https://www.globalresearch.ca/assessing-dangers-emerging-military-technologies-nuclear-instability/5807835
Assessing the Dangers: Emerging Military Technologies and Nuclear (In)Stability
In commencing work on this document, I attended the Kalaris
Intelligence Conference at Georgetown University in September 2019.
Among the featured speakers at the conference, which focused on the
military applications of artificial intelligence (AI),
was Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, then-director of the Pentagon’s Joint
Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC). After expounding for 30 minutes
on the benefits of utilizing AI for military purposes, Shanahan opened
the floor for questions. Quickly raising my hand, I inquired, “I
understand your enthusiasm about exploiting the benefits of AI, but do
you have any doubts about employing AI in computerized nuclear
command-and-control systems?”
“You will find no stronger proponent of the integration of AI capabilities writ large into the Department of Defense,” he responded, “but there is one area where I pause, and it has to do with nuclear command and control.” Given the immaturity of technology today, “We have to be very careful. [You need to] give us a lot of time to test and evaluate.”
This dichotomy between the impulse to weaponize AI as rapidly as possible and the deep anxiety about the risks in doing so runs throughout the official discourse on what are called “emerging technologies”—which, in addition to artificial intelligence, include robotics, autonomy, cyber, and hypersonics. The military utilization of these technologies, as claimed by their proponents, will provide U.S. military forces with a significant advantage in future wars against other well- armed major powers. At the same time, analysts within and outside the defense establishment have warned about potentially catastrophic consequences arising from their indiscriminate use.
The same dichotomy arises, for example, in the Final Report of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, submitted to Congress and the White House in February 2021. “Our armed forces’ competitive military-technical advantage could be lost within the next decade if they do not accelerate the adoption of AI across their missions,” the report warns in its opening pages. To ensure this does not occur, the armed forces must “achieve a state of military AI readiness by 2025.” Much of the rest of the 756-page report focuses on proposals for achieving this status—many of which have since been incorporated into legislation or Pentagon directives. But once one reads deep into the report, they will find misgivings of the sort expressed by General Shanahan.
“While the Commission believes that properly designed, tested, and utilized AI-enabled and autonomous weapon systems will bring substantial military and even humanitarian benefit,” the report states, “the unchecked global use of such systems potentially risks unintended conflict escalation and crisis instability.” In recognition of this danger, the report devoted four pages to a few modest steps for reducing the risk of such dangers, but buried them in a long list of recommendations for accelerating the weaponization of AI.
We at the Arms Control Association believe that appeals for the military utilization of emerging technologies and assessments of their destabilizing and escalatory dangers require a better balance. While not denying that certain advanced technologies may provide potential military benefits, this primer aims to balance the scales by way of a thorough and rigorous appraisal of the likely downsides of such utilization. In particular, it focuses on the threats to “strategic stability” posed by the military use of these technologies—that is, the risk that their use will result in the accidental, unintended, or premature use of nuclear weapons in a great-power crisis.....
Executive Summary
Increasingly in recent years, the major powers have sought to exploit advanced technologies— artificial intelligence (AI), autonomy, cyber, and hypersonics, among others—for military purposes, with potentially far-ranging, dangerous consequences. Similar to what occurred when chemical and nuclear technologies were first applied to warfare, many analysts believe that the military utilization of AI and other such “emerging technologies” will revolutionize warfare, making obsolete the weapons and the strategies of the past. In accordance with this outlook, the U.S. Department of Defense is allocating ever- increasing sums to research on these technologies and their application to military use, as are the militaries of the other major powers.
But even as the U.S. military and those of other countries accelerate the exploitation of new technologies for military use, many analysts have cautioned against proceeding with such haste until more is known about the inadvertent and hazardous consequences of doing so. Analysts worry, for example, that AI-enabled systems may fail in unpredictable ways, causing unintended human slaughter or uncontrolled escalation.
Of particular concern to arms control analysts is the potential impact of emerging technologies on “strategic stability,” or a condition in which nuclear- armed states eschew the first use of nuclear weapons in a crisis. The introduction of weapons employing AI and other emerging technologies could endanger strategic stability by blurring the distinction between conventional and nuclear attack, leading to the premature use of nuclear weapons.
Animated by such concerns, arms control advocates and citizen activists in many countries have sought to slow the weaponization of AI and other emerging technologies or to impose limits of various sorts on their battlefield employment. For example, state parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) have considered proposals to ban the development and the deployment of lethal autonomous weapons systems—or “killer robots,” as they are termed by critics. Other approaches to the regulation of emerging technologies, including a variety of unilateral and multilateral measures, have also advanced in recent years.
