Exponential Growth Systems and the Defense Risk of Falling Behind

Defense and dual-use texhnologies

Good morning,

"How did you go bankrupt?" Bill asked.

"Two ways," Mike said.  "Gradually and then suddenly."

This exchange from Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises captures how exponential systems progress.  Technology development usually progresses in a very similar manner.  Take AI for example.  AI developed very gradually through from the 1930s through about 2010.  It was marked by cycles of optimism broken-up with 'winters.'  By the 2010s, progress looked marginal compared to where we started decades before.  Then, BOOM!  We hit a tipping point and things accelerated rapidly. 

Mother Jones magazine published an article that calculated how long it would take to fill Lake Michigan on an exponential basis. The question posed was this: How long would it take to fill Lake Michigan if you started with an ounce of water and doubled it every 18 months?

The answer is that the lake would be completely filled after 85 years. But the interesting thing about it, from an exponential standpoint, is that al…