Success in modern conflicts does not necessarily go to the side with the better warfighting, per se, but may go to the one that most quickly produces and proliferates a convincing narrative supporting its cause. The ability to develop the desired narrative is a complex endeavor, and one that’s increasingly impacted by artificial intelligence.
Because of its ability to exert global influence, Lawfire contributor Pete Marksteiner argues that America’s entertainment industry is actually a critical component of national power. Consequently, he’s concerned that Hollywood’s resistance to AI-generated content could “pose a political risk of surrendering our critical cultural influence.”
Why? Pete points out that increasingly “foreign adversaries fully embrace AI-accelerated creation.” He fears that, over time, the speed and economy of our adversaries’ AI-enabled content creation will cause the U.S. to suffer “a self-induced retreat from the global stage” through a loss of cultural influence occasioned by an industry that may be becoming too slow and too costly to compete effectively.
Pete calls for a wide-ranging discussion on how to reconcile protecting our human content creators with the threat posed by foreign adversaries who use AI-generated content. Without likewise embracing AI tools, can the U.S. keep up in the information age? Will it be able to develop the means to rapidly and economically develop and deploy materials so vital to cognitive success?
Here’s Pete:
The Cognitive Center of Gravity:
Why the AI Entertainment Debate is a National Security Imperative
by Co. Pete Marksteiner, USAF (Ret.)
With advances in Artificial Intelligence hitting us faster than we can digest, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. In periods of rapid technological disruption, human nature tempts us to focus on the known and the familiar rather than the evolving and the novel.
Right now, the national conversation about AI in entertainment is dominated by a familiar framework: labor versus management. Over the last few years, major entertainment unions have fought hard for collective bargaining agreements that restrict generative AI, aiming to protect human artists from being rendered obsolete by computers. (See e.g., here and here)
On first blush, that sounds entirely reasonable. Who isn’t in favor of protecting human creativity? But by viewing the automation of Hollywood purely through an economic or artistic lens, our lawmakers and voters are missing a massive, potentially very dangerous blind spot.
We are ignoring the soft-power implications of generative technology—and failing to realize that the entertainment industry is a critical component of national power.
AI is an operational imperative
In modern military doctrine, artificial intelligence is no longer treated as an experimental novelty; it is a core force multiplier. From the data-fusion capabilities of Project Maven to autonomous drone swarms, the Pentagon recognizes that AI is an operational imperative for achieving decision superiority.
The doctrinalists get it. In 2023, the Department of Defense updated its Strategy for Operations in the Information Environment, acknowledging that the ability to control the narrative is a critical pillar of national power. (See also here.)
Weaponization of the information space
Meanwhile, adversarial nations are already weaponizing the information space. Congressional hearings, particularly reports from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, routinely detail how foreign regimes manipulate media to project favorable self-images while subtly undermining American credibility. (See e.g., here)
The immediate danger of placing industry-wide, protective brakes on American generative AI is a looming threat of asymmetric cost. If you use generative tools, you can produce high-quality, immersive entertainment at a fraction of traditional costs—with some industry estimates suggesting production expenses could plummet by two-thirds or more.
If the United States legally binds its own entertainment sector to legacy production methods while foreign adversaries fully embrace AI-accelerated creation, we will very likely trigger a self-induced retreat from the global stage. It would be a wash, rinse, and repeat of at least certain aspects of organized labor’s resistance to modernization in the American steel industry forty years ago.
Cognitive center of gravity
But while ceding steel production was an obvious economic gut punch, losing dominance over the global influence machine would be a subtle but even more profound, irreversible blow to America’s position in the Information Age. The movie, television, music, and video game industries are more than juggernaut revenue generators; they constitute the cognitive dimension’s center of gravity.
History is littered with disasters born from a failure to align tactics with advancing technology. We saw it when Civil War generals ordered Napoleonic frontal assaults against the devastating reach of rifled muskets at Pickett’s Charge.
We saw it in August 1914, when the French military’s dogmatic belief in aggressive willpower (élan vital) sent soldiers in bright red trousers charging into German machine-gun fire. And we saw it in World War II, with the German High Command’s myopic failure to recognize that air supremacy was a strategic must-have, rather than a mere support arm for ground troops.
Skeptics today confidently insist that AI will “never” capture the true essence of human storytelling. In so doing, they sound exactly like Lord Kelvin in 1895, who declared with absolute certainty that heavier-than-air flying machines were a physical impossibility—less than a decade before two bicycle mechanics from Ohio with nary a single diploma between them proved him abysmally wrong.
The pace and world-changing trajectory of technological adoption are exceptionally difficult to predict.
Need for wide-ranging discussion
We cannot afford to let our national policy on generative media be written solely by entertainment executives and labor lawyers. (And I say that as a former labor & employment lawyer). The discussion must be urgently expanded to include national security experts, asymmetric warfare strategists, and information operations professionals.
We need a serious, clear-eyed evaluation of the pros and cons of limiting this technology. We must weigh the undeniable value of protecting domestic labor against the geopolitical risk of surrendering our critical cultural influence. If the United States loses its dominance in global entertainment, there is far more at stake than artistic pride and box office revenues—and it’s time we brought the people who understand those stakes to the table.
Colonel USAF (Ret.) served 24 of his nearly 30-year Air Force career as a judge advocate. After retiring from the USAF in 2016, he served another 7 years as the Circuit Executive and Clerk of Court for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
The views expressed by guest authors do not necessarily reflect my views, those of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security, or Duke University. See also here.
Remember what we like to say on Lawfire®: gather the facts, examine the law, evaluate the arguments – and then decide for yourself!
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