Was just looking through a podcast transcript from late March this year with Dr Guerci. Seeing there is some chatter on him and ISL.
I've pasted part of it after the intros and some other discussion on the Fed budget, defence spending etc but the full thing is:
In this episode of From the Crow’s Nest, host Ken Miller talks to author Dr. Joseph Guerci about the evolution and outlook for cognitive electronic warfare systems. Dr. Guerci is an internationally...
fromthecrowsnest.transistor.fm
What I do find is that Dr Guerci is def a fan of neuromorphic, definitely likes BRN and Akida and I suspect he was probably one of our partners / customers asking for the additional functionalities of Akida 2.0 and TENNS from some of his comments around tailoring it for their needs.
Personally do hope that ISL is the partner as they have laid so much of the ground work it appears, unless there is a parallel NDA giant (possibly) that has been doing the same behind the scenes.
Also get an insight in how time consuming it is to develop and also get through the Govt redtape.
I've bold some parts discussing us and neuromorphic in general.
Enjoy.
So we're talking about how many things we can do with AI.
I wanna talk a little bit more, kind of take a step back, and continue talking a little bit about how AI works.
And you had a slide in your webinar presentation that we were talking about
the relationship with AI, and there's an aspect to AI that's using neuromorphic
computing and neuromorphic chips,
and we were talking about this.
This concept just blew my mind, because I really never heard the term before.
So I wanted to kind of, I wanna ask you to talk a little bit about this.
What is this piece of the puzzle, and what does it it hold in terms of the future for artificial intelligence, and then feeding into cognitive radar and EW?
- So cognitive radar, EW, live and die by embedded systems, right?
They don't have the luxury of living in a laboratory with thousands of acres
of computers, right?
They have to take all their resources on a plane or at UAB or whatever platform and go into battle.
And so to really leverage the power of AI,
you need to implement them on efficient embedded computing systems.
Right now, that means FPGAs, GPUs,
and those things are, when all is said and done, you know, all the peripherals required, the ruggedization, the MIL-SPEC, you're talking kilograms and kilowatts.
And as I pointed out, there is a rather quiet revolutionary part to AI that's perhaps even biggervthan all the hullabaloo about ChatGPT, and that's neuromorphic chips.
So neuromorphic chips don't implement
traditional digital flip-flop circuits, things like that.
Essentially they actually, in silicon, create neurons with interconnects.
And the whole point of a neural network
is the weighting that goes onto those interconnects from layer to layer.
And the interesting thing about that
is you've got companies like BrainChip in Australia, right, that is not by any stretch
using the most sophisticated foundry
to achieve ridiculous line lists like conventional FPGAs and GPUs do.
Instead it's just a different architecture.
But why is that such a big deal?
Well, in the case of BrainChip as well as Intel and IBM, these chips can be the
size of a postage stamp.
And because they're implementing what are called spiking neural networks, or SNNs, they only draw power when
there's a change of state, and that's a very short amount of time, and it's relatively low-power.
So at the end of the day, you have something the size of a postage stamp
that's implementing a very, very sophisticated convolutional neural network solution with grams and milliwatts as opposed to kilograms and kilowatts.
And so to me, this is the revolution.
This is dawning. This is the thing that changes everything.
So now you see this little UAV coming in,
and you don't think for a second that it could do, you know, the most sophisticated electronic warfare functions, for example.
Pulse sorting, feature identification, geolocation, all these things that require,
you know, thousands of lines of code
and lots of high-speed embedded computing, all of a sudden it's done on a postage stamp.
That's the crazy thing.
And by the way, in my research we've done it. we've implemented pulse, the interleaving, we've implemented, you know, ATR, specifically on the BrainChip
from Australia, by the way.
So really quite amazing.
- So where is this technology?
You said we've already done it.
We have a pretty good understanding of what it can do.
And like you mentioned, you know, a scenario where whether it's a UAV or whatever system, I mean, something the
size of a postage stamp, it completely changes size, weight, power, all those considerations, and makes almost anything a potential host for that capability.
- Yeah.
- What are some of the next steps in this,
call it a revolution or rapid evolution of technology?
I mean, because we obviously, you know,
a couple years ago there was a CHIPS Act, you know, trying to make sure that we, in the development of a domestic
chip production capability, Congress passed a CHIPS Act to kind of help spur
on domestic foundries, domestic capability to produce chips.
