Beet L. Jooz

Every Oscar loss, every protest, and every mass wave of slanted criticism has an effect on what Hollywood greenlights, and how bold films can be.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) delivered a fiery speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, contending that the "deep state needs more oversight."

The United States agreed in 1980 to implement the United Nation's rules on refugees. This means a group of recently deported migrants must be flown back to the U.S. and be given another chance to win asylum, a Democratic-appointed judge declared December 17.

President Donald Trump vowed Thursday not to sign any Democrat funding bills unless it included money for border security.

As this was likely one of Trump's last connections to his base, this should be deeply concerning.

Former FBI Director James Comey appeared December 17th, 2018, for a second round of questions by a joint House committee oversight probe into the DOJ and FBI conduct during the 2016 presidential election and incoming Trump administration.

The Joint House Committee just released the transcript online (full pdf below).

Director Blue blog's Doug Ross read through most of the septic backflow so you don't need to. You're welcome:

1. Double Standard: Obama vs. Trump

Trey Gowdy grilled Comey on his vastly different handling of comments by Trump and Obama. When Trump asked Comey whether he could see his way clear to easing up on Flynn, Comey memorialized the conversation in a memo and distributed it to his leadership team, including Andrew McCabe and James Baker.

However, when President Obama on 60 Minutes publicly exonerated Hillary Clinton's mishandling of classified information -- setting the stage for true obstruction of justice -- Comey did nothing. He never talked to the president about potential obstruction, he never memorialized his observations, and he didn't leak anything to the press. These were all things he did with Trump.

He might call it a "higher loyalty", but it looks to us peons like a true double-standard. Democrats get Wall Street Bankster treatment, while the rabble get tossed in the slammer.

2. According to Comey, Flynn had no right to counsel

This is interesting:

Mr. Gowdy. Did Mr. Flynn have the right to have counsel present during that interview?

Mr. Comey. No.

Oooooooookay.

3. Comey confirmed McCabe called Flynn to initiate "entrapment"; contradicts himself on counsel

And:

Mr. Gowdy. Why not advise General Flynn of the consequences of making false statements to the FBI?

Mr. Comey. ...the Deputy Director [McCabe] called him, told him what the subject matter was, told him he was welcome to have a representative from White House Counsel there...

So Comey is saying that Flynn didn't have the right to counsel (item 2), and then states that he does have the right to a White House counsel attending the meeting.

The lies are getting harder and harder to keep straight with this egregious individual.

4. Comey lied about McCabe's conversation with Flynn

When asked whether McCabe was trying to set Flynn up by asserting no counsel was needed in the interview, Comey claimed he was unaware of that critical fact. But McCabe, in a written memo, asserted that he told Flynn, "[i]f you have a lawyer present, we'll need to involve the Department of Justice".

In other words, McCabe was trying to ensure Flynn had no counsel present during the interview.

5. Comey still falls back on the Logan Act scam to justify his actions

Yes, the Logan Act. When former secretary of state John Kerry meets with various Mullahs while President Trump is unwinding the disastrous Iran deal, there's no crime there!

But let Flynn, a member of the Trump transition team, have a perfectly legitimate conversation with a Russian diplomat, we get:

Mr. Comey. And I hesitate only with "wrong." I think a Department of Justice prosecutor might say, on its face, it was problematic under the Logan Act because of private citizens negotiating and all that business.

What a lying sack of gumbo. At the time, Flynn was not a private citizen. He was a member of the incoming administration, and had anyone bothered to prosecute prior transitions for similar "crimes", the entire Obama and Clinton posses would be breaking rocks at Leavenworth.

6. Comey Throws James Clapper Under the Bus

When asked by Jim Jordan about his private meeting with the President to brief him on a very tiny portion of the "salacious and unverified" (Comey's words under oath) dossier, Comey claimed ODNI James Clapper had orchestrated the entire fiasco.

