Armed
with a budget of over $700 billion for the coming year – which will
likely continue to grow over the course of Trump’s
Pentagon-controlled presidency — the Pentagon’s dystopian vision
for the future of the military is quickly becoming a question not of
if but when.
by
Whitney Webb
Part
2 - Robots that are smarter, faster, stronger and, of course, don’t
die
Ground
robots like those used in the recent Army exercise are hardly the
only type of robot soldier soon to be at the Pentagon’s disposal.
Weapons manufacturers have been all too eager to comply with the
Pentagon’s growing demand for automated war machines and have
already developed a variety of such devices, to the delight of senior
military officials.
In 2015,
U.S. weapons giant Lockheed Martin began working with the military to
develop automated networks that manage complex missions involving
both unmanned aerial and ground vehicles, an effort still underway.
That same year, the Navy began deploying underwater drones. A year
later in 2016, Boeing – now the largest defense contractor in the
U.S. — launched an unmanned submarine designed for exploratory
missions as well as combat, followed by DARPA’s release of an
autonomous drone ship to be used for hunting down enemy submarines,
set to be used by the U.S. Navy later this year.
While
such machines have been advertised as combat aids to human soldiers,
DARPA has also been working on developing so-called “killer robots”
— i.e., robot infantry set to replace human soldiers. Many of these
robots have been developed by the Massachusetts-based and
DARPA-funded company Boston Dynamics, whose veritable Sears Catalog
of robots includes several models designed specifically for military
use.
One of
those robots, dubbed “Atlas,” is capable of jumping and
backflips, carrying heavy loads, navigating uneven terrain, resisting
attacks from a group of humans and even breaking through walls.
Another Boston Dynamics robot, called “WildCat” can run at
sustained speeds of nearly 20 miles per hour. By comparison, a gifted
human runner can briefly sprint at about 16 miles per hour.
Of course, the Pentagon’s interest in robotic warfare systems is not limited to machines alone. As The Atlantic reported in 2015, DARPA has been focused on “transforming humans for war” since 1990 by combining man and machine to create a “super soldier.” In 2001, DARPA made its first major advance in this area when it unveiled two exoskeleton programs. By 2013, this had evolved into a “super soldier” suit known as TALOS (Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit), which is complete with imaging systems, cooling/heating, an oxygen tank, embedded sensors and more. It is expected to be fully functional by later this year.
Most of
DARPA’s other “super soldier” programs remain secret, however.
Of those that are acknowledged, the most disconcerting is the
“Brain-Machine Interface,” a project first made public by DARPA
at a 2002 technology conference. Though its goal was to create “a
wireless brain modem for a freely moving rat,” which would
allow the animal’s movements to be remotely controlled, DARPA
wasn’t shy about the eventual goal of applying such brain
“enhancement” to humans in order to enable soldiers to
“communicate by thought alone.”
Even
this went too far for some defense scientists, who warned in a 2008
report that “remote guidance or control of a human being”
could quickly backfire were an adversary to gain access to the
implanted technology, and who also raised concerns about the moral
dangers of such augmentation.
DARPA,
for its part, seems hardly concerned with such possibilities. Michael
Goldblatt, director of the DARPA subdivision Defense Sciences Office
(DSO), which oversees the “super soldier” program, told
journalist Annie Jacobsen that he saw no difference between “having
a chip in your brain that could help control your thoughts” and
“a cochlear implant that helps the deaf hear.” When
pressed about the unintended consequences of such technology,
Goldblatt stated that “there are unintended consequences for
everything.”
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