[HN Gopher] Deliberately optimizing for harm
___________________________________________________________________
Deliberately optimizing for harm
Author : herodotus
Score : 354 points
Date : 2022-03-16 13:51 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Many years ago a colleague who works in defence told me about a
| job posting he'd seen but was having a moral struggle with.
|
| The opening was for "Lethality Engineer": Ideal candidate with
| good physics and medical background.
|
| I said that the main perk was that at least on Halloween he
| wouldn't need to buy a costume. He could just go out as himself.
|
| He didn't take the job.
| stickfigure wrote:
| I hope recent events have illustrated that if it weren't for
| the people who develop lethal weapons, we (as in you and I)
| would be helpless against the bullies of the world. Unilateral
| pacifism is cute philosophy only when there are rough men
| standing ready to do violence on their behalf.
| prmph wrote:
| Until the lethal weapons are turned on those (countries,
| groups, people) who develop them. Kind of like gun owners are
| more likely to be harmed (or harm others) by their own guns,
| notwithstanding the arguments about personal protection used
| to justify such ownership.
|
| This has already happened with groups the US has armed in the
| past. The US itself has been the bad guy sometimes.
|
| There is no proper resolution to this struggle, and people
| who are guided by their conscience should not be attacked for
| having a "cute philosophy" that relies on "rough men standing
| ready to do violence on their behalf."
| pc86 wrote:
| A sibling comment put it well that refusing to wrestle with
| these important questions is the unethical position as it
| just pushes the decision off onto other people. "Cute
| philosophy" is a perfect way to describe that because it's
| completely untenable if everyone were to think that way.
|
| The gun thing is completely tautological though. Yes, if
| you have a gun you're more likely to be injured by your gun
| than someone who doesn't. How would someone who doesn't own
| a gun be injured by their own guns in the first place? It's
| like saying you're more likely to be in a car accident if
| you own a car. Of course you are.
| prmph wrote:
| If everyone were to think that way there would be no need
| for those weapons in the first place.
|
| When I said gun owners are more likely to be harmed by
| their Gus, I meant as opposed to using the gun to protect
| themselves. Instead of an incident where the gun came in
| handy, it is more likely the the gun is used in a
| wrongful way or against oneself. I'm not sure where the
| tautology is
| cmurf wrote:
| We are acting pretty helpless because the bully has nuclear
| weapons.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Especially since we cannot really help Ukraine with anything
| but tech and they are outnumbered, so the only advantage we
| can give is how much better our weapons are than Russian
| ones.
| daenz wrote:
| I generally agree with this, however, the rough men willing
| to do violence on our behalf are more and more becoming the
| quirky scientists who are very disconnected from the actual
| impact of their work. I think there's a big difference
| between those types of people. It seems like people don't
| feel the weight of violence as much as they used to. I
| imagine this will increase as we develop more AI driven
| weapons.
| starwind wrote:
| This doesn't square with my experience in defense. I worked
| in software and we saw plenty of combat and aftermath
| footage and were always aware that the design decisions we
| made and the tools we built meant life-and-death for
| someone. We did our best to make sure it was the right
| people.
|
| I'd add, the weight of violence--if anything--is going up.
| People today are devastated when a dozen soldiers and
| scores of civilians are killed in a suicide bombing or
| urban conflict, but go back to Vietnam and those incidents
| barely register because they happened all the time. The
| number of people killed in any given armed conflict has
| dropped quite a bit in the last 50-or-so years. (The Syrian
| Civil War is one big exception.)
| daenz wrote:
| Thanks for sharing your experience. To your last point, I
| think it's a tradeoff. The number of individuals getting
| killed is going down, but we're closer than ever to the
| ability kill _everyone_ more easily (beyond nukes:
| weaponized viruses, etc). Scientists who are drawn to a
| field of research may not be practically connecting the
| dots about what they 're actually working on, or the full
| implications of their work (eg: gain of function
| research). These are the people I'm referring to when I
| mention them not realizing the weight of violence that
| they are contributing to.
| phkahler wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon
| marvin wrote:
| I strongly agree with this sentiment. _However_ , it is hard
| for an ethical person to participate in developing war
| technology when possession and usage of the weapons is purely
| a political question, and history also has seen our side of
| geopolitics commit atrocities.
|
| My stance has previously been that I am unwilling to work on
| weapons technology, because history has shown that these
| weapons sometimes end up being used for an indefensible
| cause. Then all of a sudden you're an accomplice to murder,
| and getting away with it.
|
| In the light of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which is just a
| continuation of its historical imperialism, working on
| weapons is something I would be perfectly okay with and
| probably even motivated to do. But stop for a moment and
| think what a history of aggressive military actions does to
| our society's ability to recruit for this important job.
| gtirloni wrote:
| You can be happily manufacturing weapons for a good cause
| today only to see your government turn evil the next day.
| Unfortunately people don't cluster around ideas but
| geography and that's is out of control for most.
|
| This does not mean we shouldn't do something but we have to
| realize nothing is permanent and the fruits of our labor
| can very well be misused the next day.
| starwind wrote:
| I was a reviewer for a book on ethical machine learning
| that wasn't published. I'll never forget, the author stated
| "don't work on anything that could cause harm." Here I am
| reading this while working in defense being like "that's a
| lazy and dumb position." Nearly anything in the wrong hands
| could cause harm.
|
| It's not unethical to work in the auto industry because
| people can die in car accidents. It's not unethical to work
| in the beer business because people can become alcoholics.
| It's not unethical to work for a credit card company
| because people can bury themselves in debt. And it's not
| unethical to work in defense because the weapons may fall
| into the wrong hands.
|
| What's unethical is encouraging these problems and not
| trying to prevent them. And yeah, it's hard to navigate
| these ethical issues, but we're professionals like doctors
| and lawyers and part of the reason we get paid like we do
| is because we may have to wrestle with these issues.
| marvin wrote:
| I'm not sure I've sufficiently communicated the
| background of my moral ambiguity here. I came of age
| during the War on Terror; the years where Iraq,
| Afghanistan and Syria were the primary fronts for Western
| military power. The brutal necessity of the Western world
| standing up to aggression against dictatorships was not
| so obvious during these years; from my vantage point of
| Western media the impression was that dirt-poor suicide
| bombers were the biggest risk to our civilization. And we
| were dealing with those with an aggression that at best
| left a dubious aftertaste.
|
| One could be excused during these two decades for
| erroneously assuming that the world has for the
| foreseeable future moved on towards trade and economic
| competition, rather than wars of aggression. With nuclear
| weapons ensuring the balance. It was probably naive, but
| not helplessly naive. Against this backdrop, regularly
| seeing weddings and maybe-civilians bombed from drones on
| dubious intel, it doesn't seem like a childish or
| cowardly stance to just turn one's back on the weapons
| industry. I'd call that a reflected decision.
|
| The same reasoning is almost palpable in European
| politics, which made a 180 degree shift away from this in
| the two weeks after Putin dispelled these notions. My
| point is, it wasn't obvious from where I stood that we
| would be back here today. Now that we are, the calculus
| seems clearer.
|
| Maybe with a more measured US-led use of military force
| since 2000, Western defense politics wouldn't have
| required so much hand-wringing.
| fossuser wrote:
| Like anything difficult there are real risks and trade-
| offs, but just refusing to engage in difficult pragmatic
| issues is not the ethical position imo, it's just the easy
| one that feels good. It puts the burden of actual complex
| ethical decisions onto other people.
|
| The west needs the capability to defend the ideals of
| classical liberalism and individual liberty. In order to do
| that it needs a strong military capability.
|
| https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html
| gtirloni wrote:
| By your logic, engaging in weapon manufacturing is the
| only accepted conclusion. In fact, people that refuse to
| do so are participating just fine, even though you don't
| agree with their contribution.
| fossuser wrote:
| My logic is that refusing to engage is not an ethically
| superior position when the capability is necessary.
| Engaging in difficult, high-risk, but necessary issues as
| best you can is.
|
| That doesn't mean everyone needs to work on weapons, just
| that the work on weapons is necessary and those that do
| it are not ethically compromised in some way. It's just a
| recognition of this without pretending not engaging is
| somehow more morally pure. Not engaging is just removing
| yourself from dealing with the actual hard ethical
| issues.
| chasd00 wrote:
| an interesting thought given the politics of the day. If
| you are not actively engaged in weapon manufacturing are
| you not complicit in the murder of the Ukrainian people?
| If you are not actively helping to supply the Ukraine
| army with weapons for their defense then, by your
| inaction, are you enabling their death?
| phkahler wrote:
| >> It puts the burden of actual complex ethical decisions
| onto other people.
|
| People who may not have even considered the ethical
| situation. It seems the people who are concerned about
| the ethics or morality of a necessary but questionable
| job are exactly the ones you want in that role (although
| not activists who would try to shut it down entirely).
| AkshatM wrote:
| This comment is confusing two completely separate things.
| There's a _world_ of difference between not being willing to
| defend yourself and actively trying to come up with more
| aggressive and lethal weapons.
|
| The argument that "we need defense!" only justifies the need
| to stockpile and develop _sufficiently_ lethal and tactical
| weaponry to neutralize incoming threats (like anti-ballistic
| systems). It doesn't justify inventing deadlier weapons. No
| dispossessed victim of foreign invasion has ever needed a
| bioweapon to assert themselves, and there's no chance
| developing one would ever be used for anything but war
| crimes. You should absolutely turn down roles like "Lethality
| Engineer" from an ethical standpoint, even if you agree
| military defense is necessary.
|
| People raise the spectre of deterrence as a utilitarian
| justification for needing more powerful weapons ("har har,
| they'll think twice about attacking us if they know we have
| nukes!"). But that's narrow thinking. Deterrence can be
| achieved in other less-damning ways, like strategic alliances
| and building more robust defense systems.
|
| tl;dr defence != deadlier offence.
| yosamino wrote:
| Have you considered, though, that we (as in you and I) might
| _be_ some of these bullies in the world and that these rough
| men aren 't just standing by, but are actively doing violence
| on our behalf ? One needn't look much further past recent
| events to find examples aplenty.
|
| I understand the point you are trying to make, but it's not
| as easy as pretending that the weapons "we" develop are
| purely for morally and ethically righteous purpose.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| With respect you may be making some unfounded assumptions
| about what I've built and what I believe.
|
| My point was really about the fact that this job title
| "Lethality Engineer" actually exists. And moreover, that it
| asked for medical qualifications, which would go against any
| doctor's Hippocratic oath.
|
| Most of us who've done defence related work are happy at the
| edges, with tactical information systems, coms or guidance
| (my stuff ended up in targeting).
|
| But when it comes down to figuring out how fragments can be
| arranged around a charge to make sure the waveshape optimally
| penetrates as many nearby skulls as possible... hmmm suddenly
| not so gung-ho about it.
|
| That's not a distant, theoretical morality about tyrants and
| bullies. I've no problems contemplating my family's military
| history and am plenty proud of it, even though we'd all
| rather live in a world without this stuff.
| captainmuon wrote:
| The flaw in that logic is that, if it weren't for the people
| who develop lethal weapons for the _bullies_ , we wouldn't
| have to fear the bullies.
|
| Also, I think the design space of "radical defense" is under
| explored. Our (western) armies are still designed for attack
| and force projection, although we have long since renamed our
| war ministers secretaries of defense.
|
| But I wonder if you could develop defense capability to make
| your country _unattackable_. Not by threat of retaliation,
| but for example by much much stronger missile defense. Or by
| educating ( "indoctrinating") your own population, so that an
| occupier would not find a single collaborator? Or by mining
| your own infrastructure, and giving every citizen basic
| combat training (a bit like the swiss)? Or by fostering a
| world-wide political transformation that is designed to
| prevent wars from happening at all?
|
| I think if we wanted to spend money researching stuff to keep
| us safe, it doesn't necessarily have to be offensive weapons.
| pc86 wrote:
| The flaw in _this_ logic is somewhat related to law
| enforcement, in that if your military is min /maxed for
| defense, someone who wants to do you harm only has to be
| right once in order to actually do you harm. Looking at
| nuclear weapons and missile defense (ignoring the existence
| of dirty bombs etc.), your opponent needs to only be right
| once for one of your cities and hundreds of thousands of
| civilians to be gone. And likewise, if you've focused on
| defense you're likely wholly unprepared for any sort of
| retaliation.
|
| The Swiss approach what with literally bunkering in the
| mountains and everything is interesting, but the logistics
| for larger countries would be exponentially harder (and
| most lack the geographic help). "Fostering world-wide
| political transformation" is so pie in the sky it's
| honestly not worth serious discussion. It's fanciful.
|
| Someone will always be willing to make weapons for the
| bullies because a lot of people don't view them as bullies
| in the first place. Ask people in Iraq, or Chechnya, or
| Ireland, or Pakistan, or Taiwan, who the bullies are, and
| you'll get wildly different answers that will cover
| approximately 90% of the worldwide population.
| msla wrote:
| > The flaw in that logic is that, if it weren't for the
| people who develop lethal weapons for the bullies, we
| wouldn't have to fear the bullies.
|
| You can't uninvent weapons, and you can't prevent the
| bullies from making their own weapons.
|
| The problem with an impenetrable defensive shield is that
| it gives your potential enemies the heebie-jeebies
| (technical geopolitical term) that, now that you have the
| shield, you can attack them without fear of reprisal. If
| the enemy thinks you're working on a credible shield (or
| even a shield you think is credible) their best option is
| to attack _now_ before you, emboldened by your sense of
| invulnerability, attack them.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| This is an ongoing concern of US weapons policy. By
| refusing to back down from improving our missile defense
| capabilities, we undermine MAD and our adversaries'
| willingness to engage in disarmament (thereby making it
| more likely these weapons will be used).