Mr. Comey. ...ultimately, it was Clapper's call. I agreed -- we agreed that it made sense for me to do it and to do it privately, separately. So I don't want to make it sound like I was ordered to do it.

He wasn't ordered to do it, but it was Clapper's call.

Oooooooookay.

7. Jordan Torches Comey Over His Dossier Comments

I'll just leave this here. Comey may need to put some ice on that.

Mr. Jordan. So that's what I'm not understanding, is you felt this was so important that it required a private session with you and the President-elect, you only spoke of the salacious part of the dossier, but yet you also say there's no way any good reporter would print this. But you felt it was still critical that you had to talk to the President-elect about it. And I would argue you created the very news hook that you said you were concerned about...

...it's so inflammatory that reporters would 'get killed' for reporting it, why was it so important to tell the President? Particularly when you weren't going to tell him the rest of the dossier -- about the rest of the dossier?

8. Comey Concealed Critical National Security Concerns About Flynn From the President

This is quite unbelievable: in a private dinner with the president, Comey neglected to mention that just three days earlier he had directed the interview of Trump's ostensible National Security Advisor.

Mr. Comey. ...at no time during the dinner was there a reference, allusion, mention by either of
us about the FBI having contact with General Flynn or being interested in General Flynn investigatively.

Mr. Jordan. That was what I wanted to know. So this is not just referring to the President didn't bring it up. You didn't bring it up either.

Mr. Comey. Correct, neither of us brought it up or alluded to it.

Mr. Jordan. Why not? He's talking about General Flynn. You had just interviewed him 3 days earlier and discovered that he was lying to the Vice President, knew he was lying to the Vice President, and, based on what we've heard of late, that he lied tyour agents. Why not tell his boss, why not tell the head of the executive branch, why not tell the President of the United States, "Hey, your National Security Advisor just lied to us 3 days ago"?

Mr. Comey. Because we had an open investigation, and there would be no reason or a need to tell the President about it.

Mr. Jordan. Really?

Mr. Comey. Really.

Mr. Jordan. You wouldn't tell the President of the United States that his National Security Advisor wasn't being square with the FBI? ... I mean, but this is not just any investigation, it seems to me, Director. This is a top advisor to the Commander in Chief. And you guys, based on what we've heard, felt that he wasn't being honest with the Vice President and wasn't honest with two of your agents. And just 3 days later, you're meeting with the President, and, oh, by the way, the conversation is about General Flynn. And you don't tell the President anything?

Mr. Comey. I did not.

Mr. Meadows. So, Director Comey, let me make sure I understand this. You were so concerned that Michael Flynn may have lied or did lie to the Vice President of the United States, but that once you got that confirmed, that he had told a falsehood, you didn't believe that it was appropriate to tell the President of the United States that there was no national security risk where you would actually convey that to the President of the United States? Is that your testimony?

Mr. Comey. That is correct. We had an --

The more we learn, the dirtier a cop Comey ends up appearing.

9. Gowdy Destroys the Double Standard of Clinton vs. Flynn

Check this out:

Mr. Gowdy. ...we are going to contrast the decision to not allow Michael Flynn to have an attorney, or discourage him from having one, with allowing some other folks the Bureau interviewed to have multiple attorneys in the room, including fact witnesses. Can you see the dichotomy there, or is that an unreasonable comparison?

Mr. Comey. I'm not going to comment on that. I remember you asking me questions about that last week. I'm happy to answer them again.

Mr. Gowdy. You will not say whether or not it is an unreasonable comparison to compare allowing multiple attorneys, who are also fact witnesses, to be present during an interview but discouraging another person from having counsel present?

Mr. Comey. I'm not going to answer that in a vacuum...

10. Comey May Have Been Involved With the Infamous Tarmac Meeting

Another interesting vignette, this time from John Ratcliffe:

Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. So it would appear from this that there had been some type of briefing the day before, with reference to yesterday, June 27, 2016, where you had requested a copy of emails between President Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Comey. I see that it says that.

