Posted on 02/14/2016 2:56:05 PM PST by C19fan
Killer robots that can execute without human intervention will become a reality within years unless there is a global agreement to ban them, warns a leading scientist. Wendell Wallach, an ethicist at Yale University, will today call on the US government to outlaw such machines on the basis they violate international humanitarian law. Wallach also warns that technology has become so advanced that a robot capable of killing humans on its own volition will soon become a possibility - much like the rogue machines seen in Arnold Schwarzenegger's hit film, The Terminator.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
“Look, I just designed the platform, they didn’t tell me...”
“Look, I just wrote the code, they didn’t tell me...”
“Look” etc etc
Before we reach that point, or near that point, I see a grid-down reset to Alas, Brave New Babylon.
They try. We try back.
So far, the laws of physics overcome such ideas.
If you are close enough to use a directed EMP type weapon you are close enough to be destroyed yourself or reach out and destroy the target using other means.
Jamming, interfering, and denial, are all part of the Cyber Warfare game.
I think you’d agree that personal and national politics are much bigger threat to prevailing against aggression than any weapon system out there.
BTTT ...... tick..... tick.....
If the power goes out, I predict we won’t know who or what did it.
“Before we reach that point, or near that point, I see a grid-down reset to Alas, Brave New Babylon.”
That was a perfect short story. Perfect. It took into account the true human response and the most probable scenario of chaos.
Taking down the grid is easy enough to do. EMP is the furthest thing from my mind and I have professional experience in that field. I am far more worried about human interference against the grid that can take it down. That is EASY to do. No science fiction required, just a bunch of ragheads and simple tools of the trade.
Deniability isn’t my chief concern. Banning them assumes the other side won’t cheat. How did that work with the Washington Naval Treaties of the 1930s? Would you trust the Russians or the Chinese to follow the treaties?
Or just a bunch of pissed off anybody’s who all thought, “Screw them city folks. We starve so they can have electric? I don’t think so.”
That’s a Western Union message, you want some one to know.
Consider what seems to be a swarm of yellow jackets hovering around trash cans on the Washington Mall, an area chock full of gourmet food trucks. Everybody wants to avoid them, staying away from closer scrutiny. As per your sit, watch, identify, strike scenario, this swarm or multiple swarms buzz around, every now and again a few fly off, regular hornet behavior. Who the hell knows where they go. Maybe tree top to recharge. Come out every day at lunch, normal. But with a payload of concentrated venom. Multiple stings, many stings, hornets fly off, massive anaphylactic shock. No straggler bugs, no stingers but plenty of witnesses, just one of those things that happens here and there, Tragic. Even if one or more of the bugs is discovered, whose are they? Prove it. Fast and Furious indicates that evidentiary proof means nothing today.
This administration has proven over and over that it has no moral code whatsoever, just the type to consider such action as expedient.
The best murder is the one never discovered to be a murder. If swarm behavior is autonomous, as you said, guilt feelings never get a chance to hatch.
There will be countermeasures.
Plus, if they fly, ammunition will be heavy and in limited supply. On the ground, fuel and/or ammo will need resupply.
If want something really interesting, think about autonomous torpedoes that get launched, “go to sleep” on the ocean floor and wait for a passing ship. Maybe even a certain passing ship. then they wake up and kill it. They have a lumpy outer covering with real seaweed — go ahead and try to find that.
They are not invincible, but will certainly make life harder for humans...
see my fifty, forgot
to ping you guys.
Maybe even a drone that releases yellow jackets! As you said, I’d never put ANYTHING past these freaks.
BTTT !
“We need to start developing guns that can shoot close/mid range EMP pulses.”
Such guns exist (microwave based), but the robots can be hardened against them fairly easily. Autonomous robots don’t need a constantly active radio link.
High caliber firearms should work against the lightly armored ones, though...
“It just sits there looking all day at the driveway and porch and doors, looking for its target face. While it waits, it recharges with it’s little solar wings.”
There’s an even cuter idea - birdbots that perch on electrical wires to induction charge. Of course, there’s no reason it couldn’t do both. However, with induction charging the bot could look pretty darn realistic.
That type of bot could operate autonomously indefinitely.
"Contrary to popular Internet legend, EMP isn’t this “destroy all thing electronic and electricalâ€. heck, if it were, you wouldn’t survive (your very heartbeat relies on electrical impulses). EMP may disrupt something but it doesn’t destroy it unless it is connected to very long wires that can absorb the pulse over very long distances. EMP lasts a few milliseconds and it over. It doesn’t hang around forever like those on the Internet claim. It is a very brief electrical pulse that is actually very weak."
Let me quote a few things from this excellent page on the Russian EMP tests:
Other known effects of Test 184 were that it knocked out a major 1000-kilometer (600-mile) underground power line running from Astana (then called Aqmola), now the capital city of Kazakhstan, to the city of Almaty. Some fires were reported. In the city of Karaganda, the EMP started a fire in the city's electrical power plant, which was connected to the long underground power line. The shielded electrical cable was buried 3 feet (90 cm.) underground.Note it was a "shielded electrical cable".
The geomagnetic-storm-like E3 component of the EMP (also called MHD-EMP) can easily penetrate into the ground. The E3 component of the Test 184 detonation (caused by the movement of the Earth's magnetic field) began rising immediately after the detonation, but did not reach its peak until 20 seconds after the detonation. The E3 pulse then decayed over the next minute or so. The E3 component only affects equipment connected to long electrical conductors.Note, the E3 impulse from that test lasted 80,000 milliseconds. ;-)
If the United States W49 warhead used for the Starfish Prime test had been used in Test 184, the E3 component would have been more than 5000 nT/min in the Karaganda region. According to recent studies, a disturbance in the present-day United States of 4800 nT/min would likely damage about 365 large transformers in the U.S. power grid, and would leave about 40 percent of the U.S. population without electrical power for as long as 4 to 10 years due to the loss of large transformers that would have to be custom-built (many in other countries, especially if power was not available for the two U.S. plants that are able to make these transformers).Now, imagine several such weapons (or even larger ones) detonated within a few nanoseconds of each other to blanket the entire US.
While the major risk may be solar storms, nuclear EMP is a very real threat - especially if done by sneak attack.
You took it to the point I was reaching after I posted. Started thinking about simplifing swarm unit code down to pure mechanics of flying and sensor data transmission. Micro EWACS processes incoming data, sends IFF result to swarm and releases the hounds. You added the mothership, bringing the swarm in and out. So in my scenario they appear as fat cooing pigeons or Starlings. One micro-ewacs and as many mothership birds as required. .
Then.... if the weapon is a natural occurring toxin targeting a single individual it is biological warfare but does it fall under WMD parameters? The moral and political question.
"Senator, you accuse State X of using WMDs but autopsy results show hornet toxins to be the cause of death? Aren't you engaging in overblown hyperbole for political reasons? Yes or no?"
Kicking another one out. Binary cocktails, say A is something like liquid valium or a street drug, B is Potassium chloride solution. Together the same combination used on death row.
The painkiller stops the white phosphorus type burning sensation but is quickly metabolized by the body leaving only the pain killer traces on autopsy if one is called for. Net outcome an apparently natural cardiac event instead of one induced by KCl.
One last thing. The Hungarian auto-swarm drones on the video were identified by make and model number. How secure do you think the siftware code is in Hungary? Maybe in rhe other swarm, the muzzie on, some of the chillrun have very specific missions....
droid kb’s suck, cursor bounces...Correction:
It’s potassium chloride solution that metabolizes out, but maybe there is a narcotic that does as well.
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