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The flaw in that logic is that, if it weren't for the
| people who develop lethal weapons for the bullies, we
| wouldn't have to fear the bullies.
|
| False. Bullies are a problem even if no one has weapons
| beyond what can be grabbed and used from the environment
| without any invention. Heck, bullies are a problem if
| everyone just has the weapons built in to their bodies.
|
| > But I wonder if you could develop defense capability to
| make your country unattackable.
|
| Not without incidentally developing a huge edge in
| offensive weapons that would make you attackable when it
| inevitably diffused to others. Uniquely defensive
| technology mostly doesn't exist.
|
| > Not by threat of retaliation, but for example by much
| much stronger missile defense.
|
| Much better interceptor missiles mean the technology for
| much better missiles generally. Directed energy
| interception means direct energy weapons. Hypervelocity
| kinetic interceptors are general purpose hypervelocity
| kinetic weapons.
|
| > Or by educating ("indoctrinating") your own population,
| so that an occupier would not find a single collaborator?
|
| That kind of indoctrination can also be used offensively,
| but the enemy doesn't need collaborators to attack you.
| (They might need it to conquer without genocide, but
| attackers willing to commit genocide for land are not
| unheard of, nor are attackers whose goal isn't conquest.)
|
| > Or by mining your own infrastructure, and giving every
| citizen basic combat training (a bit like the swiss)?
|
| Mining your infrastructure is itself creating a
| vulnerability to certain kinds of attacks.
|
| > Or by fostering a world-wide political transformation
| that is designed to prevent wars from happening at all?
|
| It's been tried, repeatedly. The League of Nations, the
| Kellogg-Briand Pact, the UN. It'll be nice if someone ever
| finds the "one wired trick to prevent war forever", but it
| seems distinctly improbable and particularly suicidal to
| bank your defense on the ability to find it.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| A friend is a very good university lecturer in physics, and a
| pacifist. He isn't particularly please about the fact that a
| decent number of his students will turn the particular lessons
| he teaches towards the production of weapons.
| criddell wrote:
| Lethality Engineer? Is that a P.Eng. kind of position? If your
| work doesn't actually kill anybody, could you be sued for
| malpractice and lose your license?
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| They don't take anybody, the interview is murder.
| memling wrote:
| > Many years ago a colleague who works in defence told me about
| a job posting he'd seen but was having a moral struggle with.
|
| This is a good struggle to have. What's ironic in many cases is
| that we don't experience these quandaries in other jobs, but
| the ethical and moral ramifications _still exist_. The early
| days of search in Google or social in Facebook probably didn 't
| elicit the same kind thought process as a lethality engineering
| post. (Anecdotally I spoke some years ago with an acquaintance
| Googler who told me that he enjoyed working there precisely
| because he was working on privacy issues that worked against
| some of the advertising side of the business.)
|
| I've worked in telecommunications, industrial systems
| engineering, and energy. There are ethical and moral issues in
| the work that I've done/do as a contributor in each of those
| domains, even though I'm not involved day-to-day in decision
| making that feels particularly moral.
|
| One of the base assumptions we probably need to make in our
| work is that whatever we do will always be misused in the worst
| possible way. If we explore that idea, it might give us some
| sense for how to structure our output to curtail the worst of
| the damages.
| Mezzie wrote:
| > The early days of search in Google or social in Facebook
| probably didn't elicit the same kind thought process as a
| lethality engineering post.
|
| It did for at least one person (me). I was 16 in 2004 with 11
| years of dev experience, trying to decide whether to go out
| to SV, go to college for CS, or do something else. I was from
| the same city/community as Larry Page and in Zuck's age
| group, so it wasn't an absurd consideration to try. Lots of
| things went into my decision to do something non-CS related
| for college, but morals were one of the reasons I didn't go
| to SV (I objected to the professionalization of the web +
| Zuck creeped me out + I didn't agree with cutting out
| humans/curators from the search process like Google did).
|
| It's just that until very recently, people either thought I
| was lying OR that I was just batshit insane. Who is invited
| to a gold rush and _doesn 't go_?
|
| I can't imagine I was the only one.
| memling wrote:
| > I can't imagine I was the only one.
|
| I'm sure not, and hopefully the description I provided
| isn't a blanket one. And, to be clear, I'm also not trying
| to say that working for any of those organizations is _per
| se_ unethical. I don 't think that this is the case.
|
| The point, rather, is that ethical and moral considerations
| are actually much nearer to us than might appear at first
| blush. Sometimes this happens by the mere nature of the
| work (killing people more efficiently) and sometimes by
| scale (now when we surface search results, we make direct
| impacts on what people learn, where they shop, how they
| receive advertisements, etc., _none of which was true in
| 1999_ ). Navigating this isn't easy (indeed, you can make
| an argument that there is a morally good outcome for
| killing people more efficiently; I'm not saying it's
| necessarily a good one, but that one can be made), but we
| don't routinely equip people to think about it.
|
| To make matters worse, our cultural assumptions shift over
| time. The Google/Facebook difference is illustrative. Page
| and Brin are a generation older than Zuckerberg, and their
| assumptions about what it means to be moral are probably
| not the same. These assumptions also change based on
| circumstance--when we scale a business from a garage to a
| billion dollars, it's hard to maintain the True North on
| your moral compass (assuming such a thing exists).
|
| Anyway, I think a deep skepticism about human nature and
| the utility of technology is probably very useful in these
| situations.
| robocat wrote:
| But is the world better off if moral people avoid immoral
| jobs?
|
| I believe the world shows there is plenty enough supply of
| talented people that are willing to do immoral jobs. So
| removing yourself from the pool of candidates makes little
| difference.
|
| Alternatively, one could work in an immoral job and make a
| difference from the inside.
|
| Why not do that? Perhaps to feel impotently virtuous, or
| perhaps the work couldn't be stomached by the virtuous, or
| perhaps the virtuous but weak are scared of losing their
| virtuousness...
| hef19898 wrote:
| I can relate to that. In my career I stepped out and into
| defense, and it never really bothered me that much to be
| honest. But then it was always things like fighter jets and
| helicopters sold to NATO members, I never had to rationalize
| that we build the weapons carrier and not the, e.g., missiles
| that actually cause harm.
|
| I always drew the line at small arms so. Way more people die
| because of those, they end up in every conflict and there have
| been too many scandals of those smalls arms manufacturers
| circumventing export restrictions. Quite recently I added
| supporting countries like Saudi and the UAE to that list, even
| the job would have been _really_ interesting, providing highly
| sophisticated training services to the Saudis is nothing I
| could do and still look myself in mirror. And civil aerospace
| is fun as well.
| starwind wrote:
| I worked in defense too, might go back. When I get calls I'm
| like "I don't do work for the Saudi's or the DEA" and half
| the time the recruiter is like "Uh, I said this job is for
| Raytheon."
|
| "Yeah, but who's their client?"
| hef19898 wrote:
| One way or the other, regardless of the company, properly
| one if not both of those countries. Sure, those countries
| are rich, I just hope that Ukraine showed us in the
| Democratic west that certain values, like human rights,
| shouldn't be compromised upon, which we all did in the last
| decades.
|
| I do understand why those companies chase Saudi and UAE
| contracts, that's where the money is. Maybe that changes if
| NATO members increase defense spending, it would be a nice
| side effect, wouldn't it?
| starwind wrote:
| sadly, yeah, the big contractors work for anyone its
| legal to work for. I'll just make sure I don't end up on
| a program working for scumbags. If I get canned cause I
| won't work for someone, I get canned and life goes on. My
| security clearance is worth a whole lot to the right
| person
| xwdv wrote:
| I think you were hard on him. There should be no ethical qualms
| when our weapons are used on enemies who seek to kill us or
| attack our interests.
|
| Also, if an ethical person doesn't take this job, someone far
| more unethical probably will. And they will raise no objections
| if they should ever be necessary. Kind of like how a lot of bad
| people become police officers when no one good wants to do it.
| xycombinator wrote:
| Is anybody searching for compounds that reduce evil intent?
| Something that would mellow people out without causing
| hallucinations. A mass tranquilizer? Not effective against lone
| operatives but able to be deployed against an invading army.
| orangepurple wrote:
| You have to reach deep into the internet to find the original
| recording of "PENTAGON BRIEFING ON REMOVING THE GOD GENE"
|
| The amount of people that feel the need to "debunk" it makes it
| all the more mysterious.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| I believe that's called a sedative.
|
| Most armies aren't filled with people with evil intent; they're
| filled with draftees who couldn't get out of it.
| jerf wrote:
| Of course they are. Among the "evil intent" they would reduce
| is any desire to rebel against your government, so you bet all
| big intelligence agencies are looking into it, for instance.
| Science fiction wrote about this decades ago.
|
| Fortunately, there's a lot of considerations involved in
| deployment of anything. It's easier said than done to get
| something of a medical nature into a population
| surreptitiously, because it's hard to get a certain dose into
| one person without someone else getting not enough and yet
| someone else getting way too much. You'd have to come up with a
| way of delivering a medical dose in a controlled fashion and
| lie about it or something, you couldn't just sneak it into the
| food/water reliably.
|
| Further, just because someone can name the exact complicated
| effect they'd like doesn't mean there's a drug that corresponds
| to it. _Serenity_ , already mentioned, is a bit of silly
| example in my opinion because such a large effect should have
| been found during testing. But it does no good to pacify the
| population such that they'd never dream of so much as
| peacefully voting out the current leaders if the end result is
| that nobody would ever dream of so much as having enough
| ambition to show up to their jobs and you end up conquered by
| the next country over without them even trying, simply because
| they economically run circles around you. Or any number of
| other possible second-order effects. In a nutshell, it's
| dangerous to try to undercut evolution just to stay in power if
| not everywhere decides to do so equally, because you'll be
| evolved right out along with the society you putative rule.
| Evolution is alive and well and anyone who thinks it's asleep
| and they can screw around without consequences is liable to get
| a lethal wakeup call.
| roywiggins wrote:
| It's been tried, sort of.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_hostage_crisis_chemical...
| sva_ wrote:
| The US also built bombs containing that agent, BZ, but
| destroyed their stockpiles in 1989.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M44_generator_cluster
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M43_BZ_cluster_bomb
|
| > _The M44s relatively small production numbers were due,
| like all U.S. BZ munitions, to a number of shortcomings. The
| M44 dispensed its agent in a cloud of white, particulate
| smoke.[3] This was especially problematic because the white
| smoke was easily visible and BZ exposure was simple to
| prevent; a few layers of cloth over the mouth and nose are
| sufficient.[5] There were a number of other factors that made
| BZ weapons unattractive to military planners.[5] BZ had a
| delayed and variable rate-of-action, as well as a less than
| ideal "envelope-of-action".[5] In addition, BZ casualties
| exhibited bizarre behavior, 50 to 80 percent had to be
| restrained to prevent self-injury during recovery.[5] Others
| exhibited distinct symptoms of paranoia and mania.[5]_
| ansible wrote:
| Uh, I don't know about that...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_(2005_film)
|
| On a more serious note, anything that's going to affect
| behavior is going to have a dosage range. Too little absorbed,
| and there won't be enough effect. Too much, and that will harm
| / kill people in interesting ways.
|
| With chemical weapons, you only worry about the bio-
| accumulating enough to kill your enemies. An enemy receiving
| more than a lethal dose isn't a problem.
| okasaki wrote:
| It's been suggested. eg.
