They do seem intent on using all the new technology to spy on the Citizenry. The books 1984 and Brave New World were quite good predictors of the horrors we now face - soon to be supplanted by even worse horrors, I fear. It might just be [in the end] that too many humans are evil and they get into power and spread their evil via control, theft and death, etc. And that the species will soon end and take with it many other species. I hope not...but that seems to be the trajectory. Another World IS Possible, but it will that the Sheeple becoming angry People, willing to do battle with the Powers now in control of most of the countries of the World. The USA and UK are certainly doing their very worst to become the new tyrannts to their own citizens and those of other countries. I could add some other counties to that list...Israel, Russia, China, to some extent all NATO counties. Its looking bad for life on this Planet. The madmen are in control and they have new technologies now to spy on everyone everywhere..and seem intent on using them for evil, not for good, as they could be used. Very sad indeed.
I hear they have tested bird-sized drones capable of visual and sound spying. They plan to have bee sized soon and then fly sized. With nanotechnology, I guess almost anything is possible. These, however, are NOT desirable and will destroy what very little privacy and democracy remains....precious little remains.
The good in People can't yet make the above named and some other countries stop agressive preemtive wars, use of cluster bombs, biological weapons, nukes and other horrors...now we have drones to spy on and kill people without the killers having to even enter the battlefield. Evil marches onward. Will Good ever catch up and defeat it?! I grow very skeptical in my old age...but will go out fighting!
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
Occupy Melbourne (Australia) occupied a conference today for global experts on UAV (drone) tech to come together and figure out how best to kill people. There's some photos and a little back story here: http://occupii.org/group/omel-photos/page/droneparty
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
I'm currently proof reading, and enjoying immensely, the new book "Kill Decision" by my good friend Dan Suarez. It's about autonomous drones. That's legendary timing for a new book (on top of that, his approach to the genre blows away Clancy at his best). So, as you can see, I'm particularly jazzed about this topic right now.
I've done some consulting with Northrop Grumman on the future of drones.
Finally, if you want to get ahead of the curve on this, read some of my older posts on drones and supermpowerment over the last four years.
Onto the post:::Here's the future. Courtesy of Northrop Grumman.
It's an autonomous aircraft/drone that has a full weapons bay (4,500 lbs). Say that word again: autonomous. That's the breakthrough feature. This also means:It can make its own "kill decision." Again and again and again. That decision is going to get better and better and cheaper and cheaper (Moore's law has made insect level intelligence available for pennies, rat intelligence is next).It isn't vulnerabe to a pilot in Nevada directing it to land in Iran. Oops.It will eventually (sooner than you think) be the "Queen," making decisions for thousands of smaller swarmed (semi-autonomous) drones it lays on a battle zone (aka "city"). In sum: It allows an unprecedented automation of conventional violence. Granted, it will be possible for small groups to put together systems like this on the cheap. For offensive or defense reasons.However, I'm much more worried about their ability to automate repression, particularly if combined with software bots that sift/sort/monitor all of your data 24x7x365 (already going on).
Posted by John Robb on Friday, 27 January 2012 at 11:10 AM | Permalink
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"
Must-Watch Video on How Military Robots Are Changing War
U.S. marine veteran Josh Rushing explains how the 7,000 drones and 12,000 ground robots used by the U.S. military are changing warfare as we currently know it, with major implications for the future of human rights.
I'm currently proof reading, and enjoying immensely, the new book "Kill Decision" by my good friend Dan Suarez. It's about autonomous drones. That's legendary timing for a new book (on top of that, his approach to the genre blows away Clancy at his best). So, as you can see, I'm particularly jazzed about this topic right now.
I've done some consulting with Northrop Grumman on the future of drones.
Finally, if you want to get ahead of the curve on this, read some of my older posts on drones and supermpowerment over the last four years.
Onto the post:::Here's the future. Courtesy of Northrop Grumman.
