Your Excellencies,

Senior Defence officials,

Distinguished Guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Welcome Remarks

Let me first bid everybody here a warm welcome to the 5th Singapore Defence Technology Summit. I know some of you have travelled great distances to reach here, and your presence here is an affirmation that this type of meeting serves purpose for leaders in your field of defence technology.

The Summit has attracted more leaders and participants since its inception. In its inaugural meeting, we started with approximately 50 distinguished leaders from 20 countries. Over the last five years since it began, it has doubled – now 100 top level officials from 40 countries.

This rapid increase in attendance is encouraging because, truth be told, when we held the first Summit, it was not a given that there was such a need. When the Defence Technology leaders within my Ministry pitched it to me, I supported the idea, but more as a pilot. If it did not work, we would not need to hold subsequent ones.

After all, it is not as if we suffer from a lack of meetings, and some meetings are more productive than others. What persuaded me to say “yes” to my Defence Technology leaders was my own “Oppenheimer effect”. Let me explain. All of you here would be familiar with his personal story in creating the first atomic bomb and his quote, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. We are also familiar with his life story post-discovery – how Oppenheimer became an advocate for international arms control and nuclear regulation. He opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb, and believed that an arms race with such destructive weapons would be dangerous and destabilising. He was not alone. Other scientists who played key roles in nuclear research like Albert Einstein and Leo Szilárd too opposed the development and use of nuclear weapons. Instead, they became leading advocates for nuclear disarmament and controls, only time will tell if they were right.

This difficult tension with new discoveries – new technology on one hand improving our lives while on the other potentially causing harm – is a recurrent theme in the progress of mankind. From mankind’s earliest days when fire was discovered, that dilemma existed of a technology that could produce polar opposites – health through warmth and cooking or death and injury by burning. You could use fire to have a nice barbeque or rain fire on your enemies.

Even now, this dilemma of progress versus peril stays with us. I doubt if it will ever cease. Today we grapple with the same conundrum applied to gene editing, gain of function research, social and digital media, quantum computing and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

I hope that this summit, in addition to being a platform to share scientific and technological know-how, also provides an avenue for you to have a voice in the use and safeguards for new discoveries. Because time and again, it often seemed that those who created or discovered the new technology were often left out in that conversation or called in late.

Scientists and engineers are the creators of new technology, but after the creation they oddly were treated as mere mid-wives and gave up or lost control of the parenting of the child. This meeting alone will not solve all ethical and social dilemmas that new technology brings. I think that would be too idealistic and unrealistic.

What would be a fair expectation is that the discoverers and creators should form a view among themselves, because often the control and appropriate harness of new technology requires deep technological expertise. Too often, those who are not proficient in the use of technology become the prime movers in its wanton application.

We ask ourselves — for social media applications, if safeguards had been introduced and legislated by law, before they (social media applications) were used by billions in the global population, could we have avoided the ills that we witness today. Not all problems related to social media use would disappear, but we would have at least protected the vulnerable like minors. By the time regulators wanted to seriously introduce measures to control social media, it was deemed too late – the horse had bolted.

We see that process being played out in the use of AI in both general and military affairs now. I suspect that if technical experts like you are called in ab initio with the same speaking rights as others, a more virtuous and practical outcome may emerge. Even then, I am not certain that the AI horse has not similarly bolted.

Global Challenges

The need for those conversations takes on an added urgency as the World has become increasingly fragmented and contested. Primacy and self-sufficiency, whether of individual countries or blocs are now the more dominant calculus. In that context, the global commons of limiting power, destruction, collateral damage, proportionality, even no first strike or restraint, lack a champion or moving spirit.

Evolutions On the Battlefield

The cataclysmic dangers of nuclear arsenals, chemical and biological weapons, cyber-attacks on essential services, disinformation campaigns, and AI-enabled weapons are all too clear. But in our fractious World, the voices of those who can put into place these guard rails have been rendered sotto voce, if heard at all.

Outcomes of these Challenges

This has not been a prominent role expected of Defence Technology leaders like yourself, who are often called to advise only after the challenges arise. To me, this anomaly needs to be addressed.

None here are naïve to believe that the competition to acquire first new and more powerful technology will abate. The ongoing AI race is a clear and present example with the US, China and the EU putting in large investments to come up on top. Not only will this AI race between countries persist, it will intensify. But the global commons here – whether in AI, nuclear weapons or others that needs to be safeguarded, is the survival of the human race. To paraphrase The Good Book, what does it benefit anyone, or any country, if it wins the race only to imperil humankind?

Efforts by MINDEF

I have put before you lofty goals and difficult dilemmas as an appetiser before dinner. I do so out of great respect for practitioners with deep technical expertise. I believe that those who are anointed among us to receive “the fire from the Gods” as it were, new technology to revolutionise humankind’s lives over the centuries, also feel the burden of the ultimate responsibility for its continued well-being.

Conclusion

Let me thank DSTA for organising this 5th edition of the summit, to create this platform in bringing you together – representatives from governments, industries and academia. DSTA plays a crucial role in acquiring and developing technological solutions for my Ministry and the Singapore Armed Forces. This year, they celebrate their 25th anniversary, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you in DSTA for your hard work in building a strong defence for Singapore.

Let me wish you and your deliberations in this meeting productive, and hope that you will guide us all to a better and safer future. Thank you.