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/akzyeb/link-between-lithium-...
|
| > The report states: "These findings, which are consistent with
| the finding in clinical trials that lithium reduces suicide and
| related behaviours in people with a mood disorder, suggest that
| naturally occurring lithium in drinking water may have the
| potential to reduce the risk of suicide and may possibly help
| in mood stabilisation, particularly in populations with
| relatively high suicide rates and geographical areas with a
| greater range of lithium concentration in the drinking water."
| rossdavidh wrote:
| While it's worrying and worth thinking about, the track record of
| using AI to generate pharmaceuticals to do good has been "mixed",
| except really it's just been a bust. It may someday do great
| things, but not much yet, and one silver lining is that AI-
| generated toxins are unlikely to improve on the human-designed
| ones, either.
|
| "That is, I'm not sure that anyone needs to deploy a new compound
| in order to wreak havoc - they can save themselves a lot of
| trouble by just making Sarin or VX, God help us."
| starwind wrote:
| > the track record of using AI to generate pharmaceuticals to
| do good has been "mixed", except really it's just been a bust.
|
| Researchers have only been using AI for drug development for
| like 6 years, I think it's way to early to call it a bust
| rossdavidh wrote:
| I guess I should have said "...thus far".
| ansible wrote:
| The article assumes that full development of a new chemical
| weapon would require more development effort. With regards to
| military usage: storable at room temperature, relatively easy to
| manufacture from commonly available precursor chemicals, etc. [1]
|
| How true is that? Are there components of this process that make
| things easier now? Where I have chemical structure X, and a
| system generates the process steps and chemicals needed to
| produce X. How much of the domain in chemistry / chemical
| engineering has been automated these days? What are the future
| prospects for this?
|
| [1] I _assume_ one of the design goals for a new chemical weapon
| for military use is that it breaks down in the environment, but
| not too quickly (like say in a week or a month). Though I suppose
| if you want to just destroy civilization you would design for
| longevity in the environment instead. And being able to seep
| through many kinds of plastic if possible.
| [deleted]
| logifail wrote:
| > Where I have chemical structure X, and a system generates the
| process steps and chemicals needed to produce X.
|
| Undergraduate chemistry students spend a fair amount of time
| learning how to look at a novel structure X and by
| disconnecting "backwards" it into simpler components, deduce a
| route by which it might be synthesed "forward" in the
| laboratory from readily available starting materials.
|
| There's an excellent book on this, "Organic Synthesis: The
| Disconnection Approach", by Stuart Warren.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Interesting.
|
| Were / are you a chem major?
|
| Any other major topics or readings you could recommend for
| someone wanting a general understanding of key concepts in
| modern chemistry? I'd suppose generally: materials,
| synthesis, o-chem, and chem-eng.
|
| My own background: began a hard-science degree. One year
| undergrad uni chem.
| 323 wrote:
| The field is called "process chemistry". A very big thing
| in pharma:
|
| > _Process chemists take compounds that were discovered by
| research chemists and turn them into commercial products.
| They "scale up" reactions by making larger and larger
| quantities, first for testing, then for commercial
| production. The goal of a process chemist is to develop
| synthetic routes that are safe, cost-effective,
| environmentally friendly, and efficient._
|
| https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/careers/chemical-
| sciences...
| [deleted]
| h2odragon wrote:
| > ricin is (fortunately) not all that easy to turn into a weapon,
| and the people who try to do it are generally somewhat
| disconnected from reality (and also from technical proficiency).
|
| Of course that fact was no barrier to much hype about the
| "dangers" it posed, either. I suspect the same now; that we have
| more to fear from the fear junkie propaganda than the actual
| facts.
| once_inc wrote:
| I personally fear the lone-wolf attack drastically reducing in
| cost and effort. Where it would once be cost-prohibitive to
| design and manufacture your own nerve gas or lethal virus,
| these days with AI/ML and Crispr-cas and the like, it feels
| like any intelligent, deranged person wanting to take as many
| people to the grave with him has the tools to do just that.
| bitexploder wrote:
| I think this is inevitable and something we will grapple with
| in coming decades. Especially around genetic engineering of
| viruses.
| WJW wrote:
| Intelligent and deranged persons already have the tools to
| make way more casualties with way less effort using guns
| and/or explosives. The "problem" for them is that people who
| get sufficiently deranged to think that killing a few hundred
| (or even thousand) people will meaningfully solve the problem
| they are upset about will also be sufficiently deranged that
| their ability to reason coherently will be drastically
| reduced.
| wpietri wrote:
| Would they? I'm not seeing that as necessarily true. The
| Unabomber seems like a good example:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski
|
| Or look at mass shooting incidents: https://en.wikipedia.or
| g/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_S...
|
| The Las Vegas shooting was rationally planned and carried
| out. He managed to shoot nearly 500 people, killing 60.
|
| They did happen to pick conventional weapons. But is that
| because of rational choice, or just familiarity and
| availability? Imagine somebody like Kaczynski, but instead
| of being an award-winning young mathematician, he was an
| award-winning industrial chemist or genomics student.
| uxp100 wrote:
| Kaczynski did not optimize for death, really following
| the lead of the shockingly common political bombing
| campaigns of the 70s. The Las Vegas shooter might be a
| better example.
| wpietri wrote:
| Sure, but I don't think that was a necessary outcome.
| Consider this quote: "I felt disgusted about what my
| uncontrolled sexual cravings had almost led me to do. And
| I felt humiliated, and I violently hated the
| psychiatrist. Just then there came a major turning point
| in my life. Like a Phoenix, I burst from the ashes of my
| despair to a glorious new hope."
|
| I agree he went with something common to the time. But I
| don't think that was a necessary outcome. After all, his
| approach didn't achieve his goals, so we can't say his
| sort of terrorism is any more rational than aiming for
| something bigger. Indeed, the nominal goals he ended up
| with, one could argue that mass-death terrorism is more
| rational.
| VLM wrote:
| This will probably come in handy for industrial espionage type
| tasks.
|
| Lets say you had a nation-state enemy who eats a lot of some
| ethnic ingredient. Come up with a cheap artificial flavor/color
| or process that is optimize to give heavy consumers cancer in 30
| years. Not in one year, that will show up in the approval
| process. Then have an agent in the target country "discover" thru
| random chance this really excellent food dye or whatever.
|
| Now you kill half the population with cancer, you're gonna get
| nuked in response, even non-nuke countries will be pissed off
| enough to get nukes just to nuke the perpetrator. But lets say
| you make the victims fat and sick and die a little younger just
| enough to get 1% hit on economic growth...
|
| Some people would say this is how we ended up with trans-fats and
| margarine and vegetable oils in general or certain veg oils in
| specific.
|
| Certainly, corn syrup has caused more human and economic
| devastation that fission, nerve agents, or most any WMD I can
| think of...
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| The problem with this is that this is basically genetic
| engineering, you might successfully make a low-level economic
| growth impact now, but future generations will be resistant to
| the poisons as those weak against them die off. You are
| securing your own demise long-term if you don't subject your
| population to the same.
| [deleted]
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| This is far more fun than believing in an emerging accident.
| You don't have to eat corn syrup, btw.
| tgtweak wrote:
| I guess if it's tasty then it's fair game.
| toss1 wrote:
| >>The thought had never previously struck us. We were vaguely
| aware of security concerns around work with pathogens or toxic
| chemicals, ...We have spent decades using computers and AI to
| improve human health--not to degrade it. We were naive in
| thinking about the potential misuse of our trade...
|
| Of course now, the next step is to use the technology to
| preemptively search for and develop antidotes to the new
| potential weapons their tool has discovered.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| The "dual use" paper this is commenting on is the clickbait
| equivalent of "encryption is for pedos", and maybe Derek's "not
| too surprising" is code for "Science editors are not discerning
| enough".
|
| Like, this is the whole point of pharmacology: Predicting the
| biological interactions of chemicals (what they do to biological
| targets, how potent), and their ancillary physical properties
| (solubility, volatility, stability etc). For example,
|
| Optimizing for mu-opioid agonist activity gives you super potent
| painkillers, drugs of abuse, and that stuff Russia gassed a
| theater with to knock out / kill hostages and kidnappers (i.e.
| fentanyl analogues)
|
| Optimizing for inhibition of various proteases might give you
| chemotherapy drugs with nasty side effects, or stuff with nasty
| side effects and no known therapeutic use (i.e. ricin)
|
| Optimizing for acetylcholinesterase inhibitor activity will turn
| up nasty poisons which could be purposed as "nerve agents" or
| "pesticides"
|
| Optimizing for 5HT2a activity will give compounds that are great
| for mapping receptor locations in brains, which are also drugs of
| abuse, and which are also lethal to humans in small doses.
|
| And the "predicted compounds not included in the training set"
| thing is just table stakes for any predictive model!
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > 5HT2a
|
| You sure you don't mean 5HT2b?
|
| I mean, anything can be toxic with enough dose, but the
| b-subtype agonists seem a lot more toxic than the a-subtype
| agonists.
|
| (Fun fact: 6-APB, a "research chemical" recreational substance
| became an actual research chemical because of it had better
| 5HT2b selectivity than what was previously used in lab
| research)
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| Was thinking of halogenated NBOMe series - observed in humans
| to have a pretty narrow therapeutic index re: death, cheapish
| synth, can be vaporized
|
| But yeah 2b could be worse. Or many other targets as well
|
| Funny thing, optimizing "research chemicals" for (1)
| uncontrolled synthetic pathway and (2) potency is common to
| Institutional, Druggie, and Terrorist researchers. None of
| them want to go through the bureaucracy for controlled
| substances and potency is good for [better controlled
| experiments / smaller quantities to transport / more killing
| power]
| Scoundreller wrote:
| researchers will really care about selectivity, but potency
| can help with the amount of paperwork for sure (and cut
| synth costs!)
| openasocket wrote:
| Fortunately we don't see any real work in the chemical and
| biological weapons space anymore. While it would still be pretty
| handy for terrorist groups, in actual warfare chemical weapons
| aren't super useful. See
| https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch... .
| VLM wrote:
| > Fortunately we don't see any real work
|
| Not really, having new developments all classified is not
| helpful to anyone.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| They are amazingly useful in real warfare. Drop nerve gas on a
| city, walk in a couple days later. WMDs are the only way to
| really take a country by force, and of all of them, chemical
| weapons are the most palatable and also the easiest to produce.
|
| Considering this, defense against them is at least mildly
| important. A proper defense only exists by considering offense,
| so they're still developing chemical weapons somewhere. The
| modern hot topic is viruses and other pathogens.
| someotherperson wrote:
| That's not how it works, and they're not very useful at all.
| The amount of actual product you need is non-trivial and at
| that point you might as well just use modern conventional
| munitions.
|
| The reason why it fell out of favour isn't because it's
| dangerous, it's because it was ineffective outside of TV and
| film.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| That's not how it works? That's all I get? I'd refer you to
| the site guidelines, barging into a thread and going "NO U"
| is not a real conversation.
|
| A siege of a city is more impractical than it ever has
| been. In ancient times a siege was conducted out of
| necessity; it was the only way to kill everyone inside if a
| population did not desire subjugation. Complete death of
| those resisting you was typically the goal, with the slow
| communication of antiquity leaving any resistance might
| mean coming back to an army the next time you visit. It was
| easier to depopulate the region and move your descendants
| in.
|
| We see echoes of this in modern times. We "took" Kabul at
| extreme expense, but did not really "take" it as asymmetric
| enemy forces continued to operate throughout the entire
| country while the US occupied Afghanistan. Taking many
| cities across a nation with advanced embedded weaponry is
| going to be impossible. If it came down to it, such a
| country would resort to area denial, like Russia did in the
| Chechnya and Syria, leveling the cities instead of sweeping
| them.
|
| We don't see people deploying chemical WMDs not because
| they are too expensive but because of political reasons,
| and after that, because they don't have them due to
| disarmament treaties. All it takes is someone deciding they
| really want to win for all of it to change. You can deny a
| huge area for weeks with a few chemical warheads. You can
| make a city inhospitable using less materiel than it'd take
| to flatten it.
| openasocket wrote:
| I'd invite you to read the article I linked:
| https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-
| use-ch... . Generally speaking, if you need to take a
| city you're better off using high explosives than
| chemical weapons. It's well researched and cites sources.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| And I'd invite you to re-read my comment. He agrees with
| my main point:
|
| > In static-system vs. static-system warfare. Thus, in
| Syria - where the Syrian Civil War has been waged as a
| series of starve-or-surrender urban sieges, a hallmark of
| static vs. static fighting - you see significant use of
| chemical weapons, especially as a terror tactic against
| besieged civilians.
|
| The Russians being in a similar situation because they do
| not have equipment suitable for a highly mobile army (I
| don't quite expect them to use them for reasons below,
| but worth pointing out).
|
| There's a lot wrong with his take. A lot of what he is
| writing is unsourced conjecture. It's like saying man
| portable missiles are irrelevant when you can have the
| CIA topple their government and remove their will to
| fight.
|
| For one, conventional arms are horribly inefficient at
| killing in the first place! It's thousands of rounds
| fired for a confirmed kill, and the stat is equally as
| bad for artillery. Any marginal improvement is a big
| deal.
|
| He does not convincingly separate their lack of
| legitimate use from moral concerns. Developed nuclear
| states don't use them for a lot of reasons, but a huge
| issue is that chemical weapons are on the escalation
| ladder. In the US's case it's also that we don't want to
| kill indiscriminately. He so much as states this at one
| point:
|
| > In essence, the two big powers of the Cold War (and, as
| a side note, also the lesser components of the Warsaw
| Pact and NATO) spent the whole Cold War looking for an
| effective way to use chemical weapons against each other,
| and seem to have - by the end - concluded on the balance
| that there wasn't one. Either conventional weapons get
| the job done, or you escalate to nuclear systems.
