Assorted Transhumanism and Technology
There is a new site online for transhumanist-oriented videos. It's Thoughtware.tv.
Thorium gets coverage on a leading investment website.
Peter Turney, who works for the Interactive Information Group at the Institute for Information Technology in Ottawa, blogs about my remarks on Friendly AI, and lists several interesting papers that discuss Friendly AI in academia, including one he wrote in 1991, entitled "Controlling super-intelligent machines". If any of these papers are half as insightful as the work of the Singularity Institute, the insights therein could contribute significant value to the push towards benevolent superintelligence. I'll be printing out and reading the papers Turney referenced.
Our good friends Clarke, Kurzweil, and Dr. J have been quoted in an article by San Jose's very own Mercury News. They've all published transhumanist-oriented books in the last two years. I'll be reading Breakpoint soon and letting you know what I think.
CRN's development scenario project, conducted the weekend before last, was a great success. Jamais Cascio, who conducted the project, has a post on it. It mainly involved chatting on the phone for 7 hours over two days, using Google docs and a chatroom/whiteboard to moderate and take minutes. We talked about over a hundred variables of potential relevance to the development of molecular manufacturing. If you visit the first link in this paragraph, you can also vote on the IEET poll which asks, "What do you think about the utopian impulse?" A good question. My own opinion is both that utopian energies drive human aspirations for betterment, and that these impulses turn out to be premonitions of a successful future where scarcity, disease and violence are fully eliminated.
Peter Pesti is working on a detailed roadmap of the future. He combines predictions from Ian Pearson, Ray Kurzweil, and Aubrey de Grey, among many others. The point is not to argue that all these predictions will come true exactly on schedule, but to have a unified roadmap that records all the predictions and lets us cross-reference and compare them.
Our missile defense shield is now working! This is excellent news. People speak very negatively about the billions of dollars being spent on the military (and indeed, it's too much), but sometimes these projects pay off. A missile defense system is a tremendous technological achievement that will be used to protect lives rather than take them.
Joe Stewart, author of several books on cybersecurity, joins the Lifeboat Foundation and founds our cybercrime/malcode board, an important new addition to the growing effort to fight catastrophic risks. I encourage you to subscribe to our news and blog feeds to keep up to date with this organization's important work.
January 30th, 2007 - 17:16
Okay, that was a first successful test, meaning that it will be 5-10 years before official deployment. And in the meantime, there will be countermeasures developed- it isn’t that hard to aim a ballistic missile off course and then correct it 7/8ths of the way through the flight, causing the system to miss entirely. Anyways, nuclear weapons could be brought into the country much more easily on all those unchecked shipping containers arriving at ports every day.
January 30th, 2007 - 18:10
Thanks for the mention – I must say that while I have authored over 50 articles on computer security, I’ve not yet published any books. It’s bound to happen sooner or later though.
January 31st, 2007 - 05:18
Eliezer’s AGI architecture known as FriendlyAI is probably going to be unfriendly. The root of this problem is that you shouldn’t build any kind of goals to superintelligence, because it might blindly follow that goal. But the FriendlyAI system is going to have a goal, “be friendly”.
If you ask a strict definition of this friendliness you don’t get a clear answer. They will answer some fuzzy definition like “being good to the humankind”. Basicly the FriendlyAI replaces the three Asimov’s laws with one law: “1. Be friendly to humankind”.
Eliezer has not provided any test which can determine how friendly some AGI system is. Infact, friendliness is probably going to be very complex concept with no practical strict definition. Reminds me of philosophers trying to define what “beauty” is for thousands of years. There are no simple definition to this word. And beauty seems to be far more easier word to define than “friendliness”.
To ensure a friendly AGI would be to build no goal system at all. Humans have no goals built into us that we have to follow to my knowledge. You could say something like survive and reproduce, but many people kill themselves each year and so on.
This is the solution to the friendliness problem: use intelligence to decide what to do. This is what humans do. Unfortunately humans are quite stupid and do alot of evil things. These evil people are actually stupid because they haven’t studied moral philosophy etc enough. I could predict that people with IQ of 500+ are very moral and friendly people, if that is the intelligent thing to do. It might be that when you are intelligent enough you might realise that it is stupid to follow morals, but then we are all in big trouble anyways.
January 31st, 2007 - 15:58
Missle shields have never worked, don’t work, and never will work. It will always be cheaper to build dummy warheads than an interceptor. You would need hundreds of thousands of interceptors to even come close to a missing just a few percent of the incomming warheads. On top of that, you sort of need to know, generaly where most of the warheads might be comming from. Launches from submarines and trucks in Mexico can’t be intercepted with any concievable technology.
Sorry, missle shields have little chance of ever working. They are useful only as job security for some contractors.
January 31st, 2007 - 19:40
As to the missile defense shield…
1. Back in the day, when Ronald Reagan was busily spending us all into the poor house in order to beat the Evil Empire called Russia (part of how he did this was by funding terrorists, of course, back then, they were freedom fighters, but I digress), the Missile Shield to Keep Us All Safe Forever and Ever (MSKUASFE) got started.
At that time, there were three BIG questions that no one, not even the experts, had any answers for:
Question 1: How are you going to write the program, let alone debug it? Millions of lines of code and you think you’re going to have every eventuality covered?
But we’ll pretend somehow a perfectly written computer program is somehow made.
Question 2: So, part of the system, at least, has to be in space, right? Satellites orbiting the earth, ready to shoot down missiles. How do you prevent an attacking power from simply making the first missile they fire detonate in space, where the EM pulse will burn out the satellite computers of the Missile Defense Grid, thereby allowing the remaining missiles to carry on their merry way? Okay, we’ll just pretend somehow the satellites have been shielded (maybe that fancy metaphasic shielding from the latter incarnations of Star Trek.)
Question 3. (And this one’s always a killer.) How is the MSKUASFE going to stop a missile fired from a few miles off-shore (in international waters) at an East Coast or West Coast city?
2. Now, in the Bush Days, there are two new questions.
Question 4: How would a missile defense grid have been of any use on 9/11? Or in any similar civilian-heavy scenario? Can anyone conceive of any possible good argument for developing a computerized system that would have as one of its programmed functions the shooting down of civilian transports?
Question 5: How would a missile defense grid be of any help, even if Questions 1 through 4 were addressed? If you were a terrorist or a rogue nation, wouldn’t you simply sit there and say, “OK. Evil Americans can’t be bombed. Let’s send in the bioweapons.”
Think of all the good that money could have done. ..
February 1st, 2007 - 09:25
Randpost, that was Eliezer’s original idea, before he realized that it was naive.
An AI with no goal system at all would do nothing at all. An AI with a goal system that does not directly refer to humans is very likely to find that it can satisfy its goals best in a way that eliminates humans.
If there is an objective morality (a possibility that seems very unlikely) than an AI based on extrapolated volition of humans will follow it if it determines that humans would want it to. If there is no objective morality, such an AI will still do want humans would want, so we’re not screwed – as long as you get the goal system right, which I agree is hard.
February 1st, 2007 - 10:14
“An AI with no goal system at all would do nothing at all.”
It would have no built in goal system, but would use its intelligence to make decisions, just like humans.
February 1st, 2007 - 12:13
Randpost,
Do you think that humans seek out sex, music, status, gourmet food, and the like solely *because* of their intelligence?
February 1st, 2007 - 13:07
“The root of this problem is that you shouldn’t build any kind of goals to superintelligence, because it might blindly follow that goal.”
So then what determines the superintelligence’s behavior? Coinflipping?
“Eliezer has not provided any test which can determine how friendly some AGI system is.”
I can. If it’s activation doesn’t constitute an existential risk as defined by Nick Bostrom, it’s Friendly.
“Infact, friendliness is probably going to be very complex concept with no practical strict definition.”
So? Some programs involve literally millions of different interacting pieces; this scale of complexity is not beyond us with enough effort.
“This is the solution to the friendliness problem: use intelligence to decide what to do.”
Intelligence is excellent at thinking of solutions, but you have to have a problem before you have a solution. If you can think of a way around this, you could get billions of dollars from college students who would like to know what the answer to the test is before knowing what the question is.
“This is what humans do.”
No; humans use their very complex, evolved moral system to decide what to do. You are going to have a hard time separating a human into “intelligence” and “goal system”, because the brain wasn’t built with separability in mind, but there is still a definite distinction between “motive” and “means”.
“These evil people are actually stupid because they haven’t studied moral philosophy etc enough.”
No. If you take a very, very smart human and make them evil, you get a sci-fi evil genius or real-life brutal dictator. Stalin was very smart at playing politics and getting everyone who threatened him shot, and we all know how moral he was.
“I could predict that people with IQ of 500+ are very moral and friendly people, if that is the intelligent thing to do.”
A human with an IQ of 500 would not be stable in modern society; we already see how people with IQs of around 140+ act very weird in comparison with human norms.
“It would have no built in goal system, but would use its intelligence to make decisions, just like humans.”
You can’t make decisions without options, and you can’t have options without a goal system; the expected utility equation will break down.
“Do you think that humans seek out sex, music, status, gourmet food, and the like solely *because* of their intelligence?”
We already have a drug in testing, Bremelanotide, that will heighten your sex drive without making you any more or less intelligent.
February 1st, 2007 - 13:25
“I can. If it’s activation doesn’t constitute an existential risk as defined by Nick Bostrom, it’s Friendly.”
There is no test to see whether activating it constitutes an existential risk defined by Nick Bostrom. The bottom line is that you will never be able to prove that a system complex as AGI is friendly.
February 2nd, 2007 - 01:53
Yes there is, randpost. If a seed AI kills us upon hard takeoff, then it’s not Friendly. If it doesn’t, then in all likelihood, it’s Friendly enough. It’s Bostrom’s Maxipok principle – maximize the probability of an okay outcome.
February 2nd, 2007 - 04:30
Again, there is no test to determine if an AGI is friendly without killing us.
February 2nd, 2007 - 04:56
If we’re alive, it’s friendly enough. Keep in mind that Friendly and friendly are different things, and you keep using them interchangeably.
February 2nd, 2007 - 07:45
The most effective missile defense is when you have remote detectors that can locate missiles and key components on the ground from a distance that an overflying plane or satellite can spot them. That would provide the option of hitting them first when they are vulnerable and stationary. It would also remove the issue of what is fake and what is not.
Superconducting versions of high resolution gamma ray imagers might be able to perform the detection.
http://people.csail.mit.edu/bkph/papers/Large_Area_Passive_Detector.pdf
Plus if you had portable particle accelerators (like the new desktop versions) you could ping for nuclear materials with particles that cause the nuclear materials to emit more detectable radiation. Combining active and passive detection.
The other technology that seems to be only a few years away is High Power Microwaves.
http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2007/01/military-defense-may-get-step-up-on.html
They are broader beams of power that zap the electronics of all kinds of missiles and vehicles. The missiles electronics would have to be hardened to resist the pulses. But at higher power ranges of terawatt and petawatt this could be very difficult. How difficult it is to shield, I do not know since a lot of electronic hardening info is classified. The issue of difficulty and problems for missiles also has to do with weight. If the hardening involves heavy shielding that means the hardened missiles could be too heavy to fly at the old speed and ranges or may need extensive re-design. A broad beam could be very easy to aim. Even against high speed missiles coming at you the problem would be lot easier. They are talking about taking out cruise missiles from hundreds of miles away.
The detection devices are the first key to making effective defense a far more practical issue. Then you can stop someone from placing something close to you. You detect and intercept before they are in position.
February 2nd, 2007 - 08:06
Mike, Tom: Please try to avoid flamewars. If randpost isn’t willing to read or able to understand any of the dozens of documents you have linked to on this subject you certainly won’t persuade him here. Remember how hard it was to convince Eli of this? Don’t be surprised if almost all humans, for personality reasons fairly distinct from intelligence, simply *can’t* learn it. My guess is that some people model intelligence as “the characteristic of my self-model that makes it different from my “generic person” model”. Given that error, the rest of the errors follow.
Tom: I’m not at all sure that sf style evil geniuses are possible OR that IQ 500 humans are not. The latter inference seems like another extrapolation without much theoretical foundation. Also, it seems likely to involve conflating multiple features that we identify as intelligence but which are not part of IQ with IQ. Maralyn vos Savant X 4 doesn’t give you anything very unstable. It doesn’t even give you Feynman. And Feynman seems to have been far from unstable. Not surprisingly, instability seems to come from an unbalanced mix of abilities, not from an excess of general ability. Either of these two features can lead to genius, but as entropy would suggest, genius seems to usually involve some mix of them.
Very minor point about “Evil Geniuses”. I wonder if the evil overlord list could be expanded, promoted in the sf community, and slanted towards providing actually useful advice.
February 2nd, 2007 - 08:20
Why would an AI want to kill us in the first place? It’s like the 2.0 version of the B-movies of the 1950s where the Martians come to Earth to kidnap the women.
February 2nd, 2007 - 08:31
“If we’re alive, it’s friendly enough.”
Again, there are no tests whatsoever to determine if an AGI is friendly or not without killing us. You have provided only one test: to see if it kills us, which is exactly what we are trying to find out without killing us.
Friendliness and friendliness are basicly the same things. You just brought that up to look “smart”.
Also note that Friendliness has no definition yet, it is some fuzzy magical word.
“Do you think that humans seek out sex, music, status, gourmet food, and the like solely *because* of their intelligence?”
No, but we can.
Michael, your argument is basicly that I’m wrong because I’m stupid. I think that kind of name calling argument is quite rude.
In practice we are only left with the “hunch” test; the AGI designer feels his own mind-design is safe. And every AGI designer has that same hunch..
February 2nd, 2007 - 09:26
btw: effective nuclear weapon and material detection at significant ranges and effective against shielding also takes care of the issue of smuggled weapons at ports, in trucks and other places.
Use a combination of active and passive detectors and also detect for large amounts of shielding. If large amounts of shielding are detected then either actively probe with particles or take other measures.
February 2nd, 2007 - 13:22
“That would provide the option of hitting them first when they are vulnerable and stationary. It would also remove the issue of what is fake and what is not.”
It would also require several hours to fly out to the target, by which time the missile is long gone.
