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Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles

reuters.com

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Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles

#41

Post by felipemnoa »

paganel wrote: post #36
forapurpose wrote: post #12

> The Pentagon is in a race against China and Russia to infuse more AI into its war machine ... Much of the focus is on the U.S., China, and Russia, but I wonder who else is doing it? Several years ago, a leading thinker on the application of modern IT to the military noted that it could represent an historic change: Throughout history, military power depended mostly on the quantity of two resources, wealth and popul…

Definitely not Saudi Arabia. A close friend of mine worked there as a engineering contractor for a big European aero-defense company and he said to me that the “engineering capabilities” (so to speak) of his Saudi colleagues were definitely sub-par. One of the reasons he gave me for this is that the Saudi electrical engineering students were still taught the Coran in university instead of the teachers devoting that t…

>>but we’ll have to wait at least a couple of decades for the changes’ effects to become really visible.

By that time the world could be completely different and hence too late to make any changes.

Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles

#42

Post by oh_sigh »

staunch wrote: post #14
Harvey-Specter wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US nuclear triad is way out of date and potentially vulnerable to a first strike. How are nuclear submarines vulnerable to a first strike?

There's just a handful of Ohio class subs and all of them should have been replaced by more modern and stealthier designs by now. It's conceivable that an enemy could locate most of them and hit them with nuclear torpedos or similar. And even if most of the active subs survived it might not be sufficient to ensure MAD because they don't carry all that many SLBMs.

> It's conceivable that an enemy could locate most of them and hit them with nuclear torpedos or similar.

By 'conceivable', you mean 'I am able to think this thought, regardless of how tied to reality it is', right?

Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles

#43

Post by raverbashing »

jacquesm wrote: post #31
forapurpose wrote: post #12

> The Pentagon is in a race against China and Russia to infuse more AI into its war machine ... Much of the focus is on the U.S., China, and Russia, but I wonder who else is doing it? Several years ago, a leading thinker on the application of modern IT to the military noted that it could represent an historic change: Throughout history, military power depended mostly on the quantity of two resources, wealth and popul…

Wait until the military figures out that AI is close enough over the horizon that a Manhattan style project will most likely be able to achieve a self-improving AI. There will be untold funds dumped into it to head off the 'enemy' at the pass because whoever gets it first might be able to stop others from ever achieving parity (or so it will no doubt be reasoned). For all our benefits I hope this is a lot harder than…

While the dangers of atomic chain reactions are well known, I think we're still safely behind the AI chain reaction breakthrough.

While CNN and ltstm are very good at some tasks they're still far away from meta-learning

Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles

#44

Post by asdsa5325 »

forapurpose wrote: post #12

> The Pentagon is in a race against China and Russia to infuse more AI into its war machine ... Much of the focus is on the U.S., China, and Russia, but I wonder who else is doing it? Several years ago, a leading thinker on the application of modern IT to the military noted that it could represent an historic change: Throughout history, military power depended mostly on the quantity of two resources, wealth and popul…

> Much of the focus is on the U.S., China, and Russia, but I wonder who else is doing it?

The US sells defense equipment to it's allies

Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles

#45

Post by buzer »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #40
vonmoltke wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 'Secret' software is very hard to keep secret: once your enemy has a semi-intact drone/AI then they'll have upgraded their own fleet within months (if yours was indeed superior). All new systems have anti-tamper mechanisms designed in from the start specifically to minimize the chances of this happening (assuming they work as intended).

judging by our utter inability to secure software and hardware stacks consistently, i wouldnt hold out much hope for this approach.

Adding self destruction capabilities & possible booby traps on military use drones is a bit different from adding them on smartphones.

Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles

#46

Post by 0xdead_beef »

staunch wrote: post #28
mathinpens wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

handful = 14 boats on deterrence patrols. there are literally 1000 warheads on active american boomers with superfusing..... If literally one submarine survives this amazing russian counterstrike by taking out every single other ohio class at once that still leaves a counterforce of at most 12*24 = 288 warheads. that is 144 to burn russian cities and 144 to burn chinese cities. to me that seems like a credible strike…

1. The US claims to have 14 active but that doesn't account for maintenance problems and the times when they're going in and out of port, something enemies track very closely. The real number is likely even lower than this already low number. 2. Why do you think superfuzes helps in a counter strike? They massively increase accuracy but that's not even the problem to solve in a MAD scenario. Superfuzes help in taking…

Don't you think any of those 1970s subs have seen modernization efforts?

Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles

#47

Post by vonmoltke »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #40
vonmoltke wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 'Secret' software is very hard to keep secret: once your enemy has a semi-intact drone/AI then they'll have upgraded their own fleet within months (if yours was indeed superior). All new systems have anti-tamper mechanisms designed in from the start specifically to minimize the chances of this happening (assuming they work as intended).

judging by our utter inability to secure software and hardware stacks consistently, i wouldnt hold out much hope for this approach.

The world of bespoke military hardware is very different from consumer devices or commercial installations. Where off the shelf stuff is used, a lot of work goes into neutralizing the infiltration and exfiltration vectors. It is one of the reasons military computing systems are both so expensive and so behind the cutting edge.

Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles

#48

Post by throwaway2048 »

vonmoltke wrote: post #47
throwaway2048 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

judging by our utter inability to secure software and hardware stacks consistently, i wouldnt hold out much hope for this approach.

The world of bespoke military hardware is very different from consumer devices or commercial installations. Where off the shelf stuff is used, a lot of work goes into neutralizing the infiltration and exfiltration vectors. It is one of the reasons military computing systems are both so expensive and so behind the cutting edge.

they also dont have magic pixie dust that solves the genuinely mathematicly hard problems involved in securing things. Your drone AI only needs to be stolen once.

Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles

#49

Post by trhway »

staunch wrote: post #14
Harvey-Specter wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US nuclear triad is way out of date and potentially vulnerable to a first strike. How are nuclear submarines vulnerable to a first strike?

There's just a handful of Ohio class subs and all of them should have been replaced by more modern and stealthier designs by now. It's conceivable that an enemy could locate most of them and hit them with nuclear torpedos or similar. And even if most of the active subs survived it might not be sufficient to ensure MAD because they don't carry all that many SLBMs.

>It's conceivable that an enemy could locate most of them and hit them with nuclear torpedos or similar.

i kind of wondering which Navy in the world has (or going to have in the next 10 years - supposing that US would do nothing in those 10 years) sufficient number of such superior attack submarines (or how else you're going to attack these subs? ICBM or long range bombers are obviously out of question) Definitely it is beyond Russia and China capabilities (even if combined (not is going to happen))

Re: Deep in the Pentagon, a secret AI program to find hidden nuclear missiles

#50

Post by [deleted] »

otoburb wrote: post #29
forapurpose wrote: post #12

> The Pentagon is in a race against China and Russia to infuse more AI into its war machine ... Much of the focus is on the U.S., China, and Russia, but I wonder who else is doing it? Several years ago, a leading thinker on the application of modern IT to the military noted that it could represent an historic change: Throughout history, military power depended mostly on the quantity of two resources, wealth and popul…

>> Throughout history, military power depended mostly on the quantity of two resources, wealth and population. I thought that military power depended primarily on the quantity of population and materiél . The latter is driven primarily by wealth, but also relies on building, operating and maintaining a manufacturing and industrial base. Smarter software will help equalize and hopefully reduce coordination costs (i.e.…

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