Category: Bombs and rockets

Military matters and state security: the hard-edged kind of international relations

Googling the Cyborg

In his engaging essay “Googling the Cyborg”, William Gibson effectively argues that the expectation that ‘the cyborg’ will be a human being with an electronic eye and a robot arm is mistaken. The cyborg – he argues – exists in the physical interactions between human beings and machines: “The electrons streaming into a child’s eye from the screen of the wooden television are as physical as anything else. As physical as the neurons subsequently moving along that child’s optic nerve”. (The terminology there is strangely incorrect. Cathode ray tube televisions emit photons, which are produced when the electrons fired from the back of the vacuum tube hit a phosphor screen – and the optic nerve is made of neurons, it isn’t a channel that conveys them. No matter.)

Gibson argues that the cyborg is the “extended communal nervous system” that humanity has grown for itself, with all these sensors and processors and network connections.

He also argues that there is a short-changing that occurs, when we deny that the humans who are behind machines are using them as true extensions of their own being. In the context of remote-controlled rovers on Mars, he says:

Martian jet lag. That’s what you get when you operate one of those little Radio Shack wagon/probes from a comfortable seat back at an airbase in California. Literally. Those operators were the first humans to experience Martian jet lag. In my sense of things, we should know their names: first humans on the Red Planet. Robbed of recognition by that same old school of human literalism.

Gibson, William. Distrust that Particular Flavor. p.251 (hardcover)

I am not sure what should be counted as the first cyborg on Mars. Specifically, did it need to be able to move on human command? Or is moving camera shutters enough to count? In any case, hardly anyone knows the name of the person who was controlling it when it first activated on the Martian surface.

Ending drug prohibition

Earlier, I wrote about whether the phrase ‘greenhouse gas pollution’ is accurate, and whether it might be useful for building political will to do something about climate change. The phrase is accurate – CO2 is an unwanted by-product of various processes and it does harm to people all over the world – and it may be a useful way to remind people that ‘greenhouse gas emissions’ are a real problem that needs to be dealt with. It calls to mind phrases like “make the polluter pay [for the cost of cleaning up pollution]”.

I wonder whether a similar change in language might be helpful for opposing unreasonable drug laws. Mention ‘marijuana legalization’ and the eyes of the people around you will glaze over. They have heard the debate, they have their view, and they probably don’t care about it too strongly one way or the other.

Maybe we can do better by saying things like: “End marijauana prohibition” or “End the prohibition of drugs”.

People remember the prohibition of alcohol, the way it failed, and the problems it caused. It enriched organized crime and pushed alcohol use underground. It led to inferior and dangerous kinds of alcohol being sold. It cost tax revenues, crowded the prisons, and so on. All this is true of drug criminalization today. Most of the problems associated with drugs only exist because they are illegal, or are made much worse because they are illegal. Drug prohibition turns the drug trade into a violent, dangerous business and it turns ordinary people who use substances that are often more benign than alcohol or tobacco into criminals.

Al Capone was the natural consequence of alcohol prohibition. His successors created by the drug war may be less famous – and they may kill more people in Mexico than in Chicago – but their business has arisen for exactly the same reason, and operates according to the same logic. Stratfor describes what has been happening recently in Mexico as “a stalemate” “between the Sinaloa Federation, Los Zetas and the government” and argue that it has produced 50,000 deaths. That is more than 16 times the number of people killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. It’s about 6% of the number of deaths associated with the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Ending drug prohibition just makes sense. It is both unethical and ineffective for governments to try to control what consenting adults do with their bodies. Their efforts to assert that control are doing demonstrable harm. Perhaps by speaking about the situation in terms of ‘ending prohibition’ rather than ‘legalizing’ this or that, the political debate can be moved forward just a little.

Internet surveillance in Canada

The Conservative government is proposing a new law that would require internet service providers to monitor and record what Canadians do online, and to provide that information to the authorities without a warrant.