Mr. Ratcliffe. ...The significance of that is, as we talked about last time, June 27th of 2016 was also the date that Attorney General Lynch and former President Bill Clinton met on a tarmac in Phoenix, Arizona. Do you recall whether or not this briefing was held at the FBI because of that tarmac meeting, or was it just happened to be a coincidence that it was held on that day? Mr. Comey. It would have to have been a coincidence. I don't remember a meeting in response to the tarmac meeting.

Muh don't know!

11. Comey confirms Obama knew Hillary Clinton was using a compromised, insecure email server

Well, spank me on the fanny and call me Nancy!

Mr. Ratcliffe. ...Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Obama were communicating via email through an unsecure, unclassified server?

Mr. Comey. Yes, they were between her Clinton email.com account and his -- I don't know where his account, his unclassified account, was maintained. So I'm sorry. So, yes, here were communications unclassified between two accounts, hers and then his cover account.

Mr. Ratcliffe. ...Did your review of these emails or the content of these emails impact your decision to edit out a reference to President Obama in your July 5th, 2016, press conference remarks?

If Trump had done 1/1,000,000th of this crap, he'd be -- yes -- breaking rocks in Leavenworth right now.

But there's no double-standard, rabble! Just keep buying iPhones and playing Call of Duty!

...Aaaaaaaaand I'm spent.

Okay, done for now.

But let's recap the activities of Dr. "Higher Loyalty" Comey:

• Did not investigate the felony leak to the press of the conversation between the Russian Ambassador and Flynn.

• Did not advise Congress of the "investigation" into Trump-Russia collusion as required by statute.

• Lied to the FISA court -- another felony -- about Carter Page being "an agent of a foreign power".

• Wrote an exoneration memo for Hillary Clinton before more than a dozen witnesses, including Clinton herself, had been interviewed.

But, no, there's no double-standard for the aggressiveness of law enforcement when it comes to Democrats like Clinton and Obama.

Hat tip: BadBlue Uncensored News.

*  *  *

'Constitutional crisis'

CNN’s Van Jones commended Donald Trump on a “Christmas miracle” after the First Step Act was overwhelmingly passed in the Senate Tuesday night, meaning it is due to appear on the president’s desk after previously making its way through the House.

“A Christmas miracle just happened tonight… 87 senators, both political parties came together to do something to try to begin to reduce the number of people behind bars for too long, and what this bill does is unbelievable,” Jones told CNN host Don Lemon tonight. “It means that 100 percent of the people who are behind bars in the federal system can stay out of trouble and come home a little bit sooner. Half of them can work hard and earn their way home sooner.”

He also explained the bill means “100 percent of the women behind bars can no longer be shackled when they’re giving birth and mistreated,” “100 percent of juveniles can no longer be put in solitary confinement,” and sentences for the thousands of people incarcerated for crack cocaine will be shortened, as the drug has been regulated by harsher standards than regular cocaine.

“The New York Times calls this the biggest breakthrough in criminal justice in a generation, and it was brought about by ordinary people who came together and fought. And I just want to say, formerly incarcerated people, directly impacted people, like Topeka Sam, Jessica Jackson, Lewis Reed, and frankly Jared Kushner, whose father went to prison, refused to die on this, and we have a Christmas miracle,” Jones added.

As for those criticizing the bill for its perceived shortcomings, Jones said, “This is like the 1959 civil rights act. People think about, no, New York ’64, ’65. First you had 1954 which broke the logjam.”

“It’s not called the last step. It’s called the first step,” he said. “We will get to all these other issues, but you had to make it safe.”

The progressive pundit then embarked on a lengthy monologue praising the president for his work on the bill:

“I have to be honest. Donald Trump shocked me and a bunch of people by doing the right thing on this. People thought because from my point of view he’s been wrong on 99 issues, he could never be right on one. On this issue, every time people made a prediction that Donald Trump was going to sell us out, turn on us, wasn’t going to use political capital, he came harder… Donald Trump has got to get the credit. He stood up.”