It's an autonomous aircraft/drone that has a full weapons bay (4,500 lbs). Say that word again: autonomous. That's the breakthrough feature. This also means:It can make its own "kill decision." Again and again and again. That decision is going to get better and better and cheaper and cheaper (Moore's law has made insect level intelligence available for pennies, rat intelligence is next).It isn't vulnerabe to a pilot in Nevada directing it to land in Iran. Oops.It will eventually (sooner than you think) be the "Queen," making decisions for thousands of smaller swarmed (semi-autonomous) drones it lays on a battle zone (aka "city"). In sum: It allows an unprecedented automation of conventional violence. Granted, it will be possible for small groups to put together systems like this on the cheap. For offensive or defense reasons.However, I'm much more worried about their ability to automate repression, particularly if combined with software bots that sift/sort/monitor all of your data 24x7x365 (already going on).
Posted by John Robb on Friday, 27 January 2012 at 11:10 AM | Permalink
Very sick stuff! Drones that 'make their own decisions'....even worse than the human-guided drone. No one to blame in court or by any means if someone is killed or injured by mistake or unjustly. It is a sad commentary on the world today that I sometimes think I'm glad I'll be dead before the world goes much further in this completely wrong and fascist direction. America - about face or become the leading tyrant of the World - including to your own subjugated serfs.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
Quote:BAGHDAD A month after the last American troops left Iraq, the State Department is operating a small fleet of surveillance drones here to help protect the United States Embassy and consulates, as well as American personnel. Some senior Iraqi officials expressed outrage at the program, saying the unarmed aircraft are an affront to Iraqi sovereignty.
The program was described by the department's diplomatic security branch in a little-noticed section of its most recent annual report and outlined in broad terms in a two-page online prospectus for companies that might bid on a contract to manage the program. It foreshadows a possible expansion of unmanned drone operations into the diplomatic arm of the American government; until now they have been mainly the province of the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency.
American contractors say they have been told that the State Department is considering to field unarmed surveillance drones in the future in a handful of other potentially "high-threat" countries, including Indonesia and Pakistan, and in Afghanistan after the bulk of American troops leave in the next two years. State Department officials say that no decisions have been made beyond the drone operations in Iraq.
...
So, some private security company will be routinely flying drones in sovereign territory.
Wake up Philip K Dick - your future is here.
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War." Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta." The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
Gunboat diplomacy was the essence of military power projection for centuries. Want to coerce a country? Sail a aircraft carrier battle group into their national waters. However, carrier battlegroups are hideously expensive, increasingly vulnerable to low cost attack, and less lethal than they appear (most of the weapons systems are used for self-defense). What are nation-states replacing them with? Drones. You can already see it in action across the world as drone staging areas are replacing traditional military bases/entanglements. Further, drones already account for the vast majority of people killed by US forces. Of course, the reason for this is clear. Drones are relatively cheap, don't require many people to deploy/operate, don't put personnel directly at risk, can be easily outsourced, can be micromanaged from Washington, and are very effective at blowing things up. The final benefit of Drone Diplomacy: drones make it possible to apply coercion at the individual or small group level in a way that a blunt instrument like a carrier battle group can't.
What does this mean?
It allows truly scalable global coercion: the automation of comply or die. Call up the target on his/her personal cell (it could even be automated as a robo-call to get real scalability -- wouldn't that suck, to get killed completely through bot based automation).Ask the person on the other end to do something or to stop doing something. If they don't do what you ask, they die soon therafter due to drone strike (unless they go into deep hiding and disconnect from the global system). With drone costs plummeting, we could see this drop to something less than <$1000 a strike in the next half dozen years (particularly if kamikazee drones, like Switchblade, are used to reduce explosive payload requirements).
What can we look forward to?
The mid term future of a national security apparatus in secular ($$) decline? Drones, drones, and more drones. Shrink the headcount. Cut training. Put manned weapons systems in life support mode. Cut mx. All the money is on cyber intel (to generate targets based on "signatures") and drones to kill them. When domestic unrest occurs in the US due to economic decline, these systems will be ready for domestic application. Oh joy.
