The Pentagon Is Using Software To Hunt Down Terrorists

Marcus Weisgerber, Defense One: The Pentagon’s New Artificial Intelligence Is Already Hunting Terrorists

After less than eight months of development, the algorithms are helping intel analysts exploit drove video over the battlefield.

Earlier this month at an undisclosed location in the Middle East, computers using special algorithms helped intelligence analysts identify objects in a video feed from a small ScanEagle drone over the battlefield.

A few days into the trials, the computer identified objects — people, cars, types of building — correctly about 60 percent of the time. Just over a week on the job — and a handful of on-the-fly software updates later — the machine’s accuracy improved to around 80 percent. Next month, when its creators send the technology back to war with more software and hardware updates, they believe it will become even more accurate.

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CSN Editor: The age of using software to pinpoint and target the enemy is now with us .... and it does not take much of an imagination to know that this is only going to become more effective (and deadlier) with time.

The Oldest Known Evidence Of Human Warfare Has Been Confirmed

Part of a man’s skeleton found lying in the lagoon. The skull has multiple lesions on the front and left side consistent with wounds from a blunt implement. Photograph: Marta Mirazón Lahr

The Guardian: Stone-age massacre offers earliest evidence of human warfare

Researchers say remains of 27 murdered tribespeople in Kenya prove attacks were normal part of hunter-gatherer relations

Some 10,000 years ago a woman in the last stages of pregnancy met a terrible death, trussed like a captive animal and dumped into shallow water at the edge of a Kenyan lagoon. She died with at least 27 members of her tribe, all equally brutally murdered, in the earliest evidence of warfare between stone age hunter-gatherers.

The fossilised remains of the victims, still lying where they fell, preserved in the sediment of a marshy pool that dried up thousands of years ago, were found by a team of scientists from Cambridge University.

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CSN Editor: 27 victims .... men, women, and children .... all killed in the same place and time .... and violently. This was a deliberate massacre where taking prisoners was not a priority.

More News On The Confirmation Of The Oldest Known Evidence Of Human Warfare

Prehistoric Massacre Hints at War Among Hunter-Gatherers -- New York Times
Prehistoric massacre in Kenya called oldest evidence of warfare -- Reuters
10,000-Year-Old Battered Bones May Be Oldest Evidence of Human Warfare -- Live Science
Attack 10,000 years ago is earliest known act of warfare -- Science News
Anthropologists in Kenya find evidence of 10,000-year-old massacre -- DW
Prehistoric site shows brutal human attacks -- USA Today
War is as old as time: Cambridge University researchers unveil massacred bodies dating back 10,000 years -- The Independent
A Prehistoric Mass Grave Suggests Hunter-Gatherers Weren’t So Peaceful -- The Atlantic
10,000-year-old mass killing is still a mystery -- Ars Technica
Photos: The Oldest Known Evidence of Warfare Unearthed -- Live Science

Predicting Future Wars And Conflicts

Hoss Cartwright Heralds New Era In Warfare: 'No Longer Do We Troll For Trouble; We Predict It' -- Aol Defense

WASHINGTON: A combat patrol is four soldiers walking, under orders to look for trouble and react to it. For most of modern history, infantry squads have been the military's principal sensors, forcing an enemy to respond, allowing American forces to judge the situation and respond.

But that is an always risky, often bloody way to generate intelligence. "Essentially, you are asking them to troll for trouble," the retired vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Hoss Cartwright, told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies today.  

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My Comment: When you read stories like this one .... that is when you know that a fundamental shift is now occurring within the military on how to fight future wars effectively and efficiently.

Cyber And Drone Attacks Are Changing Warfare

The new look of drone-enabled war. Reuters.

Cyber and Drone Attacks May Change Warfare More Than the Machine Gun -- Ross Andersen, The Atlantic

From state-sponsored cyber attacks to autonomous robotic weapons, twenty-first century war is increasingly disembodied. Our wars are being fought in the ether and by machines. And yet our ethics of war are stuck in the pre-digital age.

We're used to thinking of war as a physical phenomenon, as an outbreak of destructive violence that takes place in the physical world. Bullets fly, bombs explode, tanks roll, people collapse. Despite the tremendous changes in the technology of warfare, it remained a contest of human bodies. But as the drone wars have shown, that's no longer true, at least for one side of the battle.

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My Comment: Cyber and drone attacks may change warfare!?!?!?! I say that it has already changed warfare.

Here Come The Water Wars

(Click on Image to Enlarge)

Water Wars Between Countries Could Be Just Around The Corner, Davey Warns -- The Guardian

Energy secretary tells conference that growing pressure on water resources could worsen existing war and lead to new ones

Water wars could be a real prospect in coming years as states struggle with the effects of climate change, growing demand for water and declining resources, the secretary of state for energy and climate change warned on Thursday.

Ed Davey told a conference of high-ranking politicians and diplomats from around the world that although water had not been a direct cause of wars in the past, growing pressure on the resource if climate change is allowed to take hold, together with the pressure on food and other resources, could lead to new sources of conflict and the worsening of existing conflicts.

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My Comment: Conflicts and wars over water is nothing new in human history. All empires and great powers have always had their main cities near sources of water .... whether by the sea and/or by a major river. Cutting off these sources of water will guarantee conflict and war, and with water becoming a precious resource in the 21rst century .... wars over fresh water will probably be the eventual outcome.

Special Note: The above image (click on the image to expand it) sums up the world's water situation perfectly.

Update: U.S. intelligence: Looming water woes will add to global instability -- McClatchy News

Warfare Started With The Creation Of Man's First Nation States

PLUNDER Ruins at Monte Alban in Oaxaca, Mexico. A wave of new research holds that early states arose from warring chiefdoms as populations grew. Beth Greenfield for The New York Times

Sign of Advancing Society? An Organized War Effort -- New York Times

Some archaeologists have painted primitive societies as relatively peaceful, implying that war is a reprehensible modern deviation. Others have seen war as the midwife of the first states that arose as human population increased and more complex social structures emerged to coordinate activities.

A wave of new research is supporting this second view. Charles Stanish and Abigail Levine, archaeologists at the University of California, Los Angeles, have traced the rise of the pristine states that preceded the Inca empire. The first villages in the region were formed some 3,500 years ago. Over the next 1,000 years, some developed into larger regional centers, spaced about 12 to 15 miles apart. Then, starting around 500 B.C., signs of warfare emerged in the form of trophy heads and depictions of warriors, the two archaeologists report in last week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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My Comment: Economic cooperation or warfare .... the two underlying mechanisms that has always dictated how nation states behaved. It seems we have not changed much in 5,000+ years.

It Seems That Man Has Been At War With His Fellow Man For A Very Long Time

Bronze Age relic: Archaeologists have found the remains of around 100 bodies in the Tollense Valley in northern Germany, including this fractured skull

'Earliest' Bronze Age Battle Site Containing 100 Bodies Found On German River Bank -- The Daily Mail

Fractured skulls and broken bones found on a German river bank could point to the earliest site of a Bronze Age battle ever discovered.

Archaeologists uncovered the remains of around 100 bodies in the Tollense Valley in northern Germany, suggesting brutal hand-to-hand combat between warring tribes.

Bones had been battered, skulls were fractured and one body has an arrowhead buried more than 2cm inside it.

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My Comment: On the one hand, such a discovery is fascinating and informative of how we interacted (and fought) in ancient times. On the other hand .... it is depressing to know that our culture and approach to war has not changed .... with the exception that we now have better weapons.

The Effects Of World War I And II Are Still With Us

Bomb Hotspots Of Northern Europe -- New Scientist

If you want to avoid being blown up by a bombs lost during World Wars I and II, be careful trawling the seabed for fish - particularly near the coast of the Netherlands and Belgium. That's the message from the most comprehensive survey yet of sunken wartime munitions in waters of the North-East Atlantic.

The survey highlights the southern North Sea as a hotspot for accidental finds of bombs (PDF). Of 1879 encounters reported throughout the North-East Atlantic since 2004, almost three quarters, 1320, were in that area.

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Geology In A War Zone

Searching Haroon, an artisanal miner, looks for emeralds deep inside the Hindu Kush. Matthieu Aikins

The Treasure of the Safit Chir -- Popular Science

For over two centuries we have struggled to understand the scope of Afghanistan's mineral wealth. Now geologists, if they can determine what lies beneath the nation's ground, might also help bring stability to the surface.

Early one morning in June, just a week after the New York Times reported claims by U.S. officials that Afghanistan was perched atop enough copper, gold, iron, lithium, and assorted rare minerals and gemstones “to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself,” I made my way with a local guide to the illegal mines of the Safit Chir, an emerald-rich line of ridges 100 miles northeast of Kabul. After a three-hour climb up trails navigable only on foot or by donkey, we greeted several miners, and one of them led us past the dark maws of the tunnels to the edge of a ridge, the better to see the places where his nation’s wealth might be hidden.

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My Comment: Afghanistan can have trillions of dollars in gold, diamonds, minerals and resources of incredible wealth .... but as long as the war goes on, that wealth will forever be locked underground and never touched.

Are We About To Fight Wars Over Strategic Metals?

