A volume I happen to own, although this is pic from somewhere else.
I started this thread with a reference to the intelligent tanks called Bolos, as written about by science fiction author (and supposed Foreign Service diplomat) Keith Laumer, with the idea that making our weaponry intelligent may be a very bad decision, due to the unknown behavioral characteristics of an artificially intelligent life form.
On the other hand, as Mark Sumner of The Daily Kos warns me implicitly, and rather forcefully, the development of a Bolo analog may be necessary if we hope to survive the high technology era. His description of the hypersonic missiles under development (and allegedly soon to be for sale!) by Russia, the United States, and possibly other countries is more than a little disturbing:
This is by no means the only class of hypersonics in the works. While Russia’s speediest cruise missile is capable of hitting Mach 4, a new class is under development. The U.S. may bring the Mach 6 High Speed Strike Weapon (HSSW) on line within the next year. In testing, Russia’s new Zircon class of missiles has already passed Mach 8. At that speed, had Iran launched a Zircon on Tuesday, it would have impacted Erdil military base less than two minutes after launch. And Russia is claiming the final product will be faster. …
In the middle of a series of events that have revealed (again) just how much can go wrong in planning and executing a military operation, Trump also revealed that the United States is stepping up deployment of systems with which making a mistake is not an option. These are systems that aren’t just scary because Trump’s finger will be on the button. They’re scary because they require a response speed that ensures that no one’s finger will be there.
In 1983, a false alarm from the Soviet Union’s early-warning system indicated multiple incoming ballistic missiles from the United States. A single man made the judgment that the warning was a mistake and aborted a Soviet response. Hypersonics make it almost certain that human beings will be removed from the decision loop.
And what will replace them? Call it a Bolo, just to please me.
Look: humans are biological creatures with a natural sensory range that goes out hardly more than a kilometer, if that. On a clear day, we can see further, although with no great clarity; we can hear large noises and guess what’s up.
So we enhance our senses with devices, which often helps, even if, as with our biological senses, sometimes they’re wrong. But one thing we don’t fundamentally enhance is our decision making capability. If there’s a chain of command, that need to communicate renders our response slower. Devices may speed it up temporarily, right up until someone hacks that enhancement.
But a Bolo, an autonomic intelligent device, is almost by definition outside of the chain of command in a combat situation. A hypothetical Bolo, detecting an incoming hypersonic missile, could deploy the defensive weapon of choice, without consulting its human creators, in time to save the target. Hypothetically.
But is that a rabbit hole we really want to go down? A truly artificially intelligent weapon? And if it acquires a survival instinct? That’ll be the big ol’ fly in the ice cream, it is, because now it becomes less predictable.
And Trump probably isn’t even considering negotiating a treaty banning hypersonic missiles. It might not occur to him or his advisors that it’s a good idea. They might think it makes them look weak.
Ugh. All you can really say is that those hypersonic missiles are going to really expensive, because it takes a lot of fuel to go really fast. It seems a hollow argument.
