Accelerating Future

I find it funny how the mainstream security community takes Anonymous so seriously because it doesn’t understand it. See this recent CNN article, for instance.

Anonymous did not only “start” with 4chan, Anonymous still easily can be regarded as the cyber army of 4chan and its immediate network. Its not as shadowy, distributed, or effective as it’s always made out to be. It really is mostly a bunch of children, and though a bunch of children should not be underestimated, their greatest power is quantity, not quality. The group is easily distracted and needs plenty of morale to keep going. Ideologically, it is fragile. It is more dependent on the directions of central figures than commonly thought. For instance, “moot” could halt 90% of the intensity of the attack overnight by issuing a statement. Moot, meanwhile, is already in the process of selling out and becoming part of the establishment.

The security experts being asked for commentary (Bruce Schneier, again and again) do not understand the group. Because he is relatively clueless about it, he just makes general comments on cyberwar which are only tangentially relevant to the current conflict. How can someone make comments on a war knowing so little about the army? Infiltrating the “army” to its core is not at all hard, but it requires days of messing around with the 4chan community, which adults that have day jobs don’t have the time to do. There are probably 13 year-olds far more qualified to comment on this “cyber war” than Mr. Schneier, and they are probably laughing at him and similar “experts” right now.

To even ask the United States if it has been involved in “cyberwar”, as CNN did, is somewhat stupid, because the only reported-on effects of the “army” (bunch of distractable children and adults with momentary time on their hands) have been simple DDoS attacks that operate based on quantity, not quality, and that any idiot (or bot) can participate in. This is in contrast to hackers that attack based on nationalist leanings (Russian and Chinese hackers), funded and led by the state — much more effective. A cyber army that would die if 4chan and Encyclopedia Dramatica were shut down, or if moot made a statement, is only a momentary nuisance, not anything serious.

You can predict the rough effects of any Anonymous “cyber war” by looking at past cases, such as the attack on Scientology. The attack is somewhat of a nuisance while it occurs, but as soon as the community loses interest, everything goes back to normal, and the financial damage is not significant because the “hackers” lack the social engineering skills to do any real damage or get any personal information. They can only harass with faxes, prank calls, protests, DDoS, and the like. In fact, the flood of amateur hacking only causes the targets to reinforce themselves and attain immunity from the possibility of more serious attacks. True “cyber warfare” will involve small groups of highly skilled attackers simultaneously taking actions that individually cause great damage before the target can respond.

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A new Harvard-back study found that Darfuri women at refugee camps in Chad and Darfur are frequently being raped. Big surprise. Here’s how it works: you go to get firewood, and you get raped.

Like Joe Biden, I believe that there needs to be a military force in the region to put a stop to the genocide and rape. So far, only about 9,000 African Union and U.N. peacekeepers have been deployed in Darfur to protect and provide relief for 2.5 million civilians. This is not nearly enough. When hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children civilians are being murdered, tortured, and raped, it is humanity’s business. There needs to be a much larger military coalition, made up of all willing nations.

The Janjaweed are relatively small in number, just 20,000 by some estimates, and with primitive technology. They are essentially bandits with AK-47s on horseback, highly susceptible to missiles or machine gun fire from aircraft. The Sudanese government declines that it is supporting the group. Sudan has been openly complicit in massacres and slave-taking in Southern Sudan, however.

The peacekeeping force might have a problem if the military of Sudan intervened. They number about 400,000, with 100,000 reserve, and “the most advanced military production industry in Africa and the Middle East.” Still, I think it’s worth being bold and seeing what happens. If Sudan cannot defend its inhabitants from genocide, it has temporarily sacrificed its right to govern. The concept of Westphalian sovereignty ought to be suspended in this instance, under extenuating circumstances.

According to DarfurScores.org, Sally Chin of Refugees International has noted, the world has given the African Union “the responsibility to protect, but not the power to protect.” It must be given the power to protect. World leaders (nudged along by the world academic/intellectual complex) should take the necessary actions to see this happen. We have the power. The United States can lead, but it might be difficult to do alone, occupied as we are by Iraq and Afghanistan.

Perhaps we never should have invaded Iraq, and instead spent all our resources on Darfur and Afghanistan.

If US leadership is politically untenable, then other nations need to step forward. You can’t just let genocide happen and do nothing about it — that is ridiculous. At the very least, everyone could complain about it more.

Here is a letter from a Sudanese thinker who believes that intervention would only make things worse. If so, then the primary focus should be on encouraging the rebels and Sudanese government into peace negotiations. Whatever strategy is chosen, the point is to do something to try and stop the genocide. The blogger asserts that water shortages are one of the root causes of the conflict — if so, then better nanotechnology research into water filters and a humanitarian campaign to ship these to the region might do more in the long run than a UN intervention.

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Given adequate food, fuel, and gender equality, mass conflict just might disappear.

This was published by Discover magazine two days ago. By John Horgan:

Frans de Waal stands in a watchtower at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center north of Atlanta, talking about war. As three hulking male chimpanzees and a dozen females loll below him, the renowned primatologist rejects the idea that war stems from “some sort of blind aggressive drive.” Observations of lethal fighting among chimpanzees, our close genetic relatives, have persuaded many people that war has deep biological roots. But de Waal says that primates, and especially humans, are “very calculating” and will abandon aggressive strategies that no longer serve their interests. “War is evitable,” de Waal says, “if conditions are such that the costs of making war are higher than the benefits.”

War evitable? That is a minority opinion in these troubled times. For several years I’ve been probing people’s views about war. Almost everyone, regardless of profession, political persuasion, or age, gives me the same answer: War will never end. I asked 205 students at the college where I teach, “Will humans ever stop fighting wars, once and for all?” More than 90 percent said no. This pessimism seems to be on the rise; in the mid-1980s, only one in three students at Wesleyan University agreed that “wars are inevitable because human beings are naturally aggressive.”

Asked to explain their views, most fatalists offer variations on Robert McNamara’s remarks in the documentary The Fog of War. “I’m not so naive or simplistic to believe we can eliminate war,” said McNamara, who was the U.S. defense secretary during the Vietnam War. “We’re not going to change human nature any time soon.” War, in other words, is inevitable because it is innate, “in our genes,” as my students like to put it.

Continue.

Even given adequate food, fuel, etc., people might still find reasons to make war, but they’d be far decreased. I’d worry more about massively destructive individuals.

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Reading today’s post over at the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology reminded me of this image. The topic at hand was the mechanization of warfare, and the worrisome development of an auto-turret that is accurate at up to half a mile. The image is of Metal Gear D, from the video game series of the same name (minus the D). If human civilization continues as it has, then there are a lot of machines like this in our future. Over at the Lifeboat Foundation blog, I have a few words to say on the militarization of space.

There is a conundrum in the concept of the arms race. The best way to keep the world safe is to have the biggest guns, period. But it’s also an easy way to destroy the world. Keeping the world safe with mere words is impractical. Thus, someone must always have the biggest guns. Anti-authoritarian, well-intentioned people like to whine at length about this. But we have to accept that unless someone keeps the peace, the natural tendency is descent into conflict. All we can do is try to steer things such that the most powerful agent(s) at any given time are truly benevolent.

The best way to accomplish that is not to endlessly shuffle through futile anthropocentric political arrangements, but to actually change the cognitive architecture underlying the most powerful agents to make them more benevolent by nature. You could theoretically do this with enough progress in neuroengineering, but building a Friendly AI just seems easier. Is FAI possible? Yes. Here is a page that argues why.

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