Lawmakers propose banning AI from singlehandedly launching nuclear weapons

29 Apr 23 https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/28/23702992/ai-nuclear-weapon-launch-ban-bill-markey-lieu-beyer-buck

Yes, this is already banned, but there are logical reasons to affirm the policy.

American Department of Defense policy already bans artificial intelligence from autonomously launching nuclear weapons. But amid rising fears of AI spurred by a plethora of potential threats, a bipartisan group of lawmakers has decided to make extra-double-sure it can’t.

As announced earlier this week, Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) and Representatives Ted Lieu (D-CA), Don Beyer (D-VA), and Ken Buck (R-CO) have introduced the Block Nuclear Launch by Autonomous AI Act, which would “prohibit the use of Federal funds to launch a nuclear weapon using an autonomous weapons system that is not subject to meaningful human control.” The act would codify existing Pentagon rules for nuclear weapons, which, as of 2022, read thusly:

“In all cases, the United States will maintain a human ‘in the loop’ for all actions critical to informing and executing decisions by the President to initiate and terminate nuclear weapon employment.”

The bill, by the same token, says that no autonomous system without meaningful human oversight can launch a nuclear weapon or “select or engage targets” with the intention of launching one. “Any decision to launch a nuclear weapon should not be made by artificial intelligence,” the text reads.

If this is already forbidden, why introduce the bill? Its sponsors note that a 2021 National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence report recommended affirming a ban on autonomous nuclear weapons launches, not only to prevent it from happening inside the US government but to spur similar commitments from China and Russia.

Publicizing the bill calls attention to the potential dangers of current-generation autonomous artificial intelligence systems, a going concern in Congress and the tech world alike. And as indicated by the press release, it offers a chance to highlight the sponsors’ other nuclear non-proliferation efforts — like a recent bill restricting the president’s power to unilaterally declare nuclear war. I’ll let you make the obvious War Games joke yourself.

April 29, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US nuclear weapons modernization plan spurs cost questions

Susan Montoya Bryan, Independent. 27 April 23

The U.S. agency that oversees development and maintenance of the nation’s nuclear arsenal is moving ahead with plans to modernize production of key components for the weapons, but some watchdog groups and members of Congress are concerned about persistent delays and cost overruns.

The National Nuclear Security Administration released its annual plan on Monday, outlining the multibillion-dollar effort to manufacture plutonium pits, the spherical cores that trigger the explosion in thermonuclear weapons, at national laboratories in New Mexico and South Carolina.

The Savannah River Site in South Carolina faces a 2030 deadline to make 50 pits per year. Officials already have acknowledged they won’t meet that timeline, and this year’s report no longer includes a target date for Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico, to meet its goal of 30 pits per year.

Last year’s report had pegged 2026 as the year when manufacturing would be up and running at Los Alamos, which played a key role in the Manhattan Project during World War II and was the birthplace of the atomic bomb……………..

The Biden administration is requesting $18.8 billion for weapons activities, a 10% increase over spending for the last fiscal year. Modernization of production accounts for $5.6 billion of the request.

Members of congressional subcommittees blasted Hruby and top defense officials during hearings in recent weeks about the delays and the increasing price tag. Hruby acknowledged that it would be another year before her agency would have a full cost estimate.

The NNSA fell short when it came to having a comprehensive schedule for the project and ran the risk of delays and increasing budgets because its plans for reestablishing plutonium pit production didn’t follow best practices, according to a January Government Accountability Office report.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts suggested during a hearing this month that the NNSA was making up its plan as it goes along and that the timeline would be extended even further.

“It is not unreasonable for Congress to ask you to tell us how long a project is going to take and how much it’s going to cost in exchange for our forking over billions of dollars. And I suggest that’s what NNSA be required to do before we give them another penny,” Warren told Hruby………   https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/national-nuclear-security-administration-ap-congress-albuquerque-south-carolina-b2327627.html

April 27, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The US Has No Plans to Give Up Nuclear Weapons. The Public Needs to Change That.