And does this kind of fall into kind of the...
Is this benefiting from that type of activity?
Is this part of the development that's happened through the CHIPS Act?
Is there something more that we need to be doing to spur on this innovation?
- Well, the CHIPS Act is a good
thing domestically speaking.
And by the way, part of the CHIPS Act,
it is focused on neuromorphic chips, by the way, so that's good to know.
However, the real culprit is the age-old valley of death, bridging the valley of death.
And by the way, I spent seven years at DARPA, and even at DARPA with the
funds I had available to me, bridging the gap between S&T and Programs of Record is still a herculean maze of biblical proportions.
And so while you'll hear lots of nice-sounding words coming out of OSD and other places, saying, you know, "We
gotta move things along.
We gotta spur small business. We gotta..."
it's all S&T funding.
There still is an extraordinary impediment
to getting new technologies into Programs of Record.
And I, you know, I'm not the only one saying that, so don't take my word for it.
I can tell you lots of horror stories, and I've done it.
I was successful while at DARPA.
So my stuff is on the F-35 and F-22, for example, and other classified systems.
I mean, I know what it takes to get it done.
Unfortunately, though there's a lot of lip service about overcoming that barrier,
it still has changed very littlei n the 20 years since I've been successful at DARPA in transitioning.
So I'm sorry, but that's biggest impediment.
And I know it's not a technical thing, and I know there's lots of-
- But here's what concerns me about that,
is, you know, the valley of death, I mean, that's been in our terminology, in our lexicon for decades, like you say, going way back, you know, even before we even under, you know, back in the nineties and eighties when the technology, while
advanced at the time, pales in comparison to what we can do today,
the process hasn't changed.
And so like if we had a valley of death back then, how are we ever going to bridge it today with as fast as technology is moving, as fast as the solutions we
need to prototype and field.
I mean, you mentioned it's herculean.
I mean, it's almost beyond that it seems,
because our system hasn't really changed that much over the past 20, 30 years.
- Yeah, so maybe it's ironic, I don't know the right word, but on the S&T side, OSD, the service labs, you know, I would say that they're pretty forward-leaning and they're making good investments.
The problem is getting into a Program of Record is where the rubber hits the road,
and where things get fielded.
And so you look at the S&T budgets, you look at the number of small businesses
getting DOD S&T funds, and you could almost say, "Well, they're a success," right?
I mean, we're giving small businesses,
they're coming up with great things.
But then look at how much of that actually ends up in a Program of Record.
And let me just be clear.
I don't blame the Programs of Record,
because the game is stacked against them.
They, very often, especially if it's newer technology, they are having lots of problems with getting the baseline system fielded.
There's cost overruns, there's scheduling issues, and so they're already with
2.95 strikes against them, and now all of a sudden you want to on-ramp and
entirely new capability when they're already behind the eight ball.
That's just impossible, unless the whole culture of Programs of Record changes
where, for example, you structure it so that every year you have to answer
how are you dealing with obsolescence?
How are you keeping up?
Where are the on-ramps?
How successful were you with these on-ramps, these upgrades, all of these things?
Because until you fix that, I don't care how much money you spend on S&T, you're not gonna get fielded.
- From a technology standpoint, let's just, you know, assume for a second that we make some progress in the policy side of the equation as it pertains to acquisition
and the valley of death.
From a technology perspective, you've been following this for 20 years.
You know, where are some of the opportunities that are before you that you're like, this is the direction we need to go in, this is something that excites you
or keeps you awake at night in a positive way, of like this is promising and it's gonna be your next pursuit?
- Well, we definitely have to embrace cognitive systems for sure.
I mean, I don't think there's anyone out there that would say we don't need that kind of flexibility and adaptability on the fly.
Now, we can argue over just how much cognition we need and the flavors.
That's fine. So there's that, right?
Let's all just accept that.
And then I think you touched on this earlier, you know, there's a big push across all the services on what's called the JSE, which is the Joint Simulation Environment, which is this grandiose vision for having multi-user, multiplayer,
high fidelity training environments,
synthetic environments, which, by the way, can include live over sim, so that our systems become much more realistic
and reflective of whatt hey're really gonna see when they get out into the real world.
Again, I come back to lots of good things going on on the S&T side.
You almost can't, you know, you really can't argue with it, but that transition to field its systems and Programs of Record is still very much broken, and that's just a fact.
