Imagine an organization that’s working to secretly invent the deadliest and most insidious ways to kill people.
Their work is high-tech, cutting-edge and incredibly lethal. One project is the development
of what they call hunter-killer robots: self-propelled, autonomous units, some
in humanoid form, that are programmed to enter a hostile environment and seek
out an adversary and kill him – these could be enemy soldiers or individual
targets that the robot is programmed to seek through face recognition software.
The robots act independently and once released, they’re relentless: they don’t stop
or come back until they take out the target.
This organization is also working on the next generation of lethal drones: smaller, faster, more sophisticated
and more deadly than today’s models. They’re small, they can swarm and act in
concert, they can act without external control, they can flood a battlefield with
kill shots, or act in stealth-mode, following the enemy into any space or hiding
place. Some are hybrids of insects whose brains have been implanted with
control technology. Once programmed, they also act autonomously. We picture today’s drones as model helicopters flying over
the terrain; the next generation will act more like a vast swarm of killer
bees.
A
third project is called the “Man/Machine Interface” and is described as “the
future of brain-computer interface technologies.” This is just what it sounds
like: implanting computer chips inside the human brain. Imagine that our secret organization
is already testing brain implants and a wired jack into the base of a human brain:
the goal is to enhance combat performance, and to make the subject more
suitable for combat and control.
By
now you may be hoping that I’m talking about SPECTRE, the evil entity
battling James Bond in the latest movie release of that series. Or perhaps it's some
science fiction scenario that I dreamed up to challenge you to think about the
future consequences of today’s trends. So sorry to dash your hopes. As you really
suspect, the organization I’m describing is real, it’s in operation today and
it’s working on all of the above. Every word is true. And those are just the
projects we KNOW about. The ones that are classified – well, who knows?
I’ve
just finished reading a fascinating new book called “The Pentagon’s Brain” by
Annie Jacobsen. It’s a history of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency. DARPA (originally ARPA, just for the record) has been the military’s high-tech
think tank since the early years of the cold war. Their mission is to make sure
that the US stays many steps ahead of its adversaries when it comes to using
technology to its advantage in any present or future conflicts. They’ve had quite
a track record, as I’m sure you know. They brought us the hydrogen bomb, but
they also brought us the internet. They invented the GPS satellite system,
but they also invented Agent Orange. Drones, biological weapons, Star Wars –
DARPA has had a hand in it all. And on the whole, when you see the US’s technological
superiority in every conflict, you have to say they’ve had more successes than
failures. For obvious reasons, I’m glad they’re on our side.
So
I was impressed by most of the book as it surveyed the agency’s history. But
things became increasingly scary in the final three chapters as Jacobsen
described DARPA’s current work load. The three projects described above –
hunter-killer robots, drone swarms and the man/machine interface – raise serious
ethical issues that the military is not willing or interested in addressing.
Their mission is to make sure we can slaughter every enemy and how we do it is
just a means to that end. And they don’t question the means.
Ethical
concerns include the control aspect (how do we ensure all of this stays under
human control, and works flawlessly?), the moral aspect (should we fight future
wars against human adversaries with machines and robots that can slaughter at
will, with no risk to ourselves?) and the human aspect (what does it mean to
infuse technology into a human brain or body, and what are the implications for
enslavement from within?). This is not idle speculation, since all of these systems
and projects are in the pipeline right now. We will see them in our lifetimes.
The
military-industrial complex (which President Eisenhower warned about in 1960,
and which Jacobsen illuminates in the book) has the power to create a dark and
nightmarish future. Extrapolating these weapons out to a logical conclusion
will produce visions of The Terminator or 1984 or the ‘Borg’ from Star Trek.
Consider hunter-killer robots released into the world, driven by software and operating
independently. What is the guarantee that they will stay under human control,
as they act autonomously to carry out their deadly mission? We in technology
know all too well that no system ever works perfectly. Jacking a computer
into a human brain (DARPA has tested this with lab animals and plans to use
human subjects soon, if they haven’t already) will make tomorrow’s soldiers resistant
to pain, immune to fear – and perfectly obedient to their masters? The scenarios
are endless and they are not pretty. And I repeat that these projects are only the
ones we know about. DARPA’s budget and full project list is highly classified.
Jacobsen
has few suggestions on how to steer off the road we’re traveling, and I don’t
either. What is essential is that an informed citizenry provide the eternal vigilance
that our government requires, and that we elect leaders who will include
ethical consideration in the decisions that impact our national defense. We
have to protect our future as well as our country.
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Here's a link to "The Pentagon's Brain" on Amazon. But support your local bookstore and buy it there.
2 comments:
Man has been developing the technology of war for eons, and none of it is pretty, and I'll venture that much of it certainly doesn't meet our current measure of ethical practice.
Biologics, chemical, nuclear, and others are/were all based on technology of some sort. Drones, swarms, smart guns, "currency war", current use of the internet for terrorism, etc. are all based on current technology.
As you said, "Their mission is to make sure that the US stays many steps ahead of its adversaries when it comes to using technology to its advantage in any present or future conflicts." And I'm all for it. Yes, we need to trust our leadership's guidance and use of these innovations, offensively or defensively, and, as individuals, we may not always agree with appropriate use (e.g., debates over the appropriate use of drones).
But, per the mission, I sincerely hope that we can maintain our superiority in defense of our freedom.
On a side note, I realize that there is a continuum of security versus privacy as it relates to the Patriot Act. In my opinion, the sacrifice of some level of privacy has to be accepted in the name of security. Again, we must provide feedback to our leadership as to how much privacy we are willing to relinquish.
DARPA did not invent GPS. The DOD in 1973 ordered the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force to establish a Joint Progrqm Office with the AF as the executive service. I argue in my book that the synthesis was based mainly on my Dad's Timation system. I've had an email exchange with Ms. Jacobsen and she is revising a sentence on this in the next edition of her book. DARPA did fund in the 1980s miniture GPS receivers, but it played NO ro
E in the 1973 synthesis
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