Is This The Start Of The Element Wars? -- New Scientist

Warnings have already surfaced about water wars. Now the prospect of "element wars" is raising its ugly head.

Chinese customs officials are blocking shipments to Japan of rare earth elements (REEs) and companies have been informally told not to export them, says The New York Times.

The move puts more pressure on relations already tested by the capture of a Chinese fishing boat captain in disputed waters earlier this month. The captain was finally released on friday, says the Financial Times, but the ban on exports appears to remain in place.

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My Comment: Japan certainly buckled down very quickly when China started to use its monopoly position on rare earths against Japan. It may not have been the main reason why Japan acquiesced to Chinese demands, but I am sure that they thought about it .... they and everyone else in the world.

Mankind's First Genocide?

An archaeologist uncovers a skeleton from the Uruk colony's remains. Was this person killed by his/her own people? Photo courtesy Professor Clemens Reichel

New Discoveries Hint At 5,500 Year Old Fratricide At Hamoukar, Syria -- The Independent

Five years ago, archaeologists found the “earliest evidence for large scale organized warfare in the Mesopotamian world.” Using slings and clay bullets a – likely Uruk – army took over the city of Hamoukar, burning it down in the process. Now, new discoveries at a nearby settlement shed more light on the 3500 BC battle – and raise more questions. If the invading army was from Uruk, did they kill their own people? If so, why?

Hamoukar is a city that flourished in northern Syria since at least 4000 BC. They traded in obsidian and in later times copper working became increasingly important to the city’s economy. Thousands of clay sealings – once used to lock doors or containers and impressed with stamp seals – were found at the ancient site. They tell of a bureaucratic system that was almost as complex as our own.

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Civil War In Africa Has No Link To Climate Change

Temperature is not the issue (Image: Daniel Pepper/Getty)

From The New Scientist:

THE idea that global warming will increase the incidence of civil conflict in Africa is wrong, according to a new study. What's more, the researchers who previously made the claim now concede that civil conflict has been on the wane in Africa since 2002, as prosperity has increased. If the trend continues, a more peaceful future may be in store.

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Better Military Technology Does Not Lead to Shorter Wars, Analysis Reveals

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 31, 2010) — It is generally assumed that military technology that is offensive rather than defensive in nature leads to shorter wars. Yet, a new doctoral thesis from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, shows that this assumption is not correct.

For long, researchers have thought that offensive military technology, such as armoured cars and attack jets, makes it easier to shorten the duration of a war. It is also generally perceived that when the offensive technology is more effective than the defensive technology, it is more advantageous to start a war.

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Fight, Fight, Fight: The History Of Human Aggression And Weapon Development

From Live Science:

The use of weapons may date back well before the rise of humanity, given evidence that even our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees, can use spears to hunt other primates. To see how fighting evolved from hand-to-hand combat to world war, here are 10 major innovations that revolutionized combat.

--Charles Q. Choi

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Sophisticated New Computer Models Predict Details Of Insurgent Attacks

How Do The World's Most War-Torn Countries Always Seem To Have A Toyota Dealership?
Foreign Policy

From Popular Science:

Chaos, confusion, and uncertainty have pervaded battle since Homer first described the din of clashing hoplites. But new developments in computer modeling look to pierce the fog of modern war by predicting the time and location of insurgent attacks. More comprehensive than the SCARE IED cache location program, these models claim to have predicted everything from the number of casualties in an attack to the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah.

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Grunts From The Front: From Roman Tablets To Army Blogs

From The Independent:

Humans have always fought each other, but the written narrative of warfare begins about 6,000 years ago with documents detailing a conflict between Elam and Sumer (modern-day Iran and Iraq). Since then military history has been dominated by the official story of leaders and their strategic political and military decisions. Wars have rarely been narrated by the ordinary foot soldier, pilot or sailor.

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My Comment: Plus ca change .... plus c'est le meme chose. The more things change .... the more that they stay the same.

Violence Follows Common Patterns

Photo: Armed conflicts show striking statistical similarities.

From The BBC:

Researchers have uncovered common patterns in the scale and timings of attacks across a variety of different violent conflicts.

A total of 54,679 violent events spanning several decades were analysed.

The team searched for statistical similarities across nine historic and ongoing insurgencies including those of Iraq, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland.

The results, published in Nature journal, may offer the hope of reducing casualties in future conflicts.

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Do Hot, Dry Conditions Cause More African Civil Wars?

From Discover Magazine:

We’ve covered industries and species that climate change will affect, but is more war the next side effect of a warming world? A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ties warmer temperatures to higher incidence of civil wars in Africa. The scientists warn that the continent could see 54 percent more armed conflict—and almost 400,000 more war deaths—by 2030 if climate projections prove true.

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