|
| > But if chemical weapons can still be effective against
| static system armies, why don't modern system armies
| (generally) use chemical weapons against them? Because
| they don't need to. Experience has tended to show that
| static system armies are already so vulnerable to the
| conventional capability of top-flight modern system
| armies that chemical munitions offer no benefits beyond
| what precision-guided munitions (PGMs), rapid maneuver
| (something the Iraqi army showed a profound inability to
| cope with in both 1991 and 2003), and the tactics (down
| to the small unit) of the modern system do.
|
| I take no exception to this, but basically no large army
| has encountered a case where they need quickly deployed
| area denial that is different from landmines. A massive
| retreat into the interior of a country may be such a
| case, but you run into issues where a decapitation
| against that state is probably going to be more
| effective.
|
| For what it's worth, this is why Russia's concern of NATO
| countries walking up into it is nonsensical. It's just,
| perhaps, they never realized how nonsensical it was, as
| their defense planners do not have experience with a
| highly dynamic army. (But oddly they seem to have _some_
| idea of what might happen, as this is what likely led to
| their development of nuclear /neutron mortars and
| artillery. But any situation where those would come out
| is going to be ICBM time anyway.)
| amelius wrote:
| They go against the Geneva Protocol, and it's not even
| allowed to stockpile them so not even useful if you are a
| terrorist with a death wish because then there are simpler
| ways to end your problems.
| csee wrote:
| Russia used them extensively in Syria quite recently, so
| the concerns are valid.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| What?! This is not true! I've never heard anyone claiming
| russia did it. The mainstream consensus is that the
| syrian government did it, while a minority thinks it was
| either old stock getting released by accident or the
| rebels doing it.
|
| Do you have a source? Because even with all the
| controversy surrounding international investigation and
| the theories that have spawned around that, russia wasn't
| even a possible suspect.
| someotherperson wrote:
| The allegations by OPCW are politicised[0] and based on
| theoretical chemistry, i.e hexamine as an acid scavenger.
|
| That is to say: neither the Syrian government nor Russia
| have used chemical weapons in Syria. They haven't used
| them because they are -- for all intents and purposes --
| useless. If you want to take down a group of people in
| flip flops and have access to a thermobaric[1] MLRS[2]
| you're not going to break international law so you can
| give one or two of them a scratchy throat with chlorine
| payloads (if you're lucky).
|
| [0] https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOS-1
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The assertions in the Wikileaks docs are contested, and
| focus on a single incident when the war has had multiple.
|
| https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2020/01/15/the-opcw-
| dou...
|
| For example, that
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghouta_chemical_attack
| happened is not disputed by Russia; they dispute _who_
| did it.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Bellingcat has been pretty reliable but their
| investigations around the chemical attacks were very...
| flawed. It happened for sure, but their analysis of how
| the events unfolded on the ground was so lacking (not
| their fault, OSINT can only get you so far in a chemical
| attack) that imo they probably should've just not
| published their initial articles. Doesn't mean they can't
| be right on the OPCW controversy, but it's still
| something to keep in mind
|
| But in any case, while yes there is a dispute around who
| did it... Russia was never claimed to be the responsible
| by anyone. The two options are either the syrian
| government or the rebels, and that's true for all the
| chemical attacks.
|
| So the GP was completely wrong, Russia did not use
| chemical warfare in syria!
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Given that the Syrian war is still ongoing, that seems to
| debunk the idea that it's as easy as "Drop nerve gas on a
| city, walk in a couple days later."
| WinterMount223 wrote:
| I guess developments are not published on Nature.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Just doesn't seem like it's worth it even for terrorists.
|
| Why invest a bunch of time and effort making more and more
| deadly poisons when we've already got a wide variety of them
| that are cheap to manufacture, well known in how they work, and
| don't cost a bunch of research money to uncover?
| upsidesinclude wrote:
| Hmmm, and then you have to ask, for whom is it worth it?
|
| Who might _invent_ a bunch of time and effort in those areas?
| chasd00 wrote:
| from what i understand the delivery of a chemical or
| biological weapon is the hard part. For most things, you
| can't just pour it out on the ground to have a huge effect.
| Somethings you certainly can, weapons grade Anthrax probably
| just needs a light breeze to devastate a city but something
| like that is beyond the reach of your average terrorist
| groups.
| openasocket wrote:
| True, though you have to remember that threat is a social
| construct and isn't necessarily a rational measure. The 2001
| anthrax attacks killed 5 people, injuring 17, and shocked the
| nation. As a direct result Congress put billions into funding
| for new vaccines and drugs and bio-terrorism preparedness. If
| 5 people were killed and 17 wounded in a mass shooting by a
| terrorist, would we really have reacted as strongly?
|
| If you wanted to install fear into a country, I think being
| attacked by some custom, previously unknown chemical weapon
| would scarier than sarin.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| At the risk of putting myself on a watchlist, They already
| know that, so They have an eye on certain kinds of labware,
| different precursors, and such. And They already have
| antidotes to some of these poisons.
|
| One could optimize for compounds with hard-to-monitor
| precursors. Compounds that can be transported with low vapor
| pressure and volatility, so they cannot be easily sniffed
| out.
|
| Or imagine a lethal compound with a high delay factor. Or
| something with specifically panic-inducing effects, perhaps
| hemorrhagic with a side effect of your skin sliding off in
| great slick sheets. Another interesting high delay factor
| compound might induce psychosis: have fun tracking where
| these gibbering maniacs were a week ago.
|
| With a sufficiently dark imagination, "needs" could be
| identified for all sorts of compounds.
|
| Remember, the goal is to throw a monkey wrench into the
| gearwork of an opposing civilization, not necessarily to
| _kill_. Fear of the unknown is very effective for this.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| >Another interesting high delay factor compound might
| induce psychosis
|
| This kind of exists already. BZ gas is the well-known
| delirium-inducing compound with a delay of several hours: (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-Quinuclidinyl_benzilate#Eff
| e...)
|
| The effects are probably mostly temporary though.
| VLM wrote:
| > Or imagine a lethal compound
|
| You'll get nuked (or similar WMD) for that.
|
| Imagine a somewhat more realistic set of applications for
| hot new research chemicals.
|
| How about aircraft or shells or covert actors spray some
| "thing" that shorts out electrical insulators 1000x more
| often than normal. Or makes the vegetation underneath power
| lines 1000x more flammable than normal vegetation. Our
| power is unreliable causing a major economic hit both
| directly and via higher electrical bills. If "they" want to
| invade now the civilians won't have power and be more
| likely to get out of the way long before the front line
| troops arrive. I mean you could probably put nano-particles
| of graphite in a spray can right now, then stand upwind of
| a power station or substation, but I bet extensive research
| would do better. A lot of high power electrical "Stuff"
| relies on plain old varnish being inert for a long time ...
| what happens if it wasn't? Again you shut down a country
| they gonna nuke you, but what if electrical power
| transformers and switching power supplies only last one
| year on average instead of ten? Thats a huge economic and
| maybe military strategic advantage but would you get nuked
| back because some nation's TVs burn out in one year instead
| of the carefully value engineered ten years?
|
| How about a spray or microbe or whatever that screws up air
| filters. Who cares, right? Well most troops (and cops) in
| most countries have gas masks. Zap their masks via whatever
| new magical method, then drop simple plain old tear gas the
| next day or until logistics catches up, which will take
| awhile assuming they even know they're damaged. Normally
| when hit with CS, they'd mask up and the CS would have no
| effect on mask wearers other than reduced vision, but now
| the side that didn't get their masks ruined has a HUGE
| tactical advantage.
|
| If you make a bioweapon and kill half the population, they
| gonna be PISSED and you're gonna get nuked. So try
| something a little more chill. If your vitamin A reserves
| are gone, your night vision is temporarily essentially
| gone. Yeah for long term vit A deficiency you'll get long
| term skin, general growth, and infection risk problems, but
| if someone sprayed you with some weird compound that made
| you pee out all your bodies stores of Vit A before tomorrow
| morning, the only real short term effect would be night
| blindness, and that would go away in a couple days with a
| normal-ish diet or by taking a few days of multivitamin
| pill or a couple supplement vit A pills. So spray the enemy
| (and/or the civilians) and they can't see in the dark so
| magical automatic curfew for the civvies and attack the
| night blind military and absolutely pound them because
| they're night blind and can't see your guys. If they have
| NVGs then hit them at dawn/dusk when the NVGs won't work
| completely correctly but they can't see without them
| because of night blindness. Its temporary and never hurt no
| one other than the opfor "owning the night" until the
| victims figure it out or naturally recover, so at a
| strategic / diplomatic level would a country nuke another
| country because they couldn't see at night for a couple
| days? Naw probably not. And you can imagine the terror
| attack / psych warfare potential of leaflets explaining,
| "we turned off your night vision for a couple days, now
| obey or we shut off cardiac function next time" Either for
| the government to use against civilians (think Canada vs
| truckers) or governments to use against each other (China
| vs Taiwan invasion or similar). Or give them temporary
| weird fever sweats or turn their pee robins-egg blue or all
| kinds of fun.
|
| Now the above is all sci fi stuff I made up and AFAIK I'm
| not violating any secrets act, unless this post magically
| disappears in a couple hours LOL.
|
| Think of the new non-lethal battlespace like computer virus
| attacks. Yeah, we could "EMP" Russia to shut off most of
| their computers and they'd be really pissed off and nuke us
| right back so thats a non-starter. But release "windoze
| annoyance virus number 31597902733" and that could have
| real world effects. Especially if you release 20,30,4000
| new zero-days on the same day.
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _Especially if you release 20,30,4000 new zero-days on
| the same day._
|
| Interesting example of how cyber attacks could blow back.
| Anything you put in a virus can be taken out and used
| against you.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > How about aircraft or shells or covert actors spray
| some "thing" that shorts out electrical insulators 1000x
| more often than normal.
|
| Dropping anti-radar chaff strips is a very good lo-tech
| way of shorting transformers and power lines. I can't
| find a link, but IIRC the USAF discovered this
| accidentally when training missions led to power outages
| in nearby towns.
| logifail wrote:
| > At the risk of putting myself on a watchlist, They
| already know that, so They have an eye on certain kinds of
| labware, different precursors, and such. And They already
| have antidotes to some of these poisons.
|
| Errm, maybe They Do.
|
| On the other hand, I used to work in an organic chemistry
| research lab, and at least within my ex university's
| context, we could basically order anything we wanted from
| the standard chemical suppliers without anyone batting an
| eyelid. Pre-signed but otherwise blank order forms were
| freely handed out, you just filled in what compounds you
| wanted and handed it over, two days later it arrived and
| you collected it from Stores.
|
| I personally ordered a compound for a reaction I was
| planning and it was only after it arrived - when I read the
| safety data sheet - that I realised just quite how toxic it
| was.
|
| I backed carefully away from that particular bottle, and
| left it in the fridge, still sealed. Then found another -
| safer - way to do the reaction instead...
| david422 wrote:
| > I backed carefully away from that particular bottle,
| and left it in the fridge, still sealed. Then found
| another - safer - way to do the reaction instead...
|
| I've wondered how manufacturing plants handle this. You
| back away because you're afraid of touching the stuff -
| how does a giant factory that produces and ships the
| stuff handle it?
| detaro wrote:
| It clearly can be handled, the question is what's the
| procedure to handle it correctly and do you trust _your_
| procedure? Manufacturer or someone regularly working with
| this kind of thing does know and trust, if you suddenly
| realize it wasn 't quite what you signed up for backing
| off is clearly the better choice than trusting your guess
| at procedure. But risk can be managed a lot.
|
| Although certainly over-confidence can also happen on the
| other end, e.g. if something that's quite similar to
| other dangerous things you work with suddenly has an
| additional trap. And Safety Datasheets are notorious for
| not necessarily representing actual in-use risks well.
| 323 wrote:
| The same way other dangerous stuff is made?
|
| There is plenty of dangerous chemicals made on a huge
| scale - sulfuric acid, cyanide, explosives, ...
| emaginniss wrote:
| Right, and if you had ordered 3 barrels of the stuff,
| you'd get a visit from the feds.
| logifail wrote:
| > 3 barrels of the stuff
|
| Barrels? Based on what the LD50 was / what the data sheet
| said, the bottle I briefly had in my hands - and yes,
| they did start shaking - would have done for a good
| proportion of the residents of a small city had it
| managed to be spread around in a form that would have
| been ingested.
|
| Chemistry labs are typically well-stocked with quite a
| lot of fairly unpleasant things. They're also the places
| where a lot of genuinely amazing and potentially live-
| saving work gets done!
| tetsusaiga wrote:
| You can't just tease us like this! If not the actual
| chemical... maybe an analogue or something? Chemistry is
| one of my great fascinations lol.
| dekhn wrote:
| Is that toxic bottle still sealed, in the fridge, after
| you've left the institution? I've had to deal with a few
| EHS situations like that.
| danuker wrote:
| How did you deal with it? I would expect they don't take
| returns.
| dekhn wrote:
| You call your university's EHS department and tell them
| as much about what you know about the contents of the
| bottle (which may not be what is on the label). They seal
| off the lab, remove it, and using what they can determine
| about the contents, destroy it safely.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The same thing that happens when someone quits.
|
| The people finding these things have the same skill sets
| and access to the same handling/disposal facilities as
| the people leaving these things so it's very much a "oh
| my former coworker forgot to/didn't have an opportunity
| to dispose of X before departing, I'll just do it myself
| in the same manner he would have". Furthermore, these
| people have lives, they go on vacation and cover each
| other. The institutional knowledge of how to handles
| dangerous organic things necessarily exists in the
| institutions that do so.
| dekhn wrote:
| No bench chemist should attempt to cleanup this stuff. Go
| to your university or company EHS, and if you don;'t have
| that, your city does. The history of chemistry is filled
| with responsible and intelligent organic chemists who
| nonetheless died terrible deaths. EHS has strategies to
| avoid this.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Humor us all and think another few steps ahead. And
| what's EHS gonna do?
|
| They're gonna CC the guy who's office is right beside
| yours because (surprise surprise) the departments and
| teams who's work results in them having weird nasty stuff
| buried in the back of the walk in fridge are the same
| people who know how to handle it.
|
| EHS is just a coordinator. They don't have subject matter
| in everything. So they contact the experts. If your
| biology department fridge with Space AIDS(TM) in it it's
| because your department is the experts so you'll be
| getting the call.
| dekhn wrote:
| Yes, I know how these things work, as my coworkers were
| those EHS people. The point is that they had training,
| and they are working within an official university
| context (laws, etc).
