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Monday’s Forum
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8 responses to “Monday’s Forum”
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Military Times mocks AI rebrand:
A ‘super’ rebrand: Navy mandates dropping ‘artificial intelligence’
Artificial intelligence may one day destroy the human race, but if and when it does, there will be nothing artificial about it. In fact, it’ll be super.
That is, at least, the proper terminology in this great American age of rebrands, one that has borne witness to such seismic overhauls as the Gulf of Mexico becoming the Gulf of America, Lake Ontario becoming Lake America, and a push to call New Mexico … New America.
U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Sept. 29 the term “artificial intelligence” would henceforth be retired in favor of “super intelligence.”
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The president followed that “SI” declaration up with an Oct. 8 Truth Social post asserting that anyone who uses the previous moniker would be branded “THE ENEMY!”The U.S. Navy this week became one of the first services to avoid that traitorous designation, cementing the super initiative and calling on “all Navy echelons, commands, activities, and personnel [to] use ‘Super Intelligence’ and ‘SI’ in place of ‘Artificial Intelligence’ and ‘AI,’” a service memo stated.
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As part of the super overhaul, echelon II commanders, type commanders and systems commanders will be required to review all “public releases, intranet portals, and external presentations for compliance” no later than 30 days after the release of the super memo. These personnel will then be required to submit a super report on completing the task. -
When commercial interest conflict with national security interests.
‘The West can’t stop me’: Space wars heat up as Russia tails a Ukraine-linked US satellite
Washington blamed Moscow at the United Nations on Wednesday for deliberately moving a Russian military satellite with an undisclosed mission “dangerously” close last week to a U.S.-registered satellite believed to serve Ukraine, with officials vowing to defend American interests in space.
The Russian satellite, Cosmos 2612, spent more than two weeks maneuvering toward ICEYE-X36, a radar satellite operated by the American arm of Finnish company ICEYE that supplies imagery to Ukraine’s military through some of its spacecraft, then shadowed it from as close as a third of a mile through the weekend of Oct. 17.
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As the U.S. and its allies increasingly rely on commercial capabilities for national security, key assets like satellites have “become vulnerabilities that can be exploited by our adversary,”
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The impact of a possible satellite attack could reach well beyond one company or country, since commercial satellites now carry much of the imagery and connectivity militaries fight with, experts said. Musk’s Starlink slowdown in Ukraine showed how quickly a military force can suffer when that access is throttled without notice — and how easily local geopolitical conflicts can explode into global security crises.
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Moscow has warned since the first year of its full-scale invasion that Western commercial satellites helping Ukraine could become legitimate military targets.The real question is: What happens when the commercial interests of a US oligarch (or President) are in conflict with the national security interests of the United States.
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Dallas’ Colossal raises $200 million to genetically engineer military dogs
The hunter gatherers who first selectively bred wolves for specific tasks 11,000 years ago could never have seen this coming.
On Thursday, a joint venture between Dallas’ Colossal Biosciences and defense technology company Anduril announced its emergence from stealth. The startup is called Warhound, and its pitch is that with Colossal’s genetic engineering capabilities and Anduril’s cybernetic augments, it can create a new generation of working military dogs better suited to, and better protected from, today’s advanced battlefields.
Warhound, which will based in Dallas, raised $200 million in its seed round led by Sequoia Capital. The release describes Warhound as a “vertically integrated platform, combining Colossal’s enhanced genetics platform and secure biobanking capabilities of America’s top-performing dog arsenal, controlled delivery through cloning with best-in-class training and animal care.” The dogs will then be outfitted with ear and eye protection from Anduril, as well as connected with Anduril’s AI and augmented reality Eagle Eye headgear technology, to enable dogs and their handlers better situational awareness in the field.
First dogs, next humans.
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Between all the political news and having read Elie Mystal’s book Bad Law, I went on to something more lighthearted: Nuclear war, A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen.
It’s a minute by minute description of what happens after a satellite over the Pacific detects an ICBM launch in North Korea.
This scenario assumes, at first, only one ICBM launched towards the US. What I found curious thus far is the president isn’t rushed to an E-4 Doomsday plane right away. from launch until impact, there are between 30 and 45 minutes, depending where the missile was launched from. It takes under ten to determine where it’s likely headed.
That’s plenty of time to get the president airborne, assuming an E-4 is kept fueled and ready 24/7 at Andrews. In a nuclear war, flying over the Atlantic should be the safest place possible.
Time is a major factor. In all scenarios, there’s just not enough time to properly asses the situation. For instance, US doctrine is to launch a counterstrike before the first bombs hit the country. In part because after it might be too late, and there might not even be a functioning government to do anything.
It’s the combination of nukes and hypersonic ballistic missiles. It’s too fast, there’s no dependable defense against them, and the consequences are devastating. Suppose you were to launch a nuclear war only suing long range bombers. You’d have hours rather than minutes, and there are effective defenses against bombers.
Then I thought, assume a war or battle loving species, like the Klingons or the Kzinti. they might want to fight a nuclear war, but an honorable one. So maybe a pre-warp planet of such a species could set rules for nuclear war so they could have one.
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Someone may already be typing out notice of this at the same time as myself, but Walter Koenig passed away today.
I am not a Trekkie, but this news is sad indeed. 90 years is a good run, but Chekov will be missed by me and many other fans of the Star Trek franchise.
RIP
Also, so as not to spam this Open Thread, pivoting to a funny thing I overheard while on a team meeting this morning. Someone had some news on and they had not muted the TV because we all heard someone screaming that Democrats always tend to underestimate the GOP at the ballot box (alot of us got a good laugh) before the audio cut off.
Yup, the Dems might still find their hopes of taking over at least one branch of Congress dashed but it feels to me like the GOP is more worried this time around than they have been in past elections.
We shall see, did my part and voted by mail yesterday.
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Story to develop soon. Anthropic has filed for a stock market listing.
Claude has gotten rave reviews in coding. Ok. recently Corey Doctorow wrote about script sand software, including OSes, vibe-coded using AI, and including Claude, for jailbreaking and otherwise de-enshittifying appliances and devices.
I don’t know whether anticircumvention laws apply to individuals who modify devices they own so they work as they want. And here I include things like fam machinery for which the owner vibe-codes software to access capabilities they otherwise would have to pay John Deere or some other manufacturer.
So, if a trillion dollar company with billionaire capital enables losses to other trillion dollar companies owned by billionaire capita, who wins? Isn’t disruption a goal, an explanation, and absolution all packed in one word?
So, the interesting times are actually getting interesting.
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