As well as being an obvious violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (§8 “Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure.”), I think this is an example of thinking badly about security. Obviously, having the government monitor everything that happens online could prevent some bad things from happening. At the same time, it is virtually certain that the capability would be abused or that security breaches will allow it to be hijacked by those with nefarious purposes. The abuse could happen at the governmental level – say, with discreet inquiries being made into the private correspondence of members of competing political parties. It could be done within the police and intelligence services – say, a jilted ex tracking the emails of their former partner. It could be done within internet service providers – say, some low-paid tech at Bell or Telus deciding to earn a bit of extra cash by blackmailing customers.

The archives of internet use would be an irresistible target for malefactors of every type, from nosy bosses and spouses to spammers and rogue political operatives. Maintaining and trying to secure these archives would also be a major burden for internet service providers. Instead of being in the business of helping their clients communicate, they will be forced into the business of keeping tabs on their clients on behalf of the government.

The security risks created by internet surveillance are greater than the risks that it might help reduce. Furthermore, allowing the creation of internet surveillance systems violates the Charter-protected rights of Canadians. What Canadians do online is their private business. It is not something that governments have the right to monitor, just because doing so will occasionally allow them to catch people committing crimes. Hopefully, this proposal will never become law.

Advice to supervillains – killing your own scientists

One classic mistake made by cartoon supervillains concerns the complicated piece of machinery that is inevitably at the heart of their secret plan. It might be a time travel device of some sort, or a machine that strips the opposing superhero of their power, or a key part of a world domination scheme.

As a way of illustrating just how evil and ruthless they really are, supervillains will often kill the whole team of scientists who built the thing, perhaps by having them all drink poisoned champagne. This does make a certain measure of sense. Killing the scientists keeps them from going off and telling people about what they did, which could cause problems for you.

That being said, I strongly object to the timing that is frequently used for these killings. The supervillain will kill off the science team right before testing the device for the first time. As anyone who has worked on anything remotely technical and complex can tell you, this is the worst possible time to kill off all the people involved. Chances are, the machine will not work properly on the first try and that the only people who can figure out what went wrong are the people who designed and built the machine.

By all means, kill the science team once you are confident that you have a machine that will do what you want. Build it, test it, build an improved model, build a backup copy or two, and then hand out the glasses of killer champagne.

Tagging explosives

On a television show I was watching, they mentioned that C-4 explosive is tagged in a way that aids the tracing of its origin if it is used in an illicit way like in a terrorist attack.

Possible method of tagging

I have no idea if that is true, but an idea did occur to me about how it could be done if an organization wanted to. What you need is a collection of chemicals that are stable – that can survive an explosion – and which are rare and can be detected individually. Say you have a set of six such chemicals: A, B, C, D, E, and F.

Each is essentially one bit of data: a zero if absent in the explosive in question and a one if it is present. With six bits of data, you could then label 64 different batches with a unique combination of those chemicals. They would range from 000000 to 111111.

As the number of chemicals used increases, the number of distinct batches you can tag increases rapidly, according to the formula 2x, where x is the number of different chemicals used.

After undetonated explosives or an explosion is found, tests could be administered to detect the presence or absence of the marker chemicals. Based on the combination of chemicals present, the marker could be read.

Uses of tagging

If you had a couple of dozen distinct chemicals, you could label a huge number of distinct batches. You could have factories making the stuff identify whether it was sold for civilian use or military use, where it was to be initially sold, etc. You would then have a forensic ability to trace back the explosive to the point of manufacture and maybe identify who was the final user.

This could be especially useful if you suspect a legitimate customer is illicitly trafficking in explosives. Say you suspect a mining company of providing explosives to paramilitary groups, or you suspect an allied country of providing explosives to armed rebels in another country. You could make sure to provide the suspect entity with a specially tagged batch, and then you could take samples at sites of suspected use and look for the markers.

Of course, you could also get caught in the act yourself if you got careless. Someone could work out your marker system for themselves or buy information about it from someone who knows. Then, they might be able to find cases where you were redistributing explosives yourselves through illicit channels.