And it's not just me saying that.
You can ask anyone who's in the business
of trying to transition technology to the Department of Defense, and they'll tell you the same thing.
So, you know, again, S&T community,
doing a great job, I think, generally speaking, your DARPAs, your AFRLs, all of these, but that transition piece is just continuing.
And by the way, do our adversaries have the same issues?
Some do, some don't, you know?
And this technology I'm talking about, neuromorphic chips, that's available to the world.
I mean, BrainChip is an Australian company.
There's no ITAR restrictions, so.
- Well, and also I think it speaks to the multidisciplinary approach to technology today.
I mean, the neuromorphic chip, I mean, it has military applications you can obviously use it for, but, I mean, you're gonna find this in all various sectors
of an economy and society and what we use in everyday life, and so, you know-
- So Ken, let me just say that the neuromorphic chip that BrainChip makes from Australia had nothing to do with electronic warfare.
It's designed to do image processing.
So one of the things we had to overcome
was take our electronic warfare I/Q data,
in-phase and quadrature RF measurement data, and put it into a format to make it look like an image so that the BrainChip could actually digest it and do something with it.
So you're absolutely right.
I mean, these chips are not being designed for us in the electronic warfare community, but they're so powerful that we were still able to get it to work.
Imagine if they put a little effort into tailoring it to our needs.
Then you have a revolution.
So, sorry to interrupt you there, but I just want...
You made a point and it's very valid, you know.
- It's valid. It's valid, it's important.
I mean, it goes to just the possibilities that are out there.
- Well, and to amplify that point, all the advanced capabilities that we have in our RFsystems, radar and EW, most of that is driven by the wireless community, the trillion-dollar wireless community compared to a paltry radar and EW ecosystem.
So, you know, what's happening in the commercial world is where, and leveraging, you know, commercial off-the-shelf technology is a gargantuan piece of
staying up and keeping up, and by the way, addressing obsolescence as well, right?
If you have a piece of proprietary
hardware from the 1980s, good luck, you know, with obsolescence, right?
- Well, that, and also hopefully, you know,
as we move down this path on standards
and open systems and so forth, some of that will work its way in.
We can adapt some of thatbso that as we struggle less with obsolescence in the future than we do now.
- We hope.
- Hopefully, yes. I mean-
- Again-
- We'll see.
But, I mean, I would think that's the idea.
- I mean, look at the day-to-day pressures
that Programs of Record are under.
So I'm not gonna get into all kinds of details here, but we had a capability
that was vetted by the program offices
and was developed under SBIRS, and went all the wayt hrough to a Phase III SBIR.
We have flight-qualified software to bring this much-needed capability to the war fighter.
This is all a true story.
And all of a sudden the program ran into scheduling and budgetary constraints,
so they had a jettison the on-ramps,
and so a capability that was vetted was a really important capability, just got thrown to the curb because of the everyday problems that Programs of Record run into, and that's not how they get judged, right?
They're judged on getting that baseline system over...
Look, the F-35 was just recently declared operational, what, a month ago?
You gotta be kiddin' me.
- Well, Joe, I think this is a good spot to, I mean, I feel like if we keep talking we can keep going inl ayer and layer and layer,
and I don't wanna put our listeners through that, but I think a good consolation prize is to have you back on
the show in the future, and we can go a little bit deeper into this, but I do really appreciate you taking some time to talk about this, 'cause this is a topic as of,
you know, really 24 hours ago, I realized how often I just use the word, and I never really understood the depth of the definition of what the words I was using,
so I really appreciate you coming on the show, kind of helping me understand this better, and hopefully our listeners as well.
- Thank you, Ken.
You had great questions, great interview.
And let me give a shout out to AOC. Great organization.
I'm personally, and my company's a big supporter of AOC and what you guys are doing, so you're part of the solution, not part of the problem.
- We appreciate that, and, you know, appreciate all that you've done for us
in terms of helping us understand this really complex topic.
And really I do say this honestly,
I do hope to have you back on the show here, and there's no shortage of topics of conversation for us, so I appreciate you joining me.
- Thanks again, Ken.
- That will conclude this episode of "From the Crow's Nest."
I'd like to thank my guest, Dr. Joe Guerci,
for joining me for this discussion.
Also, don't forget to review, share, and follow this podcast.
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