Tag: perpetual war

The Threat Of “Killer Robots” Is Real And Closer Than You Might Think

From self-driving cars, to digital assistants, artificial intelligence (AI) is fast becoming an integral technology in our lives today. But this same technology that can help to make our day-to-day life easier is also being incorporated into weapons for use in combat situations.

Weaponised AI features heavily in the security strategies of the US, China and Russia. And some existing weapons systems already include autonomous capabilities based on AI, developing weaponised AI further means machines could potentially make decisions to harm and kill people based on their programming, without human intervention.

Countries that back the use of AI weapons claim it allows them to respond to emerging threats at greater than human speed. They also say it reduces the risk to military personnel and increases the ability to hit targets with greater precision. But outsourcing use-of-force decisions to machines violates human dignity. And it’s also incompatible with international law which requires human judgement in context.

Indeed, the role that humans should play in use of force decisions has been an increased area of focus in many United Nations (UN) meetings. And at a recent UN meeting, states agreed that it’s unacceptable on ethical and legal grounds to delegate use-of-force decisions to machines – “without any human control whatsoever”.

But while this may sound like good news, there continues to be major differences in how states define “human control”.

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Trump appears to threaten aliens with ‘military the likes of which we’ve never had before’

Donald Trump did not deny media reporting that the US Department of Defense has set up a task force to examine “unidentified alien phenomena” after the Air Force released a video earlier this year showing pilots flying by what many people have speculated was a UFO.

“Can you explain why the Department of Defense has set up a UFO task force?” Fox News host Maria Bartiromo asked Mr Trump in an interview on Sunday.

“Are there UFOs?” she asked.

“Well, I’m going to have to check on that. I mean, I’ve heard that. I heard that two days ago. So I’ll check on that. I’ll take a good, strong look at that,” Mr Trump said.

He then quickly segued into a boast about US military might, which some people on Twitter took to be the president threatening aliens with human weaponry.

“I will tell you this, we now have created a military the likes of which we’ve never had before, in terms of equipment. The equipment that we have, the weapons that we have, and hopefully — hope to god we never have to use them,” Mr Trump said.

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SPACEX IS BUILDING A MILITARY ROCKET TO SHIP WEAPONS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD

SpaceX and the Pentagon just signed a contract to jointly develop a new rocket that can launch into space and deliver up to 80 tons of cargo and weaponry anywhere in the world — in just one hour.

Tests on the rocket are expected to begin as early as next year, Business Insider reports. It’s expected to shuttle weapons around the world 15 times faster than existing aircraft, like the US C-17 Globemaster.

“Think about moving the equivalent of a C-17 payload anywhere on the globe in less than an hour,” General Stephen Lyons, head of US Transportation Command said at a Wednesday conference.

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VOTE BIDEN GET ‘CROOKED’: Hillary Auditions For SecDef In 5000-Word Pro-Biden Article Which Admits Massive Defense Jobs Cuts Plan

FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE, U.S. SENATOR, AND BENGHAZI BELITTLER HILLARY CLINTON HAS PENNED A 5000-WORD OPINION EDITORIAL FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS MAGAZINE – A SCARCELY-READ YET IMPORTANT FOREIGN POLICY INDUSTRY PUBLICATION. THE ARTICLE CLEARLY AIMS TO ESTABLISH CLINTON AS A POTENTIAL BIDEN PICK FOR SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL CABINET POSITIONS IN THE U.S. GOVERNMENT.

The Trump campaign will surely see the audition by the very unpopular Hillary Clinton as a gift in the final days of the U.S. Presidential campaign. The idea of voting for Joe Biden and waking up with Hillary Clinton will send chills up the spine of even many Democrats, to whom both Clinton and Biden represent an old, tired, globalist worldview at odds with a “progressive” or even populist Democrat trajectory.

And Clinton appears to know this, too.