Also, there will always be some homemade explosives like triacetone triperoxide (TATP) that groups will have access to, but denying them the ability to make covert use of explosives manufactured for legal military purposes or commercial use could nonetheless be valuable.

Inside Canadian Intelligence

Edited by Dwight Hamilton, Inside Canadian Intelligence: Exposing the New Realities of Espionage and International Terrorism is an interesting read, though I would say that there are some important counterarguments to the main ideological positions adopted by the various authors.

The book describes Canada’s various present and historical intelligence services, including the intelligence branch of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), military intelligence, and others. There are chapters on counterintelligence, on the Air India attack and subsequent investigations, on special forces (including JTF-2), and on various other topics connected to matters of Canadian security and intelligence. For those wanting to get a better understanding of the history and present operations of these organizations, it is probably a worthwhile read. There is also some interesting information on technical capabilities and techniques, such as some information on the RADAR and infrared data fed into NORAD, how internal government security screenings are conducted, automated facial recognition, how some information from human sources is validated, and voice recognition in mass surveillance of telecommunication.

Most books written by people closely linked to intelligence organizations have a tendency to represent the officers of those organizations as heroes who can do no wrong, opposed by inhuman monsters, and hampered by meddling politicians and judges (for example). What this ignores is the dangers posed to the general public by intelligence services themselves, as well as the willingness they sometimes demonstrate to protect their own interests at the expense of the general public. Oversight may occasionally prevent good things from being done, but it surely prevents abuses as well.

Another assumption I question is that it is appropriate to categorize counterterrorism efforts as a ‘war’. First, I don’t think that is accurate. Terrorism is a tactic, not an entity that can be defeated. Secondly, I think it causes problems when we describe the fight against terrorism as a war. It justifies a lack of oversight, and can be used to justify human rights violations. It also creates the misleading impression that the ‘War on Terror’ could end. In reality, as long as there are people willing to use violence for political purposes, there will be terrorism. It can no more be ended than tax evasion or petty crime.

Above all, what this book lacks is a sense of perspective. Terrorism really isn’t such a huge problem. It kills far fewer people than chronic or infectious diseases, war, or accidents. It’s a mistake to turn our society upside down or spend an excessive amount of money trying to stop people from using certain violent tactics. We need to remain aware of the importance of other priorities, as well as the ways in which ‘being at war’ corrodes the integrity of democratic states. One example of such corrosion is the dangerous tendency of states to spy on everybody, in hopes of catching the few people who may be up to no good. Because it is so powerful, and has so many abilities to hide its mistakes and abuses, the state is far more dangerous than any terrorist cell, and it is critical to human freedom that the power of states be kept in check.

By all means, we should be grateful for the good work done by the security services, but we must also recognize the danger that they will go too far and become violators of rights, as well as the much greater importance of other governmental undertakings. Dealing with cancer and providing a better education for children are far more important to the welfare of Canadians than stopping terrorist attacks. It’s a shame that we are continuing to spend billions on the latter, while government is cutting back on virtually everything else.

Space tourism is pointless and damaging

Henry Shue has written convincingly about the moral importance of the rich giving up luxuries for the sake of fighting climate change, before the poor are asked to give up necessities. As he explains it, even in an emergency you sell the jewelry before you sell the blankets.

The ultimate example of luxury emissions is probably private spaceflight, as described in Nature recently. All that fuel gets burned so that a few really rich people can get to a high altitude and gawk for a while before returning to Earth.

Surely, our climate policies should curb such behaviours.

Remembrance for victims and objectors

Every year, I see the militarism and nationalism that are linked to Remembrance Day, and every year I find them at least partly objectionable. The twentieth century should be taken as a comprehensive demonstration of the immorality of war, and how dangerous it is when people adopt nationalist and militarist ideologies. Putting on a poppy and saluting the people who fought for ‘our’ side in various conflicts seems to be missing the point.

