Space and cyberspace
Two interesting headlines today:
-Kyrgyzstan under cyberattack: Details are sketchy, but Russian hackers appear to have knocked Kyrgyzstan entirely off the Internet, engaging in the same DDoS attacks that they deployed in Estonia and Georgia. As of last night, the American air base in Kyrgyzstan was no longer receiving emails, which is presumably the point, given that the U.S. and Russia are jockeying for position/negotiating in Central Asia as the U.S. tries to secure supply lines into Afghanistan that don’t involve Pakistan. Regardless of the extent of the attack, geography dictates that Russia has the upper hand here, and this is their way of reminding the U.S. of that fact.
-Iran launches satellite: As Danger Room is quick to point out, the details need to be taken with a grain of salt, as Iran scores high on the Bullshit Meter vis-a-vis anything involving missile capabilities. Nonetheless, the satellite is being tracked even as I write this, meaning that Iran’s weapons are on the verge of global reach. The targeting problem will be a lot trickier, but in the meantime: score one for the Persians. Xerxes would be proud.
Tags: ballistic missile, cyberwar, iran, kyrgyzstan, russia, satellite
February 3rd, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Hay, off topic, I just heard your paperback book talked about on Dragon Page Cover to Cover #346B
February 3rd, 2009 at 6:11 pm
good to know! and hey, everybody check out Gail’s website!
http://gailcarriger.com/
her first novel comes out this fall, and she is going to be HUGE. trust me on this.
February 21st, 2009 at 7:54 am
A screen grab of a YouTube video of a multiple-kill-vehicle, an orbital robot designed to shoot down enemy ballistic missiles from space.
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Autonomous military robots that will fight future wars must be programmed to live by a strict warrior code, or the world risks untold atrocities at their steely hands.
The stark warning — which includes discussion of a “Terminator”-style scenario in which robots turn on their human masters — is part of a hefty report funded by and prepared for the U.S. Navy’s high-tech and secretive Office of Naval Research.
The report, the first serious work of its kind on military robot ethics, envisages a fast-approaching era where robots are smart enough to make battlefield decisions that are at present the preserve of humans.
Eventually, it notes, robots could come to display significant cognitive advantages over Homo sapiens soldiers.
“There is a common misconception that robots will do only what we have programmed them to do,” Patrick Lin, the chief compiler of the report, said. “Unfortunately, such a belief is sorely outdated, harking back to a time when … programs could be written and understood by a single person.”
The reality, Dr. Lin said, was that modern programs included millions of lines of code and were written by teams of programmers, none of whom knew the entire program.
Accordingly, no individual could accurately predict how the various portions of large programs would interact without extensive testing in the field — an option that may either be unavailable or deliberately sidestepped by the designers of fighting robots….
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,496309,00.html#
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well what these people missed and terminator was based on – the central AI, skynet, became self aware and was so intelligent, advanced, plugged in, networked to everything “trusted to run it all” …
I like those killer satellites for missile defense though whoo hoo (see pic at link)
(sci fi geek in me)
February 22nd, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Very cool stuff. . . you should check out PW Singer’s book, WIRED FOR WAR: I’ll be posting on it shortly . .