“that cause the nuclear materials to emit more detectable radiation. ”
Said nuclear material, if the packager has any brains at all, will be distributed in a very sub-critical pattern, so on average, a single neutron makes the uranium fission, say, around %0.5 of the time, giving back 0.01 neutrons. But other materials also reflect neutrons; the neutron can simply hit a heavy nucleus and bounce back. So how do you tell the difference?
“Plus if you had portable particle accelerators (like the new desktop versions)”
I’m currently trying to build one- where can I get a good-quality vacuum pump for less than $2000?
“But at higher power ranges of terawatt and petawatt this could be very difficult.”
The combined electricity generation of every power plant in the world is currently around two terawatts, so this isn’t happening without some major revamping to power production technology.
“How difficult it is to shield, I do not know since a lot of electronic hardening info is classified.”
Non-ionizing radiation is ridiculously easy to stop with a Faraday cage.
“You detect and intercept before they are in position.”
Huh? ICBMs are usually launched from submarines or fixed ground launchpads; neither would require any time to “get in position”. These launchers are designed so that they can fire back even in a MAD scenario with twenty minutes’ lead time.
“Mike, Tom: Please try to avoid flamewars. If randpost isn’t willing to read or able to understand any of the dozens of documents you have linked to on this subject you certainly won’t persuade him here.”
Point taken.
“Remember how hard it was to convince Eli of this?”
No, please provide a link. My memory must be going again.
“for personality reasons fairly distinct from intelligence, simply *can’t* learn it.”
I’m still convinced that most people could understand at least the basic principles of FAI if they wanted to. However, that’s the key point; a lot of people seem to have a “Knowledge Defense System” in place, so anything new is automatically dismissed as “irrelevant” or “gay” or “liberal bias” or “conservative bias” or whatever the catchphrase is nowadays.
““the characteristic of my self-model that makes it different from my “generic person†model—
So people internally attribute intelligence only to themselves? That would surprise me; even if people are horrendously biased, they will have all kinds of problems if they dismiss everyone else as total robots.
“I’m not at all sure that sf style evil geniuses are possible”
I don’t claim they’re possible; I simply gave the first result that came to mind when you combined those personality characteristics. Sorry if that was poorly worded.
“that IQ 500 humans are not.”
Obviously some sort of being with a 500 IQ is possible, I’m just questioning whether it would act like a human. I obviously don’t have an IQ anywhere near that high, yet a lot of people I’ve met physically still think of me as some sort of Creature From Outer Space ™. The eccentricity of high-intelligence humans has become a cultural stereotype, so we do have quite a few examples in this regard.
“but which are not part of IQ with IQ”
I’m just using IQ as short for general intelligence. Actually, Randpost is using IQ as short for GI, and I’m just replying to him in the same terms he used.
“Maralyn vos Savant X 4″
Weirdness doesn’t scale linearly, I think. The upper end of the IQ chart is similar to an exponential decay, and so people’s conceptions of what is “kind of weird” versus “weird” versus “totally incomprehensible” is likely to be biased towards the more populated, lower intelligence regions of the graph (availability heuristic).
“Why would an AI want to kill us in the first place? It’s like the 2.0 version of the B-movies of the 1950s where the Martians come to Earth to kidnap the women.”
It wouldn’t kill us, really, in the classical sense; we would just die as an unintended side effect of the AI taking apart the Earth for spare atoms.
“No, but we can.”
Precisely. Intelligence gives you the ability to do whatever you want; it expands your range of options. It does not tell you which option to choose.
“Michael, your argument is basicly that I’m wrong because I’m stupid.”
No, he’s writing you off as stupid because you’re wrong so consistently. Big difference.
“I think that kind of name calling argument is quite rude.”
Rudeness must be subordinate to truth; otherwise we might tell each other “2 + 2 = 5″ all day and pat ourselves on the back because we’re being polite.
“also detect for large amounts of shielding”
The best way to slow down neutrons so they can be absorbed quickly is with hydrogen, which is kind of difficult to scan for. I can imagine it now:
“Captain, we’ve detected a shipping container with a bomb!”
“Which one?”
“That big blue one over there!”
“You mean the ocean we just sailed over?”
“Exactly! It should be arrested for smuggling nuclear materials; call in SWAT!”
February 2nd, 2007 - 14:25
It is likely that the west will suffer a few nuclear detonations in its cities. That may be the cost of waking up into the world as it exists in reality, as opposed to the one that exists in the minds of most professors and journalists.
The natural state of humankind through history is not peace, but rather war. Unfortunately war tends to escalate toward the most powerful weapon of the era, which at this time would be WMDs of the ABC variety. It is nice for a peaceful culture to consider effective defensive weapons as the herald of a new and more civilised era. Unfortunately, we have not yet arrived there.
I expect that many people will die, but I do not wish that to be true. I am hoping that Michael is closer to the truth.
February 2nd, 2007 - 15:03
The power levels are based on pulsed bursts of power.
>It would also require several hours to fly out >to the target, by which time the missile is >long gone.
Nuclear materials surveillance would be constant.
If a plane flies overhead, the defender would need to know that it was one with detectors inside. Against smaller nuclear powers, the US could fly over with stealth equiped planes loaded with detection gear. Then as the they detect they hit the sites with precision guided weapons. One would try to take them out all at once. One would use deep diggers for the fortified and buried locations.
One can perform the detection at all times. Are you saying that the defender would launch the minute any plane took off from a US base ? already that would be forcing them into a posture of detectable activity. Missile launch prep can be spotted by regular satellites as well.
I am talking about detecting bombs and missiles that are in underground facilities.
Terahertz and millimeter radiation can detect active and inactive nuclear plants from 9 kilometers away.
http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2006/10/improved-detection-of-small-amounts-of.html
http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2006/06/other-tech-new-sensor-technology.html
http://www.anl.gov/Media_Center/News/2006/news060321.html
Gamma ray telescope detection of nuclear material
http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2006/06/gamma-ray-telescope-could-be-used-to.html
The energy spectrum of photons emitted from isotopes of uranium or plutonium in the 40-1000 keV energy range give unique signatures that, if accurately measured, give inspectors important information about the age and enrichment of the material and therefore its intended purpose.
The before they get in position scenario was when people were talking about floating bombs over on ships to the coastline. If one has effective detectors then ports and ships can be monitored. One would setup blimps or position detectors at locations on the shipping lanes.
I am not saying that this would be effective against Russia. But this threatening the missiles on the ground or in boat capability is better than try to shoot them when they are going at 5000mph.
Table top particle accelerators
http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn10741-tabletop-particle-accelerator-created.html
Not all ordinary shielding would be effective against the power levels the high power microwaves are working at.
http://www.ieee-virtual-museum.org/collection/tech.php?taid=&id=2345911&lid=1
The problem with Faraday cages is that most vital equipment needs to be in contact with the outside world. This contact point can allow the electromagentic field to enter the cage, which ultimately renders the enclosure useless. There are ways to protect against these Faraday cage flaws, but the fact remains that this is a dangerous weakpoint.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/hpm.htm
February 2nd, 2007 - 15:18
btw: One of the main points that I am trying to address is the claim that nuclear weapon and nuclear missile defense is an intractable problem.
I am indicating that new sensor technology is making it possible.
I am also indicating that detecting and going after the problem earlier in the build, development, safe storage stage is better and less time constrained than hitting them in the launch, boost, re-entry stages.
Creating ubitquitous sensors is also possible with more advanced tech. I am indicating that possible nearer term breakthroughs with gamma radiation detection and differentiation, terahertz radiation, millimeter radiation could start shifting the balance earlier.
February 2nd, 2007 - 16:04
Some random thoughts…
Missile Defense is something that can strategically be justified if all it does is cause the “enemy” to spend their money to work around it, assuming your nation has the financial upper hand. The fact that it might work for “rogue nations” is another pretty good reason to make the effort. Can North Korea or Iran easily afford thousands of decoys per nuke? Maybe, but I’d rather they spend a bunch more money on that than some other method of trying to target our country, assuming they are targeting us of course.
The argument that we can’t do something like this seems to me to not carry any weight. Every time there is something that some expert says can’t be done early the next decade or century someone is doing it and often it is mass produced. The “it’s impossible” argument almost screams invalid premise to me.
Who would have thought that building thousands of nuclear tipped missiles would be a great idea to prevent nuclear annihilation? Building something that keeps someone from “accidentally” pushing the button and killing millions seems like a noble effort. Arguments against appear political to me. Even an imperfect “shield” would be better than none, especially if we are proactive and attempt to protect our allies as well.
Is there a reason you couldn’t address the short range missile attack by creating anti-missile batteries near the coastal cities themselves? Maybe you need more, but defending the high population centers seems like a priority to reduce the incentive of the enemy to attempt to attack in the first place.
How do you protect a nation with open borders from smuggling in nuclear, biological or chemical weapons? I’m reading a lot about sensors here as the solution. Ok. That is great. Let’s have a strong border and import regulation to verify what is coming into the country. All for it. However, isn’t the real question, “What is the root cause?” Shouldn’t we be proactively attempting to identify who our enemies are and who is developing what weapons and has what plans to use them? Increase our intelligence capacity both high tech and low tech. Get some feet on the ground within some of these target countries and infiltrate their organizations. Preventative medicine (action) is what is necessary. Know beforehand that an attack is coming. Foil it before they even contemplate launching an attack… Just a thought.
February 2nd, 2007 - 16:29
The difference in terms of detection is the exact spectral analysis of the gamma rays
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray
I believe the scientific american article in the Nov 2006 issue has some spectral diagrams that show the higher resolution of analysis from superconductors allows for the differentiation of isotopes. Certain isotopes would only be in nuclear weapons.
Seeing with Superconductors; November 2006; Scientific American Magazine; by Kent D. Irwin; 8 Page(s)
Your eyes are exquisite light detectors, determining the intensity, color and spatial distribution of the rays incident on them. The human retina has more “pixels” than a consumer digital camera, containing about six million color-sensing cone cells and more than 100 million of the rod cells responsible for vision in the dark. And eyes are highly sensitive: a dark-adapted rod cell can fire off a signal to the brain on absorbing a single particle of light, or photon, the smallest quantum unit of an electromagnetic wave. As few as six of these single-photon signals are required for your brain to perceive a flash. But eyes and commercial cameras are far from ideal for many tasks, because they can detect only those photons whose frequencies lie in the narrow visible range. Furthermore, their color capabilities do not involve a measurement of each photon’s precise frequency.
Scientific and industrial photon detectors, in contrast, peer into the electromagnetic realms beyond that of visible light–into the low-frequency (long-wavelength, low-energy) world of infrared and microwaves and into the high-frequency regime of x-rays and gamma rays. Yet they too are limited in their abilities. In particular, for visible and longer wavelengths scientists have lacked a detector able to “see” an individual photon and discern its frequency, and thus its energy, with any accuracy. Determining the frequency of photons opens the door to a wealth of information about the matter that emitted the photons.
February 2nd, 2007 - 17:40
“The power levels are based on pulsed bursts of power.”
Okay, but damage doesn’t usually depend on total power level; it depends primarily on how much energy is applied. If you have a petawatt-level burst for one nanosecond, that’s only 1 MJ, and since it would spread out on route it wouldn’t do any damage at all.
“Nuclear materials surveillance would be constant.”
Oh, so you’re talking about peacetime, in which case you’re talking about flying over another countries’ airspace with heavy weapons. I don’t think we would like it if Chinese bombers regularly flew over our major cities and blew up the occasional military installation.
“Against smaller nuclear powers, the US could fly over with stealth equipped planes loaded with detection gear. Then as the they detect they hit the sites with precision guided weapons.”
Yup. After all, we all know that the US’s jurisdiction includes the known universe and they have total freedom to fly over any countries’ airspace, with heavily armed bombers, and blow up the (nuclear-armed!) military installations, without any complaints, threats of retaliation or declarations of WWIII. Something like this happened before; the president called it “a day that will live in infamy”, and we responded with a four-year all out military assault.
“Are you saying that the defender would launch the minute any plane took off from a US base ?”
If there’s a state of war, any sane defender would launch their missiles as soon as said war turned nuclear.
If there’s no state of war, the US is going to quickly become known for its violent surprise attacks.
“http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2006/10/improved-detection-of-small-amounts-of.html”
If you actually read the article, they’re talking about searching nuclear plants on the ground and using technology to rapidly identify whether samples of uranium are weapons-grade. While cool, this technology cannot detect anything at large distances or behind large quantities of matter.
“http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/mg19025566.100.html”
Okay, these can detect nuclear materials at moderate distances, but once again, they cannot work behind radshields or large quantities of matter.
“http://www.anl.gov/Media_Center/News/2006/news060321.html”
Okay, they can detect nuclear materials in the open from 600 meters away on the ground. How you’re going to get within 600 meters of exposed nuclear material in a hostile enemy country is beyond me.
“http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060523072848.htm”
“with instruments located 9 km from a nuclear power plant showed clear differences between when the plant was operating and when it was idling”
This is a commercial nuclear power plant; it’s not hidden! Congratulations, you managed to find something when you already knew where it was. Secret nuclear facilities would obviously not have giant towers poking a hundred meters into the air that conveniently release large clouds of visible, detectable smoke into the atmosphere.
“The before they get in position scenario was when people were talking about floating bombs over on ships to the coastline”
Oops. My misinterpretation.
“One would setup blimps or position detectors at locations on the shipping lanes.”
Okay, now you’ve got the huge cargo ships covered, but nuclear bombs are small enough that they can come in on almost any ship, from any direction. We can’t even stem the flow of heroin from Afghanistan, with a ten-billion dollar budget, and anyone can recognize heroin on-sight without the need for special detectors.
“Not all ordinary shielding would be effective against the power levels the high power microwaves are working at.”
“The average power is not high enough to significantly damage living tissue, although it can heat nerves and break down cells. Even so, heating cells requires sustained exposure of several seconds or more and the duration of an HPM pulse is generally only microseconds.”
If the damn thing can’t even burn through your skin, how is it going to blow up a missile in flight? Yes, it is very painful (as demonstrated by the military’s new riot-inducing ADS), but metal can heat up to several hundred degrees C without even needing special cooling systems.
