Is it agreed that knowledge is the supreme weapon.
Anything can become a weapon... one silly example
take 60 semiloads of tomatoes over a year or so
add- knowledge of how to recognize the microbe producing botulism toxin in
spoiled food
add- lease/rent/purchase of a small vinyard
equals- a supply of botulism toxin large enough to kill tens of thousands
(millions )
protect the protein so that it has a latentecy of 4-8 hours (activation in the
colon)
add access to the water supply for the top 5 of say beer suppliers.
add toxin to line of specific SKU of products.
Coordinate this with prior knowledge of a one day multi- million dollar
sweepstakes promotion for a product which will be in high demend for only for a
single day, say July 04 ( a time when early symptoms might be mis -diagnosed
, people are mobile.....)
another senario- one that is more likely and dangerous
malicious code is created which can reside in the common base of operating
systems for several years. Code like DNA or receptors might be activated by
only specific instructions. Perhaps even better this code is devised so that it
can be re-written each time an operating system is redone. At some time it is
modified so that it can be activacted.
Once activated it opens a system to further rewrite with the real destructive
code.
a coordinated attack would devise code specific to hundreds of different
applications
which would disable,disarm, render remote access and control to most program
controlled operations. If this code were written today for release in say 6
years an army of operatives could be put into place worldwide and this rogue
army would be able to do any malicous or lethal act any electronic device would
be capable of and do so in a fully integrated fashion.
The question is how except by creating an all encompassing AI(s) can the human
race protect itself from itself?
MJ
Samantha Atkins wrote:
> Damien Broderick wrote:
> >
> > At 12:06 AM 9/29/01 -0400, Eliezer wrote:
> >
> > >> Question: What would you propose?
> > >
> > >Lots and lots and lots of nuclear power plants.
> >
> > Each of them protected by a force field and ray guns, to keep the next lot
> > of terrorist-hijacked planes at bay.
> >
>
> There will be no more terrorist hijacked planes. That is not
> difficult to guarantee. At least much less difficult than force
> fields and ray guns.
>
> > And try not to build them over faults this time.
> >
> > And never use candles when checking the foam rubber seals.
> >
>
> Ancient history.
>
> - samantha
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:40:59 MDT