Super Weapons: The End of the World as we know It

Something for you to chew on while chewing on your Memorial Day ribs;

In futures studies, a technological singularity represents an "event horizon" in the predictability of human technological development past which present models of the future cease to give reliable or accurate answers, following the creation of strong artificial intelligence or the amplification of human intelligence. Futurists predict that after the Singularity, humans as they exist presently will cease to be the dominating force in scientific and technological progress, replaced with posthumans, strong AI, or both, and therefore all models of change based on past trends in human behavior will be obsolete.

From Wikipedia: A posthuman or post-human is a hypothetical future being whose capabilities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer human by current standards. A posthuman can also be described as the creature that results from radical human enhancement. In these ways, the difference between the posthuman and other hypothetical sophisticated non-humans is that a posthuman was once a human, either in its life time or in the life times of some or all of its direct ancestors. More here

Why should you care? Superweapons, that's why. Can American minds grasp the concept of post-nuclear weapons?

In 2003, the Program of International Student Assessment (PISA) assessed the level of knowledge of-not of "super-higher mathematics," and not even that of higher mathematics, but of ordinary mathematics for school pupils of 14, "near the end of mandatory school education." Participating were about 250,000 school pupils of 29 countries, including over 5,000 pupils in more than 250 U.S. schools.

The best results were attained by 5 countries, including South Korea (a non-Western country!) and the worst results by 5 countries, including the U.S., which took 24th place among 29 participating countries, which did not include China, Russia, or Arab countries.

Is there a Super weapon?

Imagine the implications of a weapon that could knock out tanks, ships, and planes as fast as the speed of light. The same technology, with modifications, could disorient and even tranquilize military personnel, rendering them virtually helpless in the battle zone.

For more than 50 years, the threat of nuclear war has riveted the world. With the terror of assured mutual destruction, scientists have been searching for new types of weapons that offer the promise of winning battles without the deadly aftereffects of nuclear weapons. More here

But the very phrase "Mutual Assured Destruction," once widely used, has now been forgotten in the West, and hence the forthcoming possession of nuclear weapons in Iran has become a sufficient cause for a (nuclear) attack on Iran.

Let us recall the mathematical perception before the advent in the West of the "higher mathematics" of Newton and others. Before, numbers had been added, subtracted, multiplied and divided. That had been clear. But differentials or integrals? What on earth were THOSE?

Bearden and Weeks think in terms of "higher geostrategy," which involves new superweapons in China and Russia. But today's U.S. political and military establishment does not understand these weapons – what on earth are they talking about? Militarily and hence politically, the Western countries are becoming backward – "underdeveloped" – while China, in alliance and in cooperation with Russia, is regaining its position of the "Center of the World" ("Middle Kingdom").

At the same time, the U.S. military establishment cannot stop the mouth of its retired Lt. Col. Bearden on the plea that he is insane (of which Einstein was also accused), since his U.S. military research background is impeccable.

Lt. Col. Thomas E. Bearden (U.S. Army, retired) is one of the two U.S. high military officers (the other is Col. Byron Weeks, M.D., U.S. Army, retired) who deal with today's "higher geostrategy," in contrast with the Pentagon, the U.S. government, the CIA and the mainstream media,

all of which deal with a fairytale. More here.

There is much I counter (his harsh take on Rumsfeld for example) but politics aside - the idea of genetics, nanotechnology, robotics   entropy, information theory, and moving  towards a technological singularity creates a new future reality with frightening implications;

Bearden's book. Its three "final urgent commentaries" are:

The darkest days in the history of our republic lie immediately ahead of us.

If we are to survive, we shall need the most strenuous and rapid effort in our history, NOW.

God bless and keep America! We pray for its survival.

It is clear that Bearden is not an intellectual anarchist, baiting the establishment. He continues to do what he did in the U.S. Army: Defend America. But defending America requires knowing what superweapons the enemy may have and understanding today's "higher geostrategy."

You and I will have to look more deeply into this .............right now must dash with the kids to a  Memorial Day BBQ where I won't be discussing this as the revelers will absolutely look at me as if I had two heads or more probably see me as something of a  posthuman.

We cannot rely on trial-and-error approaches to deal with existential risks... We need to vastly increase our investment in developing specific defensive technologies... We are at the critical stage today for biotechnology, and we will reach the stage where we need to directly implement defensive technologies for nanotechnology during the late teen years of this century... A self-replicating pathogen, whether biological or nanotechnology based, could destroy our civilization in a matter of days or weeks." - Ray Kurzweil ......More here

Ray Kurzweil justifies his belief in an imminent singularity by an analysis of history from which he concludes that technological progress follows a pattern of exponential growth. He calls this conclusion The Law of Accelerating Returns. He generalizes Moore's law, which describes exponential growth in integrated semiconductor complexity, to include technologies from far before the integrated circuit.

I am sure Israel is all over this (this is so their bailiwick.) And while it all sounds terribly anti-religious  - you can't believe in G-d if you're dead.

Comments

[pastorius]

Wait a minute, Atlas. Just yesterday, you told me this stuff was all bullshit.

Whassup?

[Pamela aka "Atlas"]

Pastorius, I have been doing research and the irrefutable facts can not be dismissed out of hand. Just as these new advances bring enormous strides in the fields of medicine,technology, etc. so to must the malevolent applications be considered.

Just recently the first implantation of robotic arms into a human being was to be performed at the Syrian-Lebanese Hospital, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. A microchip implanted into the patient's brain will make it possible to control the prosthetics.The technique consists of implanting a microchip into the human brain to translate the nerve pulses into electric pulses, making it possible for the patient to move robotic prosthetics. This is wonderful thing for our wounded soldiers (and like afflicted patients) but the larger applications are enormous.

Who is to say what the Chinese were doing with the harvested organs from living members of the Falun Gong .......it may not just have been organs for hire.

All I am saying is that technology is advancing apace and we had better be ahead of the curve. Unfortunately, our academic numbers for math and science as ranked in the industrial work suck - 24th our of 29th. This is a problem, Pastorius, this is a problem of unquantifiable proportion.

[Tommy]

This all sounds far to theoretical at this point. It doesn't sound like all the implications of such superweapons have even been thought out. I wonder if they have exerted even a fraction of the same mental effort trying to conceive of superdefenses, as well.

[Francis W. Porretto]

In Vernor Vinge's most recent novel, Rainbow's End, the central techno-motif is a new weapon of mass destruction he calls YGBM: "You Gotta Believe Me." It's a mass-persuasion technology, capable of inducing unshakable belief in a selected proposition, however absurd, in whatever audience it's aimed at. I've played with the notion myself. It strikes me as far more terrifying than any explosive or virus one could whip up.

[lifeboat]

"I wonder if they have exerted even a fraction of the same mental effort trying to conceive of superdefenses, as well."

The Lifeboat Foundation is working to promote the production of superdefenses. Atlas has agreed to join Nobel Laureates Sir Clive W.J. Granger, Wole Soyinka, and Frank Wilczek on our Scientific Advisory Board. (We are now just waiting for her bio!)

Bill Frist has agreed to support a 100 billion dollar superdefense against bioweapons. Read http://lifeboat.com/ex/quotes#frist for details.

"It strikes me as far more terrifying than any explosive or virus one could whip up."

You are unaware of what weapons will soon be here. In approximately 14 years, a weapon will be developed that is smaller than the size of the period at the end of this sentence and will be able to destroy all life on the planet, including viruses and bacteria, in a matter of days. Read "The Singulariy is Near" by Ray Kurzweil to learn about our future.

[moonbatone]

Hi Atlas:

Been reading you for a while, good job, haven't seen a more gung-ho member of the tribe in a while.

Superweapons from a biological perspective.

Botulinum toxin is one that attracts evil people. This is Botox, but if weaponized properly and turned into a stable aerosol could be a region killer with under kilogram quantities. Our buddy Saddam manufactured thousands of kg of this stuff.

Then there are the more common ones. Anthrax spores can be weaponized, sadly, fairly easily.

What real bioweapons designers wanted was the virulence of small pox against which we have little defense, and the 95% mortality of Ebola Zaire. Ebola is a hemorrhagic disease, it liquifies your organs and you die an extremely gruesome and painful death. The scariest words I have ever heard in my professional life have been the following rough quote at a conference several years ago. "dried human blood samples with Ebola-Pox". That is not a disease which exists in nature. The BioPreparat people in the FSU were trying to get there, and by various accounts, may have.

There are others, but the idea is that by approporiate engineering and distribution mechanisms, almost any disease can be turned into a weapon. All you need is something nasty and disabling. Give your enemy the runs, you don't even need to kill them.

The delivery vehicle for any of this shows you why the pentagon is wasting its money on ballistic defense when it should be spending it on biodefense. All you need is a single cabin class airline ticket, and a jihadi who wants his 72 raisins. No boxcutters. Just a volunteer index patient.

Then all hell breaks loose, as the hundred or so passengers on the plane are now vectors themselves. They carry the disease as long as it is sufficiently virulent, to their locations, incubating it, spreading it.

You get a geometric infection rate. If the disease has a high mortality rate you get a kill that makes Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and others look like pathetic attempts to exterminate.

Now here is the bad part. You measure destructiveness of a munition by its effect blast/kill radius. What have you destroyed, and how close have you come to destroying it. The bomb has a finite blast radius. The bad part is that a biological weapon has a potentially infinite "blast radius".

You don't have control, ever.

We cannot ever let jihadis get these or other weapons. Nukes are bad enough. If we see them pursuing these, we need to rethink some very basic things.

[pastorius]

Hi Atlas,
As I noted in my email to you yesterday, there are people who discuss the "Singularity" who are nerds, Utopians, and weirdoes, but that doesn't mean that it isn't a real oncoming event. It just means that it is an oncoming event which is not as yet very defined, and therefore, it is, for some people akin to a conspiracy theory, or ghost story, they can tell each other to entertain themselves.

Forget about those people.

The truth is, we, as a human race, are on the cusp of becoming very powerful in three ways which we previously thought only God could be powerful -

1) Omniscience - we are increasing our powers of surveillance, and it is not anymore entirely inconceivable to think that eventually every human being on Earth will be tracked 24 hours a day.

2) Omnipotence - we are now able to desroy all life on Earth. Eventually the technology to do so will become more and more well known, and inexpensive and this power will move down the ladder from being the purview of a state to being within the realm of possibility of an individual terrorist.

3) Immortality - With the advent of bioengineering and the mapping of the Genetic Code, the DNA sequence, man is learning the "switches" which control the processes of aging and disease. Eventually, it is entirely conceivable that man will figure out how to make himself live indefinately. Considering how bored and angry so many people are with their 70 allotted years, imagine the problems an indefinate lifetime would cause.

You are correct to say "technology is advancing apace and we had better be ahead of the curve."

Others use the term the Singularity to describe this field of interest.

I call it Pre-Futurism.

I believe we have moved out of the age of Postmodernism (which was always a transitory age, lacking any coherent ideology anyway), and into the Pre-Future Age.

The Pre-Future Age is characterized by the inevitability of technological changes which will bring about MASSIVE moral challenges for humanity.

We must learn, as human beings, how to take on the challenges of our new "Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Immortality."

Previous ages in the history of man have been mediated by the texts of religion and philosophy. When we refer to the Renaissance, the period of the Greeks, the Age of Faith, or the Modern period, we are always referring to the idea that culture stuggles with certain ideologies; Greek philosophy, the Christian worldview, man and his art, Communism, etc.

The age of Pre-Futurism is the first age, since the dawn of history (the written word) in which man will be struggling with the elemental things of life.

In the pre-historic period, man was struggling with the physical elements of nature. Will it rain? Will the crops come, etc.?

In the Pre-Future Age, man is struggling against the limits of his own nature, of his own ability to be moral.

We will have to turn to God for the answers.

[Tommy]

moonbatone,

A few thoughts:

Some of the points you make about biological weapons are good. However, in practicality, deploying biological weapons on a large scale is often far more difficult than one might imagine.

Making biological weapons that are highly lethal and, at the same time, antibiotic resistant is a lot of work and difficult to carry out safely without some serious money and expertise.

Even in the case of the last set of anthrax attacks, newer advances in antibiotics resulted in a much lower death rate than might have been anticipated. The "weaponized" anthrax wasn't terribly effective and would have undoubtedly been less and less effective as time went by, if the attacks had continued.

Viruses are a better option for creating mass casualties, but they are far more difficult to work with and weaponize than bacteria. Most bacteria aren't particularly good at human to human transission. The exception is bubonic/pneumonic plague. Developing a strain of bubonic plague that is antibiotic resistant and still highly infectious is more difficult than you might imagine and requires money and skills.

Another problem that viruses like Ebola and Marburg present is that they often kill their victims too rapidly. This doesn't give them time to spread. That is probably why outbreaks in Africa have been relatively limited to date.

I recommend anybody interested in the subject of biological weapons start with a book by former Soviet biological weapons scientist turned defector Ken Alibek, "Biohazard."

[moonbatone]

Hi Tommy:

Nation-states typically have the financial resources to do this, and have. Kan's book is a good place to start for those with an interest.

Ebola/Marburg and hemorrhagic disease range significantly in virulence. Ebola by itself tends to kill its host within about a week. In terms of how much you need, the last data I saw had a small number of virus particles being sufficient to transmit. The main issue with these as weapons are the need for a bodily fluid transmission, such as the areosol from an infected person sneezing. The other issue is that Ebola is relatively fragile, and cannot survive long on surfaces outside of a host. It is sensitive to UV, and can be killed easily with a bleach solution. If you can stabilize it, and lengthen the incubation period then the equation changes.

Unfortunately the vaccine under development had something like a 2% infection rate, which tends to mean given the mortality rates, that this 2% will likely die. This is a higher infection rate than for influenza, which kills many more people per year.

Viral weapons are exceptionally difficult to weaponize. The Anthrax that you pointed to was of marginal (non-weaponized) quality. I haven't heard if they have re-opened the mail facility, as they were having trouble cleaning it up. The point of this is that it doesn't need to be terribly effective to be a weapon of terrorism.

The most effective disease would be something like influenza. I have heard that the jihadis have an interest in the 1918 variant which spread in a pandemic killing something like 40M, and despite protestations of some historians, may have been the real cause for the cessation of hostilities in WWI.

The major problem is that defending against viri requires quite a supply of virus particle samples, lots of luck, and a high throughput low latency production facility for the vaccines.

Your delivery system does not need to be weaponized. You have a jihadi as a delivery vehicle. All they need to do is sneeze alot. This doesn't require any effort to weaponize. Just some tests to measure infection rates. Very low cost, and you can run many tests in parallel with all the airlines flying and some airline tickets. Unfortunately, quite fast as well.

All you need to do to an army to beat is to incapacitate it. You don't need to kill it. Just give it the runs. Same with the population.