AI and Autonomous Weapons Systems
Among the most prominent applications of emerging technologies to military use is the widespread introduction of autonomous weapons systems— devices that combine AI software with combat platforms of various sorts (ships, tanks, planes, and so on) to identify, track, and attack enemy targets on their own. Typically, these systems incorporate software that determines the parameters of their operation, such as the geographical space within which they can function and the types of target they may engage, and under what circumstances.
At present, each branch of the U.S. military, and the forces of the other major powers, are developing— and in some cases fielding—several families of autonomous combat systems, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), unmanned surface vessels (USVs), and unmanned undersea vessels (UUVs).
The U.S. Navy, for example, intends to employ a fleet of USVs and UUVs to conduct reconnaissance operations in contested areas and, if war breaks out, launch antiship and land-attack missiles against enemy targets. The U.S. Air Force has embraced a “loyal wingman” approach, whereby armed UAVs will help defend manned aircraft when flying in contested airspace by attacking enemy fighters. The U.S. Army seeks to reduce the dangers to its frontline troops by developing a family of robotic combat systems, including, eventually, a robotic tank. Russian and Chinese forces are developing and deploying unmanned systems with similar characteristics.
The development and the deployment of lethal autonomous weapons systems like these raise significant moral and legal challenges. To begin with, such devices are being empowered to employ lethal force against enemy targets, including human beings, without significant human oversight—moves that run counter to the widely-shared moral and religious principle that only humans can take the life of another human. Critics also contend that the weapons will never be able to abide by the laws of war and international humanitarian law, as spelled out in the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the Geneva Convention and 1949. These statutes require that warring parties distinguish between combatants and non-combatants when conducting military operations and employ only as much force as required to achieve a specific military objective. Proponents of autonomous weapons claim that the systems will, in time, prove capable of making such distinctions in the heat of battle, but opponents insist that only humans possess this ability, and so all such devices should be banned.
In recognition of these dangers, a concerted effort has been undertaken under the aegis of the CCW to adopt an additional protocol prohibiting the deployment of lethal autonomous weapons systems. As the CCW operates by consensus and state parties have opposed such a measure, proponents of a ban are exploring other strategies for their prohibition, such as an international treaty under UN General Assembly auspices. Some members of the European Union have also proposed a non-binding code of conduct covering LAWS deployment, requiring continuous human supervision of their use in combat.
Hypersonic Weapons
Hypersonic weapons are usually defined as missiles than can travel at more than five times the speed of sound (Mach 5) and fly at lower altitudes than intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which also fly at hypersonic speeds. At present, the United States, China, Russia, and several other countries are engaged in the development and fielding of two types of hypersonic weapons (both of which may carry either nuclear or conventional warheads): hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs), unpowered projectiles that “glide” along the Earth’s outer atmosphere after being released from a booster rocket; and hypersonic cruise missiles (HCMs), which are powered by high-speed air-breathing engines, called “scramjets.”
Weapons of these types possess several capabilities that make them attractive to military officials. Due to their high speed and superior maneuverability, hypersonic missiles can be used early in a conflict to attack high-value enemy assets, such as air-defense radars, missile batteries, and command-and- control (C2) facilities. Since hypersonic missiles fly closer to the Earth than ICBMs and possess greater maneuverability, they may be capable of evading anti- missile systems designed to work against other types of offensive weapons.
All three major powers have explored similar types of hypersonic missiles, but their strategic calculations in doing so appear to vary: The United States currently seeks such weapons for use in a regional, non-nuclear conflict, whereas China and Russia appear to be emphasizing their use in nuclear as well as conventional applications.
The U.S. Air Force has undertaken the development of two such missiles for use in a regional context: the Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), slated to be the first U.S. hypersonic weapon to enter service, and the hypersonic attack cruise missile (HACM). Concurrently, the U.S. Army and Navy have been working jointly on a common hypersonic boost-glide vehicle for use by both services, along with booster rockets to carry the HGV into the atmosphere. Russia has deployed the nuclear-armed Avangard HGV on a number of its SS-19 Stiletto ICBMs, while China has tested the Dongfeng-17 (DF-17), a medium-range ballistic missile fitted with a dual-capable (nuclear or conventional) HGV warhead.
While most of these weapons programs remain in the development or early deployment stage, their presence has already sparked concerns among policymakers and arms control advocates regarding their potential impact on strategic stability. Analysts worry, for example, that the use of hypersonic weapons early in a conventional engagement to subdue an adversary’s critical assets could be interpreted as the prelude to a nuclear first-strike, and so prompt the target state to launch its own nuclear munitions if unsure of its attacker’s intentions.
