The 107-country Outer Space Treaty signed in 1967 prohibits nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons from being placed in or used from Earth’s orbit.
What they didn’t count on was the US Air Force’s most simple weapon ever: a tungsten rod that could hit a city with the explosive power of an intercontinental ballistic missile.
During the Vietnam War, the US used what it called “Lazy Dog” bombs. These were simply solid-steel pieces, less than 2 inches long, fitted with fins.
Over the last decade, military theorists and authors in the fields of future warfare and strategy have examined in detail the potential impacts of an ongoing revolution in information technology. There has been a particular focus on the impacts of automation and artificial intelligence on military and national security affairs. This attention on silicon-based disruption has nonetheless meant that sufficient attention may not have been paid to other equally profound technological developments. One of those developments is the field of biotechnology.
There have been some breathtaking achievements in the biological realm over the last decade. Human genome sequencing has progressed from a multi-year and multi-billion dollar undertaking to a much cheaper and quicker process, far outstripping Moore’s Law. Just as those concerned with national security affairs must monitor disruptive silicon-based technologies, leaders must also be literate in the key biological issues likely to impact the future security of nations. One of the most significant matters in biotechnology is that of human augmentation and whether nations should augment military personnel to stay at the leading edge of capability.
Military institutions will continue to seek competitive advantage over potential adversaries. While this is most obvious in the procurement of advanced platforms, human biotechnological advancement is gaining more attention. As a 2017 CSIS report on the Third Offset found most new technological advances will provide only a temporary advantage, assessed to be no more than five years. In this environment, some military institutions may view the newer field of human augmentation as a more significant source of a future competitive edge.
Jack Beard, a professor in the University of Nebraska College of Law’s Space, Cyber and Telecommunications Law Program, told Politico that the Woomera Manual on the International Law of Military Space Operations “will become the definitive document on military and security law as it applies to space.”
The Woomera Manual won’t actually lay out any new guidelines. Instead it will organize and present the laws that are already on the books so that politicians, industry leaders, and others can make better informed decisions regarding activity in space.
Given the fact that the Outer Space Treaty, which banned military actions in outer space, has all but been tossed aside, it’s unclear how much they’ll actually listen.
Johnny Matheny demonstrates how a modular prosthetic limb works during DARPA Demo Day 2016 at the Pentagon, May 11, 2016. Matheny is a test subject with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab8.
New technology being developed by the MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory uses laser light to excite moisture in the air surrounding a target’s ear, causing it to quietly whisper a personal message from several metres away.
“Our system can be used from some distance away to beam information directly to someone’s ear,” says MIT team leader and physicist Charles M. Wynn.
You probably don’t need us to count off potential applications for such a device, which range from military applications to targeted advertising.
Scientists have devised a way to communicate secretly by sending laser-transmitted messages directly into the area around a person’s ear.
Humans enjoy talking with one another, and often do so in ways that prevent eavesdroppers from listening in. This new research could have potential military applications—but who knows where else it might find use?
NAIROBI — Countries must agree strict rules on “killer robots” — autonomous weapons which can assassinate without human involvement, a top Red Cross official has said, amid growing ethical concerns over their use in future wars.
Semi-autonomous weapons systems from drones to tanks have for decades been used to eliminate targets in modern day warfare — but they all have human control behind them.
With rapid advancements in artificial intelligence, there are fears among humanitarians over its use to develop machines which can independently make the decision about who to kill.
Amidst these complex security challenges and the sea of unknowns coming our way, what remains fundamental for the safety and security of the human race is the role of programmers and programming along with the integrity of semiconductor chips. The reason behind this is programmers can define and determine the nature of AWS (at least in the beginning) until AI begins to program itself.
Weaponized artificial intelligence is almost here. As algorithms begin to change warfare, the rise of autonomous weapons systems is becoming a terrifying reality.
Physicists have built a ring in which pulses of light whip circles around each other and the normal rules that govern light’s behavior no longer apply.
Under normal circumstances, light displays certain kids of physical symmetry. First, if you were to play a tape of light’s behavior forward and then backward, you would see it behave in the same way moving in both directions in time. This is called time-reversal symmetry. And second, light, which can move through the world as a wave, has what is called polarization: how it oscillates relative to the motion of the wave. That polarization usually stays the same, providing another type of symmetry.
But inside this ring-shaped device, light both loses its time-reversal symmetry and changes its polarization. Inside the ring, light waves turn circles and resonate with one another, producing effects that don’t normally exist in the outside world. [The 10 Most Outrageous Military Experiments].