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| So why not save everyone the week of back and fourth
| emails while nothing gets done and ask them directly how
| they want to deal with it rather than putting tons of
| people on blast and substantially constraining their
| options by bringing intra-organization politics into the
| mix?
| QuercusMax wrote:
| Sounds like a great way to get Normalization of
| Deviance[1]. One senior person says "I know how to
| dispose of this, so it's OK if I don't go through proper
| channels." Then the next person, following their lead
| without understanding the implications, says "Joe Senior
| over there disposed of something scary they found without
| wasting time going through EHS, so I'll do the same."
| Maybe it goes fine for a while, but eventually you'll end
| up with a situation where you've poisoned the groundwater
| or released dangerous chemicals into the air, because
| nobody is following the proper channels any more.
|
| 1.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Telling your boss or relevant colleague instead of going
| over everyone's heads from the get go isn't normalization
| of deviance and we both know it.
|
| I really dislike these sorts of "name drop" comments.
| They're just equivalent of "F" or "the front fell off"
| with a high enough brow for HN veneer on top.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| You're suggesting that people bypass official procedures
| and/or laws in order to save time. This is a bad path to
| start down. The fact that you're posting this as a
| throwaway indicates that you don't want your HN account
| associated with these proposals.
|
| Here's a relevant software-related analogy:
|
| I work in a situation where if we receive certain types
| of data, we have to go through proper procedures
| (including an official incident response team). It would
| be very easy for me to say "I've verified that nobody
| accessed this data, and we can just delete it," instead
| of going through the proper channels, which are VERY
| annoying and require a bunch of paperwork, possibly
| meetings, etc.
|
| Maybe nothing bad happens. But next time this happens,
| one of my junior colleagues remembers that the 'correct'
| thing to do was what I did (clean it up myself after
| verifying nobody accessed the data). Except they screwed
| up and didn't verify that nobody had accessed the data in
| question - and now we are in legal hot water over a data
| privacy breach.
|
| And then people go back through the records, and both the
| junior engineer and I get fired for bypassing the
| procedures which we've been trained on, all because I
| wanted to save some time.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >You're suggesting that people bypass official procedures
| and/or laws in order to save time. This is a bad path to
| start down.
|
| You are assuming rules say what they mean and mean what
| they say (and are even written where you're looking, and
| if they are that they're up to date). If it's your first
| week on the job, by all means, do the most literal and
| conservative thing. If it's not, well you should know
| what your organization actually expects of you, was is
| expected to be reported and what isn't.
|
| There's a fine line to walk between notifying other
| departments when they need to be notified and wasting
| their time with spurious reports.
|
| When maintenance discovers their used oil tank is a hair
| away from being a big leaking problems they just fix it
| because they are the guys responsible for the used oil
| and keeping it contained is part of their job.
|
| Your bio lab or explosives closet isn't special. If the
| material is within your department's purview then that's
| the end of it.
|
| Not every bug in production needs to be declared an
| incident.
|
| >Maybe nothing bad happens. But next time this happens,
| one of my junior colleagues remembers that the 'correct'
| thing to do was what I did (clean it up myself after
| verifying nobody accessed the data). Except they screwed
| up and didn't verify that nobody had accessed the data in
| question - and now we are in legal hot water over a data
| privacy breach.
|
| You can sling hypothetical around all you want but for
| every dumb anecdote about informal process breaking down
| and causing stuff to blow up I can come up with another
| about formal process leaving gaps and things blowing up
| because everyone thought they had done their bit. It's
| ultimately going to come down to formal codified process
| vs informal process. Both work, both don't. At the end of
| the day you get out what you put in.
|
| >The fact that you're posting this as a throwaway
| indicates that you don't want your HN account associated
| with these proposals.
|
| This account is how old? Maybe I just use throwaways
| because I like it.
| dekhn wrote:
| It sounds like you may have had a bad time with EHS in
| the past. I found that by making friends with everybody
| involved ahead of time, I suddenly had excellent service.
|
| sadly, after 30 years of training to be a superhacker on
| ML, my greatest value is actually in dealing with intra-
| organizational politics.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| I work in a regulated software space, and my experience
| is that treating quality and regulatory folks as
| adversaries is a great way to have your projects take way
| longer than they should and cause immense frustration.
| Understanding the hows and whys of the way things work
| makes life easier for everyone. I haven't worked with EHS
| in the past, but I imagine it's much the same - if you're
| seen as somebody who's trying to cut corners and take
| shortcuts, yeah, you'll probably have a bad time.
| mcguire wrote:
| This is how you wind up spending many, many $ remediating
| a building. And getting those weird questions like,
| "Inventory says we have 500ml of X, anyone know where it
| is?"
| logifail wrote:
| > This is how you wind up spending many, many $
| remediating a building
|
| Oh yes, and this isn't a new phenomenon, for instance:
|
| "When Cambridge's physicists moved out of the famous
| Cavendish laboratories in the mid-1970s, they
| unintentionally left behind a dangerous legacy: a
| building thoroughly contaminated with mercury. Concern
| about rising levels of mercury vapour in the air in
| recent months led university officials to take urine
| samples from 43 of the social scientists who now have
| offices in the old Cavendish. The results, announced last
| week, show that some people have exposure levels
| comparable to people who work with mercury in
| industry."[0]
|
| [0] _The mercury the physicists left behind_
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12817450-800-the-
| merc...
| logifail wrote:
| > Is that toxic bottle still sealed, in the fridge, after
| you've left the institution?
|
| Quite possibly!
|
| The previous occupant of my bench area (and hence
| adjoining fridge space) left some barely-labeled custom
| radioactive compounds(!!) in the fridge me to find
| shortly after I took over that space, so I know how that
| feels.
|
| After consulting suitably-trained personnel, the contents
| of the vials were then disposed of ... by pouring down a
| standard sink, with lots of running water.
|
| Those were the days :eek:
| marcosdumay wrote:
| "They" are not proactive, because they know people hiding
| bad things need time and coordination. So, only taking
| notice (and notes) and investigating strange patterns is
| enough.
|
| But also a lot of what the GP says doesn't apply, because
| on the case of terrorism, "They" is either the police or
| random people, so "They" definitively do not have
| antidotes or training on how to handle known poisons.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| Flourine compound? Organic heavy metal? I'm curious.
| mcguire wrote:
| The real fun starts when somebody starts using techniques like
| this that overcome the weaknesses of known chemical weapons and
| provide specific advantages. It's also kind of hard to monitor
| computational chemical research.
|
| It's my understanding that the Soviet army doctrine in the '70s
| and '80s included the use of chemical weapons. That
| hypothetical threat put a hell of a lot of friction on NATO in
| terms of training, supplies, and preparedness.
| derefr wrote:
| On a tangent: it occurred to me recently that we also don't see
| much use of ICBMs with non-nuclear payloads, despite these
| being a fairly-obvious "dominant strategy" for warfare -- and
| one that _isn 't_ banned by any global treaties.
|
| I'm guessing the problem with these is that, in practice, a
| country can't use any weapons system that could _potentially_
| be used to "safely" deliver a nuclear payload (i.e. to deliver
| one far-enough away that the attacking country would not,
| itself, be affected by the fallout) without other countries'
| anti-nuke defenses activating. After all, you could always
| _say_ you 're shooting ICBMs full of regular explosive
| payloads, but then slip a nuke in. There is no honor in
| realpolitik.
|
| So, because of this game-theoretic equilibrium, any use of the
| stratosphere for ballistic weapons delivery is _effectively_
| forbidden -- even though nobody 's explicitly _asking_ for it
| to be.
|
| It's interesting to consider how much scarier war could be
| right now, if we _hadn 't_ invented nuclear weapons... random
| missiles just dropping down from the sky for precision strikes,
| in countries whose borders have never even been penetrated.
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| Conventional Prompt Global Strike is intended to provide the
| ability to deliver a conventional kinetic attack anywhere in
| the world within an hour. It has been an active area of
| weapons research for the US for 20 years. As you speculate,
| misinterpretation of the launch is a concern. [1]
|
| As opensocket points out, there are many shorter range
| conventional weapons used across borders. The cruise missiles
| of gulf war 1 or the drones of the post September 11 world.
|
| [1] https://sgp.fas.org/crs/nuke/R41464.pdf
| the_af wrote:
| > _It 's interesting to consider how much scarier war could
| be right now, if we hadn't invented nuclear weapons... random
| missiles just dropping down from the sky for precision
| strikes, in countries whose borders have never even been
| penetrated._
|
| Why are cruise missiles any less scary? They are indeed used
| in precision strikes across country borders, and can kill you
| just the same. The existence of nuclear weapons still allows
| some countries to use cruise missiles, as we see happen
| almost every year.
| dwighteb wrote:
| Interesting tangent I hadn't considered before. However,
| China is testing some ballistic anti ship missiles.
| https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2021/11/aircraft-
| carrie...
|
| To be fair, if these become a reality, they would likely
| strike targets in the Pacific Ocean and South China Seas, far
| away from the US, but the potential to spook nuclear nations
| is still there.
| openasocket wrote:
| There are quite a lot of shorter-range conventional systems.
| In practice you don't need that inter-continental range for
| most purposes. For some modern examples you have the Chinese
| DF-21 and the Russian Iskander system. And a lot of those
| systems are dual-use: capable of delivering both nuclear and
| conventional payloads. It's not totally clear what that will
| mean in a conflict between two nuclear powers. What do you do
| when early warning radar picks up a ballistic missile coming
| in when you can't tell if it is nuclear or conventional? Plus
| this isn't a video game, you won't hear some alarm going off
| after it detonates indicating it was a nuclear explosion.
| You'll need to send someone to do a damage assessment, and
| that takes time.
| [deleted]
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| We have satellites which can detect a double flash
| (characteristic of a nuclear explosion), the US and
| probably most other nuclear powers with the exception of
| perhaps North Korea and Pakistan would know instantly of
| any nuclear detonation above ground.
| jhart99 wrote:
| Not to mention the net of seismographs across the US.
| Those would tell us within our own borders if a nuclear
| detonation has occurred within seconds of impact.
| upsidesinclude wrote:
| I'd consider how much more docile the nation's of the world
| would have become sans nuke.
|
| If the possibility of an untraceable, space borne, hypersonic
| weapon was on the table we might have had a better deterrent
| than nuclear weapons. The lack of fallout and total
| deniability makes it almost certain they would have been
| deployed and quite concisely ended a few conflicts at the
| onset.
|
| It is alarmingly frightening, moreso even, because the impact
| could be extremely precise- leaving infrastructure intact.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| > I'd consider how much more docile the nation's of the
| world would have become sans nuke.
|
| Interesting. I expected that nuklear weapons made us more
| docile. It's a huge deterrence for big powers to go to war
| with each other. I think we are seeing this play out in
| Ukraine right now. If Russia had no nuclear weapons, I'd
| expect NATO to have intervened much more directly at this
| point, especially after seeing that Russia seems much
| weaker than expected.
| anonAndOn wrote:
| That is precisely why Putin keeps saber rattling about
| Russia's nukes. NATO (but mostly the US) would wipe out
| the Russian forces in Ukraine in a matter of days. Since
| he's committed so much of Russia's military to the
| invasion, the west would effectively castrate Russian
| defenses and likely all manner of hell would break loose
| in all those oppressed satellite regimes (hello!
| Chechenia, Georgia, Belarus, etc.)