Her article contains a number of veiled mea culpas over globalism, though she repeatedly lumps the blame at Donald Trump’s door for many of the problems caused – in a national security sense – by his predecessors:

“For decades, policymakers have thought too narrowly about national security and failed to internalize—or fund—a broader approach that encompasses threats not just from intercontinental ballistic missiles and insurgencies but also from cyberattacks, viruses, carbon emissions, online propaganda, and shifting supply chains. There is no more poignant example than the current administration’s failure to grasp that a tourist carrying home a virus can be as dangerous as a terrorist planting a pathogen. President Barack Obama’s national security staff left a 69-page playbook for responding to pandemics, but President Donald Trump’s team ignored it, focusing instead on the threat of bioterrorism.”

The article even critiques U.S. reliance of China, a key part of Donald Trump’s platform in both 2016 and 2020. She writes:

“[T]he pandemic has underscored how much the United States relies on China and other countries for vital imports—not just lifesaving medical supplies but also raw materials such as rare-earth minerals and electronic equipment that powers everything from telecommunications to weapons systems.”

And while also appearing to lambast her own side’s heartlessness over job losses – she calls the left’s “learn to code” mantra “fanciful and condescending” – she also gives away that a Democratic plan for the “modernization” of the U.S. military would lead to massive job losses:

“No one should pretend that every defense job can be saved or replaced. Cutting hundreds of billions of dollars in military spending over the next decade will inevitably inflict a painful toll on families and communities across the country.”

The admission will further serve as a boon to the Trump campaign seeking to bolster its support amongst military families after a fake news onslaught wherein The Atlantic magazine invented sources in order to drive a wedge between the President and his traditional base.

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Secretive Tonopah Test Range Airport Had A Mysteriously Busy Week In September

The secretive Tonopah Test Range Airport, located in the northwestern reaches of the Nevada Test and Training Range, the sprawling amalgam of restricted airspace that makes up much of Southern Nevada, usually appears to be a very quiet place in daytime satellite images, but once in a while that calm is broken. This was the case during the week of September 19th. The highly secure installation hosted a number of uncommon aircraft throughout the week in what appeared to be some sort of large test or training event. 

Satellite imagery dated September 23rd, 2020 that The War Zone obtained from Planet Labs offers a peek into just how busy the remote installation was during this time period. What are usually empty ramps, aside from a couple ‘Janet’ 737 airliners that shuttle workers to and from the installation and Las Vegas’ McCarran International Airport daily, became far more cluttered on that week. A number of uncommon visitors dotted the ramp, as well as a more common one—the base’s resident F-117 Nighthawks. The F-117s spent their formative, classified, years at Tonopah and were retired there in 2008, cocooned five to a hangar. Over the last decade, a handful of them have become remarkably active in the test and aggressor role. 

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Defense to Outfit and Steer Military Dogs with Augmented Reality Goggles

U.S. military dogs might one day be equipped with augmented reality goggles that their human servicemember partners can remotely provide guiding commands through during dangerous rescue operations or explosive device hunts.

Seattle-based small business Command Sight produced a technological prototype that could enhance troops’ safety by enabling exactly that, and some say it could fundamentally transform how the U.S. military’s canines are deployed down the line. Having completed a phase I project developing the prototype via a Small Business Innovation Research, or SBIR, program steered by the Army Research Office, the company was selected for funding through phase II, to further refine the potential product. 

“The military working dog community is very excited about the potential of this technology,” ARO senior scientist Dr. Stephen Lee said in an announcement published Tuesday. “[It] really cuts new ground and opens up possibilities that we haven’t considered yet.”

When it comes to heeding instructions from the people that lead them, military working dogs generally follow hand signals, laser pointers, or walkie talkies and cameras strapped to their own bodies—all of which can lead to confusion for the animals or risk of unwanted exposure for humans. But the new prototype offers human handlers the ability to see from the dog’s point of view, and a means to give commands while staying completely out of sight. 

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