While the U.S. nuclear enterprise has widespread support by both Democrat and Republican members of Congress, one of the boldest shows of opposition to nuclear weapons was voiced by Michigan congresswoman Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who has expressed her support for the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Additional support for the prohibition of TPNW (also called the “ban treaty”) came from Massachusetts Rep. James McGovern and Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer, who introduced a resolution in 2019 calling for “the American people to work towards reducing and ultimately eliminating nuclear weapons.” Furthermore, in 2022, more than 200 U.S. mayors collectively called for the adoption of a timebound plan for the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

A first step toward anti-nuclear advocacy is becoming aware of the current sprawling state of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

By Jon Letman , TRUTHOUT April 24, 2023

hen Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his intention to deploy short-range nuclear missiles to Belarus in March, he pointed to U.S. nuclear weapons housed in five NATO nations as justification. Putin said the construction of a “special repository” for an Iskander missile complex in Belarus would not violate obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

But by accepting the deployment of Russian nuclear weapons, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko would be reversing more than three decades free of nuclear weapons after it pledged to abandon them in 1991. Like Ukraine and Kazakhstan, Belarus gave up Soviet nuclear weapons shortly after the USSR broke apart.

In a statement, Daniel Högsta, acting executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) said, “As long as Putin has nuclear weapons, Europe cannot be safe.” He also warned that decades of “nuclear sharing” with NATO nations “helps give Putin cover,” posing a grave risk far beyond Europe.

ICAN has played a central role in advocating for the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which entered into force in 2021. Although 68 countries have ratified the treaty which prohibits all aspects of developing, possessing or threatening to use nuclear weapons, none of the nine nuclear-armed nations — Russia, the United States, China, France, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea — recognizes the treaty.

According to the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project, the U.S. houses an estimated 100 B61 gravity bombs on air bases in five NATO nations (Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey). Usually described as “tactical” or nonstrategic nuclear weapons, the new B61-12, which will replace older versions of the B61, has a selectable yield (energy released in a nuclear explosion) that can be adjusted from 0.3 to 50 kilotons. The atomic bombs which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 and 21 kilotons respectively.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said that describing a nuclear weapon as “tactical” may lead people to wrongly assume that such weapons are necessarily “smaller,” less destructive, and would be confined to a battlefield or limited geographic area.

That, he said, is a dangerous assumption. ……………………………………………………

According to research by the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project, the United States maintains an estimated total inventory of 5,244 nuclear weapons, including reserve warheads and retired warheads awaiting dismantlement. Currently, 3,708 nuclear warheads make up the military stockpile (those weapons which could potentially be used in war).

Within the stockpile, the U.S. has 1,770 deployed nuclear warheads that make up the nuclear triad of air, land and sea-based bombs…………………………………….

Under the Sea

Widely considered to be least vulnerable to attack are long-range submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM). The United States has two Strategic Weapons Facilities, one for the Pacific beside Naval Base Kitsap in Bangor, Washington, 20 miles west of Seattle, and a second facility for the Atlantic at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, Georgia…………………………………………………………………………

The U.S.’s Nuclear Sponge

The third leg of the nuclear triad is its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which are housed in fortified underground silos in five states (Montana, Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming and North Dakota). The ICBM force is made up of aging Minuteman III missiles which are slated to be replaced with a new $96 billion system called Sentinel (formerly called Ground Based Strategic Deterrent).

Plagued by scheduling delays and cost overruns, there is growing public support for phasing out ICBMs. Despite this, the bipartisan congressional ICBM Coalition’s support is all but unshakable. But the idea of creating what has been called a “nuclear sponge” (referring to the idea that ICBM silos would attract enemy missiles and, like a sponge, soak up an incoming attack), raises serious questions about why rural communities only began receiving greater government support for improved communications and transportation infrastructure after they started hosting nuclear weapons. “I think it’s important to interrogate that and ask why the needs of the missiles have so often come before the needs of the people who actually live there,” Korda said.

In addition to the SLBM, ICBMs and bombers, Korda and his colleague Hans M. Kristensen have documented additional nuclear warheads (many awaiting dismantlement) at a storage complex in New Mexico and, Korda noted, California has “very important nuclear weapons infrastructure” which could potentially host a small number of nuclear weapons for design purposes.

Finally, there is the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas, which describes itself as “the nation’s primary assembly, disassembly, retrofit, and life-extension center for nuclear weapons.” The dismantlement of retired nuclear warheads is ongoing but, Korda said, the pace has slowed in recent years……………………………………….