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The normalization of saber-rattling about nukes is one of
| the most unsettling outcomes of this whole conflict TBH,
| and hopefully it's going to be addressed in some way down
| the line. If every non-nuclear power is suddenly
| vulnerable to conventional attacks by any rouge state
| with nukes, the ensuing equilibrium is pretty clear and
| is not good for overall stability.
| mcguire wrote:
| Nuclear saber rattling has been the norm for a very long
| time; it's just that after the fall of the Soviet Union
| there wasn't much need for it. Things have returned to
| their more traditional state.
| anonAndOn wrote:
| Kim Jong Un would like you to hold his soju.
| chasd00 wrote:
| in the 80s it was not unusual for armed Russian strategic
| bombers to cross into US airspace above Alaska and then
| be escorted back out by US interceptors. I agree nuclear
| saber rattling is unsettling but it can get much worse
| than what we're seeing now.
|
| /btw, in other discussions i've been too cavalier
| throwing around the likelihood of nuclear weapon use in
| Ukraine. I've thought about it much more since those
| other threads
| willcipriano wrote:
| I don't feel like anything has really changed in regards
| to nuclear saber rattling, Biden did so last year in
| regards to US citizens[0] no less.
|
| [0]https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/06/23/
| in-gun...
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Well yes, but that's just Biden missing the point
| entirely as usual. The military is sworn to defend the
| Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, so
| if a mass insurgency is ever needed to counter some
| future totalitarian government, much of the military will
| be on _that_ same side. What Putin has been saying is a
| whole lot more serious than that.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I think he more critically missed that using nuclear
| weapons on yourself is a massive tactical blunder. Just
| pointing out this isn't anything new.
| p_j_w wrote:
| >If every non-nuclear power is suddenly vulnerable to
| conventional attacks by any rouge state with nukes
|
| There's nothing sudden about it, this has been the
| reality for decades now. We here in the US were on the
| other side of the matter in Iraq and arguably Vietnam.
| This is an old truth.
| the_af wrote:
| Some in the US even argued for using nuclear weapons on
| Vietnam, out of frustration with the lack of progress
| with conventional war.
|
| Imagine how that would have gone -- dropping nukes on the
| Vietnamese in order to "save" them from Communism.
|
| Thankfully saner minds prevailed.
| IntrepidWorm wrote:
| Yup. Henry Kissinger was a big part of that nonsense,
| along with a whole bunch of equally sinister stuff. The
| cluster bombings of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Korea were in
| many ways directly the result of his machinations.
| nradov wrote:
| Nah. There's no point in putting hypersonic cruise missiles
| in space. Too expensive, and not survivable. Those weapons
| will be launched from air, ground, and surface platforms.
| Magazine depths will be so limited that they'll only be
| used for the highest priority targets. They won't be enough
| to end any major conflict by themselves.
| derefr wrote:
| > Magazine depths will be so limited that they'll only be
| used for the highest priority targets. They won't be
| enough to end any major conflict by themselves.
|
| I'm probably being incredibly naive in saying this, but
| what about "non-wartime" decapitation strikes -- where
| _instead_ of going to war, you just lob some well-timed
| hypersonic missiles at your enemy 's capitol building /
| parliament / etc. while all key players are inside;
| presumably not as a way to leave the enemy nation
| leaderless, but rather to aid an insurgent faction that
| favors you to take advantage of the chaos to grab power?
| I.e., why doesn't the CIA bring ICBMs along to their
| staged coups?
| ISL wrote:
| If you do this, the enemy's nuclear-weapons services will
| look in the playbook under "what to do if someone kills
| the government", see, "launch everything as a
| counterattack", and press the button.
|
| A key advantage of a hypersonic weapon is the possibility
| of first-strikes to disable the enemy's retaliation
| systems before they have the ability to launch more-
| traditional retaliatory responses. Only submarines are
| likely to be mostly-immune to them.
| 323 wrote:
| So why are the Chinese doing it?
|
| https://www.heritage.org/asia/commentary/chinas-new-
| weapon-j...
| nradov wrote:
| The Chinese weapon is ground launched, exactly as I
| stated. Sure you can boost such a weapon up above most of
| the atmosphere in order to get longer range, but the
| downside is that higher altitude flight paths make it
| easier to detect and counter.
| sangnoir wrote:
| AFAIK, there are no publicized counters to partially
| orbital hypersonic glide weapons in their glide phase due
| to their maneuverability and speed. Perhaps THAAD - but
| it may be difficult to ascertain the target when a weapon
| can glide halfway across the world
| nradov wrote:
| Well in _theory_ the RIM-174 (SM-6) has some limited
| ability to intercept hypersonic glide weapons. Although
| obviously that 's never been tested.
|
| There are counters to hypersonic glide weapons beyond
| shooting them down. If you can detect it early enough
| then the target ship can change course and try to evade.
| The sensors on those missiles have very limited field of
| view so if it's not receiving a real time target track
| data link for course correction then it can be possibly
| be dodged (depending on how many are incoming, weather,
| and other factors). Even if the target can't evade, a bit
| of advance warning would at least allow for cueing EW
| countermeasures.
| upsidesinclude wrote:
| Nah? You don't put cruise missiles in space. You put mass
| in space.
|
| I supposed the point would be to hit the highest priority
| targets and nothing else. Loss of command and logistics
| has a profound effect on endurance
| nradov wrote:
| Putting mass in space as a weapon is just a silly scifi
| idea disconnected from reality. Even with modern reusable
| rockets, launch costs are still extremely high,
| especially if you need enough platforms to hit time
| sensitive targets. And the platforms wouldn't be
| survivable. There are cheaper, more effective ways to
| fulfill the mission.
| openasocket wrote:
| I don't think you'd necessarily have deniability. We have
| early warning radars and satellite networks now capable of
| identifying an ICBM missile launch in the boost phase. Even
| with only ground-based sensor detecting the missile in the
| midcourse, it is a ballistic missile, which means the
| missile follows a predictable trajectory. This can be used
| to fairly precisely determine what it is aiming at, but
| also could be used to trace the missile back to a launch
| site.
| upsidesinclude wrote:
| Well from space, the point of origin is a bit arbitrary.
| We could just wait for our satellite to reach enemy
| territory.
|
| Also, ICBMs in their present form would not likely
| resemble anything deployed in space
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > So, because of this game-theoretic equilibrium, any use of
| the stratosphere for ballistic weapons delivery is
| effectively forbidden -- even though nobody's explicitly
| asking for it to be.
|
| Interesting! SpaceX was hoping to one day use Starship for
| quick intercontinental flights. I wonder if this unspoken
| rule would make that prohibitive?
| misthop wrote:
| Unlikely, as those flights would be scheduled and the
| launch site publicized. It wouldn't absolutely preclude a
| masked nuclear strike, but that would be possible already
| with space launches.
| brimble wrote:
| It'd also be a pretty shitty first strike, since you'd be
| limited to the count of starships scheduled to launch
| (and likely only ones headed generally in the direction
| of your target if you _really_ want to mask it) at about
| the same time. So, probably just one or two, at best.
| Meanwhile, you 'd need at least dozens (of missiles--more
| warheads) to have any hope of substantially reducing a
| major nuke-armed opponent's capability to retaliate.
|
| Not remotely worth the complexity of setting up and
| executing. _Maybe_ worth it against an opponent with
| extremely limited launch capacity (North Korea?) but that
| 's a pretty niche application.
| merely-unlikely wrote:
| Until we have some magical non-polluting rocket fuel, I
| can't imagine intra-planetary rocket trips ever becoming
| permissible. Planes are bad enough.
| ucosty wrote:
| Ignoring production, hydrolox would work, not that spacex
| are going down that road
| dirtyid wrote:
| >game-theoretic equilibrium
|
| Equilibriums change, every major US platform was at one point
| designed to be nuclear capable, i.e. cruise missiles now
| liberally launched from planes/bombers/ships that are all
| nuclear capable. There's no a reason nuclear countries who
| get attacked by any US platforms should assume any incoming
| ordinance ISN'T nuclear, down to gravity bombs, except for
| expectation - knowing US has overwhelming conventional
| capabilities and would rather use it than nukes.
|
| Same will apply as conventional ICBM matures - we haven't
| seen much of it because ICBMs have not been sufficiently
| accurate unless carrying nukes where CEP in meters don't
| matter. For countries with power projection, it was
| dramatically cheaper to get closer first and deliver less
| expensive ordinance. Conventional ICBMs seem effectively
| forbidden because most actors assume they're too inaccurate
| for anything but nukes and too expensive for anything but
| nukes.
|
| But that's changing - there are hints that PRC is pursuing
| rapid global strike i.e. US prompt global strike, because IMO
| it's the great equalizer in terms of conventional mutually
| assured destruction precisely because it isn't banned. A lot
| of articles being seeded on SCMP about PRC hypersonic
| developments that spells out meter level CEP ICBMs designed
| to conventionally attack strategic target of depth, aka
| Prompt Global Strike.
|
| Ergo (IMO) PRC maintaining no first use nuclear policy while
| conducting massive nuclear build up to setup credible MAD
| deterrence. This sets up the game theory of accepting that
| conventional ICBM attacks on homeland from across the globe
| is possible and that it's best to wait for confirmation
| unless one wants to trigger nuclear MAD. Entire reason US /
| USSR and countries that could moved to Nuke triad or
| survivable nuke subs was because it bought more time than
| hair trigger / launch on warning posture.
|
| This makes a lot of sense for PRC who doesn't have the
| carriers, strategic bombers or basing to hit CONUS (or much
| outside of 2nd island chain). It makes a lot of sense for any
| nation with enough resources for a ICBM rocket force but not
| enough for global force projection (basically everyone).
| World will be very different place if such capabilities
| proliferate. Imagine any medium size country with ability to
| hit stationary targets worldwide - fabs, server farms, power
| stations, carriers being repaired in a drydock.
| salawat wrote:
| Hypersonics are a boogieman imo. You'll get one volley
| before everyone starts rolling out flak or other anti-
| warhead defenses, and hypersonics have a gigantic weakness
| in not being able to maneuver for beans. Once you're going
| over a mile per sec -> predicting where you'll be to fill
| it with crap to destroy you isn't that hard.
|
| Who cares if you can blow up one target once? Unless you
| marshal enough to wipeout enough infrastructure to really
| cripple your opponent, it won't do you much good anyway;
| and if you do cripple them, and they're nuclear,
| congratulations; you just won a nuclear response. You now
| have bigger problems.
| malaya_zemlya wrote:
| take a look at
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_Global_Strike
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I'm not sure there's much difference between the Russians
| using air-launched cruise missiles (with ranges of hundreds
| to potentially thousands of kilometers and almost always
| capable of carrying a nuclear warhead) launched from their
| Tu-95 Bear strategic bombers (equivalent to the B-52), which
| Russia has done several times now in Ukraine.
| gambiting wrote:
| I think the difference is that air launched missiles could
| carry nuclear payloads but usually don't, while ICMBs could
| carry non-nuclear payloads but usually don't. All kinds of
| countries have been using air launched missiles all the
| time which at least on average tells us that every time one
| is fired it won't(shouldn't) have a nuclear payload. ICMBs
| on the other hand have never been used against anyone, and
| their stated goal for existence is carrying nuclear
| payloads - so if you see one coming your way you can assume
| it's a nuke, even though technically it doesn't have to be.
| stickfigure wrote:
| > despite these being a fairly-obvious "dominant strategy"
| for warfare
|
| I don't think these are quite as viable as you think. ICBMs
| are _expensive_. Probably tens of millions of dollars each,
| for a single-use item. Cruise missiles cost $1-$2 million to
| deliver the same payload and have a better chance of
| surprising the enemy.
|
| ICBMs have longer range, but how often do you need to strike
| targets more than 1000km past the front line? They're
| inherently strategic weapons.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > ICBMs are expensive. Probably tens of millions of dollars
| each
|
| For sub-launched ICBMs (like the UK's nuclear deterrent)
| you also need to factor in the through-life costs of the
| launcher platform, and the fact that once it starts
| launching, it has given itself away. We only have four
| subs, not all of which are on patrol, so it would be
| barking to compromise these to deliver a conventional
| payload.
| misthop wrote:
| Which country is "we"? The US has 14 Ohio class SSBNs in
| service until at least 2029
| therealcamino wrote:
| Probably the UK.
|
| https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news-and-latest-
| activity/operat...
