Robots, artificial intelligence and genetic engineering to change human life and the Killing. New technologies find rapid entrance in defence projects. What does this mean for the future of armed conflict?
Exactly 35 years ago, the world of the atom, the past week of war. It was at the height of the Cold war. Since March 1983 that sounded from the German Radios of the number 1 Hit “99 luftballons” in the German pop star Nena describes a war Accidentally. And that is exactly what almost happened.
90 kilometers South of Moscow, reported in the night from 25. on the 26. September 1983, the satellite-based early warning system of the former Soviet Union, the Start of 50 American nuclear missiles. It was a great happiness for mankind, that in this night, Stanislaw Jewgoritsch Petrov was on duty. A Person. A, the pixels on his screen, distrusted, and regarded the message on his own authority as a false alarm and not automatically for the nuclear retaliatory strike ordered. Petrov’s assessment proved to be correct: A Soviet spy satellite had a rating because of a software error, a sunrise and reflections in the clouds as a missile launch. Petrov lonely feat has been treasured for decades as a state secret.
The world is kept in 1983, possibly a nuclear war: Stanislav Petrov
The question at this point is not alone, as another man at Petrov point would have reacted. The question is rather: How would he have reacted to an automated System? In the meantime, the digitization is not only in all areas of human life. She is also advanced in weapons technology and in the area of the killing. Artificial intelligence, machine Learning, robotics, 3D printing and genetic engineering and the military to revolutionize. There is a clear Trend towards Autonomous weapons systems. It is evident that soon more and more people are in control when decisions about life and death are taken. “Has a Wealth of implications beyond the question of whether this is ethically justifiable,” Reinhard Grünwald, office of technology assessment of the German Bundestag feast to follow. “What are the risks to international stability? This is a very complex field, which includes the continued existence of mankind,” says green of the forest.
Deadly Trend to a higher Tempo
The Trend to Autonomous weapon systems is fueled by the growing speed in conflict. The commanders make use of modern technology and increasingly also artificial intelligence, in order to retain in complex battle situations and make decisions. This sets a vicious circle in motion, because the velocity increases still further. “At some point, the people can no longer keep up, neither cognitive, nor the response capability,” predicts green forest. “There’s a certain pressure that one is always faster, and at some point the human ability to make decisions, the responsibility falls back down already exists”.
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Also Justin Bronk looks at the armies of the growing willingness to trust in technical systems, in order to deal with what the German strategist Carl von Clausewitz called already 200 years ago, “the uncertainty of the war” (“fog of war”). Bronk is conducting research with the British defence think tank “Royal United Services Institute” (RUSI) on the topics of air force and technology. He was diagnosed with the Western military, particularly in the USA and the UK intellectual climate “to trust that these systems work – even when there is often evidence that they work nearly as reliably as the theory would suggest”.
The tall Bronk sits on the gray upholstered furniture in the Stockholm Museum of photography. The red brick building right on the water, formerly served as a customs building. On this day, at the end of September, it serves as a venue for a conference desStockholmer peace research Institute, SIPRI. “New technologies” is overwritten. “The technology to make lethal Autonomous weapons systems (LAWS), especially in the air, is already there,” explains Bronk. “If you look, how much combat power you get for the Euro, the pound or the Dollar, are Autonomous, programmable and armed drones (UCAVS) are significantly cheaper than manned combat aircraft.” Since the US Navy in 2015, even the air to air refuelling of such combat drones have mastered, the RUSI expert, was limited to the duration of use, the Oil consumption of the machines and the inspection times.
Justin Bronk warns of faith in Technology
A combination of new technologies
The SIPRI Meeting at the end of the question, what threats arise from the combination of new technologies. Dan Smith is for three years, Director of the Sto0ckholmer peace researchers. “The idea behind the conference is that we look at the issues, often separately,” he explains in an interview with Deutsche Welle. “We will discuss, for example Cyber-warfare here, and nuclear threats. But perhaps the real danger in the Hacking of nuclear power plants.” Or in the combination of 3D printing and genetic engineering. Dan Smith has a fear that biological warfare agents could be disseminated in the Form of zeros and ones as a digitized and re-settable gene sequence. “This would not even be a virus, people make you sick. The could also attack will be biological substances, the plants, the food supply and wreak havoc on food markets.”
To discuss such nightmares and searching for solutions, almost 200 participants to the photography Museum of Stockholm: government officials, military officers, researchers, representatives of international organizations, people from the private sector. To deal with these complex problems, SIPRI Director Smith, “we need to create this melting pot of discussions and ideas.” “.
“Ethics first”
With Charlotte’s Lindsey Curtet, the Director of digital Transformation and data to the International Committee of the Red cross, ICRC. It demands that international humanitarian law and the Geneva Convention must continue to retain their validity, no matter with what weapons systems wwerde fought. The Position of the ICRC is clear that Curtet, that “a man must centrally be involved in the decision-making process about the use of any technology or weapon to kill, injure, or maim, or the important infrastructure for the lives of civilians are affected.”
Heather Roff of the John Hopkins University on the American East coast calls, already in the development of new weapons systems has to be considered with ethical principles from the very beginning. “Ethics first, ethics-by-Design” are the keywords of the security researcher. How far the positions of SIPRI has created the “melting pot of ideas” apart, not the fact that a high-ranking military explained: “We know where the technological development takes us. But we will go this way. We have no Alternative.”
And how great is the perplexity is given the complexity of the problem, illustrated perhaps best by the remark of a participant at the Buffet: “Our Situation is the equivalent of the Roman Empire plus Cyber. We have a few ideas of what we can do. We should read history books.”