“The problem with Faraday cages is that most vital equipment needs to be in contact with the outside world. This contact point can allow the electromagentic field to enter the cage,”
The entire missile is made of metal! The entire bloody thing is already a Faraday cage, without even needing to do anything in particular. Yes, these missiles can communicate via radio, so the antennas are obviously exposed, but an antenna isn’t exactly delicate electronics.
Oh, and the cage doesn’t need to be solid metal all around; it still works with a wire mesh.
” Can North Korea or Iran easily afford thousands of decoys per nuke?”
No, but nukes are so much more expensive than missiles they could easily afford, say, ten.
“The “it’s impossible†argument almost screams invalid premise to me.”
It’s not impossible to magically detect secret nuclear systems from space; it’s just damn hard. All the obvious stuff, neutron and gamma radiation, is blocked by several meters of shielding (it has to be, or else the radiation would kill everyone working there).
“by creating anti-missile batteries near the coastal cities themselves?”
Okay, so now you plan to put anti-missile batteries in every coastal town or city around the US? We have over 3,000 km of coastline, not including Alaska.
“The difference in terms of detection is the exact spectral analysis of the gamma rays”
Gamma rays are scattered by matter; even before a ray is absorbed, it has gone through hundreds of scatterings (each of which alters the wavelength), meaning this won’t work at all behind any thickness of material.
February 3rd, 2007 - 01:14
The HPM claims are that they can down a cruise missile at over 100 miles of distance. Why can they down a cruise missile and not a ballistic missile? there are seams, vents and rivets in the metal. Plus the back end of the rocket has an opening.
I did not claim that this stuff would work perfectly or that a lot more development is not needed but that this is a promising area. that it is on the way to be very useful. Better detection and surveillance. Plus being able to detect nuclear reactors at range is start. (btw. the advancednano blog is mine, I wrote all of the articles on that site)
Surveillance can be performed during peacetime to locate the weapons. The shooting only goes off when the war starts.
>Yup. After all, we all know that the US’s >jurisdiction includes the known universe and >they have total freedom to fly over any >countries’ airspace, with heavily armed >bombers, and blow up the (nuclear-armed!) >military installations, without any complaints, >threats of retaliation or declarations of >WWIII.
Are the nuclear weapons impossible to deal with or only impossible to deal with if you are not willing to do what might work?
AS I said you fly over with what looks like a civilian transport in peacetime with your detection gear. Or you stick them into drones. Or you supply your spies with the necessary gear. The USA is not the only country that has trouble protecting and detecting what passes through their borders.
the anti-personnel microwave – I am assuming that they crank up the power to make it more deadly and have more range on it.
Heroin does not have a unique spectral signature that can be detected at distance.
Bombing a smaller power with targeted attacks against actual nuclear WMDs is an improvement over an invasion/occupation of a country without WMDs.
Terahertz and millimeter waves can penetrate metal and material and there are other wavelengths and particles that can do that as well. The point being with research this could be solvable problem. Plus traces could be detectable upon people who work at the facility. Detect and track them to the sources
February 3rd, 2007 - 09:22
“The HPM claims are that they can down a cruise missile at over 100 miles of distance.”
Okay, but if they can do that, every air force in the world is going to become instantly obsolete. A plane is very similar in structure to a missile: large volatile fuel tanks, fragile, lightweight metal skin, so it should be easy to shoot down dozens of planes at a time with these things.
“(btw. the advancednano blog is mine, I wrote all of the articles on that site)”
Oops, sorry. I thought that it was someone else’s blog that you had linked to, in which case it would be a thirdhand story and therefore prone to distortion.
“Surveillance can be performed during peacetime to locate the weapons.”
Hostile nations will obviously not permit regular overflight of their territory by surveillance drones; look at what the Soviet Union did, for instance, when we tried to fly over with U2 planes.
“The shooting only goes off when the war starts.”
When the war starts, a hostile defender would probably not keep their nuclear weapons in one spot and risk having them destroyed. Why would any sane nation not powerful enough to have a MAD deterrent keep their nuclear weapons right next to a large, easy-to-detect facility?
“AS I said you fly over with what looks like a civilian transport in peacetime with your detection gear. Or you stick them into drones. Or you supply your spies with the necessary gear. The USA is not the only country that has trouble protecting and detecting what passes through their borders.”
When this is discovered, it would be a major scandal and a violation of numerous treaties and international law, and a hostile nation would probably retaliate violently. Remember the Lusitania?
“Heroin does not have a unique spectral signature that can be detected at distance.”
Yes, it does; every material will behave in a certain way when pummeled with a beam of neutrons, and heroin is no exception. Heroin can also be easily recognized on sight without special equipment of any kind.
“Terahertz and millimeter waves can penetrate metal and material and there are other wavelengths and particles that can do that as well.”
THz radiation is even easier to defend against than neutron radiation; just surround the materials in a metal sheath. THz radiation is not magically immune to the laws of electromagnetism; it is physically impossible to maintain a large electric potential in a metal.
“Bombing a smaller power with targeted attacks against actual nuclear WMDs is an improvement over an invasion/occupation of a country without WMDs.”
Until said country retaliates with their nuclear weapons, probably causing tens if not hundreds of thousands of people to be blown into bloody smithereens.
“Plus the back end of the rocket has an opening.”
Which is filled with hot ionized plasma, an excellent absorber of all kinds of radiation.
“there are seams, vents and rivets in the metal.”
Obviously an accidental Faraday cage isn’t going to be absolutely perfect, but it would probably work well enough to make 90% or more of the energy going into heating the metal skin rather than the electronics. Electronics are a very small target to hit in a missile anyway.
February 3rd, 2007 - 10:05
Superb discussion (as usual). Thanks to all, but especially to the back-&-forth betwenn Brian and Tom—thanks much, guys!! Please forgive my johnny-come-lateliness…
1. randpost would seem to be right on at least one particular point (at as far as specifically embedded in the above discussion): There is as yet no non-existentially-lethal **test** for whether an AGI is friendly (or Friendly, if one prefers). To rather cavaleirly, if not, indeed, whimsically retort to the effect that the (relevant?!) “test” is whether or not humankind is annihilated (indirectly, of course, as a side-effect of the AGI’s well-considered plan of “better living through nanotech [and eventually, probably, femtotech]“). But this is, rather obviously, NOT a meaningful “test” AT ALL, meaningful, that is, **epistemically** and **pragmatically**, as there will be, *ex hypothesi* NO KNOWING SUBJECTS LEFT TO *ACT* UPON THE “TEST’S” RESULT(S)!!! Which is, I take it, randpost’s implicit point. Yet this—surely relevant, to say the least—point seems not to be grasped (or at least insufficiently appreciated) by randpost’s “opponents” in this discussion. Positing such a “test” is simply methodologically *self-stulltifying* in the extreme, and thus of no pragmatic use at all! (Which is, again I take it, randpost’s point!) And this merely highlights why we need to be able to test (in a more realistic, robust sense!) a developing AGI isolated *in situ*, in a sealed-off (from the rest of the world) environment over which we will have control. And this, admittedly, will be no easy task, if we’re talking even moderate genuine learning, environmentally-modifying AGI with access to nanotech (itself being embodied nanotech, if the two tech trajectories continue on toward convergence around 2020 or sooner). But w/o such isolation-&-control, one cannot realistically and meaningfully have a (series of) test(s) as to whether or not the thing is friendly (or, again, Friendly). (And while it might be argued that the thing would have no motive to deceive us, it would, presumably, have the intelligence/skill(s) to do so, if it did so choose…) Except the “turn it loose & see what happens” “test”, which, as we’ve seen, is really no test at all… All this is nothing new, this very cluster of issues/problems being (at least part of) the very core of concerns about the development (much less deployment) of superhuman AGI. I’m just surprised (if not appalled) that randpost’s point in this regard was, not just ignored, but seemingly not even appreciated!
2. Ballistic missle defense is fine, as far as it goes. But it doesn’t “go” all that far. Tom is quite correct that a small, tactical nuke (or, at least in-principle, a larger, missle-grade strategic nuke for that matter)—sufficient to obliterate at least, say, 10-15 sq. km—could easily be smuggled in via one of the myriad freight containers (typically railway-configured containers) that almost *literally* *pour* into the major American ports (from Boston and NYC, to New Orleans and Houston, to LA and SF) **daily**. And security in this regard, while slightly improved over the last several yrs, is still little more than a joke compared to what the security measures could be and should be. And this doesn’t mean draconian police-state crap either, just sensible protocols which nonetheless have yet to be implemented (wonder why…?!?!) From such a port city, such a nuke could farily easily be transported virtually anywhere, and then detonated. And both the Canadian and Mexican borders are so porous, that anyone who wants to bring-in, quitely literally, a “back-pack” nuke could do so…
3. But as far as terrorism goes, colleagues, we must be very careful to not discount the possibility (and, indeed, in my judgment, rather high probability) of false-flag terror tactics. Is it genuinely realistic to think that a bunch of 3rd World wacko-zealots (and/or domestic “right-wing” wackos) could’ve pulled-off that which they are alleged to have pulled-off?! The evidence really does suggest otherwise, if one takes the time to investigate it thoroughly. “Remember the Maine!!” indeed!!! There is ample evidence to suggest—if not prove beyond any reasonable doubt—that most-if-not-all of the terror events of the last 15-20 yrs or so (not just in America, but worldwide) have indeed been false-flag terror ops. I was somewhate skeptical of this myself, at first. But the more one researches the various events, the facts, the timelines, etc., it becomes obvious that the official accounts are bullshit. The neo-cons would like nothing better than for a back-pack nuke to detonate somewhere within the lower 48 as a *pretext* to further eviscerate Constitutional liberties, protections, and rights, all in the name of protecting us from terror, of course. See Webster Tarpley’s book, *9/11: Synthetic Terrorism–Made in the USA*, among many others, for a discussion. And see also Michael Ruppert’s exhaustively thorough *Crossing the Rubicon…* for further discussion. The neo-cons, the Straussian bastards, wanted a pretext to militarily secure the central-asian oil fields, as well as have a pretext for police-state machinations here in America. Far from being an “extreme” position, this is actually a straightforward one, once one examines the evidence and puts on one’s neo-con cap: What would an oil-industry-steeped, Straussian ideologues-cum-would-be-oligarchs DO? Precisely the kind of crap we’ve seen over the last 15 yrs or so, and especially over the last 5 or so yrs. Far from being unrealistic, this real politik 101!!
In terms of both domestic and international politics, it well behooves us all to recall the the title (and contents) of Albert J. Nock’s classic, *Our Enemy, the STATE*…
Ciao
February 3rd, 2007 - 11:26
“randpost would seem to be right on at least one particular point (at as far as specifically embedded in the above discussion): There is as yet no non-existentially-lethal **test** for whether an AGI is friendly (or Friendly, if one prefers).”
By Rice’s theorem, it is mathematically impossible to write a test that can predict whether an arbitrary AI is Friendly. I was referring to a test that can take the statement “AI Bob will do ABC” and spit back the statement “ABC is/is not Friendly”.
“The neo-cons would like nothing better than for a back-pack nuke to detonate somewhere within the lower 48 as a *pretext*”
Be *on your guard* for something like this happening in the next few months. It is obvious that the US government is gearing for war with Iran, and another “attack” would be just the thing required to increase popular support. We have already moved two aircraft carriers, along with their associated battle groups, cruisers, destroyers, oilers, submarines, gunboats, AA batteries, fighters, bombers, missiles, supply ships, troop transports, et cetera ad nauseam (anyone remember the submarine-tanker collision a few weeks back? We have so many ships there we can hardly keep them from running into each other) in the Persian Gulf area. This could trigger any number of undesirable things:
- Several members of this board being drafted to go get blown up by a Chinese-made cruise missile. Unlike the last draft, students and women are “eligible”, and the age limit has been raised to 35 (see the SS website).
- A drastic rise in the oil price. Any war in Iran would rapidly shut down the Persian Gulf, pretty much cutting off the oil of not only Iran, but Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and others.
- A declaration of emergency in the US, with subsequent loss of any remaining democracy or civil liberties.
- Nuclear warfare. Any use of nuclear weapons in Iran would pretty much scrap the NPT and could easily start a nuclear arms race.
- Terrorist attacks in the US, either by American, Israeli, Iranian, or rogue operatives.
- A loss of control over Iraq. The Mahdi Army, Iraq’s largest militia, does not usually battle with US forces (yes, Iraq’s Shiite death squads are effectively condoned by the American army). The Shiite militias are much larger and better armed than the Sunni militias we’ve been fighting, and obviously they would retaliate in the event of an attack on Iran.
- The dollar crashing on international markets. If you have a dollar bill in your pocket, it could easily and instantly lose 20%, 40%, 60% or more of its value. Poof, there goes the money to pay the rent.
- I’m sure there are others.
How did this get so off-topic anyway?
February 3rd, 2007 - 14:48
THANK YOU, as always, Tom, for your clarification. If it was implicit in your earlier remarks, then I missed it in my perusal (forgive my dumb-dumbness…).