He also gave credit to “Republicans who know better, like Rick Perry, like Mike Lee, like Rand Paul,” while noting GOP senators who opposed the measure “got crushed like little bugs.”

Watch above, via CNN.

[image via screengrab]

Rio Grande Valley Sector Border Patrol agents came upon more than 300 migrants who crossed the border illegally on December 18 to surrender themselves. The group consisted mainly of unaccompanied minors and family units, officials stated.

Over the last 18 months, Chinese hackers breached several unidentified Navy contractors, stealing large amounts of data related to undersea warfare, including top-secret programs to develop supersonic anti-ship missiles for submarines, officials and experts said, triggering top-to-bottom review of cyber vulnerabilities for the Navy.

Navy Secretary Richard Spencer recently requested a review to examine why the service and its contractors are continuing to get hacked by China.

Officials told The Wall Street Journal that a classified initial assessment of the problem was delivered to Navy Secretary Spencer last week and provides appropriate countermeasures to thwart future cyber attacks.

Navy officials declined to say how many cyber attacks occurred during the 18 months except to say that there were “more than a handful,” calling some of the cyber attacks "troubling and unacceptable."

“Attacks on our networks are not new, but attempts to steal critical information are increasing in both severity and sophistication,” Spencer wrote in an internal memo in October reviewed by the Journal.

“We must act decisively to fully understand both the nature of these attacks and how to prevent further loss of vital military information.”

Spencer’s memo excluded explicitly mentioning China, but officials told WSJ that China mostly does the hacking.

On Friday, the Navy said Spencer’s memo “reflects the seriousness to which the [Navy] prioritizes cybersecurity in this era of renewed great power competition so that our Navy and Marine Corps warfighting team can sustain and improve our military advantage over any peer or competitor.”

Even though China would struggle in a conventional war with the US, Navy officials said Beijing had already shown its muscles on the modern battlefield as it continues to launch cyber attacks on the US.

“They are looking for our weak underbelly,” said a defense official. “An asymmetric way to engage the United States without ever having to fire a round.”

Officials told WSJ that "cyber fingerprints pointing to China include the remote administering of malware from a computer address accidentally exposed as located in the island province of Hainan."

US officials also say they have classified sources that have ample evidence the attacks are directly linked to China.

Tom Bossert, an ex-homeland security adviser to President Trump, said the "Chinese hack the U.S. military and other organizations for various reasons—sometimes to sabotage American systems, sometimes to gather intelligence and other times to gain a competitive advantage by stealing intellectual property."

“It’s extremely hard for the Defense Department to secure its own systems,” Bossert said. “It’s a matter of trust and hope to secure the systems of their contractors and subcontractors.”

An intelligence official told WSJ that subcontractors employed by the military are severely lagging in cybersecurity and have been targeted by the Chinese. 

"Senior Pentagon leaders view the military’s acquisition process as inadequately structured to hold contractors and subcontractors accountable for their cybersecurity," officials said.

Spencer’s memo coincides with a broader strategy by the Trump administration to label China as a thief of American intellectual property. 

WSJ indicates that Navy contractors and subcontractors that have been hacked, are generally targeted by one Chinese government hacking unit, known as Temp.Periscope or Leviathan, that often deploys email phishing schemes to break inside secured networks. 

The hacking group has been active since at least 2013 and has focused mostly on targeting Western governments and their militaries. 

Ben Read, senior manager for cyber espionage analysis at FireEye, said that Temp.Periscope has been one of the top hacking groups in China targeting American maritime interests. 

The group has targeted " entities that may be strategically significant to Chinese interests in the South China Sea, including Cambodian political organizations," Read said.

So, how many more hacks will Washington tolerate until President Trump snaps and punishes Beijing with even more tariffs while sending an even greater US military presence in the South China Sea?

As a reminder, NATO recently declared that a major cyber attack on one of its members could be grounds for a declaration of war.

Authored by Michael Klare via TomDispatch.com,

There could be no more consequential decision than launching atomic weapons and possibly triggering a nuclear holocaust. President John F. Kennedy faced just such a moment during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and, after envisioning the catastrophic outcome of a U.S.-Soviet nuclear exchange, he came to the conclusion that the atomic powers should impose tough barriers on the precipitous use of such weaponry. Among the measures he and other global leaders adopted were guidelines requiring that senior officials, not just military personnel, have a role in any nuclear-launch decision.

That was then, of course, and this is now. And what a now it is! With artificial intelligence, or AI, soon to play an ever-increasing role in military affairs, as in virtually everything else in our lives, the role of humans, even in nuclear decision-making, is likely to be progressively diminished. In fact, in some future AI-saturated world, it could disappear entirely, leaving machines to determine humanity’s fate.

This isn't idle conjecture based on science fiction movies or dystopian novels. It’s all too real, all too here and now, or at least here and soon to be. As the Pentagon and the military commands of the other great powers look to the future, what they see is a highly contested battlefield -- some have called it a “hyperwar” environment -- where vast swarms of AI-guided robotic weapons will fight each other at speeds far exceeding the ability of human commanders to follow the course of a battle. At such a time, it is thought, commanders might increasingly be forced to rely on ever more intelligent machines to make decisions on what weaponry to employ when and where. At first, this may not extend to nuclear weapons, but as the speed of battle increases and the “firebreak” between them and conventional weaponry shrinks, it may prove impossible to prevent the creeping automatization of even nuclear-launch decision-making.

Such an outcome can only grow more likely as the U.S. military completes a top-to-bottom realignment intended to transform it from a fundamentally small-war, counter-terrorist organization back into one focused on peer-against-peer combat with China and Russia. This shift was mandated by the Department of Defense in its December 2017 National Security Strategy. Rather than focusing mainly on weaponry and tactics aimed at combating poorly armed insurgents in never-ending small-scale conflicts, the American military is now being redesigned to fight increasingly well-equipped Chinese and Russian forces in multi-dimensional (air, sea, land, space, cyberspace) engagements involving multiple attack systems (tanks, planes, missiles, rockets) operating with minimal human oversight.

“The major effect/result of all these capabilities coming together will be an innovation warfare has never seen before: the minimization of human decision-making in the vast majority of processes traditionally required to wage war,” observed retired Marine General John Allen and AI entrepreneur Amir Hussain.

“In this coming age of hyperwar, we will see humans providing broad, high-level inputs while machines do the planning, executing, and adapting to the reality of the mission and take on the burden of thousands of individual decisions with no additional input.”

That “minimization of human decision-making” will have profound implications for the future of combat. Ordinarily, national leaders seek to control the pace and direction of battle to ensure the best possible outcome, even if that means halting the fighting to avoid greater losses or prevent humanitarian disaster. Machines, even very smart machines, are unlikely to be capable of assessing the social and political context of combat, so activating them might well lead to situations of uncontrolled escalation.

It may be years, possibly decades, before machines replace humans in critical military decision-making roles, but that time is on the horizon. When it comes to controlling AI-enabled weapons systems, as Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis put it in a recent interview, “For the near future, there’s going to be a significant human element. Maybe for 10 years, maybe for 15. But not for 100.”

Why AI?

Even five years ago, there were few in the military establishment who gave much thought to the role of AI or robotics when it came to major combat operations. Yes, remotely piloted aircraft (RPA), or drones, have been widely used in Africa and the Greater Middle East to hunt down enemy combatants, but those are largely ancillary (and sometimes CIA) operations, intended to relieve pressure on U.S. commandos and allied forces facing scattered bands of violent extremists. In addition, today’s RPAs are still controlled by human operators, even if from remote locations, and make little use, as yet, of AI-powered target-identification and attack systems. In the future, however, such systems are expected to populate much of any battlespace, replacing humans in many or even most combat functions.