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Yes, the UK (I should have made this more explicit).
|
| The UK's current deterrent force is currently expected to
| be replaced by the successor Dreadnought class [0] in the
| 2030s. They are currently projected to cost PS31 billion
| (likely an underestimate) for four subs, each of which
| can carry 8 missiles max. Again, these are a horribly
| expensive way to deliver conventional explosives when we
| have cruise missiles instead.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreadnought-
| class_submarine
| rmah wrote:
| Even cruise missiles are horribly expensive for
| conventional munitions payloads. Cruise missiles were
| developed to deliver nukes.
|
| An unguided 1000kg "dumb" bomb costs $2,000. A "smart bomb"
| costs $20,000 to $100,000. A cruise missile costs $1mil to
| $2mil.
|
| In the scope of any protracted real war, sending out lots
| of cruise missiles is _horribly_ inefficient. Much much
| cheaper to send out a few planes to drop 100 's of tons of
| dumb or smart bombs. IOW, you can deliver 10x to 100x more
| boom if you just use planes and bombs. 1000x more if you
| use long range artillery. But then, the pilots or soldiers
| are at risk-- and that is a political calculation.
| chasd00 wrote:
| about cruise missiles, wasn't there one of those DARPA
| contests to see if a guy in the garage could produce a
| cruise missile? IIRC it got quite scary and was cancelled
| or something. Being in the drone and high power rocketry
| hobby i have absolutely no doubt there's enough knowledge
| and electronics availability for a guy in their garage to
| come up with something that delivers 50lbs to a precise
| gps coordinate a few hundred miles away for less than
| $10k. Once you do that, it's easy to scale up to 500lbs
| HALtheWise wrote:
| There was a man in New Zealand trying to make a very low-
| cost DIY cruise missile as a hobby project [0]. iirc, he
| was using a pulsejet engine, but ended up getting shut
| down by some visits from stern-looking government agents.
|
| 0: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jun/04/terroris
| m.davi...
| openasocket wrote:
| I'm skeptical you could hit that sort of range for
| anywhere near $10K. Forget the electronics, you need an
| engine powerful enough to lift a few hundred pounds for
| that distance. Unless you want it detected immediately by
| early warning radar you need it to fly at a low altitude,
| like a hundred feet or less. Unless you want it to take
| forever and be susceptible to infantry with small arms it
| needs to be traveling fast, in the hundreds of miles an
| hour. That's simply not possible with an electric system
| with today's technology, and a rocket engine won't
| provide the endurance or efficiency you need. That leaves
| a jet engine or pistol engine. Plus, flying at that speed
| and altitude means you need an effective autopilot system
| that uses terrain-following radar. You'll also need some
| nice guidance packages that allow the shooter to set
| multiple waypoints, so the missile doesn't have to just
| fly a direct course. And a 50 lb payload of high
| explosive just isn't that helpful. There aren't a ton of
| targets where you only need 50lb of explosives to defeat
| them, that are also going to stay in the same exact GPS
| position long enough for your missile to travel a few
| hundred miles. So you'll want a different terminal
| guidance method, either some sort of radar sensor or
| infrared.
|
| I don't think you could get an engine capable of getting
| you hundreds of miles at that speed and altitude, much
| less the sensors and guidance system.
| stavros wrote:
| Gliders though.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > ICBMs have longer range, but how often do you need to
| strike targets more than 1000km past the front line?
|
| Don't you need to also consider the vast expense countries
| (okay, mostly just the United States) spend to essentially
| extend their "front line" well beyond their own borders?
| rainsil wrote:
| Well the first year of the Iraq War cost the US $54
| billion, according to congress's budget[0]. This doesn't
| include the total cost of the supporting infrastructure
| need to be able to deploy troops in Iraq quickly, but we
| can estimate that using the increase in defence budget
| from 2002-3, or $94 billion ($132B in 2020)[1].
|
| According to Wikipedia, Minuteman III ICBMs have a 2020
| unit cost of $20 million[2], so for the cost of an Iraq
| invasion, the US could have fired about 6600 missiles.
| Considering the invasion toppled the Iraqi government,
| it's pretty unlikely that firing 6600 missiles with
| conventional payloads would have been anywhere near as
| effective.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_
| Iraq_War...
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the
| _United_...
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-30_Minuteman#Count
| erforce
| tshaddox wrote:
| The comparison we're making is whether _precision
| attacks_ , presumably on roughly building-sized targets,
| would be cheaper to do from long range via ICBMs (with
| conventional warheads), or via much cheaper but shorter-
| range missiles. My guess is that _neither_ ICBMs nor
| shorter-range missiles could have accomplished what the
| U.S. military accomplished in Iraq. Presumably missiles
| alone were responsible for a small portion of that $54
| billion.
| nradov wrote:
| Shorter range ballistic missiles have been heavily used in
| multiple conflicts around the world for many years. The US
| military has been researching the possibility of using
| conventionally armed long range ballistic missiles to fulfill
| the prompt global strike mission. Potential target countries
| have no anti-nuke defenses. But there is a risk that Russia
| or China could misinterpret a launch as aimed at them.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| in WW2, Germany used V2 missiles for indiscriminate bombing
| of cities (primarily London). I can imagine it would look
| like that, but worse - and having gone to a few museums that
| showed Blitzkrieg London, that was bad enough as it is.
| dekhn wrote:
| blitzkrieg is something else. You're referring to the
| London Blitz. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blitz was a
| bombing campaign (airplanes fly over and drop bombs on
| cities, a very WWII thing to do). V-1 and V-2 sort of came
| "after" when rocket and guidance tech developed enough that
| it was practical to target cities using missles from
| hundreds of miles away (northern france, I think).
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Yes you're right, I meant the blitz, and regular bombing
| did indeed come first. It's been quite a while since I
| learned about ww2 history!
| the_af wrote:
| Agreed about the nastiness of V2 attacks.
|
| However, the existence of nuclear weapons _today_ doesn 't
| seem to have prevented indiscriminate bombing (using
| whatever weapons: dumb bombs, unguided rockets, cruise
| missiles) of targets (including cities) in several
| countries in recent years.
| chasd00 wrote:
| i would imagine delivering a conventional warhead with an
| ICBM has a very high risk of being mistaken for a nuclear
| armed ICBM. Also, they're expensive. Putting a JDAM package
| on an old iron bomb turning it into the most advanced
| precision guided munition is very cost effective.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Direct_Attack_Munition
| importantbrian wrote:
| To tie this in with current events this is exactly what makes
| the no-fly zone idea in Ukraine so dangerous. All of the
| things you have to do to establish a no-fly zone and take
| away the enemy's ability to fire into and effect your no-fly
| zone look the same as a prelude to an invasion or nuclear
| first strike. This is made worse by the fact that many of the
| weapons systems you would be using are dual use. Meaning they
| were designed to deliver conventional or nuclear weapons.
| It's a massive gamble that the actions won't be
| misinterpreted or used to justify moving up the escalation
| ladder.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Chemical and biological weapons are very useful in warfare as a
| way to demonize one combatant. False or doubtful claims of
| chemical weapons deployments have an effect on the response of
| the public and international organizations that is entirely out
| of scale with the damage that could be inflicted.
| danuker wrote:
| Relevant if you want real life cases of military
| impersonation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag
| groby_b wrote:
| In general, a wikipedia link with no additional comment
| does little to advance a discussion in any direction.
|
| It might be relevant, but it's an extremely low-value
| comment. A good chunk of the people reading the comment
| (and caring about it) will already know it's describing
| false-flag operations.
|
| A good way to think about good HN comments is "is there a
| specific point I'm trying to make". Anything that doesn't
| try to articulate a point is likely to be downvoted.
| danuker wrote:
| Thank you.
| bsedlm wrote:
| that we don't see it doesn't mean it is not happening.
| alpineidyll3 wrote:
| Hype over crap like this grinds my gears. Organophosphines like
| VX are ALL toxic. There's about a zillion such toxic molecules
| all containing the same functional group. This study does not
| demonstrate that this tool is better generator of toxic molecules
| than anything that includes the basic rules of valence and
| rudimentary understanding of shape similarity.
|
| When thinking about whether ML does something novel, we must
| always compare with some simple alternative. I would be impressed
| if it'd predicted something like Palytoxin, a highly specific
| molecule with extraordinary toxic activity. There's no way the
| tools of this paper would though.
|
| -- director of ML at a drug company.
| ck2 wrote:
| Why make a chemical weapon when you can just tweak a virus which
| self-replicates?
|
| BA.2 is even more infectious than BA.1 which is saying something,
| imagine an engineered BA.3 with even more spread and then make it
| as even more deadly. You might even be able to target it to one
| race or region if there is a gene specific to that area.
|
| Always hoped the future would be Star-Trek-like but it seems all
| it takes is one dictator or terrorist to end the world, slowly at
| first but then it would double every other day and impossible to
| stop.
| danuker wrote:
| If you make it too deadly, maybe it doesn't spread as far
| (because the hosts die). Make it just the right amount of
| deadly!
| sjdegraeve wrote:
| .
| [deleted]
| ______-_-______ wrote:
| You might be looking for this thread
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30699673
| jleyank wrote:
| Chemical weapons above a certain level, bio weapons and nucs are
| all seen as weapons of mass destruction and are not really that
| useful tactically. Introducing strategic-destabilizing elements
| to a conflict greatly increases its unpredictability and probably
| is a health risk for the leaders involved.
| verisimi wrote:
| Wow - I picked up on this earlier today, and even quoted the same
| as in this article. I was amazed that the scientists had not
| considered that AI could be/is being used for harm. (Was
| downvoted for this, but whatevs.)
|
| It struck me as incredibly naive, but then - what would someone
| else do in their situation? Most of us work in silos without
| awareness of how our work is used, and I suspect we are often
| causing (unintentional) harm to others whether we are scientists,
| programmers, in finance, in health, in government, etc. If we
| realise our predicament, there isn't an moral authority to make
| things right. There is only the legislation that was been written
| by lobbyists paid by the corporations we work for.
|
| Putting the article in broader context, perhaps it is about the
| creation of a moral framework for AI intended to pacify our
| disgust at the system we find. I expect that we will be expected
| to look away as AI "ethics" committees justify the unjustifiable,
| but call it ethical. As whatever-it-is is found to be ethical
| after all by ethical authorities, most of us we will wave this
| through and consider that we have acted judiciously. IMO.
| teekert wrote:
| Interesting exercise, perhaps the harmful molecule generating AI
| still generates helpful molecules because molecules harmful at a
| certain dose may sometimes be very beneficial in a (much) lower
| dose. And the other way around of course.
|
| Perhaps we should simply have one "biologically active molecule"
| generating network. The dose will ultimately determine the
| toxicity.
| slivanes wrote:
| I couldn't help but think of homeopathy with the above
| sentence.
| teekert wrote:
| Some snake venoms will stop your heart... but at a lower dose
| they will simply ease the heart and lower your blood
| pressure. For some examples: [0]
|
| [0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6832721/
| l33t2328 wrote:
| > And the other way around of course.
|
| Whaaat? Are you saying there exist molecules which are very
| harmful in a (much) lower dose, but are beneficial at a higher
| dose?
|
| Do you have any examples?
| teekert wrote:
| So, as I said my remark didn't come out right, but, some
| molecules may be considered harmful at low dose and harmless
| at high dose if they stabilize a deteriorating conduction at
| or over some threshold concentration. Yeah I know it's a
| fetch but you got me thinking... It's not that clear cut.
|
| I mean the urine of someone on chemotherapy is pretty toxic,
| still we consider the molecules beneficial to the patient
| overall (the patient-tumor system if you will, not the
| patient by themselves).
| teekert wrote:
| I am saying that the network that comes up with "good"
| molecules will produce molecules that are very harmful as
| well, presumably at higher doses.
|
| I mean take some beta blockers (helpful molecules) at 100x
| normale dose: pretty harmful.
|
| Edit: Yeah my original comment didn't come out right, I
| agree.
| empiricus wrote:
| Does this fall into the category of research "try not to make
| public"? Or is this category only wishful thinking on my part.
| busyant wrote:
| I'm sure I'm not the first person to consider this, but ...
|
| RNA molecules can often be "evolved" in vitro to bind/inhibit
| target molecules with high specificity (e.g.,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systematic_evolution_of_ligand...)
|
| I imagine it would not be difficult to create RNAs that inhibit
| some essential human enzyme and then use the RNAs for targeted
| assassination.
|
| I mean, if you're doing an autopsy, you might run standard drug
| tests for poisons, but who's gonna screen for a highly specific
| RNA?