At present, there is no established venue in which officials of China, Russia, and the United States can meet to discuss formal limits on hypersonic weapons. The U.S.-Russia Strategic Stability Dialogue could serve as a possible forum for direct talks between government officials on these topics. While Washington paused the dialogue following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the two sides should return to the table as soon as circumstances allow. A U.S.-China strategic dialogue, if and when established, could address similar concerns.
Cyberattack and Nuclear C3
The cyberspace domain—while immensely valuable for a multitude of public, private, and commercial functions—has also proven to be an attractive arena for great-power competition, given the domain’s vulnerability to a wide variety of malicious and aggressive activities. These range from cyberespionage, or the theft of military secrets and technological data, to offensive actions intended to disable an enemy’s command, control, and communications (C3) systems, thereby degrading its ability to wage war successfully. Such operations might also be aimed at an adversary’s nuclear C3 (NC3) systems; in such a scenario, one side or the other—fearing that a nuclear exchange is imminent—could attempt to minimize its exposure to attack by disabling its adversary’s NC3 systems.
Analysts warn that any cyberattack on an adversary’s NC3 systems in the midst of a major crisis or conventional conflict could prove highly destabilizing. Upon detecting interference in its critical command systems, the target state might well conclude that an adversary had launched a pre-emptive nuclear strike against it, and so might launch its own nuclear weapons rather than risk their loss to the other side.
The widespread integration of conventional with nuclear C3 compounds these dangers. For reasons of economy and convenience, the major powers have chosen to rely on the same early-warning and communications links to serve both their nuclear and conventional forces—a phenomenon described by James Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as “entanglement.” In the event of a great-power conflict, one side or the other might employ cyberweapons to disable the conventional C3 systems of its adversary in the opening stages of a nonnuclear assault, but its opponent—possibly fearing that its nuclear systems are the intended target— might launch its nuclear weapons prematurely.
The utilization of cyberspace for military purposes poses significant challenges for arms control. Existing means of inspection and verification cannot currently detect cyberweapons, whose very existence is often hard to prove. With the proliferation of cyberweapons creating new and severe threats to strategic stability, policymakers bear responsibility for developing strategies to prevent accidental and unintended escalation. Some of the most effective, stabilizing measures, analysts agree, would be U.S.-Russian and U.S.-Chinese bilateral agreements to abstain from cyberattacks on each other’s NC3 systems.
Automated Battlefield Decision-Making
With the introduction of new hypersonic weapons and other highly capable conventional weapons, the pace of warfare will likely increase and, as a result, exacerbate the pressure on battle commanders to make rapid combat decisions. In response, the militaries of the major powers plan to rely increasingly on AI- enabled battlefield decision-making systems to aid human commanders in processing vast amounts of data on enemy movements and identifying possible combat responses.
Within the U.S. military, the principal mechanism for undertaking the development of automated systems of this sort is the Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) program. Overseen by the Air Force under its Advanced Battlefield Management System, JADC2 is envisioned as a constellation of computers working together to collect sensor data from myriad platforms, organize the data into digestible chunks, and provide commanders with a menu of possible combat options. While JADC2 is initially intended for conventional operations, the program will eventually connect to the nation’s NC3 systems.
The increased automation of battlefield decision- making, especially given the likely integration of nuclear and conventional C3 systems, gives rise to numerous concerns. Many of these technologies are still in their infancy and prone to often unanticipated malfunctions. Skilled professionals can also fool, or “spoof,” AI-enabled systems, causing unintended and possibly dangerous outcomes. Furthermore, no matter how much is spent on cybersecurity, computer systems will always remain vulnerable to hacking by sophisticated adversaries.
Given these risks, Chinese, Russian, and U.S. policymakers should be leery of accelerating the automation of their C3 systems. Ideally, government officials and technical experts of the three countries should meet—presumably in a format akin to the U.S.-Russian Strategic Stability Dialogue—to consider limitations on the use of any automated decision- making devices with ties to nuclear command systems. Until meetings of this sort become feasible, experts from these countries should meet in neutral venues to identify the dangers inherent in reliance on such systems and explore various measures for their control....
....
https://www.globalresearch.ca/sy-hersh-way-we-live-now/5808287
Sy Hersh and the Way We Live Now. “The Propaganda Apparatus that Manipulates and Controls our Society”
Coverage of the sabotage of the Nordstream pipelines helped Murray realize something important about how the Big Lie works.
It is a clear indicator of the disappearance of freedom from our so-called Western democracies that Sy Hersh, arguably the greatest living journalist, cannot get this monumental revelation on the front of The Washington Post or The New York Times, but has to self-publish on the net.
