Wired for War by P. W. Singer

Author:P. W. Singer
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.
Published: 2011-03-07T16:00:00+00:00

IT BECAME NECESSARY TO DESTROY THE VILLAGE IN ORDER TO SAVE IT

Through these types of technologies, many science fiction writers envision how the “war on terrorism” might ultimately be won. In movies such as Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, police are constantly tracking everyone’s movement on ubiquitous cameras and able to intervene before a crime even occurs, while S. M. Stirling’s book Conquistador points to a future where terrorists can get only halfway through their plots before the authorities catch on.

Reality won’t necessarily work out that way (and even in Minority Report, the system fails in the end). Such counterterrorist technologies are expensive. They also rely on government agencies that don’t like to share information, as well as businesses locked in competition over who can control the most information, to set aside their differences and kindly open up all their most closely guarded databases. And, as the maker of KARNAC admits, it “cannot guarantee the software will work 100% wrinkle-free.”

Even if these “wrinkles” get ironed out, the smartest of counterterrorist AI will still be at the mercy of the information that goes into the systems. As the computer programming adage warns, “Garbage in, garbage out.” If an informant, for instance, claims that he knows about a secret WMD facility and no one thinks it worthwhile to also add into the system that he is a known liar (as failed to happen with “Curveball,” the Iraqi defector whose false claims ultimately became part of Colin Powell’s speech to the UN on the eve of the Iraq war), the system will produce the wrong conclusions.

In turn, just when the state might get ahead of the game, terrorists can be anticipated to react and learn. A program like KARNAC, for example, is great for linking together indicators that might otherwise be missed on the behavior of existing suspects or “persons of interest.” But it will face a tougher test when the attackers are what are known as “clean-skins” (operatives with no prior history, who otherwise lead normal lives), or when terrorists figure out how to trigger false or misleading patterns that could divert attention from real threats. Having a human spy on the inside of a terror cell will still prove far more useful than an AI trying to read the tea leaves from airline tickets, van rentals, and e-mail traffic.

The back-and-forth of these new technologies in terrorism and counterterrorism then comes full circle to the new challenges for the state. The technologies don’t just potentially change the balance of power in society between states and nonstate groups, as in the battle between Israel and Hezbollah, but also between states and citizens. Civil liberties, especially those of privacy, will be under a whole new level of pressure in a world where every step is actually monitored, tracked, and recorded. The opponents of these systems worry about an “Orwellian mass surveillance system,” as Wikipedia described TIA, while the makers retort that the possibility of another large-scale terrorist attack “is more terrifying than losing one’s privacy.”

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