Uncle Sam Wants Your Brain

Drugs that make soldiers want to fight. Robots linked directly to their controllers' brains. Lie-detecting scans administered to terrorist suspects as they cross U.S. borders.

These are just a few of the military uses imagined for cognitive science -- and if it's not yet certain whether the technologies will work, the military is certainly taking them very seriously.

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One potential use involves making soldiers want to fight. Conversely, "How can we disrupt the enemy’s motivation to fight? [...] How can we make people trust us more? What if we could help the brain to remove fear or pain? Is there a way to make the enemy obey our commands?"

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"I think most reasonable people, if they imagine a world in which all sides have figured out how to control brains, they'd rather not go there," he said. "Most rational human beings would believe that if we could have a world where nobody does military neuroscience, we'll all be better off. But for some people in the Pentagon, it's too delicious to ignore."

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Gary McKinnon: Hacking Away At Truth and the Failings of the Disclosure Community?

McKinnon not only found the odd gem of significant exopolitical data, he also found that the US’s military and intelligence electronic networks were, to understate it, vastly insecure.

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It’s unfortunate that a UK citizen with [whatever your moral views on his activities] humanitarian intent should now be facing a 60 year jail term when possibly more threatening actors are still free behind their respective computer screens.

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It’s worth remembering that McKinnon spent numerous hours online trawling these networks and finding mostly regular material – it was his obsessive nature on the embargoed UFO issue that pushed him onwards. By the time of his arrest, Gary had found two items that have been endlessly debated in the field ever since. First was a list of ‘non-terrestrial officers’ and second was a spreadsheet detailing ‘fleet-to-fleet transfers’.

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US wants sci-fi killer robots for terror fight

KILLER robots which can change their shape to squeeze under doors and through cracks in walls to track their prey are moving from the realms of science fiction to the front line in the fight against terrorism.

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America's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) and the Army Research Office has awarded the contract to iRobot, which has developed other robots for the military.

They want scientists to come up with a design for a tiny robot able to move under its own power and change shape so it can get through gaps less than half an inch wide.

Think of where this technology will lead us. Not a pretty sight.

Ah. The world we live in.

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Raytheon's Pain Ray: Coming to a Protest Near You?

Coming soon, from the folks who brought you the microwave -- Raytheon! After more than ten years in the making and at a cost of over 40 million dollars, 'Silent Guardian', or Active Denial System, (ADS, in it's formal mood), is almost ready for public release!

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Transmitted at the speed of light over a 700 yard distance, the Pain Ray is a millimeter-wave beam that penetrates 1/64th of an inch beneath the skin, causing the water molecules there to bubble, producing an intense burning sensation, said to feel like being burnt by molten lava or a hot iron. Its delivery system attached to a Humvee and aimed right, the Pain Ray makes people run away -- fast.

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Testing, conducted on human volunteers and animals by the Air Force Research Laboratory's Human Effectiveness Directorate continues, and although it has not been proved that exposure to the ray can cause cancer, it has been ascertained that the corneas of Rhesus monkeys can be damaged.

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"But what happens if the people faced with such a weapon can't just run away? What happens if they're trapped in a crowd, and the crowd can't move? How much pain must that crowd endure? How long can any member of the crowd be exposed to that weapon before his or her skin -- or their eyes -- simply cook off?

What happens if the devices are used deliberately in a manner designed to cause maximum harm -- say, by training the device on prisoners trapped in prison cells until they literally go mad with pain?

What happens if the system operator turns up the power? A little bit works well, why not try a lot?

What happens if the scientists didn't test the devices thoroughly, and they turn out to render anyone touched by them blind, or impotent, or sterile?"

Hmmm. If this is used once against a civilian crowd in America, then it's doubtful crowds would ever gather again for any reason, particularly for political reasons.

Hmmmm. Maybe that's the point.

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Weather warfare

Rarely acknowledged in the debate on global climate change, the world’s weather can now be modified as part of a new generation of sophisticated electromagnetic weapons. Both the US and Russia have developed capabilities to manipulate the climate for military use.

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Weather-modification, according to the US Air Force document AF 2025 Final Report, ‘offers the war fighter a wide range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary’, capabilities, it says, extend to the triggering of floods, hurricanes, droughts and earthquakes: ‘Weather modification will become a part of domestic and international security and could be done unilaterally… It could have offensive and defensive applications and even be used for deterrence purposes. The ability to generate precipitation, fog and storms on earth or to modify space weather… and the production of artificial weather all are a part of an integrated set of [military] technologies.’

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Air Force Aims for 'Full Control' of 'Any and All' Computers

The Air Force wants a suite of hacker tools, to give it "access" to -- and "full control" of -- any kind of computer there is. And once the info warriors are in, the Air Force wants them to keep tabs on their "adversaries' information infrastructure completely undetected."

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In Next-Gen Bullets and Bombs, Even the Casing Explodes

In development for more than 30 years, the research is beginning to bear fruit, and may soon spawn more powerful bombs, warheads that tear apart stone and concrete, mines that can be set to stun or kill, and grenades that can swat rockets or mortar rounds out of the sky like flies.

It's the thing humans are best at.

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$160 Billion Robotic Army Network Passes First Big Test. Kinda.