To speed this transformation, the Department of Defense is already spending hundreds of millions of dollars on AI-related research.

“We cannot expect success fighting tomorrow’s conflicts with yesterday’s thinking, weapons, or equipment,” Mattis told Congress in April.

To ensure continued military supremacy, he added, the Pentagon would have to focus more “investment in technological innovation to increase lethality, including research into advanced autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, and hypersonics.”

Why the sudden emphasis on AI and robotics? It begins, of course, with the astonishing progress made by the tech community -- much of it based in Silicon Valley, California -- in enhancing AI and applying it to a multitude of functions, including image identification and voice recognition. One of those applications, Alexa Voice Services, is the computer system behind Amazon’s smart speaker that not only can use the Internet to do your bidding but interpret your commands. (“Alexa, play classical music.” “Alexa, tell me today’s weather.” “Alexa, turn the lights on.”) Another is the kind of self-driving vehicle technology that is expected to revolutionize transportation.

Artificial Intelligence is an “omni-use” technology, explain analysts at the Congressional Research Service, a non-partisan information agency, “as it has the potential to be integrated into virtually everything.” It’s also a “dual-use” technology in that it can be applied as aptly to military as civilian purposes. Self-driving cars, for instance, rely on specialized algorithms to process data from an array of sensors monitoring traffic conditions and so decide which routes to take, when to change lanes, and so on. The same technology and reconfigured versions of the same algorithms will one day be applied to self-driving tanks set loose on future battlefields. Similarly, someday drone aircraft -- without human operators in distant locales -- will be capable of scouring a battlefield for designated targets (tanks, radar systems, combatants), determining that something it “sees” is indeed on its target list, and “deciding” to launch a missile at it.

It doesn’t take a particularly nimble brain to realize why Pentagon officials would seek to harness such technology: they think it will give them a significant advantage in future wars. Any full-scale conflict between the U.S. and China or Russia (or both) would, to say the least, be extraordinarily violent, with possibly hundreds of warships and many thousands of aircraft and armored vehicles all focused in densely packed battlespaces. In such an environment, speed in decision-making, deployment, and engagement will undoubtedly prove a critical asset. Given future super-smart, precision-guided weaponry, whoever fires first will have a better chance of success, or even survival, than a slower-firing adversary. Humans can move swiftly in such situations when forced to do so, but future machines will act far more swiftly, while keeping track of more battlefield variables.

As General Paul Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, toldCongress in 2017,

“It is very compelling when one looks at the capabilities that artificial intelligence can bring to the speed and accuracy of command and control and the capabilities that advanced robotics might bring to a complex battlespace, particularly machine-to-machine interaction in space and cyberspace, where speed is of the essence.”

Aside from aiming to exploit AI in the development of its own weaponry, U.S. military officials are intensely aware that their principal adversaries are also pushing ahead in the weaponization of AI and robotics, seeking novel ways to overcome America’s advantages in conventional weaponry. According to the Congressional Research Service, for instance, China is investing heavily in the development of artificial intelligence and its application to military purposes. Though lacking the tech base of either China or the United States, Russia is similarly rushing the development of AI and robotics. Any significant Chinese or Russian lead in such emerging technologies that might threaten this country’s military superiority would be intolerable to the Pentagon.

Not surprisingly then, in the fashion of past arms races (from the pre-World War I development of battleships to Cold War nuclear weaponry), an “arms race in AI” is now underway, with the U.S., China, Russia, and other nations (including Britain, Israel, and South Korea) seeking to gain a critical advantage in the weaponization of artificial intelligence and robotics. Pentagon officials regularly cite Chinese advances in AI when seeking congressional funding for their projects, just as Chinese and Russian military officials undoubtedly cite American ones to fund their own pet projects. In true arms race fashion, this dynamic is already accelerating the pace of development and deployment of AI-empowered systems and ensuring their future prominence in warfare.