Forgive my shunting off onto “this topic”. I just want(ed) to make sure that my esteemed colleagues here are aware that not only the current administration, but the last 15 or 20 administrations have been the most corrupt and evil imaginable. The entire world has actual been enthralled by an international financial elite for many generations. FDR alluded to it, as did Woodrow Wilson, both more than once. I’m afraid Alex Jones and Aaron Russo are RIGHT: Fascism has already come to America (now more appropriately spelled, AmeriKa). If we expect to have any decent, (trans)humane future, it is this oligarchic, Straussian, **fascism** that must be uncovered, disclosed and routed…as they say, Thoreau the rascals out (and throw their asses in jail, for that matter…) IF there is another “terror” attact anywhere in the world, large or small, you can bet it is a false-flag black-op using 3rd world patsies and actually carried out by Intelligence Community black-ops agents, whether nominally of the CIA, Military Intelligence, MI6/SAS, or Mossad. Don’t be fooled if the Corporate-Fascist media spins as a “right-wing militia” sort of terrorist op (a la McVeigh/OKC) or an “Islamic terrorist” op. It’s just the black ops branch of the Establishment oligarchy doing its “job” to foment fear and lay the groundwork for a draconia police state domestically, and more fascist-imperialism abroad. We need to protect our borders and get the hell out of just about everywhere else in the world. Again, don’t by fooled by mainstream spin bullshit if/where there’s another terror insident—and KEEP YOUR POWDER DRY, folks…
February 3rd, 2007 - 15:11
My (meta)point, in other words is: If we (are to) have any chance of navigating robotech, nanotech and the Singularity successfully, then we must also focus our attention (in part) on exposing and routing the already metastasising neo-fascist, neo-totalitarian cancer in our midst. This is not about nominal, superficial, left-right, Demopublican-Republicrat polarizing CRAP. If we let the Corporate-fascist media control what the “masses” think is going on, their mindset and biases, if we let net-neutrality and vigorous/robust First Amendment protections, and net-neutral, pro-robust-First-Amendment-access/exercise regulations go by the wayside (as they already partially have as of the passing of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which was slipped-through with nary an examination, much less debate, in either chamber), then you can kiss your liberty—and eventually your life—good by. These neo-con maniacs (and there is, literally, a frothing mania about them), who are ultimately merely minions/Mandarins of the transnational ultra-wealthy oligarchic super-elite(s), want nothing more than or other than to turn the entire planet into one big, unified, borderless, totalitarian, feudal/hierarchical **police state**. We try to deny this, ignore this, not unlike whistling past a graveyard, but the evidence is now too overwhelming to mistake, if one will only investigate it thoroughly. The evidence for virtually each and every terror event over the last few decades being a false-flag black op simply can no longer be ignored. Good ol’ Ben (Franklin), when ask by an uppercrust matron, upon his exiting the final meeting ratifying the Constitution, what he and Jefferson, and Madison (bless his soul), *et al*, “had wrought us”, he replied, “A REPUBLIC, madame, *if you can keep it*.” The battle for the American Republic is already joined, already underway. To have any hope of a (trans)humane future, do your homework, dear esteemed colleagues, and join the fray—we have a future to win…
February 3rd, 2007 - 15:15
Forgive my dictional/grammatical faux pas in both the above posts—I was carpal-tunneling (i.e., typing) fast and furiously…
February 3rd, 2007 - 17:47
“hen we must also focus our attention (in part) on exposing and routing the already metastasising neo-fascist, neo-totalitarian cancer in our midst.”
I don’t see why this is a serious problem. If the government gets bad enough to prevent the kind of work we need to face the future, then the smart people will move to Europe and continue work there. The US could implode and it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
February 3rd, 2007 - 18:29
“The US could implode and it wouldn’t be the end of the world.”
No, but it would be very, very bad for everyone. The modern economy is so interwoven that a crash of one industry will affect every industry. Say there’s a depression and a screw factory goes bankrupt. The truck factory down the road requires screws, and now it has to buy them from faraway markets at elevated prices, so it also goes bankrupt. The food factory, which buys trucks to cart its product to stores, now also has to buy them internationally at elevated prices, so it goes bankrupt. The store now has to buy food at high prices, so it goes bankrupt, and then Joe Consumer has to go to another store with higher prices, which then makes him go bankrupt, and since Joe Consumer is 75% of the US economy, it just rolls downhill from there.
The US has a population of three hundred million people used to first-world living standards. If there’s a depression, or trade restrictions, or a crash in the dollar’s value, or a war, or anything else that disrupts the basic infrastructure, all those people are going to have to go somewhere. The US has not had a war on its soil for a hundred and fifty years, has not had a major economic depression for seventy years. The entire country has become hypnotized; even something as serious and immediately threatening as nuclear war is treated as a joke by the American populace. I honestly don’t know what would happen.
February 3rd, 2007 - 23:03
this site
http://trshare.triumf.ca/~safety/EHS/rpt/rpt_7/node17.html
seems to indicate that gamma rays can go through a lot of material. The site lists how thick to drop the gamma rays to a tenth of their intensity.
A pdf on gamma ray interaction with matter
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/lib-www/la-pubs/00326397.pdf
Possibilties for Moun detection
http://www.lanl.gov/quarterly/q_spring03/muon_text.shtml
Wired 2002 article on nuke detection ideas
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.11/nukes_pr.html
A pdf that reviews the issues of detection of nuclear weapons and the current and developing options
http://www.ndu.edu/ctnsp/Def_Tech/DTP%2013%20Primer%20on%20Detection.pdf
February 4th, 2007 - 10:05
“seems to indicate that gamma rays can go through a lot of material. The site lists how thick to drop the gamma rays to a tenth of their intensity.”
A “lot” of material? The chart shows the average 1 MeV gamma ray will get absorbed half the time after going through a hundred meters of air, a material not exactly known for its excellent shielding qualities. So a plane at 5,000 meters up is going to detect nothing at all, not even because of the shielding, but because of all that air in the way.
“Possibilties for Moun detection
http://www.lanl.gov/quarterly/q_spring03/muon_text.shtml”
The annoying thing about uranium is that you simply don’t need very much to make a bomb; a few dozen kilograms is plenty enough even if you don’t have very sophisticated technology. So while this can detect large, solid lumps of uranium, it couldn’t detect, say, 30 kg of uranium mixed in with 3,000 kg of iron or aluminium (the mixing could be done by any half-decent metal smelter, and then the uranium could be recovered through remelting or chemical processes).
” In the split second he was under the scanner, 500 gamma rays might collide with it.”
This would very quickly become a standing joke among the officials there, as such a sensor would detect any radiological materials passing through. Nobody would take it very seriously if it was set off every time a truck carrying smoke detectors or potassium chloride went by. According to the chart you provided, it would only take ten centimeters of lead to shield the gammas below detectability anyway.
February 4th, 2007 - 13:08
You speak about smart people moving to Europe as a solution, no? Not smart idea. Europe will be imploding much more quick than United State. Smart people hence going opposite derection. You be thinking danger comes from fascists inside United State? Ha. Good one frend. Plenty fascists sure. Not in United State though. But coming with bad toys for bad boys.
February 4th, 2007 - 15:26
Reading through the gamma ray info, it seems that more sensors that are closer than a plane flying over would be better. The superconducting gamma ray detectors can provide more details as to what is setting things off but it is better to get them closer. As the wired article indicates a network of smaller sensors. This would also need to be combined with detailed high resolution radiation maps of target locations and borders and other areas that are being monitored so that it would be easier to determine when something is there that should not be.
The terahertz and millimeter atmospheric detection would be to monitor when someone gets sloppy and allows for a radioactive leak or does any unshielded work.
Ten centimeters of lead is quite a bit. And forcing the enemy to take more measures than they currently are could make it easier for other monitoring and spying to detect the unusual activity.
By monitoring passively and actively across the spectrum (terahertz radiation and x-rays could spot that much lead shielding) it can cause mistakes to be made where guarding against detecting with one method allows for detection with another method.
ie. make a big lead and metal shield could look unusual and out of place. Burying things deep can show detectable construction.
As I indicated, improvements need to be made on the various methods.
Getting detectors in closer on insect sized drones or planted by agents and then relaying information out.
The problem is still very difficult and needs layers of detection and monitoring. But I think it is worthwhile to try to figure this out.
February 4th, 2007 - 16:42
It is rather easy to design sensors of very small size, that fly into a region of interest, perhaps solar powered. Tiny robotic sensors could work their way into the most sensitive areas, then relay information out through a network of nano-sensors. There is really no way of preventing such an incursion if well designed.
February 4th, 2007 - 17:40
“Ten centimeters of lead is quite a bit.”
It’s small enough to be easily concealed in an ordinary shipping box and light enough to put on a truck.
“And forcing the enemy to take more measures than they currently are could make it easier for other monitoring and spying to detect the unusual activity.”
As compared to the cost of getting the enriched uranium in the first place, everything I’ve described is trivial. The cost of twenty kilos or so of HEU or plutonium could run into the billions of dollars, since that’s what people would be willing to pay for it.
“Burying things deep can show detectable construction.”
Detectable construction?! Things are “constructed” literally every day. In my own home town, in the last five years, we’ve built a library, an elementary school, several large housing developments, at least five restaurants, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Should the whole town then be bombed into oblivion because of “detectable construction”?
“There is really no way of preventing such an incursion if well designed.”
True, but by the time we have nanotech that sophisticated we’ll have much bigger worries than nuclear weaponry.
“(terahertz radiation and x-rays could spot that much lead shielding)”
THz radiation would be very quickly absorbed, because lead is a conductive material just like any other metal. X-rays would also be absorbed, because lead is very thick and is a good gamma blocker. Both of these properties are shared by things as mundane as large blocks of iron, aluminium, copper, and a whole bunch of other metals.
“when something is there that should not be.”
You seem to have the view that each and every one of the millions of cars, trucks, boats, planes, bicycles, and other vehicles going in and out of America every day are all coordinated by some central agency. Even under the heading of “radioactive materials”, there are plenty of things that aren’t really regulated, let alone constantly monitored, including various tritium lights, smoke detectors, things with large amounts of potassium, test sources, radioactive rock, broken CRT televisions and monitors, et cetera.
February 5th, 2007 - 07:12
I am not saying that the monitoring is happening now. I am saying that in order to handle detection of nuclear materials and being able to prevent bombs from being snuck in from Mexico etc… that the heightened level of monitoring is what will need to be achieved.
So let me repeat that again. I know that it is not being done now. I know that the measures that I am proposing are not mature or capable now. I am suggesting that if the shoot the missiles down in the air is impossible or that it is leaving open the vulnerability of smuggled bombs via truck and ship, then R&D into massive and effective detection is what is needed.
Gamma rays by themselves will not do it. Ten centimeters of lead is not forcing enough of a response. Thus the need for a wider range of things Muons going through several feet of material. The atmospheric effects. Again what I listed is not enough as you have pointed out. It is the necessary path. What are you suggesting. It is impossible so do not try? Or let things continue as usual, let the even cruder and larger force approach for Iraq be used in Iran an N Korea.
The other thing is that people can get sloppy. Developing some detection ability when previously there was none, might catch some activity before the new capabilities are widely known.
The fact that something is absorbed is an indication that something is there.
Detectable construction would be to detect something buried 300 feet underground. I do not think your schools, library, restaurants etc… were built that far down. Deep diggers can reach down to those levels.
http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2006/11/destroying-bunkers-and-entrances-down.html
A more precise way to get to the deep bunkers that Iran has buried under its cities. Thus the town can mostly avoid oblivion
February 5th, 2007 - 09:08
“hen we must also focus our attention (in part) on exposing and routing the already metastasising neo-fascist, neo-totalitarian cancer in our midst.â€
“”I don’t see why this is a serious problem. If the government gets bad enough to prevent the kind of work we need to face the future, then the smart people will move to Europe and continue work there. The US could implode and it wouldn’t be the end of the world.”"
1) Europe is falling to the influx and birth rate of their Islamic citizens and temporary workers. 40% of 15-25 year olds in France are islamic (or some % close to that.) Europe will be in the midst of a freeze on intellectual investigation, only the koran can be read, or in the midst of civil war…
The USA will likely see an influx of the best and brightest free thinkers from Europe since it appears the Europeans don’t intend to stand up and fight for all they’ve earned since the Renaissance…
2) I’m not sure I understand the argument of the US being neo-fascist or neo-communist, unless the “neo” changes the meanings of the root word? Socialist-capitalist-republic and not necessarily in that order is how I’d attempt to describe our current state. I do tend to agree that there isn’t much real significant difference between the two political parties, but for the sake of advancing research, etc I think both are equal.
The only area I can think of that there is a difference wrt to R&D is embryonic stem cell research. Even there it is simply a difference of whether or not new embryos are destroyed. How significant is this to the overall cause of advanced R&D? It seems to be a very small % of new development to me, but I could be wrong.
February 5th, 2007 - 13:04
“I am saying that in order to handle detection of nuclear materials and being able to prevent bombs from being snuck in from Mexico etc… that the heightened level of monitoring is what will need to be achieved.”
We can’t even keep thousands of illegal immigrants from pouring across the border, despite the fact that anyone can pick out humans from a background with a $200 infrared camera.
“It is the necessary path.”
It is the insane and ridiculous path. Unlike bombs, drugs, or other materials, nuclear bomb-making materials must start out under our direct control, as they can only be produced in large, high-tech facilities. It is much, much, much easier to guard a facility with a perimeter of one kilometer than a border with a perimeter of ten thousand kilometers.
“Or let things continue as usual, let the even cruder and larger force approach for Iraq be used in Iran an N Korea.”
Iraq and Iran don’t even have nuclear weapons. Iran has a nuclear program that may possibly be converted to produce nuclear weapons at some time in the indefinite future, but the same thing could be said for Japan. North Korea effectively already had nuclear weapons, as they have thousands of cannons trained on the city of Seoul which can rapidly disperse chemical agents and kill the population. If some rogue group wanted to get their hands on a nuclear weapon, they sure as hell wouldn’t go for North Korea- it’s the most heavily guarded country in the world.
“The other thing is that people can get sloppy.”
Yup, we all know that people doing as safe, routine and ordinary a job as smuggling a stolen nuclear weapon into a major US city are bound to become bored and get sloppy.
“The fact that something is absorbed is an indication that something is there. ”
Sure, something is there. What is there? We have no clue, as the radiation is absorbed and so nothing bounces back to the detector!
“Thus the town can mostly avoid oblivion”
Mostly avoid oblivion? Sure, the energy may go into creating an underground shockwave, but said shockwave is going to go into the foundation of every building in the area. It may not be as damaging, but it’s not a magic weapon that just hits one spot only.
“Detectable construction would be to detect something buried 300 feet underground.”
And how, pray tell, do you detect something buried 300 feet underground? Your own article admits that even the blast force of a nuclear explosion (!) can’t penetrate that much ground.
“40% of 15-25 year olds in France are islamic”
A government where %90 of the population is Islamic really isn’t that different from a government where %90 of the population is Christian or Jewish. The basic religious principles are still there.
“Socialist-capitalist-republic and not necessarily in that order is how I’d attempt to describe our current state.”
Okay, to go over the 14 Defining Characteristics of Fascism: (http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm)
Hmmm, that’s all fourteen. Sieg Heil!