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Have you seen the latest Bond movie?
| busyant wrote:
| No. Is that part of the plot?
|
| edit: just read the wiki for the latest Bond movie.
| Apparently, there is nothing new under the Sun.
|
| Thank you.
| Computeiful wrote:
| [deleted]
| cryptonector wrote:
| The use of nuclear weapons would be... obvious: if an explosion
| in the 10Ktn or bigger happens, it's a nuclear weapon. There
| aren't enough nuclear powers to make the use of nuclear weapons
| plausibly deniable.
|
| The use of chemical weapons might not be as obvious if they are
| slow acting. And the production of chemical weapons is much
| easier than that of nuclear weapons. Though, the dispersion of
| chemical weapons is non-trivial.
|
| The use of biological weapons need not be obvious at all -- "it's
| a naturally-evolved pathogen, this happens!". The development and
| production of biological weapons is much easier than that of
| nuclear weapons. Human and animal bodies can be made to help
| spread biological weapons, so their dispersion can be trivial.
| The only thing that a bioweapons user might need ahead of time is
| treatment / vaccines, unless the bioweapon is weak and the real
| weapon is psychological.
|
| Sobering thoughts.
| tgtweak wrote:
| "Now, keep in mind that we can't deliberately design our way to
| drugs so easily, so we won't be able to design horrible compounds
| in one shot, either. "
|
| I would discount this, heavily and concerningly, as a false sense
| of security. The reality is that prohibitive factors in creating
| new drugs from compounds discovered similarly (by AI or other
| automated process) is almost entirely due to testing safety
| procedures and regulations... If the bad actors are trying to
| find the most lethal compound with no such oversight - and
| chances are very high that they aren't bound by any such
| regulation if they're state-level labs operating under impunity -
| there is nothing but the synthesis that would make the
| formulation and testing of these as impractical as the author
| claims. Take away the years-long, heavily scrutinized and
| regulated multi-stage billion-dollar path to drug approvals and
| you'll find that barrier is not so high.
|
| I would like to think this data could be helpful to any
| organizations looking to proactively develop detectors or
| antidotes for such compounds - especially if the threat was
| previously unknown to them.
|
| Let's say an entirely novel class of toxin was found in a cluster
| of these predictions that has no existing references in private
| or public records - it could be that another organization has
| discovered and synthesized something similar through one of many
| other paths.
|
| Many lines are drawn between this type of approach and that of
| whitehat hackers. You must necessarily create the vulnerability
| to mitigate it. It feels like "white hat" biolabs claiming the
| same are operating on the same conundrum and that the difference
| between "studying for the sake of mitigating" and "creating a
| weapon" are fundamentally indistinguishable without an absolute
| knowledge of intent - such is impossible from the outside.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > The reality is that prohibitive factors in creating new drugs
| from compounds discovered similarly (by AI or other automated
| process) is almost entirely due to testing safety procedures
| and regulations
|
| Most drug candidates fail because _they don 't work_, not
| because of any regulatory procedure. About 50% of drug
| candidates that enter Phase III trials--the final clinical
| trial before approval--fail, and that's almost always because
| they failed to meet clinical endpoints (i.e., they don't do
| what they're supposed to do), and not because they're not safe
| (toxicity is Phase I trials).
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| That "not working" part has some nuance to it as well. How
| well do we predict ADME? Is there binding with some off
| target protein that makes it terrible? Maybe it just doesn't
| bind to the desired target at all.
|
| Toxins don't have those constraints, its not even about
| regulation. Making something that's safe is way harder than
| making something that is not safe, purely because of the
| complexity involved in making the thing safe.
| taurusnoises wrote:
| Anyone wanna ELI5? It's useful for bother explainer and receiver.
| ;)
| xondono wrote:
| They had an AI that looked for safe drugs by minimizing an
| estimate of lethality, changed it to 'maximize' and the
| computer spewed known nerve gas agents.
| danuker wrote:
| Before, computers were used to make less poisonous chemicals.
|
| Now, the people asking computers to do that realized they can
| ask the computers to make more poisonous chemicals.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| Software is able to simulate the effect of chemical compounds /
| molecules on the human body. This can be used to find drugs
| that do specific things, or stronger versions of existing
| drugs. For example, you could look for very strong but very
| short acting sleeping pills that immediately make you fall
| asleep, but cause zero grogginess the next day. Or you could
| optimize antibiotics to have a high half life, so you only have
| to take them once, instead of 3 times a day for a week, which
| you can easily forget.
|
| Now think about nerve gas. We have discovered lots of different
| nerve gas agents and know pretty well how much of each type you
| need to kill a human. Said software can be used to find new
| versions of nerve gas that kill with even lesser
| concentrations. You could also optimize for other variables:
| Nerve gas that remains on surfaces and doesn't decay by itself
| for example.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| We already (sort of) do this. AI/ML is probably used for
| simulating nuclear explosions, and is [arguably] even more useful
| and accurate than actually setting off a bomb, and measuring it.
|
| It makes sense that it could be weaponized. When Skynet becomes
| self-aware, it would probably just design a chemical that kills
| us all, and would aerosol that into the atmosphere. No need for
| terminators, just big pesticide cans.
| wanda wrote:
| I'm quite sure we have already invented several chemicals that
| match your description -- like sarin gas, invented in 1938 by
| someone who, indeed, wanted to create a decent pesticide. A
| lethal dose of sarin gas is something like 28-35m3/min over 2
| minutes exposure, according to wikipedia. [0]
|
| Hitler was well aware of its creation, and I believe quite a
| lot of the stuff was produced for the purpose of warfare. There
| were several in the Nazi military who wanted to use it, but
| Hitler declined.
|
| That seems rather odd, given his indifference to exterminating
| people with gas on an industrial scale beyond the theater of
| war. It has been suggested that Hitler was probably aware that
| to use sarin gas would be to invite the allies to do so in
| response, which would result in a dramatic loss of life on the
| German side due to the sheer lethality of such chemical
| weapons. [1]
|
| Perhaps he thought it easier to stick to conventional warfare,
| in which the pace is more manageable than with WMDs, where you
| would start going down the road of mutually assured destruction
| but without the strategic framework in place to prevent anyone
| from actually wiping out a population before realising how bad
| an idea it would be.
|
| And I think this reluctance to change the game, this seemingly
| deliberate moderation, perhaps best demonstrates the true
| difference between the machine and human in warfare.
|
| It is not a difference in innovation -- we have always been
| very good at inventing highly optimised ways to end life.
|
| The difference is that a machine intelligence will not
| hesitate. It will not ask for confirmation, pause or break a
| sweat. It will pull the trigger first, it will point the bombs
| at anything that is an adversary and anything that could
| theoretically be _or become_ an adversary, and it will not
| miss. And it will not have to face ethical criticism and
| historical condemnation afterwards. [2]
|
| [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin
|
| [1]:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/04/11...
|
| [2]: Assuming this is a Skynet-like machine intelligence, which
| doesn't really have the capacity for remorse or negotiation and
| seems primarily, indeed solely occupied with the task of ending
| human life.
|
| Obviously, a true AI that is essentially a conscious mind
| equivalent to our own minds, may experience the same hesitancy
| that most of us would, were our fingers to be over the buzzer.
|
| Unless the AI independently arrives at a different set of
| values to us, like the Borg or something.
| VLM wrote:
| Its the classic logistics problem. Scaling ratio of weight vs
| volume or something like that. Just like nukes, if you heat
| an enemy soldier to 100M degrees he isn't any more dead than
| heating him to 10M degrees and volumes expand very slowly
| with mass so making bigger and bigger bombs is a fools-
| errand.
|
| Same problem with chem weapons. You hit a tank brigade with
| 1000x lethal dose they aren't any deader than if you hit them
| with 1x dose. But if the bomb misses which is likely, all
| you've done is REALLY piss them off. Nerve gas in an empty
| wheat field just kills a bunch of corn bugs but it really
| pisses people off. If you target their tank brigade and miss,
| they'll target your home town, as we did to them with
| conventional bomb even without having been nerve gassed to
| start with. If you target their home town then the brigade
| you missed is going to be unhurt and really angry. Its the
| kind of weapon thats pretty useless unless you have infinite
| supply and infinite logistics. Like cold war USA or cold war
| Russia.
|
| The allies had better logistics than the Germans so they knew
| the second time around in WWII that trying to go chem is just
| going to end up in the German's getting more chem'd than the
| allies.
|
| Another issue is WWI and previous its all about siege warfare
| and breaking sieges where WMD is awesome and useful, whereas
| WWII and newer is all about maneuver warfare and blitzkrieg
| and all of Germany's plans and all of their early success
| were based on the idea that anything in range of shells or
| aircraft today is going to be occupied rear supply area next
| week at the latest, so destroying it would be pretty dumb
| because we need that area to be the rear of the battle space
| next week. For a modern comparison the USA could have nuked
| the green zone in Iraq and there's absolutely nothing anyone
| could have done about it, but 'we' knew we'd be occupying the
| green zone and needing something like the green zone, and the
| green zone is sitting there for the taking, so in an
| incredibly short term perspective it would have saved troops
| and saved time and saved effort to just nuke it instead of
| taking it the old fashioned way, but in medium and longer
| term it would be counterproductive to war efforts to use WMDs
| against the green zone, so we didn't.
| iosono88 wrote:
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Hitler probably also experienced gas (not sure his generals
| did, though). People forget that he was actually a decorated
| NCO, from WWI (which had a lot to do with his terrible
| attitude, later in life).
|
| It was fairly worthless, militarily. High risk, big mess, no
| real tactical advantage, and it just pissed everyone off. Its
| only real efficacy would have been for bombing civilian
| targets, and I don't think they had the delivery mechanisms.
| brimble wrote:
| Chemical weapons are expensive. Consider the logistics and
| training required to effectively deploy them, plus any
| specialized equipment. Meanwhile, they're only useful as long
| as your opponent doesn't know you're planning to use chemical
| weapons, since countermeasures are relatively cheap and every
| major military knew what to do about them by the time WWII
| broke out. As soon as your enemy knows to beware chemical
| attacks, all you're doing is annoying them while making it
| hard for your own troops to advance (they have to put on
| chemical suits/masks themselves, or else wait for the gas to
| disperse). Very hard to use effectively in maneuver warfare.
| They didn't even prove very effective in WWI, which was much
| closer to an ideal environment for their use.
| nradov wrote:
| I don't think AI/ML is really used for simulating nuclear
| explosions. There's not much point, better techniques exist.
| hackernewds wrote:
| What such better techniques exist?
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Knowledge of actual physics. Explosions can "easily" be
| simulated from first principles. Easily in scare quotes
| because it takes quite a bit of computing power. This was
| actually my wife's first job back in 2003, simulating
| missile strikes for the Naval Research Lab. A thorough
| simulation took a few days back then, but given that was
| almost 20 years ago, I'm sure it's a lot faster now.
|
| In contrast, think of what you'd need to do this via
| machine learning. You'd need to gather data from actual
| missile strikes first and learn approximation functions
| from that. While it's certainly doable, this is inherently
| less accurate, thanks to both approximation error and
| measurement error. It's not like pixels -> cat where the
| true function isn't known.
| Barrera wrote:
| If this were really a practical concern, machine learning would
| be designing drugs that fly through the clinic today. They aren't
| and so this paper, though click-grabbing, is probably of no
| practical consequence.
|
| One reason is lack of data. Chemical data sets are extremely
| difficult to collect and as such tend to be siloed on creation.
| Synthesis of the target compounds and testing using uniform,
| validated protocols are non-trivial activities. They can only be
| undertaken by deep pockets. Those deep pockets are interested in
| return on investment. So, into the silo it goes. This might not
| always be the case, though.
|
| For now, the paper does raise the question of the goals and
| ethics around machine learning research. But unintended and/or
| malevolent consequences of new discoveries have been a problem
| for a long time. Just ask Shelley.
| philipkglass wrote:
| A successful drug candidate must be useful in the treatment of
| human medical problems and not have harmful side effects that
| outweigh its benefits. A weaponized poison may have any number
| of harmful effects without diminishing its utility. A compound
| with really indiscriminate biochemical effects, like
| fluoroethyl fluoroacetate, makes a potent poison without any
| specific tuning for humans. It's much easier to discover
| compounds that genuinely harm people than those that genuinely
| help them.
| MayeulC wrote:
| Providing chemical plants with models to estimate lethality of
| orders could be a great use case for this work.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| This is essentially what the pesticide and herbicide industries
| have been doing since their inception, i.e. designing molecules
| that efficiently kill animals, insects and plants. It seemed like
| a miracle at first, but the long-term consequences of things like
| persistent chlorinated aromatics and their derivatives (Agent
| Orange and dioxin for example) eventually appeared in human
| populations.
|
| The development of the toxic nerve agents (organo-phosphate
| compouds mostly) in particular was a side effect of research into
| insect toxins. The nerve agents were discovered in this manner,
| they worked too well. Nevertheless, these pesticides were deemed
| safer than the organochlorines because they degraded fairly
| rapidly after application (although they are implicated in nerve
| damage related diseases like Parkinson's in agricultural areas).
|
| Insect infestations are indeed a big issue in agriculture and can
| wipe out entire crops if not dealt with, but there are plenty of
| options that don't require applications of highly toxic or
| persistent chemicals.
|
| Otherwise, this is just another of the many issues modern
| technology has created. Smallpox is another one - in the late
| 1990s, there was a great debate over whether to destroy the last
| smallpox samples - and then in the mid 2000's, someone
| demonstrated you could recreate smallpox by ordering the
| appropriate DNA sequences online and assembling them in a host
| cell. Then there's the past ten years of CRISPR and gain-of-
| function research with pathogenic viruses, a very contentious
| topic indeed, and still unresolved.
| cryptofistMonk wrote:
| This is not really that worrying IMO - we already have weaponized
| toxins, viruses, and enough explosives to blow up the entire
| planet. So what if an AI can come up with something a little bit
| worse? It isn't the existence of these things that's stopping us
| all from killing each other.
| hengheng wrote:
| So, their tool will draw molecules that are good at doing harm,
| and that is it? No word on stabilization (which makes it safe to
| handle), synthesis, purification and such. I'd wager that most of
| these substances have at some point been on somebody's
| blackboard, but deemed impractical or infeasible, and then not
| pursued, and that's why we don't know them by name today.
|
| Still a scary lesson though.
| adultSwim wrote:
| I'm most worried about state actors.
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