Command and Control

As this arms race unfolds, artificial intelligence will be applied to every aspect of warfare, from logistics and surveillance to target identification and battle management. Robotic vehicles will accompany troops on the battlefield, carrying supplies and firing on enemy positions; swarms of armed drones will attack enemy tanks, radars, and command centers; unmanned undersea vehicles, or UUVs, will pursue both enemy submarines and surface ships. At the outset of combat, all these instruments of war will undoubtedly be controlled by humans. As the fighting intensifies, however, communications between headquarters and the front lines may well be lost and such systems will, according to military scenarios already being written, be on their own, empowered to take lethal action without further human intervention.

Most of the debate over the application of AI and its future battlefield autonomy has been focused on the morality of empowering fully autonomous weapons -- sometimes called “killer robots” -- with a capacity to make life-and-death decisions on their own, or on whether the use of such systems would violate the laws of war and international humanitarian law. Such statutes require that war-makers be able to distinguish between combatants and civilians on the battlefield and spare the latter from harm to the greatest extent possible. Advocates of the new technology claim that machines will indeed become smart enough to sort out such distinctions for themselves, while opponents insist that they will never prove capable of making critical distinctions of that sort in the heat of battle and would be unable to show compassion when appropriate. A number of human rights and humanitarian organizations have even launched the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots with the goal of adopting an international ban on the development and deployment of fully autonomous weapons systems.

In the meantime, a perhaps even more consequential debate is emerging in the military realm over the application of AI to command-and-control (C2) systems -- that is, to ways senior officers will communicate key orders to their troops. Generals and admirals always seek to maximize the reliability of C2 systems to ensure that their strategic intentions will be fulfilled as thoroughly as possible. In the current era, such systems are deeply reliant on secure radio and satellite communications systems that extend from headquarters to the front lines. However, strategists worry that, in a future hyperwar environment, such systems could be jammed or degraded just as the speed of the fighting begins to exceed the ability of commanders to receive battlefield reports, process the data, and dispatch timely orders. Consider this a functional definition of the infamous fog of war multiplied by artificial intelligence -- with defeat a likely outcome. The answer to such a dilemma for many military officials: let the machines take over these systems, too. As a report from the Congressional Research Service puts it, in the future “AI algorithms may provide commanders with viable courses of action based on real-time analysis of the battle-space, which would enable faster adaptation to unfolding events.”

And someday, of course, it’s possible to imagine that the minds behind such decision-making would cease to be human ones. Incoming data from battlefield information systems would instead be channeled to AI processors focused on assessing imminent threats and, given the time constraints involved, executing what they deemed the best options without human instructions.

Pentagon officials deny that any of this is the intent of their AI-related research. They acknowledge, however, that they can at least imagine a future in which other countries delegate decision-making to machines and the U.S. sees no choice but to follow suit, lest it lose the strategic high ground. “We will not delegate lethal authority for a machine to make a decision,” then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work told Paul Scharre of the Center for a New American Security in a 2016 interview. But he added the usual caveat: in the future, “we might be going up against a competitor that is more willing to delegate authority to machines than we are and as that competition unfolds, we’ll have to make decisions about how to compete.”

The Doomsday Decision

The assumption in most of these scenarios is that the U.S. and its allies will be engaged in a conventional war with China and/or Russia. Keep in mind, then, that the very nature of such a future AI-driven hyperwar will only increase the risk that conventional conflicts could cross a threshold that’s never been crossed before: an actual nuclear war between two nuclear states. And should that happen, those AI-empowered C2 systems could, sooner or later, find themselves in a position to launch atomic weapons.

Such a danger arises from the convergence of multiple advances in technology: not just AI and robotics, but the development of conventional strike capabilities like hypersonic missiles capable of flying at five or more times the speed of sound, electromagnetic rail guns, and high-energy lasers. Such weaponry, though non-nuclear, when combined with AI surveillance and target-identification systems, could even attack an enemy’s mobile retaliatory weapons and so threaten to eliminate its ability to launch a response to any nuclear attack. Given such a “use 'em or lose 'em” scenario, any power might be inclined not to wait but to launch its nukes at the first sign of possible attack, or even, fearing loss of control in an uncertain, fast-paced engagement, delegate launch authority to its machines. And once that occurred, it could prove almost impossible to prevent further escalation.