“The only area I can think of that there is a difference wrt to R&D is embryonic stem cell research.”
And having a stable, functioning government and economy from which to base research off of. You don’t see much Singularity research going on in Nigeria. Everyone seems to forget that a stable, first-world country is something that must be worked for, not something that can just be taken as a given.
February 5th, 2007 - 13:25
Eric: Thank you very much for your input. The simple, verifiable facts are these. Both intranational and, especially, international politics (including war, terrorism, etc.) are, if not, indeed, controlled and managed, then at the very least very, very strongly influenced by the transnational financial/corporate elite, and has been for quite sometime. They control, for the vast most part, the media, the political parties, the military-industrial symbiotic complex, and the various (most active) intelligence services. All this is verifiable by anyone with the time and patience to dig it up. The national and transnational elites are corporativists and control freaks, essentially. They want nothing more or other than “Earth, Inc.” (with myriad “subsidiaries”, of course), controlled & managed, of course, by **themselves**. For them, constitutional protections & protocols, basic rights, due process for all, and full & accurate investigation & disclosure of facts (i.e., vigorous, virtuous, independent **journalism**), all are mere impediments to global dominance of the “consuming” masses (who, over the last 10-12 decades have been systematically dumbed-down and over-specialized—the works of Joel Spring and John Taylor Gatto). This is not wild-eyed “conspiracy theory”, but simple, verifiable fact. Nor is this merely my parroting, say, Noam Chomsky (though I concede that much of what Noam says is important and spot-on). The very nature of the modern corporation, qua institutional “person” is, as has been pointed out in a book and companion documentary DVD (“The Corporation”) that of a **psychopath** (or *sociopath*, if one prefers to split terminological hairs). And many (if not virtually all) of the flesh-&-blood persons comprinsing the global elite(s) are, if not full-blown psychopaths, then at least megalomanical, narcissistic *semi-psychopaths*. W/o a robust, ultimately Aristotelian/Lockean **culture** (which, via “dumbing-down”, has largely been gutted over the last several decades) with a robust appreciation (on the part of the “common man”) for fundamental constitutional protections, safeguards & protocols, the door is thrown if not wide-open, then at least a whole foot (jack-boot)-in-the-door’s worth for **corporativism** (which Mussolini himself said is a more accurated & appropriate term for “fascism”), and the elites behind it, to utilize the time-tested, almost-never-fails formula of “Problem > Reaction > (draconian) Solution” to…do what?…further expand the corporate state into virtually every aspect of citizen’s lives—all at the logically-necessary cost/price of systematic erosion of liberty (civil liberties in particular), privacy, etc.
The transnational elites (who finaced both the Bolsheviks and the Nazis—and, again, this is not a “wild-eyed” claim, but straightforwardly verifiable) first used the various World Wars and other, more-or-less manufactured “conflicts” (such as Korea & Vietnam) to achieve several ends, among which the two most pertinent are: Make money hand-over-fist supplying munitions (to both sides, of course), insidiously inculcate into the minds of humanity that some sort of transnational, global **government** (**STATE**), *with its own money* (the soon-to-be-unvailed “Bancor” version of SDRs), its own laws (which would override any vestiges of conventiional national sovereignty [which, in the USA, rests, mind you, ultimately **with the People (Citizens) themselves**, as John Jay's Supreme court first early-on made absolutely clear]), its own court system(s), and, its own transnational police/military force. Again, this is not wild-eyed “fringe” stuff at all whatsoever. This is straightforwardly verifiable. But, with the demise of the Cold War, the ploys are now (the “War” on) Terrorism, and, of course, The Environment (or Climate Change, whatever). Note that most “offically” proposed (as distinguish, that is, from genuine **grass-roots** analysis/proposals) “solutions” to the Climate/Environment “Problem” usually entail massive taxation, restirction(s) and wheelbarrow loads of transnational bureaucracy/redtape, which advances the cause of a global police state (for the protection/preservation of the Environment, of course, don’t ya know…). Same with Terrorism. There is sufficient evidence—and I’ve researched it all fairly thoroughly, but am still on-goingly doing so, and am open to consturctive, collegial criticism—to provisionally (at least) conclude that there was/is a rather high degree of government involvement in virtually all the “terror” events of the last, say, 15-20 yrs. The specifics of that involvement/complicity vary (and reasonable persons might disagree about some particulars, etc.), but the fact of complicity is virtually unassailable, whether of the “knowingly let it happen” kind or the even more dastardly “actually *made* it happen” kind.
The process is akin to a constricting snakes m.o.: Keep the squeeze on! Keep mounting the pressure, via propaganda about the Environment and/or the Terror(ist) Threat, and throw in an oil-spill or two, and/or a terror-attack or two, and slowly propagandize the masses (via the lap-dog, in-their-back-pocket “mainstream” media) into accepting draconian incursions upon basic rights and civil liberties, all the while saying, in effect, “trust me, I’m your *elected* government, after all…”
This ain’t cynicism, and it damn-sure ain’t paranoia (clinical or otherwise), but simply informed common-sense. And, of course, now the elites want to throttle and control (“manage”) the INTERNET…to which I say, “JUST SAY ***NO***!!”
For further discussion, a list of suggested sources, etc., by all means please contact me. Just be duly skeptical of governments and their machinations, and their “offical” lines, dear colleagues, please…we don’t need a global depression-cum-police state virtually on the eve of the robotech, nanotech and SHFAGI breakthroughs…
Ciao for now…
And, oh yeah, OF COURSE, stem-cell research, of whatever variety, should push forward…
February 5th, 2007 - 13:26
Thanks, Tom, as always, for your contribution! Rock on, brother…!! (wink)
February 5th, 2007 - 13:33
And, as always, forgive my dictional/grammatical typos…
February 5th, 2007 - 14:32
MCP, I’m not sure what your agenda is here. I thought this was about accelerating to the future? I am not even sure that I disagree with what you’re saying in the first place, but the amount of conflict in your text leads me to believe that I should be just on that alone. What I believe you imply, if not state outright, is that all politicians (and especially the behind-the-scenes elite) are manipulating everything and everyone to become one world gov’t so they can control it all AND they’re all working together.
This is just way to basic for me to swallow. I just don’t believe any group of people are going to be able to work together in such an organized and efficient manner. Let alone that the very people you’re likely talking about are the most power hungry and self-motivated of the lot.
Maybe, just maybe, your trying too hard to see something you want to see? Is it possible that there really are just a lot of individual agendas out there that result in some poor outcomes for individuals or for the world? Does there have to be a nefarious group running it all?
Tom:
“40% of 15-25 year olds in France are islamicâ€
“”A government where %90 of the population is Islamic really isn’t that different from a government where %90 of the population is Christian or Jewish. The basic religious principles are still there.”"
I have a feeling you want to say that all religion is evil. I won’t go there as it wasn’t my point at all. Religion is secondary to this discussion right now. I was saying that scientific research in much of the islamic world has been on hiatus for almost a millenia. A lot of that is simply due to the concept that there is only one truth, the koran. The argument that people of other faiths are suffering similarly is not bore out by the fact that the West has progressed scientifically over the same period. The Renaissance and the Reformation occurred in Christian regions, individuals questioning god and the natural order, etc. and the concept of the individual being important and relevant these are the important variances between christian countries and islamic countries. Enlighten me if I’m incorrect here.
“Okay, to go over the 14 Defining Characteristics of Fascism: (http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm)
Hmmm, that’s all fourteen. Sieg Heil!”
Thanks for the link. It truly helps me identify and understand your view on the world and especially the USA. Good luck with that, but it seems awfully one-sided. I’d really rather not get into a “bush is evil argument” if I can avoid it. Really, what is to be gained here by this link??
I would truly love to see America see a return of individualism and accountability, along the lines of where we were 200 years ago. Somehow I just don’t see the sense of entitlement prevalent in today’s society leaving us anytime soon. It is the concept of government being the final answer to everything and the government bailing us out of any and all of our problems that leads to fascism. You can only give power away, it cannot be taken. Unfortunately with each entitlement and bail-out I see something similar to what I believe you describe as seeing in each “feigned” terror attack or each “oil spill”.
I fundamentally hear something different from the left and right on issues like individualism and accountability. That is probably why I’m having difficulty simply agreeing with you. I can’t lump the left and the right together into some cooperative ‘evil’. One is for big government heading toward world government, this is the left and much of Europe. The other at least says they want smaller government, less entitlement and fewer laws, but unfortunately this “right” doesn’t do what it says it wants to do. So as I said earlier I don’t practically see much difference between left and right in power.
I’ll try to keep an eye on this blog as I had thought it looked promising from the initial entries. More tech and less political agendas, but I guess even in tech you can’t separate politics and religion…
February 5th, 2007 - 16:25
Eric: We can’t very easily accelerate into an awesome, post-Singularity future if society degenerates into an Orwellian, hi-tech Police State, now can we? Eric, check out the actual history of banking over the last, say, 300 yrs or so. In particular, check out the history of the Federal Reserve system, which is a privately-controlled entity (i.e., it’s neither federal, nor does it have any reserves…). While we might eventually evolve beyond the need for money, any group which controls money-as-such (what is legally permitted to be used as money) will have an inordinate control (more than influence) on policies, etc. The elites are more cohesive than you might imagine, and they pretty-much agree on authoritarian world government (for our own good, of course…)
You allude to “conflict” (inconsistency, incoherence, what?!?) in what I said earlier. Please edify me further, as I don’t understand what you’re getting at…
February 5th, 2007 - 16:25
“I was saying that scientific research in much of the islamic world has been on hiatus for almost a millenia. A lot of that is simply due to the concept that there is only one truth, the koran.”
The Christian and Jewish religions have exactly the same principle- there is only one truth, the Bible/Torah. And indeed, what you saw during say, the Dark Ages, was a total stagnation of all scientific progress. The key element here is not the specifics of the religion- the prophets, the gods, the books, the rites, etc.- but the way in which it is practiced.
“I thought this was about accelerating to the future?”
That’s not a very good phrasing, but you have a point- we have gotten off topic. MCP2012, please stop posting long rants on the political system, that’s not what this blog is about.
“The argument that people of other faiths are suffering similarly is not bore out by the fact that the West has progressed scientifically over the same period.”
The West is not suffering now, because religion is no longer the one dominant force over society. We know that we can fall into the exact same trap as the Muslims, because we have the Dark Ages as a historical example.
“christian countries and islamic countries.”
Yes, but not between Christianity and Islam; it’s an important distinction.
“Good luck with that, but it seems awfully one-sided.”
Of course it’s one-sided, but the other side is hawked so often by the media we really don’t need to hear more of it.
“I can’t lump the left and the right together into some cooperative ‘evil’.”
The Demopublicans and the Republicrats are obviously cooperating- just look at the Senate. Even when the “opposition” party is in power, they have trouble getting enough votes to pass an utterly toothless, non-binding resolution talking about how we possibly shouldn’t use strategy X instead of strategy Y in prosecuting an aggressive war of conquest against a crippled, third-world country thousands of miles away.
“The other at least says they want smaller government, less entitlement and fewer laws,”
Seriously, when was the last time you even heard anything from Bush about this?
February 5th, 2007 - 17:48
>Yup, we all know that people doing as safe, >routine and ordinary a job as smuggling a >stolen nuclear weapon into a major US city are >bound to become bored and get sloppy.
Actual example of sloppy nuclear material smuggling.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/24/uranium.sting.ap/index.html
Russian man who tried to sell a small amount of nuclear-bomb grade uranium in a plastic bag in his jacket pocket, U.S. and Georgian officials said. He forgot to carry any lead shielding or to even wrap in tinfoil.
>We can’t even keep thousands of illegal immigrants from pouring across the border, despite the fact that anyone can pick out humans from a background with a $200 infrared camera.
I believe the immigrant issue is because of lack of political will. Business interests that influence the politics. Presumably there is not a similar lack of will to prevent nuclear weapon smuggling and attack. Although I could be mistaken on the lack of will if Tom is representative.
Underground facility detection
imaging with radio waves
http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/haarp.htm
advanced acoustic and seismic detection
in the future, highly advanced gravity gradient measurements to the nanometer precision.
>If some rogue group wanted to get their hands on a nuclear weapon, they sure as hell wouldn’t go for North Korea- it’s the most heavily guarded country in the world.
N Korea is helping Iran with nuclear testing
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/24/wiran24.xml
>It is much, much, much easier to guard a >facility with a perimeter of one kilometer than a border with a perimeter of ten thousand kilometers.
I guess you are assuming that nuclear materials should be prevented from leaving US and western facilities. I think the main problems are the lack of control of Russian materials and Pakistan and now N Korea.
February 5th, 2007 - 17:49
And yet we can “rant” about religion?! (at least occasionally?) Surely, Tom (and Michael A.), you’d concur that political institutions/processes can significantly impact future tech developments, for good or ill.
February 5th, 2007 - 18:37
“He forgot to carry any lead shielding or to even wrap in tinfoil. ”
This is Georgia, one of the most backwards countries on Earth and a prime black-market hub. I’ve read this story before; the guy was caught only by luck and undercover police work, radiation detection had nothing to do with it. I doubt there are a hundred Geiger counters in the entire country.
“I believe the immigrant issue is because of lack of political will. Business interests that influence the politics.”
Please tell me, what (legitimate) business interest is there in the shipping of large quantities of heroin and cocaine across the border?
“in the future, highly advanced gravity gradient measurements to the nanometer precision.”
Nanometer precision?! In order to measure anything with a gravity gradient, you have to have a thorough geological map of the area, including every structure, natural and manmade, other than the one you’re trying to detect. To get nanometer precision you’d have to have a 3D map of the entire planet (conveniently except for whatever you’re trying to detect) down to meter-level precision.
“N Korea is helping Iran with nuclear testing”
And how do we know this? We made it up!
Let’s run off the checklist we conveniently got four years ago for media propaganda stories-
- Anonymous sources. Check.
- Blatant accusations and bold statements with no evidence. Check.
- Government sources. Check.
- Agitation against a Western-unfriendly nation. Check.
- Scare tactics. Check.
- Trying to create the appearance of a “grand axis of evil”. Check.