The theory behind the FCS is that dispersed, intelligent robotic systems plugged into a universal communications network can help small numbers of U.S. troops riding in new vehicles to control huge swaths of terrain. Any ship, airplane or tank fitted with the FCS network devices will be able to see everything the others see.

The SkyNet-like network and dynamic coordination “is the most important thing,” Brigadier General James Terry says.

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How Your Tax Dollars Are Spent

The biggest chunk of your money -- 42.2 cents of every income-tax dollar -- goes to fund the military. Over half of it, or 28.7 cents, goes to pay for the current war and military, 10 cents goes to interest payments on past and present military debt and 3.5 cents is allocated for Veterans' benefits.

Pathetic.

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US to skip cluster bomb meeting

The United States will skip a meeting in Dublin next month that aims to ban cluster bombs, officials said Friday.

Instead, Washington will focus on separate United Nations talks in Geneva that will restrict — but not ban — the use of the weapon, the head of the U.S. delegation said.

How sad.

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New anti-terror weapon: Hand-held lie detector

The Defense Department says the portable device isn't perfect, but is accurate enough to save American lives by screening local police officers, interpreters and allied forces for access to U.S. military bases, and by helping narrow the list of suspects after a roadside bombing. The device has already been tried in Iraq and is expected to be deployed there as well. “We're not promising perfection — we've been very careful in that,” said Donald Krapohl, special assistant to the director at the Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment, the midwife for the new device. “What we are promising is that, if it's properly used, it will improve over what they are currently doing.”

Make note of the phrase "if it's properly used".

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ACLU: Military skirting law to spy

The military is using the FBI to skirt legal restrictions on domestic surveillance to obtain private records of Americans' Internet service providers, financial institutions and telephone companies, the ACLU said Tuesday.

Read more, but know the military knows you're reading more.

Pentagon: Colleges must hand over names

Under rules that will take effect April 28, defense officials said they want the exact same access to student directories that is provided to all other prospective employers.

Students can opt out of having their information turned over to the military only if they opt out of having their information provided to all other recruiters, but schools cannot have policies that exclude only the military, defense officials said in a March 28 notice of the new policy in the Federal Register.

What crap.

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Rapists in the ranks

The stories are shocking in their simplicity and brutality: A female
military recruit is pinned down at knifepoint and raped repeatedly in
her own barracks. Her attackers hid their faces but she identified them
by their uniforms; they were her fellow soldiers. During a routine
gynecological exam, a female soldier is attacked and raped by her
military physician. Yet another young soldier, still adapting to life
in a war zone, is raped by her commanding officer. Afraid for her
standing in her unit, she feels she has nowhere to turn.

These
are true stories, and, sadly, not isolated incidents. Women serving in
the U.S. military are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than
killed by enemy fire in Iraq.

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Air Force Blocks Access to Many Blogs

The Air Force is tightening restrictions on which blogs its troops can read, cutting off access to just about any independent site with the word "blog" in its web address. It's the latest move in a larger struggle within the military over the value -- and hazards -- of the sites. At least one senior Air Force official calls the squeeze so "utterly stupid, it makes me want to scream."

Read more, unless of course you're in the Air Force.

Automated killer robots 'threat to humanity'

But up to now, a human hand has always been required to push the button or pull the trigger.

It we are not careful, he said, that could change.

Military leaders "are quite clear that they
want autonomous robots as soon as possible, because they are more
cost-effective and give a risk-free war," he said.

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But even more worrisome, he continued,
is the subtle progression from the semi-autonomous military robots
deployed today to fully independent killing machines.

"I have
worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot
making decisions about human termination terrifies me," Sharkey said.

It's just a matter of time.

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Experts fear debris isn't the only fallout from satellite shoot-down

"I don't see how other nations don't see this as an anti-satellite test," said Theresa Hitchens, the director of the Washington D.C.-based Center for Defense Information, a centrist national security policy institute. "They'll see it as the weaponization of space."

China, which last year came under harsh U.S. criticism for using a missile to destroy an aged weather satellite hundreds of miles in space, was the first to react.

Do as we say, not as we do!

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U.S. Troops Asked If They Would Shoot American Citizens

Scott writes that his company hired a soldier who had recently returned from Iraq, who told him that U.S. troops were being quizzed on whether or not they would be prepared to shoot their own friends and family members during a national state of emergency in America.

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Navy Tests Incredible Sci-Fi Weapon

The U.S. Navy yesterday test fired an incredibly powerful new big gun designed to replace conventional weaponry aboard ships. Sci-fi fans will recognize its awesome power and futuristic technology.

The big gun uses electromagnetic energy instead of explosive chemical propellants to fire a projectile farther and faster. The railgun, as it is called, will ultimately fire a projectile more than 230 miles (370 kilometers) with a muzzle velocity seven times the speed of sound (Mach 7) and a velocity of Mach 5 at impact.

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Anti-war group says war crimes are "encouraged"

Iraq war veteran Jon Turner said it was almost expected of him to pull the trigger on people who didn't need to die. So he did.

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"The killing of innocent civilians is policy," veteran Mike Blake said. "It's unit policy and it's Army policy. It's not official policy, but it's what's happens on the ground everyday. It's what unit commanders individually encourage."

And we let them get away with this shit.

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