The question then arises: Would machines make better decisions than humans in such a situation? They certainly are capable of processing vast amounts of information over brief periods of time and weighing the pros and cons of alternative actions in a thoroughly unemotional manner. But machines also make military mistakes and, above all, they lack the ability to reflect on a situation and conclude: Stop this madness. No battle advantage is worth global human annihilation.

As Paul Scharre put it in Army of None, a new book on AI and warfare,

“Humans are not perfect, but they can empathize with their opponents and see the bigger picture. Unlike humans, autonomous weapons would have no ability to understand the consequences of their actions, no ability to step back from the brink of war.”

So maybe we should think twice about giving some future militarized version of Alexa the power to launch a machine-made Armageddon.

In 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,' Mark Twain creates a heroic archetype that is uniquely American.

The contrast between the outcome of Andrew McCabe lying to the FBI and Michael Flynn lying to the FBI demonstrate the DoJ is ruled by only one law: Does it help get Trump?

The FBI’s conduct with Flynn is a troubling display of the government using its power against a citizen to achieve the effect it desired.

Shortly after the release of his 2015 Wall Street drama "The Big Short," writer and director Adam McKay was home sick with the flu and picked up a book about former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney.

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk unveiled the first tunnel completed by the underground transit venture he launched two years ago as a remedy to Los Angeles' infamous traffic.

Says she won't vote to re-elect Trump without a wall at the border

Are they now also setting the stage for a stock market bust?

Judges have dismissed more than 80 ethics complaints against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, because lower courts can't investigate a high court jurist.

Share this video to expose the illegal spying.

‘I should note, Andrea, one should not equate violation of the Logan Act with treason, because they are different’

An Ohio man trying to cash a real paycheck at a bank got an unwelcome surprise when the branch not only refused to cash the check, but also called the police on him.

“It was highly embarrassing, highly embarrassing,” Paul McCowns told WOIO-TV in Cleveland.

The incident took place Dec. 1 at the Huntington Bank in Brooklyn, Ohio, as McCowns tried cashing his paycheck for about $1,000.

“I had got a new job. I worked there for about three weeks,” he told the station.

After providing identification in the form of a driver’s license and Social Security card, along with a fingerprint per the bank’s policy for non-customers, bank employees began questioning the transaction.

“They tried to call my employer numerous times. He never picked up the phone,” McCowns explained.

When tellers refused to cash the check, McCowns then left, but was stopped by police.

“I get in my truck and the squad car pull in front of me and he says get out the car,” he said.

McCowns did not know the bank had called the authorities.

On the 9-1-1 recording, a teller told police: “He’s trying to cash a check and the check is fraudulent. It does not match our records.”

Police handcuffed McCowns and put him in the back of a squad car. In a matter of minutes, authorities were able to contact the employer who confirmed the check was, in fact, legitimate.

“My employer said yes he works for me. He just started and yes, my payroll company does pay him that much,” McCowns explained.

He was able to cash the check at another Huntington branch the following day.

McCowns, who is black, believes he was a victim of racial profiling.

“It hurts. It really hurts,” he said.

A representative for the bank told WOIO there have been 11 cases of fraud at that specific branch in the past few months, and tellers were being extra vigilant.

Huntington issued a statement to the station, saying:

“We sincerely apologize to Mr. McCowns for this extremely unfortunate event. We accept responsibility for contacting the police as well as our own interactions with Mr. McCowns. Anyone who walks into a Huntington branch should feel welcomed. Regrettably, that did not occur in this instance and we are very sorry. We hold ourselves accountable to the highest ethical standards in how we operate, hire and train colleagues, and interact with the communities we have the privilege of serving.”

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