Hersh tells the story of the U.S. destruction of the Nordstream pipelines in forensic detail, giving dates, times, method and military units involved. He also outlines the importance of the Norwegian armed forces working alongside the U.S. Navy in the operation.
One point Sy does not much stress, but it is worth saying more about, is that Norway and the U.S. are of course the two countries that have benefitted financially, to an enormous degree, from blowing up the pipeline.
Not only have both gained huge export surpluses from the jump in gas prices, Norway has directly replaced Russian gas to the tune of some $40 billion per year. From 2023 the United States will appear in that list in second place behind Norway, following the opening in the last two months of two new liquefied natural gas terminals in Germany, built to replace Russian gas with U.S. and Qatari supplies.
So Russia lost out massively financially from the destruction of Nordstream and who benefited? The U.S. and Norway, the two countries who blew up the pipeline.
But of course, this war is nothing to do with money or hydrocarbons and is all about freedom and democracy….
To return to Hersh’s account, particularly interesting are the series of decisions taken to avoid classification of the operation in various ways which would require it to be reported to Congress. In terms of United States history, this ought to be a big deal.
For the executive branch to commit what is an act of war without the approval of the legislature is fundamentally unconstitutional. But that is one of those quaint remnants of democracy that the neoliberal elite consensus can quietly sidestep nowadays.
Hersh sets out the well-known background in compelling detail, including that, from U.S. President Joe Biden down, the Americans effectively announced what they were going to do, openly.
But what most worries me about the entire story is the unanimous complicity of the mainstream media in ignoring the completely obvious.
The media line, parroted here relentlessly by the BBC and corporate media, was that the Russians had probably themselves blown up the pipeline on which they had expended such great resources and three decades of intense diplomatic activity, and which was to be the key to Russia’s single most valuable source of income for the next 40 years.
This was always quite literally incredible. You would have to be deranged to believe it.
How the Big Lie Works
It actually taught me not just that we truly are in the realm of totalitarianism and the Big Lie, but I learnt something very important about how the Big Lie works.
The secret is not that people genuinely believe an outrageous claim. The secret is that people do genuinely believe that they are in a battle of good against evil, and it is necessary to accept the narrative being promoted, in the interests of fighting evil.
Don’t question, just follow. If you do question, you are promoting evil.
I am sure that is how it works.
State and corporate stenographer journalists are actually intelligent individuals. If they thought about it, they would realise that the narrative that Russia blew up its own pipeline is obvious nonsense.
But they are convinced it is morally wrong to think about it.
Which is why none of them challenged the equally mad claims that Russia was repeatedly shelling its own forces occupying the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station. It’s also why none of them challenged the utterly risible official version of the Skripal story.
I previously told the anecdote from when I worked in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and asked a good friend if he really believed the misinformation on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) with which he was involved.
He replied by referring to the video game “Championship Manager” (now renamed “Football Manager”), which we used to play together. He said when he was in the game, it was immersive, he was manager of Liverpool and it fully absorbed him.
Similarly, when he walked through the FCO gates, the world of the intelligence reports was immersive and Iraq did have these WMDs inside that world. He worked in the “reality” of the FCO. Once he left in the evening, he lived in a different reality, the world of us in the pub.
I know of journalists bright enough to detach their professional output from what they really think, in a similar way. (I once had a conversation along these lines with Jeremy Bowen in Tashkent.)
Most however don’t think like this. They simply think that all right-thinking people support the historic struggle against the evil Russians, so it must be right to read out the propaganda without thinking too much about it
Those of us critical of the aggressive promotion of war in Europe, are not only barred from all mainstream media and confined to corners of the internet. Even there we are heavily suppressed on social media (which is why Sy Hersh’s article does not have the scores of millions of readers it merits).
We can’t even obtain freedom of assembly.
Two established left-wing venues have cancelled the “No-2-NATO” meeting I am addressing in London on Feb. 25. Conway Hall’s reasons for cancellation included threats to funding and fears for the safety of staff.
We are now reduced to a guerrilla meeting, the Central London venue for which will not be announced until the evening before.
Is this really a democracy, where it is not possible for dissidents to hold a public meeting without secrecy, subterfuge and hiding from supporters of the state?
I do urge you to come along on the day, whatever your views on the subject, to support the right to freedom of speech.
I have a different view from perhaps all of the other speakers, on the legitimacy of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which I oppose.
But I also oppose NATO expansion which is an underlying cause of the war, and indeed oppose the existence of NATO itself.
NATO is a war machine that sucks resources from working people to benefit the military industrial complex, and unleashes devastating destruction on the developing states that do not make their natural resources available to Western billionaire elites.