Honestly, this sounds almost identical to the bogus reports we got about Iraq four years ago. You trust the media too much- the bloody exact same newspaper published the story at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/27/walq27.xml back in 2003, which we now know were lies invented by the Bush and Blair administrations.
February 5th, 2007 - 22:11
>the guy was caught only by luck and undercover police work, radiation detection had nothing to do with it
With proper remote radiation detection we could catch more sloppy smugglers who we are missing because we were not lucky. Basketball analogy: Block the lane to prevent easy layups. Make them shoot the three pointers.
>3D map of the entire planet
Enhanced LIDAR (Laser Imaging Detection and Ranging)
http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2006/09/follow-up-on-image-resolution.html
http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2006/08/remote-imaging-1000-times-better.html
Current LIDAR systems with sub-millimeter feature accuracy
http://graphics.cs.ucdavis.edu/~okreylos/ResDev/LiDAR/index.html
High resolution aerial photography with millimeter per pixel resolution
http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/publications.htm?SEQ_NO_115=170302
http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2006/08/aerial-satellite-and-gigapixel.html
Satellite imaging resolution 2cm or better
Gigapixel, 10 gigapixel cameras
Commonly available high resolution cameras
http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2006/08/high-resolution-cameras-available-now.html
February 6th, 2007 - 01:03
Tom and MCP, I was thinking about this discussion on my drive home and you’ve convinced me that the geo-religio-politico-finacial factors are as important as only looking at the science. I wish it weren’t so, but it is naive to only wish. I’m still not convinced that it is organized and controlled, Orwellian. I’ll agree that there is more alignment than I’d like at the upper levels if only from a self-protecting perspective. Bush I and Clinton I working together to repair Clinton I’s reputation so that Clinton II can win after Bush II. I’ll really believe it if we see Bush III in Jeb.
That said, if we can achieve MNT, then your monetary woes (not necessarily personal, but political-financial domination by the Fed) should be immensely diminished. I think it still wishful thinking that “they” are shortsighted enough to miss it though. It is much more likely that they’ll attempt to dominate that and any other technology if they can. The methuselah set if immortality comes first. Hey, how old is Greenspan anyway…? ;)
My comment on confrontation was mostly only because all I had really said was that an anti-missile shield seems an admirable goal even if an imperfect one. In return it seemed a political tirade was sent back (or at least a loaded one implied.) Perhaps it was only inferred?
If you take your premise of a single beast at the controls the world is in trouble. It seems like the best scenario would be to get a group to develop this underground, anarchists, etc. Instead I put forth that “they” really aren’t a coherent single entity, but more of a mix of self-interested parties with varying agendas, political and otherwise. They may cooperate, but if you can find the crack and use the wedge… Well, it seems that there is still enough freedom and individualism in the country to allow new tech to get pushed down, hopefully to the lowest rung.
The question remains though how to ensure that this happens in spite of those in power? Personally I’m still old-school enough to be patriotic and more nationalistic than not. I’d much rather see nanobiotech developed here in the USA than elsewhere. As imperfect as we may be I still think the US is the best nation on earth, opportunity-wise or as a force for good. Hmmm… I guess I’m not as convinced as when I started to reply. Still, I think it is reasonably predictable how most “democratic-republics” act. Naive? Maybe, but if there is an “us” and a “them”, then I’d rather have any new and disruptive technology developed by “us”.
February 6th, 2007 - 13:38
“3D map of the entire planet”
When I said “3D” I meant the ENTIRE planet, including thousands of miles underground. Do you even understand how a gravitometer works? Any extraneous object- including a dense lump of rock hundreds of miles away- will affect the readings.
“I’d much rather see nanobiotech developed here in the USA than elsewhere.”
Elsewhere? In North Korea, sure, but if “elsewhere” is Canada…
February 6th, 2007 - 15:42
I listed out some of multiple ways to go about spotting underground bunkers or the construction activity/evidence of said bunkers. Spy satellites, cameras, seismic, sonar, LIDAR, other wavelengths can watch construction. The sensitive gravimetric readings which are not sufficiently sensitive enough yet, when we have it we can take a global set of precise readings with all of the variances, Then if any new bunkers are created, they would show up as differential from the prior detailed set of readings. Thus circumventing the need for planet 3D biopsy.
I do not think it worthwhile to continue debating the details of each prospective technology, since we do not even agree on the usage of present capabilities OR the principles of whether to try to monitor or not. I would rather just summarize the two positions and agree to disagree. I will ignore political differences and interpretations of reality.
The basics being that I think that monitoring and detection is somewhat useful now for greater security (versus nuclear weapons and materials) and capabilities and usefulness for security are improving. You have disagreed about even attempting to monitor and detect (as you put it the insane and ridiculous path).
You have also disagreed about the usefulness of current and projected monitoring and detection capability. You have stated every detection method by itself is in some way inadequate or in violation of something or easily countered by what you believe are fully informed and capable opponents. My counter that those specific points is that the improving aggregate of monitoring capabilities is useful and can be effective when used collectively.
We also disagree about numerous technical points which in general I believe can be solved to the extent of achieving improved results and which you believe will still far short of being effective or which will lag counter measures.
Did I miss anything relavent in the summary, which you wanted to highlight which is not apparent from the thread?
February 6th, 2007 - 16:37
I did find a link to a proposed quantum gravity gradient system for detection of underground facilities from space
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awc/streland.pdf
February 6th, 2007 - 17:04
btw: the end of chapter six (pg 59, 60) and the conclusion (of the link to the pdf in the prior posting) provides a more clear description of the integration of signals and intelligence resources approach that I was trying to describe. I am thinking the integration approach is what is needed both for nuclear weapons and materials detection and for deep bunkers.
February 6th, 2007 - 17:15
“The sensitive gravimetric readings which are not sufficiently sensitive enough yet, when we have it we can take a global set of precise readings with all of the variances, Then if any new bunkers are created, they would show up as differential from the prior detailed set of readings.”
(Laughs)
And said readings would also be affected by waterfalls, piles of ice, people, cars, dogs, trucks, ships, planes, planets, satellites and everything else that moves that’s heavy. You forgot a few billion billion things.
“I did find a link to a proposed quantum gravity gradient system for detection of underground facilities from space
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awc/streland.pdf”
I found a contradiction (I looked for all of two minutes, so it wasn’t exactly hard):
- The author claims that it is unreasonably difficult to try and alter the Earth’s gravitational field enough to affect the sensors.
- However, he also claims that these bunkers alter the Earth’s gravitational field enough to affect the sensors.
- Obviously building an average underground bunker isn’t unreasonably hard if we’re worried about it.
- Therefore, he claims third world countries are both capable and incapable of altering the Earth’s field enough to affect sensors, QED.
February 6th, 2007 - 17:16
Wow, sixty comments. Is that a record?
February 6th, 2007 - 21:03
>contradiction alter the Earth’s gravitational field enough to affect the sensors, building an average underground bunker isn’t unreasonably hard if we’re worried about it.
1. You are suggesting that these third world opponents do what exactly ? Note: that prior to looking at this you were suggesting that they had to do nothing because the technology would require a 3D biopsy of the planet OR maybe they will be placing an extraneous lump of rock some hundreds of miles away to effect the readings.
2. So how will they spoof the gravity gradient in such a way that it will not trigger one of the other detection methods. NOTE: it is kind of like creating a fake of currency. Fool the 10 or 15 publicly known forgery detection methods and also the methods that are kept secret.
Also, note the SQUID version could detect the motion of fist from 50 cm away. This and the quantum gradient system would be able to detect that 10 cm of lead shielding around your block of uranium or plutonium that you stuck in a shipping container.
February 7th, 2007 - 08:32
Just imagine what the discussion needs to be to cover “bad”-nano. How do we detect it before it is brought within our midst? That is probably best saved for another thread, if one hasn’t already begun.
February 7th, 2007 - 13:32
“2. So how will they spoof the gravity gradient in such a way that it will not trigger one of the other detection methods. NOTE: it is kind of like creating a fake of currency. Fool the 10 or 15 publicly known forgery detection methods and also the methods that are kept secret.”
They don’t even have to bother, the project will sink itself long before it becomes a threat. Let’s say you want to detect the digging out of a 1 km^3 bunker (which is VERY large) from a thousand kilometers away. The said 1 km^3 of rock, a few billion metric tons, is moved ten kilometers (quite some ways). Doing out the math, this is equivalent to being able to detect masses of fifty-odd million metric tons at one thousand kilometer’s distance, which is in turn equivalent to detecting five hundred thousand tons at one hundred kilometers’ distance. One hundred kilometers below the Earth is the Mohorovicic discontinuity. If you figured out how to model the density of the Moho for several hundred kilometers in every direction, with a resolution of a hundred meters or so, and keep track of the thousands of masses of rock which are constantly moving and slipping past each other, you would probably win a Nobel Prize.
“Also, note the SQUID version could detect the motion of fist from 50 cm away. This and the quantum gradient system would be able to detect that 10 cm of lead shielding around your block of uranium or plutonium that you stuck in a shipping container.”
It would also detect every single other bit of metal (these shipping containers are MADE of metal). Oops.
“NOTE: it is kind of like creating a fake of currency. Fool the 10 or 15 publicly known forgery detection methods and also the methods that are kept secret.”
Except that none of these methods are actually in use, meaning systems (if they are implemented at all) will probably be implemented one-at-a-time. Sure- if you hand-scan every package, car, truck, shipping container and load of illegal drugs that come into the country, you will probably catch 90% of nuclear terrorists. But the government is never going to do that and you, me, and the criminals all know it.
February 7th, 2007 - 21:19
>It would also detect every single other bit of metal (these shipping containers are MADE of metal). Oops.
The containers would be passed underneath a nearby detector. The containers are very similar and the gravitic gradient signature that they give would be excluded. Then the containers that have the higher density hunk of lead and uranium would be detected.
>Except that none of these methods are actually in use.. > They don’t even have to bother
So you are back to your original contention that the prospective systems will not work and will not be used together. The nuclear terrorists can carry their materials in ziplock baggies and bum a ride inbound with Mexican illegals.
We agree to disagree as I stated in comment 56. You and the criminals can “know” that these things will not be used.
As for the government and myself, Measurement and Signature Intelligence recognized as a formal intelligence discipline in 1986.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MASINT
February 8th, 2007 - 13:12
“gravitic gradient signature”
Gravitic gradient signature? You’ve mentioned so much wacky stuff you can’t even keep it straight anymore. I replied to your statement on SQUID magnetic field detectors, which have nothing whatsoever to do with gravity. Searching a container with a gravity field is absolutely, utterly futile as each container contains thousands of different things, each of which will blend together into the signal.
“As for the government and myself, Measurement and Signature Intelligence recognized as a formal intelligence discipline in 1986.”
MUSINT appears to just be a catchall term covering dozens of different technologies. I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here.
February 8th, 2007 - 16:58
MASINT is an area that has a central MASINT Office of the Defense Intelligence Agency. It has an established area of the Defense Intelligence agency. It has staff and budget to its operation and it has money spent for its research. So I am saying that there are departments in the government working on MASINT. There are funded projects for research and funded projects for the deployment of capability. [you had said the government would NEVER do it]
>Mentioned so much stuff
You were the one who asked about each of the wacky items. I have repeatedly said that I was not depending only on the “wacky ways working” to make my case that existing sensors are useful and that better sensors will be even more effective. I referenced the other ways to find caves and bunkers and before that the original point about nuclear material. (seismic, acoustic, imaging etc..) those were also listed in the linked documents under current methods.
Thinking about detecting the heavily shielded uranium a bit mroe. I believe the the 10 inch lead lined uranium can be detected with current security procedures.
Highly dense material like lead and uranium.
Lead has density of 11.34  g·cm−3
10 inches is about 25 cm
to surround the uranium block with 25 cm on each side. It is about a 60 cm cube with a 10cm interior cube filled with uranium.
that weighs about 2.4 tons.
A shipping container can hold 20 tons fully loaded.
However, that lead lined block is like a heavy safe.
It would be sitting on a pallet to be moved by a forklift. The pallet with the block would probably have to be in the center of the container or balanced in some way.
Standard X-rays and radiation detection can penetrate a container but get blocked by that honking piece of lead. It would be unusual. Pull the 0.01% of containers with something that suspicious for visual inspection. 5% of containers are inspected.
Port security info.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1596221/posts
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/26/business/Transcol.php
Not every container has that much highly dense material. Even setting up visual monitoring at loading, checking manifests etc…
So the better radiation portal monitors run over each container, if they are upgraded so that a lot more lead lining is required then that would allow regular procedures to detect the 2 ton lead safe.
Sticking better radiation detectors on drones and other vehicles would be useful outside of port situations.
February 8th, 2007 - 18:00
“There are funded projects for research and funded projects for the deployment of capability. [you had said the government would NEVER do it]”
I said that the government would never spend hundreds of billions to search every single package that comes into this country. MASINT does NOT even refer specifically to nuclear weapons or even radioactive materials; according to the Wikipedia, it covers:
* Electro-optical
* Radar
* Radio
* Nuclear
* Materials
* Seismic
and probably others.
“A shipping container can hold 20 tons fully loaded.”
That’s the 6-meter one, conveniently you picked the smallest size.
“10 inches is about 25 cm
to surround the uranium block with 25 cm on each side.”
I said 10 CENTIMETERS, not 10 INCHES. Which, according to your own chart, would be enough to reduce gamma intensity by a factor of over ten thousand, down to background. HEU isn’t highly radioactive, and emits primarily alphas, not gammas.
“Pull the 0.01% of containers with something that suspicious”
Large blocks of metal are suspicious? You do know that these containers are the primary shipping method for… large blocks of iron, which is fully 70% as dense as lead?
You are correct that a criminal is not likely to think of and separately plan twenty different responses to twenty different kinds of sensors. However, it would not be politically and economically viable to implement twenty different kinds of sensors when we have trouble getting one. And the information as to where and how these sensors are used would very quickly leak if it is supposed to be used by technicians handling bulk cargo containers. If the government doesn’t simply trumpet it to the heavens first (it would be a large PR coup).
February 8th, 2007 - 22:38
You are right 30 cm block of lead not 60cm.
