype cycle like “big data” and “augmented reality,” technologies
that have reached the point of investor saturation long before becoming
household names. Inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil posits that, as a
result of information technology, the rate of technological advancement will
increase by a factor of 5.6 per linear decade.
Without validating Kurzweil’s figures, Welby said that, broadly speaking,
it’s a problem that the military is aware of. “The reality is that we’re not
likely to get a 40-year run out of any technology,” he acknowledged. “You
won’t have a 40-year advantage.”
The best bets include more capable robotic systems, commonly known by
the shorthand, autonomy. “The emergence of autonomy is a real shaper,”
of the military approach to securing technological dominance in the
future, said Welby. “The ability of systems to react to their environment…
autonomy is an emerging technology with strong applications,” he said.
The request for information lists five broad areas of exploration: space,
undersea, air strike, missile defense and “other technology-driven
concepts.”
Does it make sense to plan that far into future given the rapid pace
of technological progress? Mathew Burrows, the director of strategic
foresight at the Atlantic Council and author of The Future Declassified:
Megatrends That Will Undo the World Unless We Take Action (Palgrave,
2014) applauded the effort as timely, if not overdue. His only criticism:
“The five focus areas seem very constraining. There will be a lot of
emerging technologies that don’t fall neatly into one or the other of the
categories. Hopefully [the Defense Department] will look beyond their five
constructs to see how emerging technologies—that don’t fall neatly into
one of them—could transform the battlefield of the future.”

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