It is also a fundamental node of the propaganda apparatus that manipulates and controls our society, particularly as counter narrative. Dissident thought is now rigorously and systematically excluded.
There is no longer an Overton window of permitted debate. It has narrowed and should be renamed the Overton letterbox.
One of those small difficult ones right down at the bottom of the door. With a very fierce spring, and snarling dogs guarding it.
....
https://www.globalresearch.ca/germany-prepares-conscription-final-war/5808291
Germany Prepares for Conscription and the Final War
Imagine Vladimir Putin, sitting behind his desk in the Kremlin, learning the news Germany plans to reintroduce conscription (involuntary servitude). The Russians are outraged at the prospect of Leopard 2 tanks bearing the Balkenkreuz, the Iron Cross, killing its soldiers and destroying its tanks in Ukraine.
Germany’s parliamentary commissioner, Eva Högl of Olaf Scholz’s “center-left” SPD, believes the Bundeswehr, the German army, is woefully unprepared for military conflict and must force the nation’s youth into military “service.”
Prior to Högl’s remark on conscription, published in the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper, Jan Christian Kaack, the chief of the German navy, said involuntary servitude and the possibility of citizens becoming bullet stoppers for the state, should be based on the Norwegian model, “whereby men and women are called in for an examination upon turning 19, but only a small, motivated percentage of each year group is drafted into the army,” The Guardian reports.
Considering the russophobic rhetoric emanating from Germany, France, Britain, and NATO countries (add Switzerland’s astounding decision to do away with its centuries-long neutrality), Putin and the Russians are rightfully angry about the growing military hysteria (and psychopathic disorders) of the “collective West.”
The idiots in Brussels, DC, Berlin, and other European capitals either do not understand what Nazi Germany did in Eastern Europe and Russia during WWII, or they simply don’t care.
Nazi Germany’s Operation Barbarossa, the largest invasion in history, razed approximately 1,710 Soviet towns and 70,000 villages. 27 million Russians, the vast majority civilians, were killed during the war. The costly Russian victory over Germany is remembered every May 9 as the Great Patriot War (Velikaya Otechestvennaya voyna in Russian).
None of this is the least bit significant to USG war chief Lloyd J. Austin III, Secretary of State Atony Blinken, the scurrilous Victoria Nuland, wife of top neocon Robert Kagan, and Biden’s “liberal hawks” (sic), including National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan (formerly of Macro Advisory Partners, along with CIA boss William Burns), Wendy Sherman (former Vice Chair of Albright Stonebridge Group, founded by mass murder facilitator and apologist Madeleine Albright, role model for the aforementioned Blinken) Brett McGurk (a Bush admin. appointee), and others.
In the “indispensable nation,” there is yet little talk of reinstating the draft, which ended in 1973 as the disastrous Vietnam War ground to a halt. However, the state has kept its “selective service” active, obligating millions of young men to register.
The so-called “Generation Z” is not so hot on involuntary servitude and the prospect of a horrible death for the sake of Biden and his neocons. The Pentagon derisively calls Gen Zers the “Nintendo Generation” due to sedentary lifestyles, obesity, drug and alcohol abuse, and the fact they are not as physically fit as previous generations.
In 2017, a Gallup poll revealed 49% of Americans favor involuntary servitude for young adults. However, those likely to be conscripted were opposed. “A majority (57%) of those younger than 30 are against the idea,” Gallup reported.
The idea of mandatory national service has been floated numerous times by think tanks and opinion writers over the past decade and a half, but it has never become a major issue in national politics. U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel unsuccessfully pushed a version of the idea in every legislative session from 2003 to 2015; at one point, it even reached the House floor, where it was defeated by a vote of 402-2.
Of course, that was before Ukraine, the incessant, intrusive pounding of war drums by propaganda media, an idiotic desire to feed war machines into the conflict by the West, and the very real prospect of a third world war.
According to author Shadia Drury, the guru of neocon-ism, Leo Strauss, and his devotees,
understood politics as a conflict between mutually hostile groups willing to fight each other to the death. In short, they all thought that man’’s humanity depended on his willingness to rush naked into battle and headlong to his death. Only perpetual war can overturn the modern project, with its emphasis on self-preservation and “creature comforts.
In the current context, the “conflict between mutually hostile groups” will result in the termination of life on the planet.
It is an arrogant and psychopathic disregard for the lives of ordinary people that is in part driving the world toward a final thermonuclear conflict.
It is unfortunate far too many Americans are incapable of realizing they are nothing more than pawns in a geopolitical suicide pact. History demonstrates, over and over, this realization usually arrives when it is far too late.
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