308 kg.
Found what hopefully is a definitive collection of information on port security and the specific parameters of in place and anticipated systems specifically related to finding nukes and nuke materials in shipping containers.
Images like the one at this link
http://www.discover.com/issues/jul-02/departments/feattech/
Look detailed enough so that a 30cm lead block would stand out.
Since 2002 Seattle’s port has been using gamma ray emitters to scan containers. Beaming the gamma rays into the containers to look for objects. Instead of X-rays, VACIS uses highly penetrative gamma rays at low levels — roughly 5 microrems per hour, or a quarter of what anyone gets simply by standing in a Seattle street — to see through metal containers, detecting anything from possible stolen cars to SLIGHT ANOMALIES IN DENSITY. The system can also effectively see through containers on railroad cars moving 10 mph. The device can detect false walls or ceilings, explosives, weapons, drugs — even people — and whether the cargo matches a manifest. Nuclear material that could be contained in a so-called “dirty bomb,” for example, could be distinguished.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/68232_portsecurity27.shtml
The Department of Homeland Security’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office is funding research to explore another imaging and detection capability. The proposed system, called fluorescence imaging in the nuclear domain with extreme radiation (FINDER), could be used to image the isotopic composition of materials inside well-shielded objects, such as cargo containers moving through an inspection terminal.
http://www.llnl.gov/str/Dec06/Barty.html
Livermore researchers are developing a system that combines the capabilities of a Thomson-radiated extreme x-ray (T-REX) system with a nuclear resonance fluorescence technique to detect small amounts of nuclear materials and image their isotopic distribution. The system could be used to inspect well-shielded objects, such as cargo containers moving through a terminal.
Companies and systems being worked on or deployed in 2003.
CZT detectors (expensive but provides easy to understand readouts, cheaper versions could get widely deployed)
VACIS and other systems for looking through more metal. (metal penetration from a few inches to a foot or more with higher power ratings)
Eagle X-ray scanner.
Pulsed fast neutron analysis beams neutrons into cargo containers, which shows the approximate chemical composition of scanned objects.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2003/02/17/337291/index.htm
So there are systems that look like they will be quite effective and systems that are fairly effective now if they were fully deployed and if all of the containers get sent through the installed detectors. However, I know that only some of the ports have enough of the good equipment. So the $1.15B for port security will not have a full rollout until 2011.
Advanced Spectroscopic Portals with sodium iodide detectors
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/security/0,71632-0.html?
I saw that the wired article did indicate problems with how things are currently operated at the ports, so better systems are needed in order to improve actual security. Systems that are more tolerant of sub-par operators and drivers circumventing the detectors.
A senator is saying that by 2007 radiation detection of all containers entering into the 22 busiest seaports must be in place.
http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Speeches.Detail&Speech_id=25&Month=9&Year=2006
The government will be spending many billions.
$6.7 to 8.9 Billion port security bill approved 2006 (spending from 2007-2011)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAFE_Port_Act
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=7179&sequence=0
Parts of the
$30.9 Dept Homeland Security budget
http://www.calinst.org/bulletins/b1212.htm#_1_7
Parts of defense and various research budgets are also applicable. Plus the private sector spends some of its own money as well (the CNN money article about those private company projects)
MASINT is for a variety of purposes and I brought it up in regards to finding things like bunkers.
February 9th, 2007 - 13:03
“Images like the one at this link
http://www.discover.com/issues/jul-02/departments/feattech/
Look detailed enough so that a 30cm lead block would stand out.”
Indeed, it would absorb all the X-Rays and so would be very visible. But how, exactly, would you distinguish it from a 30cm block of iron, which would also absorb all the X-Rays?
“Instead of X-rays, VACIS uses highly penetrative gamma rays at low levels — roughly 5 microrems per hour”
Hmmm, interesting.
“Nuclear material that could be contained in a so-called “dirty bomb,†for example, could be distinguished.”
Anyone and their dog can already cook up a car bomb loaded with phosgene, cyanide, and other toxic gases, so I don’t see the point in trying to smuggle radioactive materials into the country.
And while this system would be able to tell the difference between metallic lead, metallic iron, and metallic uranium, good luck trying to detect every chemical compound that can be formed with lead and uranium. Just from the list of “common ions” on Wikipedia, you can form a uranium/lead chloride, bromide, iodide, fluoride, oxide, sulfide, borate, carbonate, nitrate, phosphate, sulfate, thiosulfate, sulfite, bisulfate, bisulfite, acetate, formate and oxalate. Don’t even bother with “dirty bomb” materials; just about every element on the Periodic Table has a radioactive isotope and so you’d basically be trying to detect every chemical in existence.
“The government will be spending many billions.
$6.7 to 8.9 Billion port security bill approved 2006 (spending from 2007-2011)”
I’m honestly impressed; this is indeed good news and I’m surprised the government is spending that much. However, the problem is that the people designing these security systems have roughly the same level of intelligence as the criminals, and so they can’t get a permanent edge. Take an infamous crime: bank robbery. We have, in place, right now:
- A first-world, not-very-corrupt police force on which tens of billions is spent every year.
- Cameras, probably infrared and UV as well as visible, in practically every bank.
- Dozens of kinds of alarm systems, including door alarms, safe alarms, automatic alarms, silent alarms, laser alarms and who knows what else.
- High-strength metal alloys that can withstand even small explosive charges.
- A thoroughly educated workforce that knows what to do in the event of a robbery.
- Metal detectors to catch guns and knives.
- Numerous dedicated security guards.
And yet people still, somehow, find a way to rob banks. Most are caught, but the criminals know that some small percentage will get away with it. And so the bank-robbing continues.
February 9th, 2007 - 15:01
>But how, exactly, would you distinguish it from a 30cm block of iron, which would also absorb all the X-Rays?
That container is flagged and opened for inspection or run through some other more precise detector.
>Dirty bombs
I personally am not worried about dirty bombs. The coal industry dumps 20,000 tons of uranium and thorium into the atmosphere every year. Dirty bombs would be an annoyance and have a cost to clean up, but the deaths would not be different from the same size regular bomb.
Nuclear terrorism and large scale terrorism are only moderate risks in my opinion. (More actual deaths [1 million/yr] from coal pollution and the other preventable environmental causes of disease [13 million/yr]) I personally think that the people who are trying commit regular and nuclear terrorism are not as organized or as capable as people think (just a gut feeling/opinion). However, those who are working on defending against this cannot go with that opinion. But the defenders/intelligence agencies for all of their imperfections are keeping pace to the threats.
I think Iran can be deterred through non-military means, but I think instead 60% chance they will be bombed this year or next.
Another big terrorist incident (nuclear or not) would have the direct impact of whatever the damage is. But the bigger effect would be the pasting on whatever countries are deemed to be culprits and the bad choices that the US might make in re-organizing itself after the fact. A diversion of resources from accelerating to the future.
>the problem is that the people designing these security systems have roughly the same level of intelligence as the criminals, and so they can’t get a permanent edge.
I think the technology game will change in the 2017 to 2027 timeframes. So if the edge can be maintained until then (or if we can continue to be lucky), it would be a matter of handling the transition to the new tech. Personal opinion again, I believe we will muddle through. But the good news for this thread and site is we can get back on to the topics of the 2017-2027 tech and issues.
February 9th, 2007 - 17:12
“That container is flagged and opened for inspection or run through some other more precise detector.”
Yup. After all, it’s not like it’s a big deal, tracking every single piece of iron that goes through the country. We only produce, what is the figure now, four hundred million metric tons of the stuff annually? That’s equivalent to an asteroid 400-500 meters across. Of solid iron.
“Nuclear terrorism and large scale terrorism… resources from accelerating to the future.”
Wow. I actually agree with this.
February 9th, 2007 - 19:05
I don’t believe the solid raw iron shipments are a problem. If you do, then I leave it to you to research it.
My intuition is that raw iron is
1) shipped in various forms. Many of which may not be problematic to scan
2) Industrial iron is probably shipped all by itself. A container full of iron wire or rebar or ingots or whatever. In a pure and uniform format there are a bunch of properties that could be checked. I don’t know which specific one they use or if they even need to go there.
3) If a particular class of shipment of the 70 million containers is a problem for inspectors then if it made up several million of the shipments every year then it would be worth buying special gear if needed
Some pointers to where the answer probably can be obtained. One of the companies selling the scanning port security gear, homeland security, one of the ports could be called and asked the question. You might be able to email or call some organization like the iron and steel importers of america. Or you could phone and ask a steel or iron company.
Anyway I have shown that the port security problem is being fairly well looked after with companies and research and billions of dollars going into it every year. It makes no logical sense with all that effort to have a consistent problem with several million containers with the same stuff in it.
February 10th, 2007 - 07:23
“It makes no logical sense with all that effort to have a consistent problem with several million containers with the same stuff in it.”
Really? We spend tens of billions on the Internet every year, and yet we still have a very consistent problem with spam, which always has much the same stuff in it (the Shannon entropy of every spam ever sent would be very low compared to other sets of data of that size).
“Some pointers to where the answer probably can be obtained.”
If you think that any of these will actually provide a decent answer to some random guy on the Internet emailing them out of the blue, I have this bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.
February 10th, 2007 - 14:34
>actually provide a decent answer to some random guy
Not my problem. I don’t think port security is being mishandled. It is not completely screwed up now and will be pretty good by 2011. It will be to the level where it would be easier for someone who wanted to do something to try and cross a border or sneak onshore. {Other work and effort is going towards that problem)
You could find far better information but perhaps not complete answers if you tried. [As I already did for the rest of it] If you are too lazy to look for answers to what you think is an issue, it is your problem and I leave you to your incorrect speculations. As you were incorrect about desktop particle accelerators, the actual current level of effort/spending and capabilities for detectors, etc… Btw: I know that getting to the actual complete answers could be problematic…could get a flag raised on some electronic files kept by Homeland security/FBI. That is another reason I was telling you to do it if you really care about it. (haha)
Spam has partial and sufficient solutions to the level of actual problem it causes. The problem is at a manageable level. If it became worse then more can be done. People get a level of solution that they are willing to pay for. Proportional effort to the level of perceived problem and the actual costs. The tens of billions spent on the Internet are to make web sites and services and conduct the billions of dollars of business. Spam gets some attention but it is merely an annoyance that is not stopping the utilization of the internet or ecommerce. Many corporations spend the money for the better spam solutions and block almost all of it.
You have to differentiate your mountains from your mole hills and properly size them and the response to them.
February 10th, 2007 - 18:44
“It is not completely screwed up”
It is very hard to completely screw anything up. Even Stalin’s Russia succeeded in not starving all of its citizens to death.
“If you are too lazy to look for answers to what you think is an issue, it is your problem”
I admit I don’t look too deeply into this stuff, but if big companies are paranoid and don’t allow inquiries from the general public, that is NOT my problem. As a blatant example of this, I once emailed GE, which makes neutron detectors, what the cross-sections were for certain nuclear reactions involving neutrons. They replied they could not tell me; apparently it was a secret or something. Three weeks later I found out the information was all in a free public database, which they didn’t even bother to provide a link to. Oops. Seriously- most of the time I’ve emailed a big company I’ve either gotten zero response (it just vanishes into the air) or an automatic response. They don’t even bother to tell me “no” in person.
“As you were incorrect about desktop particle accelerators,”
Huh? You mentioned desktop particle accelerators and I asked where I could get a vacuum pump, as I wanted to build one. You didn’t reply. How is anyone incorrect here?
“the actual current level of effort/spending and capabilities for detectors”
You’re putting words in my mouth. I never said that the government wasn’t putting any effort into this; I said that they weren’t going to put in the ridiculously large amount of effort required to seal America’s ten-thousand-kilometer-long borders, and that statement STANDS unless you have evidence to the contrary.
“(haha)”
The Emperor’s Protective Squadron doesn’t have a sense of humor.
“People get a level of solution that they are willing to pay for. Proportional effort to the level of perceived problem and the actual costs.”
Precisely. There have been exactly zero nuclear terrorist attacks, and so even at nuclear plants where very tight security can be put in place due to the small area and amount of traffic, things are only happening slowly.
February 10th, 2007 - 19:01
my reply in comment 21
Table top particle accelerators
http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn10741-tabletop-particle-accelerator-created.htm
February 10th, 2007 - 19:10
http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/homeland/index.html
More than doubled funding for border security – from $4.6 billion in 2001 to $10.4 billion this year;
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1997490,00.html
Each airship will float 12 miles (20km) above the surface (in the low stratosphere), be powered by solar panels and could oversee an area of 600 square miles. Put 11 of them over the US with suitably powerful cameras, and they could keep watch on every square metre of the whole country
http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2006/06/other-tech-city-wide-surveillance.html
Phased array radar across the skin of the blimp. Looking downwards and tracking.
some info on phased array radar
http://www.airspacemag.com/issues/2006/june-july/howthingswork.php
Other monitoring as well
February 10th, 2007 - 20:08
btw: I also refer you back to the various links about terahertz radiation systems, millimeter radiation, imaging tech, LIDAR etc… On my site, there is a bunch of information about “sound telescopes” and other gear that is here or coming soon that would be relevant to monitoring and spying. Smart dust. Not just borders but monitoring of practically everyplace.
The tech is there to make things way more secure and the budget is there specifically for border security as well as in various aspects of defense.
It is a pretty big effort to secure the borders and to monitor what is going on inside. Since you never define ridiculous amount of effort or what you thought the level of effort would be there is no point discussing what this level of effort is relative to what your definition of ridiculous is. It will not be impervious but it will be lot higher than what is available now. It will also be a lot more than most people will be comfortable with.
As to how all that information ends up getting used. I don’t know.
February 10th, 2007 - 21:07
“Since you never define ridiculous amount of effort”
You are correct, I have never defined it and this is an oversight on my part. According to your own link, some $6.7 billion dollars has been allocated for the US Border Patrol in the year 2006. Our borders are meanwhile famous for their total porousness, with thousands of illegal immigrants slipping across every day. More relevant to nuclear smuggling, the US DEA has a budget of $2 billion, and utterly, utterly fails to control the drug trade (something like 2% of the drugs moving through this country are seized). So we’re looking in the range of at least tens of billions of dollars a year. Meanwhile, SIAI has trouble limping along on a ~$200,000 a year budget, and most of the transhumanist organizations are in a similar situation.