In recent years, arms control treaties such as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the Open Skies Treaty and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (“Iran Nuclear Deal”) have been abandoned by the U.S., Russia, or both. The last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), was extended for five years just two days before it expired in 2021 but in February, Russia announced it was suspending participation, leaving the last U.S.-Russia arms control treaty hanging by a thread.

With the end of inspections, data exchanges, and much-needed communication between Washington and Moscow, as well as Beijing, Kimball worries mistrust can lead to the assumption of worst-case scenarios. He says there is a great need for increased public awareness and engagement on nuclear issues.

While the U.S. nuclear enterprise has widespread support by both Democrat and Republican members of Congress, one of the boldest shows of opposition to nuclear weapons was voiced by Michigan congresswoman Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who has expressed her support for the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Additional support for the prohibition of TPNW (also called the “ban treaty”) came from Massachusetts Rep. James McGovern and Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer, who introduced a resolution in 2019 calling for “the American people to work towards reducing and ultimately eliminating nuclear weapons.” Furthermore, in 2022, more than 200 U.S. mayors collectively called for the adoption of a timebound plan for the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

“This is an existential threat that demands engagement even with our worst adversaries and even with a bona fide war criminal like Vladimir Putin because our survival ultimately depends on it.”

Without dialogue and diplomatic engagement, the result, Kimball warned, could be an unconstrained three-way arms race between Russia, China and the U.S. “If we didn’t have enough problems already,” Kimball said, “it still can get worse.”

The public has a vital role in all this, Kimball said. “Over the long course of the nuclear age, concerned U.S. citizens have stood up and demanded that their leaders take action to reduce the number and the risks posed by nuclear weapons by engaging in arms control and disarmament diplomacy with our adversaries. That effort has to be renewed again.”  https://truthout.org/articles/the-us-has-no-plans-to-give-up-nuclear-weapons-the-public-needs-to-change-that/
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April 26, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

‘It Is Skynet’: Pentagon Envisions Robot Armies in a Decade

Blitzkrieg 2040

Nazi Germany, overran Europe in a very, very short period of time … because they were able to take those technologies and put them together in a doctrine which we now know as Blitzkrieg,” he said.

Milley, and the Pentagon with him, hopes to do the same now by bringing together emergent capabilities like robotics, AI, cyber and space platforms, and precision munitions into a cohesive doctrine of war.

By being the first to integrate these technologies into a new concept, Milley says, the United States can rule the future battlefield.

The Pentagon’s quest for an AI-dominated battlefield is becoming a reality

Epoch Times, By Andrew Thornebrooke, April 20, 2023

WASHINGTON—Robotic killing machines prowl the land, the skies, and the seas. They are fully automated, seeking out and engaging with adversarial robots across every domain of war. Their human handlers are relegated to the rearguard, overseeing the action at a distance while conflicts are fought and won by machines.

Far from science fiction, this is the vision of Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley.

The United States, according to Milley, is in the throes of one of the myriad revolutions in military affairs that have spanned history.

Such revolutions have spanned from the invention of the stirrup to the adoption of the firearm to the deployment of mechanized maneuver warfare and, now, to the mass fielding of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI).

It is a shift in the character of war, Milley believes, greater than any to have come before.

“Today we are in … probably the biggest change in military history,” Milley said during a March 31 discussion with Defense One.

“We’re at a pivotal moment in history from a military standpoint. We’re at what amounts to a fundamental change in the very character of war.”

Robotic Armies in 10 Years

Many would no doubt be more comfortable with the idea of robots battling for the control of Earth if it were in a science-fiction novel or on a movie screen rather than on the list of priorities of the military’s highest-ranking officer.

Milley believes, however, that the world’s most powerful armies will be predominantly robotic within the next decade, and he means for the United States to be the first across that cybernetic Rubicon.

“Over the next ten to fifteen years, you’ll see large portions of advanced countries’ militaries become robotic,” Milley said. “If you add robotics with artificial intelligence and precision munitions and the ability to see at range, you’ve got the mix of a real fundamental change.”

“That’s coming. Those changes, that technology … we are looking at inside of 10 years.”

That means that the United States has “five to seven years to make some fundamental modifications to our military,” Milley says, because the nation’s adversaries are seeking to deploy robotics and AI in the same manner, but with Americans in their sights.

The nation that gets there first, that deploys robotics and AI together in a cohesive way, he says, will dominate the next war.