Rather than celebrate the people who happened to fight on ‘our’ side, it seems more suitable to recognize that virtually all wars have involved appalling crimes committed by the soldiers on both sides of the conflict. We need only think about the firebombing of German and Japanese cities during the second world war (to say nothing of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) to realize that nobody comes away from major conflicts with an unblemished moral record. The only justification for such crimes is that it seemed necessary at the time to avert a still-greater evil.

Of course, many histories of war are written with retroactive justifications that do not accord well with a dispassionate examination of the historical evidence. Germany is the only country in Europe where the role of the state in perpetuating the Holocaust is unambiguously recognized and taught. People in many other countries were complicit. The trains to the death camps originated in many places, and everyone who was involved in the system bears some guilt for it. The same is true with regard to the atrocities in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia – in Russia, and China, and Congo, and every other place where human beings have engaged in or tolerated the systematic abuse and slaughter of their fellows. I personally find it deeply troubling that there are so many people who remain unapologetic about the crimes committed by ‘their side’ in the course of wars in which they participated. ‘My country right or wrong’ is one of the most damaging and dangerous mindsets people can adopt.

I think it would be much more appropriate to devote Remembrance Day to marking the suffering of all the civilians who have been caught up in wars. That includes people who were the incidental victims of military campaigns, dying either directly from weapons or indirectly from starvation or disease. It also includes the millions of victims of the intentional genocides of the twentieth century and before – crimes that could not possibly have been committed without the willingness of human beings to commit acts of violence upon the orders of their states. We should feel disgusted and angry about how easily people can be convinced to fight for states that are undertaking such programs, and actively involved in building institutional and cultural defences against such things happening again.

In that spirit, I think it would also be suitable to use Remembrance Day to celebrate those unpopular figures who have had the courage to refuse to fight – and those who had the even greater courage to speak out publicly against unjust wars. Conscientious objectors are people who have had the moral insight necessary to realize what an appalling thing wars are, and who have had the personal courage to refuse to fight. They have done so even when that choice has been harshly criticized by the other members of their societies and frequently punished by prison or worse. This has sometimes been equally true for people who have taken a public stance against war, at a time when their societies have been progressing toward it. Soldiers may deserve praise for their courage, but so do people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer – a German clergyman who spoke out against Nazism and paid for it with his life.

The world would surely be a better place if more people refused to get caught up in the drumbeat and euphoria of war. People are dangerously quick to do so, and that is something we must all guard against.

Related:

The Wordy Shipmates

I was first exposed to Sarah Vowell through her entertaining contributions to This American Life and The Daily Show. In addition to being rather charming, she comes across as expressive and very nerdy. Those qualities are also evident in her short and engaging book on Puritan settlers in North America in the 17th century.

Vowell is an American patriot who is nonetheless acutely aware of the injustices in America’s history, from the earliest days of European contact to the present. Thrown in with the discussion of the founding of Rhode Island is a sophisticated conceptual criticism of Ronald Reagan and a moving expression of pure disgust about Abu Ghraib and the use of torture by the Bush administration. She is also delighted to celebrate the achievements of people she admires, and skilled at showing why what they did was important and people in the present should care.

While the book is written in an entertaining and informal style, the subject matter is serious. Vowell pokes some fun at the theological quirks of the Puritans, but she takes their disagreements and positions seriously. Even I found myself caring about the disputes of 17th century theologians. The book is also forthright about the brutality involved in European colonization – from smallpox epidemics that killed 90% of some native tribes to massacres in which men, women, and children are burned alive.

Vowell colours her work in with anecdotes and personal asides. The final result reminds me a bit of Monty Python – clever, funny work that demonstrates a real interest and knowledge about the sometimes-obscure subject matter behind it and a willingness to engage with challenging and controversial topics. One passage of analysis on a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. struck me as illustrative of her way of writing:

I happen to be with King in proclaiming the Sermon on the Mount’s call for love to be at the heart of Christian behaviour, and one of us got a Ph.D. in systematic theology.

I suspect Vowell is one of those authors whose entire canon I will eventually read.