“and they could keep watch on every square metre of the whole country”
Okay, quick, get out Google Maps. According to statistics, at least one robbery is taking place while these photos were taken. How would you find it? Even at a very low resolution of 1 pixel per meter, covering the entire country would require a data flow of around 10 TB/s (in comparison, the highest data transfer rate ever clocked was 14 TB/s, and the transfer rate for the entire Internet is somewhere around 10 TB/s). If we can just barely move all this data with technology that’s currently at the prototype stage, how in hell are we going to analyze it all in a useful way? Keep in mind that this is at a leisurely rate of 1 image per second and with a resolution so low that a person would just barely show up as a tiny speck. Also keep in mind that Geospatial Vision, rather than writing software to do the task of picking out large, obvious signs on a roadway, is outsourcing the job to random people on the Internet at Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.
February 11th, 2007 - 23:18
At a first cut the data would have to be processed and compressed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_compression
When nothing is changing and nothing of note is happening then that data can be tossed.
Data will be saved on things like
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAMR
http://news.com.com/IBM+lets+Millipede+storage+out+for+a+stroll/2100-1015_3-5615421.html
So the future system will have a lot more than petabytes ($4 million, in 2006 from EMC)
http://www.engadget.com/2006/01/30/emc-rolls-out-4-million-petabyte-array/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petabyte
AI – automated understanding and analysis will be needed to make use of the feeds.
http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/imagunder.html
But one of the main things is you make use of other data to understand what you are looking at or for. All of the GPS and geomatic data that tells you where all of the bank branches are. There is no reason not to make use of other data and meta data to make the analysis easier and more useful.
Use the real time high resolution monitoring to focus in on the bank branches and banks. Coordinate with the sound telescopes that get installed to cover all public places. Have the automatics scanners looking for things like “give me all of the money” or “this is a robbery”. Then use that location as a feed to the imaging databases. Gunshots anywhere can be triangulated and with the visual systems the shooter can be identified.
http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2006/11/audio-telescope-can-differentiate.html
http://news.com.com/iRobot+unveils+sniper+detector/2100-11394_3-5888411.html
The sounds could trigger the focus or the silent alarm. So at a minimum the visual system will provide a rewind capability to review what happened from a point in time and allow a trace back from that point to the origins. With the detection and the background info, response can be faster. Plus the getaway can be traced and the perps caught.
For the border security, you would combine the imaging with other systems for a useful rapid response to incursions.
In terms of raw speed.
The 14 tbps was over a single fiber. You can use more than one fiber. The speeds are improving rapidly as well (doubling every year)
http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2006/09/14-tbps-over-single-optical-fiber.html
Cisco has a 92 tbps router
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps5763/index.html
There is all optical stuff coming which will be faster.
February 11th, 2007 - 23:24
Pre-processing of the distributed video and other data can be done by each info collection system. Only certain indexing needs to be available centrally. Most of the data can be held and archived in a distributed system.
February 12th, 2007 - 08:59
I have thought of the basic architecture for what would be a workable system.
Convert everything to objectIDs. Once you have loaded up from existing or the first set of high resolution surveillance. then you have some compressed photos of each person (7 billion worldwide), car, building, location etc…
You can compartmentalize the detailed image server from the main tracking systems.
You convert the images to objectid, locationid, timestamp.
You can also simultaneously load and update other purpose built data strucures. Like an air traffic control like system for tracking 100,000 to 1 million objects coming over the border. More attention and data resolution goes to criminal and terrorist activity. Data volumes become manageable and the systems very useful.
You can integrate them with electronic intel, sound intel etc…
Each thing tracks what it is specifically built to track. A series of manageable applications. Integration would be with web services where the servers provide electronic data based on programmed calls.
thus you can call up a bank branch location ID and see all the people who were there, entered and left over a timespan. You could decide that person X was a problem and pull up where he was and is. What vehicle he travelled in. Who he met etc..
Key events can get tagged. More data resolution can be placed on more interesting activity. A bank robbery, other criminal activity, gun shots, border crossing that is not at a checkpoint etc…
February 12th, 2007 - 09:02
the different feeds go to the millions of people in law enforcement, border security, fbi, cia and defence (coast guard, air force, navy,etc…)
Plenty of automation opportunities. Easy ways to chunk it up into data layers and for parallelization and distribution.
February 12th, 2007 - 14:35
“At a first cut the data would have to be processed and compressed.”
Please describe these processing and compressing methods and how they can be done usefully, in realtime, on 14 TB/s of data. Even at only ten FLOPS/byte, you’ve already exceeded most modern supercomputers, and at 30 FLOPS/byte you’ve exceeded the thoroughput of the BOINC network with over a million PCs (and BOINC requires that the analysis be easily parallelizable).
“So the future system will have a lot more than petabytes ($4 million, in 2006 from EMC)”
“Cisco has a 92 tbps router
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps5763/index.html”
Okay, so we can at least store and transfer this huge mountain of data (even if we couldn’t, Moore’s Law would soon catch up). So, how are we going to analyze it to detect anything useful?
“All of the GPS and geomatic data that tells you where all of the bank branches are.”
Bank branches are already under surveillance from their OWN cameras, so that’s kind of a useless application.
“Coordinate with the sound telescopes that get installed to cover all public places.”
Okay, so you’re basically describing 1984 Redux. Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Oceania has ALWAYS been at war with Eastasia. If you put this technology in place, sooner or later some evil bastard is going to come along and abuse it. And yes, this is different from all the other technologies that are abused by evil bastards, because the world of 1984 is essentially an existential risk. The potential of humankind has been permanently destroyed.
“For the border security, you would combine the imaging with other systems for a useful rapid response to incursions.”
We already have cameras covering the border. It isn’t helping. The US border patrol already catches 80% of the people that try and sneak over, who are then promptly shipped back to Mexico so they can try it all over again. And so even a good success rate doesn’t count for much.
“The sounds could trigger the focus or the silent alarm.”
This is probably already implemented at many banks, and even if it isn’t, there’s no reason why it requires constant omniscient surveillance. A microphone and computer would be enough.
“Convert everything to objectIDs”
Okay, bang, right off the bat you’re describing something that software has a very difficult time doing, and certainly can’t do over 14 TB/s of data, even with a modern supercomputer. I point you again to the outsourcing of these kinds of tasks to random people off the Internet on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.
“Most of the data can be held and archived in a distributed system.”
(Laughs)
Even compressed down to 1 TB/s, after three months you’d have five exabytes, which equals every single bit of language ever spoken by anyone ever.
“You convert the images to objectid, locationid, timestamp.”
Suppose twenty cars go into a tunnel. A minute later, twenty cars come out of the tunnel. Which one is which? Damned if I can tell, even if you gave me the photos and I analyzed them manually.
“Like an air traffic control like system for tracking 100,000 to 1 million objects coming over the border.”
Okay, first of all there are only several thousand planes in the air at one time, and even then air traffic control has a job on its hand, with HUMAN OPERATORS manually directing air traffic. Secondly, there aren’t billions of other large objects in the air (yes, there are birds, but they’re much smaller than commercial jets and easily separable) to confuse sensors. Thirdly, it’s AIR, it’s empty, there’s nothing else in it. Fourthly, planes aren’t trying to actively evade air traffic control.
“More attention and data resolution goes to criminal and terrorist activity.”
“More data resolution can be placed on more interesting activity.”
Okay, this is a textbook case of circular logic.
- We are able to detect criminal and terrorist activity because we devote more bandwidth and FLOPS to areas where it is occurring.
- We know where it is occurring because we can detect criminal and terrorist activity.
February 12th, 2007 - 17:18
>Its kind of a useless application
I know but it was the one you asked about
February 12th, 2007 - 17:27
“I know but it was the one you asked about”
I meant “robbery in general”, not “bank robbery” specifically. Sorry for the confusion.
February 12th, 2007 - 17:48
My architecture was to primarily address data volumes, which was the first cut.
>“Convert everything to objectIDsâ€
>>Okay, bang, right off the bat you’re
>>describing something that software has a very
>>difficult time doing.
Take the radar or phased or other sensor tracking of moving objects. Where the things are easier to pick off as objects and then map/overlay those objects across to the video images. I did indicate AI was needed.
Use some infrared or other wave systems that can pick up some biometric markers for uniquely identifying people. I did indicate we were using more than just visibible spectrum video. Use that to hash into some objectIDs.
also, for the cars going into and out of tunnels. We can use the other sensors millimeter waves, terahertz and gamma rays that have some penetration capability to not lose track. The other alternative is that you zoom in on the license plates and car models and color spectrum ID use OCR reading systems to remap the objects.
>Even compressed down to 1 TB/s, after three >months you’d have five exabytes, which equals >every single bit of language ever spoken by >anyone ever.
I indicated that there would be data cleanup. Most of the unimportant or untagged stuff would get tossed. Flush a lot of the video looking at death valley etc… Keep a rolling one day, one week or one month for generic areas which have historically proven to be not useful.
>“Like an air traffic control like system for
>tracking 100,000 to 1 million objects coming
>over the border.â€
I did not say that this would not be a hard problem or that when they do design this with many full time people architecting each subsystem that they will build what will work and something that is useful. My cut at the architecture was just a few minutes. A few minutes more than you had spent initially, where you said too much data and could not find a bank robbery. So my point is that you can manage the large amount of data and make progress towards more powerful capabilities.
throw a bunch of full time project teams at each section and it is possible to get systems that work. My point was just to start moving this away from see this is impossible and useless. Too much data can’t make use of it and can’t transmit it. If there are bottlenecks then it will have to be designed around.
>We are able to detect criminal and terrorist
>activity because we devote more bandwidth and
>FLOPS to areas where it is occurring
You misunderstood. I indicated that there would be an event annotation system. People are bookmarking and recording criminal and terrorist events (This would grow uot of what we have now. Police dispatches. 911 calls, etc…). This is an input feed to the system which when an event gets brought up it causes the system to increase monitoring at the location and to retain more time information and to increase the resolution of the time slices being viewed.
Again I do not intend to solve every design issue with this thing. I just expect that when they spend a few billion that the project teams that it is very reasonable to expect useful systems to result.
also, guess what if the system after various automation still needs some human operators or interaction. Then they have the ability to hire people for that. If there are resource bottlenecks then it will require redesign.
February 12th, 2007 - 17:56
>Okay, so you’re basically describing 1984
>Redux …If you put this in place…
> The potential of humankind has been
>permanently destroyed.
I don’t make the bad news or wish for it to happen. I don’t put it in place. Just like I did not install billions in port security, or the CCTV Cameras monitoring central London and soon NY, or the high resolution Keyhole spy satellites etc… I am just saying hey this is already there. That stuff is made with old tech. New stuff is coming.
I just lay out the technology trends that indicate this is the trajetory of a bunch of tech. Privacy is pretty much dead. There will continue to be less and less of it. the tech is there and continuing to develop, I think those trends cannot be stopped. So people should plan accordingly and take whatever constructive action that they want.
February 13th, 2007 - 12:34
“the tech is there and continuing to develop, I think those trends cannot be stopped.”
We cannot stop tech development, but we CAN stop the implementation of this ridiculous trillion-dollar nationwide sensor net. While this is actually feasible with modern-day technology, it would be such a large project that it would easily come to the public’s attention and so can be defeated through the normal political process. When we get nanotech cameras floating around on bits of dust and 10^20 FLOPS computing power, that will change, but by then we’ll have bigger issues to worry about anyway.
February 14th, 2007 - 13:56
“Privacy is pretty much dead. There will continue to be less and less of it. the tech is there and continuing to develop, I think those trends cannot be stopped.” (Brian)
“We cannot stop tech development, but we CAN stop the implementation of this ridiculous trillion-dollar nationwide sensor net. While this is actually feasible with modern-day technology, it would be such a large project that it would easily come to the public’s attention and so can be defeated through the normal political process. When we get nanotech cameras floating around on bits of dust and 10^20 FLOPS computing power, that will change, but by then we’ll have bigger issues to worry about anyway. (Tom)
The preservation/restoration of the Bill of Rights and robust (1) privacy and (2) civil liberties and (3) DUE PROCESS should be a top-priority as we accelerate toward the Singularity. There will soon come various tipping points, or bifurcations, which will trend us either toward or away from a high tech Police State.
**THANK YOU** BOTH, Brian & Tom, for always providing us such an invigorating and informative discussion!!
February 21st, 2007 - 11:16
“I think Iran can be deterred through non-military means, but I think instead 60% chance they will be bombed this year or next.”
The carrier Stennis just pulled into the Persian Gulf. That makes three flat tops in the Gulf now…
The Brits are drawing down their troop levels.
I’d say your prediction looks accurate, but in the timeline you have I’d put the odds closer to 80% or higher now.
March 8th, 2007 - 22:50
I’m glad you enjoy http://www.thoughtware.tv
Thanks for promoting the website! There are plenty of new transhumanist videos out there. Check them out. :-)
August 21st, 2007 - 20:20
I just have a question concerning mirco-micro chips and another one concerning intrared tracking. Is there a way to deactivate a microchip once implanted into somebodies body, that can be done relatively easily and cheaply. And 2. is there a countermeasure for hiding from infrared survallience, that can also be applied cheaply and relatively easily? Thanks.
August 21st, 2007 - 20:42
J. Carpenter,
There is no microchip implanted in your body or anyone’s you know. You are not being watched by infrared surveillance. You have a paranoid delusional disorder. See a psychiatrist.
June 29th, 2010 - 12:23
I truly enjoyed reading this write-up.Thank you.
June 29th, 2010 - 14:15
The oil spill is nothing to laugh at but I just saw a kid wearing a t-shirt that cracked me up. BP – We’re bring oil to America’s shores. I died laughing because BP’s billion dollar image change to their new sunflower logo is forever going to be associated with the worst environmental disaster to strike America. Check out the shirt here – http://bit.ly/bJAuTb
November 28th, 2011 - 20:30
Lurid help and advice. I’m unsure how much to think of this situation, simply.