Posted by John Robb on Monday, 30 January 2012 at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (13) |
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"
US President Barack Obama admits to US drone strikes in Pakistan
WASHINGTON:
President Barack Obama on Monday admitted that US drone aircraft have struck Taliban and al Qaeda targets within Pakistan -operations that until now had not been officially acknowledged.
When asked about the use of drones by his administration in a chat with web users on Google+ and YouTube, Obama said "a lot of these strikes have been in the FATA" Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
"For the most part, they've been very precise precision strikes against al Qaeda and their affiliates, and we're very careful in terms of how it's been applied," Obama said.
"This is a targeted focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists, who are trying to go in and harm Americans, hit American facilities, American bases, and so on."
Explaining that many strikes were carried out "on al Qaeda operatives in places where the capacities of that military in that country may not be able to get them," Obama confirmed that Pakistan's lawless tribal zone was a target.
"So, obviously, a lot of these strikes have been in the FATA, and going after al Qaeda suspects who are up in very tough terrain along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan," he said.
"For us to be able to get them in another way would involve probably a lot more intrusive military action than the ones we're already engaging in."
US officials say Pakistan's tribal belt provides sanctuary to Taliban fighting for 10 years in Afghanistan, al Qaeda groups plotting attacks on the West, Pakistani Taliban who routinely bomb Pakistan and other foreign fighters.
64 US missile strikes were reported in Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt last year, down from 101 reported in 2010, according to AFP tallies.
According to the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, drone strikes in Pakistan over the past eight years have killed at least 1,715 people, and as many as 2,680 people.
The United States had until now refused to discuss the strikes publicly, but the program has dramatically increased as the Obama administration looks to withdraw all foreign combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
In October, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta acknowledged the CIA's drone program, but did not specifically indicate they were used in Pakistan.
When asked by AFP if Obama's remarks signaled a change in US policy about the drone program, a White House spokesman refused to comment.
The Pakistani government is understood to agree to the program despite popular opposition at home. Drones have reportedly killed dozens of al Qaeda and Taliban operatives and hundreds of low-ranking fighters since 2004.
But the missile strikes fuel widespread anti-American resentment, which is running especially high in Pakistan since US air strikes inadvertently killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November.
A US-NATO investigation blamed the deaths on a litany of errors and botched communications on both sides. But Pakistan rejected the findings, insisting the strikes had been deliberate.
Obama said drones had "not caused a huge number of civilian casualties" and that it was "important for everybody to understand that this thing is kept on a very tight leash."
Islamabad is now reviewing its entire alliance with the United States and has kept its Afghan border closed to NATO supply convoys for two months.
It ordered US personnel to leave Shamsi air base in western Pakistan, widely believed to have been a hub for the CIA drone program, and is thought likely to only reopen the Afghan border by exacting taxes on convoys.
The State Department said Monday it had used small, unarmed surveillance drones to protect US diplomats in so-called "critical threat environments" overseas.
The news emerged after The New York Times reported that Iraqi officials have expressed outrage at US use of a small fleet of drones to help protect the embassy, consulates and American personnel in Iraq.
"The State Department has always used a wide variety of security tools and techniques and procedures to ensure the safety of our personnel and our facilities," spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.
"We do have an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) program used by the State Department," she said, adding the UAVs are "tiny" and "not capable of being armed" but designed to provide pictures of US government facilities.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
Quote:Obama said drones had "not caused a huge number of civilian casualties" and that it was "important for everybody to understand that this thing is kept on a very tight leash."
By their lies, shall ye know them.
More mundanely, Obama displays a fluent grasp of the national security state's Synapse Manipulator known, in its limited hangout capacity, as Neuro-Linguistic-Programming.
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War." Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta." The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