“I would submit that the country, the nation-state, that takes those technologies and adapts them most effectively and optimizes them for military operations, that country is probably going to have a decisive advantage at the beginning of the next conflict,” Milley said.

The global consequences of such a shift in the character of war are difficult to overstate.

Milley compared the ongoing struggle to form a new way of war to the competition that occurred between the world wars

In that era, Milley says, all the nations of Europe had access to new technologies ranging from mechanized vehicles to radio to chemical weapons. All of them could have developed the unified concept of maneuver warfare that replaced the attrition warfare which had defined World War I.

But only one, he said, first integrated their use into a bona fide new way of war.

“That country, Nazi Germany, overran Europe in a very, very short period of time … because they were able to take those technologies and put them together in a doctrine which we now know as Blitzkrieg,” he said.

Blitzkrieg 2040

Milley, and the Pentagon with him, hopes to do the same now by bringing together emergent capabilities like robotics, AI, cyber and space platforms, and precision munitions into a cohesive doctrine of war.

By being the first to integrate these technologies into a new concept, Milley says, the United States can rule the future battlefield.

To that end, the Pentagon is experimenting with new unmanned aerial, ground, and undersea vehicles, as well as seeking to exploit the pervasiveness of non-military smart technologies from watches to fitness trackers.

Though the effort is just gaining traction, Milley has in fact claimed since 2016 that the U.S. military would field substantial robotic ground forces and AI capabilities by 2030.

Just weeks from now, that idea will begin to truly culminate, when invitations from the Defense Department (DoD) go out to leaders across the defense, tech, and academic spheres for the Pentagon’s first-ever conference on building “trusted AI and autonomy” for future wars.

The Pentagon is on a correlating hiring spree, seeking to pay six figures annually for experts willing and able to develop and integrate technologies including “augmented reality, artificial intelligence, human state monitoring, and autonomous unmanned systems.”

Likewise, the U.S. Army Futures Command, created in 2018, maintains as a critical goal the designing of what it calls “Army 2040.” In other words, the AI-dependent, robotic military of the future.

Though slightly further out than Milley’s assumption of 10 to 15 years, Futures Command deputy commanding general Lt. Gen. Ross Coffman believes that 2040 will mark the United States’ true entry into an age characterized by artificially intelligent killing machines.

…………………….. Everything Spins Out of Control’

Remaking the American military and forming a new, cohesive way of war is a tall order. It is nevertheless one that the Pentagon appears prepared to pay for.

The DoD is requesting a record $1.8 billion in funding for AI projects for the next year alone. That amount will exceed the estimated $1.6 billion in AI investments being made by China’s military.

……………….. John Mills, former director of cybersecurity policy, strategy, and international affairs at the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, believes that this path is rife with the potential for unintended consequences.

“It is Skynet,” Mills told the Epoch Times, referencing the fictional AI that conquers the world in “The Terminator” movie franchise. “It is the realization of a Skynet-like environment.”

“The question is, what could possibly go wrong with this situation? Well, a lot.”

…………… “The integration of AI with autonomous vehicles, and letting them action independently without human decision-making, that’s where everything spins out of control.”

To that end, Mills expressed concern about what a future conflict might look like between the United States and its allies, and China in the Indo-Pacific.

Imagine, he said, an undersea battlespace in which autonomous submarines and other weapons systems littered the seas.

Fielded by Chinese, American, Korean, Australian, Indian, and Japanese forces, the resulting chaos would likely end with autonomous systems engaging in war throughout the region, while manned vessels held back and sought to best launch the next group of robotic war machines. Anything else would risk putting real lives in the way of the automated killers.

“How do you plan for engagement scenarios with autonomous undersea vehicles?” Mills said

“This is going to be absolute chaos in subsurface warfare.”

……………………… There is just one caveat to that ethical, trustworthy, governable, deployment of lethal AI systems: The Pentagon does not have any hard and fast rules to prohibit autonomous systems from killing…………………………………………………………….
more https://www.theepochtimes.com/in-depth-it-is-skynet-pentagon-envisions-robot-armies-in-a-decade_5207504.html?utm_source=China&src_src=China&utm_campaign=uschina-2023-04-20&src_cmp=uschina-2023-04-20&utm_medium=email&est=vibelq5SAFOai0xZ2IdvvJe4uwKWVBE7hfxTKp%2FcR9S0a9BSSEoQCAfiSObFUg%3D%3D

April 24, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment