US Military Building a Giant, Armed Nervous System

While Sarah Connor may not have been a real person and her son has not been able to combat a future evil, robotic empire where its own created bodyguards are being sent abroad through time and space to effect a better outcome for themselves, we are possibly on the cusp of a very strange evolution in military might and capabilities.

The American military systems that are currently the single most powerful force on the planet Earth are poised to become even more powerful and more lethal.  A new thrust has recently taken place in the mindset of the military populace among its leaders that seeks to make all military systems under our control cyber-linked in a way that removes any doubt or chance for mistakes, and virtually guarantees ultimate victory in every battle on every battlefield in the world.

What is this revolutionary idea?  The people behind this newfound interest in full autonomy of our nation’s military are proposing that every branch of the military (Army, Navy, Marine Corps, National Guard, The Reserves and the Coast Guard) fall under one immense communications system that will make every decision on a global basis for the services in order to increase the speed at which actions can occur and countermeasures can be taken!  Some are calling it Skynet, after the doomed futuristic robotic computer network from the Terminator movie series.

While the military doesn’t subscribe to that line of thinking, they are, nevertheless, describing a system VERY reminiscent of the James Cameron-inspired saga.

The US’s military leaders have agreed on a strategy to guarantee the US military retains its global dominance during the twenty-first century: Connect everything with everything, as DefenseOne describes it. The result? An unimaginably large cephapoloidal nervous system armed with the world’s most advanced weaponry, and in control of all military equipment belonging to the world’s most powerful army

A networked military – an extreme take on the “internet of things” – would connect everything from F-35 jets to the Navy’s destroyers to the armor of the tanks crawling over the land to the devices carried by soldiers – every weapon would be connected.  Every weapon, vehicle, and device connected, sharing data, constantly aware of the presence and state of every other node in a truly global network.

Of course, the development of these “smart” weapons should unnerve Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has repeatedly warned that AI and machine learning poses a greater threat to the future of the US than North Korea. If not properly regulated, Elon suggested that machines could turn against their human masters.

“Until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don’t know how to react because it seems so ethereal,” he said.

“What would the world look like if we connected what we have in that way? If we looked at the world through a lens of a network as opposed to individual platforms, electronic jamming shared immediately, avoided automatically? Every three minutes, a mobility aircraft takes off somewhere on the planet. Platforms are nodes in a network,” the Air Force chief said.

As DefenseOne explains, the idea of a networked military borrows from the  “network centric warfare” concept that first emerged more than a decade ago. However, the concept that military leaders proposed in their latest review is less a strategy for increasing efficiency than a plan to connect all military equipment on a single network. The result would be better coordinated, faster, and more lethal operations in air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace.

Certainly, “network everything to everything” sounds a bit like the setup for the Terminator franchise , wherein a fictional defense contractor, Cyberdyne Systems, convinces the Defense Department to link the U.S. arsenal to a single artificially intelligent entity. Skynet, of course, determines that humans are a threat to its existence and uses its ubiquitous command and control powers to launch a war on humankind.

Here’s a little taste of the Cyberdyne (precursor to the infamous Skynet network) propaganda film produced for the Universal Studios Terminator “ride” (beginning at 1:30 of the clip):

So, just in case you weren’t already solidly creeped out by the notion that our military nuclear codes would be at the mercy of an AI system that has no regard for human life (think “Wargames”), remember that this network would also, most likely, ultimately supplant even the president himself as the ultimate authority in determining who gets fried and who doesn’t.

Source:  DefenceOne

Image: Realcleardefence