It’s like expecting (full) Artificial Intelligence to be a willing servant.
#Whats the best kill shot bravo hack cracked#
In a supposedly hardened US Military network, but which still relies on the broader background of network hardware, which has been (allegedly) cracked by the NSA to the extent it is not as fit for purpose as it used to be, I expect the kill switches to be (artfully) disconnected when and where they are expected to be connected. PEBKAC for the kill switch.īesides, as is well known, anything can be hacked, and probably will. The issue with North Iraq and Islamic State was actually one of (lack of) morale on the part of the Iraqi Army, and (plenty of) morale on the part of Islamic State irregulars. A kill switch ain’t gonna stop this sort of mischance. One phrase springs to mind: “Every time someone invents something foolproof, the universe upgrades the fools.”Īnd an image sticks out in my mind: a woman in Wewak, PNG, using the tail fins of an unexploded WWII bomb buried in topsoil as a stand to cook a meal, and it exploding. Once triggered to dissolve, these electronics would be useless to any enemy who might come across them. Transient electronics developed under VAPR should maintain the current functionality and ruggedness of conventional electronics, but, when triggered, be able to degrade partially or completely into their surroundings. What if these electronics simply disappeared when no longer needed? DARPA announces the Vanishing Programmable Resources (VAPR) program with the aim of revolutionizing the state of the art in transient electronics or electronics capable of dissolving into the environment around them. At the end of operations, these electronics are often found scattered across the battlefield and might be captured by the enemy and repurposed or studied to compromise DoD’s strategic technological advantage. These electronics have become necessary for operations, but it is almost impossible to track and recover every device. The sophisticated electronics used by warfighters in everything from radios, remote sensors and even phones can now be made at such a low cost that they are pervasive throughout the battlefield. New DARPA program seeks performers for transient electronics demonstration This Web Feature Will Disappear in 5 Seconds This is from a DARPA announcement for their Vanishing Programmable Resources (VAPR) program, posted on January 28, 2013 So, is there anyone out there who is offering an informed discussion of how kill switches might realistically be incorporated into weapons?Īn alternative to the kill switch, as a means to keep weapons from enemy hands, is the concept of “transient electronics”. Psychology and political science are way out on the soft edge of the scientific spectrum, but even they are capable of enough rigor to say that some things just plain aren’t going to happen. Ordnance is designed to sit in bunkers for twenty years and then be used on short notice when the things are turned off they are well and truly OFF.Īnd let’s not even mention the idea that anyone is going to let the UN security council have the keys to their ordnance. The timer-based concept is little better what powers the clock when the battery is removed? Missile guidance systems aren’t built like PCs, with CMOS batteries keeping the BIOS warm even when the system is nominally powered down. Make the system fail-deadly, and a terrorist can use the missile in Newark so long as he buys a local GPS jammer at the nearest truck stop. Make the system fail-safe, the Assad regime can certainly and ISIS probably render all of our high-tech assistance useless with a stand-off GPS jammer. GPS-based kill switches that only allow the weapons to be used in Syria? GPS jammers are now commercially available for as little as a couple hundred dollars.
I can remember the days when one could expect basic scientific literacy in the pages of Scientific American this is just science-as-magic wishful thinking. It was still in many cases possible (using the intel gained from those who went before and sometime failed) to defuse many of these by use of unorthodox techniques or even discovering later upon disassembly what the designated defusal method was. These often had fuses that could sense multiple forms of tampering and even had some dummy fuses designed to only trigger the bomb when an attempt is made to defuse it. Sometimes dropped bombs would be set to explode up to 36 hours after impact to kill those returning to clean up wreckage. It reminds me of the cat-and-mouse games the allied bomb disposal teams had during WWII, defusing Axis ordinance.
An enemy or an talkative well meaning friend discovering one tiny error and then a weapon about to be used becomes so much useless slag and not just in the wrong hands. Like all kill switch suggestions it sounds like a great idea on paper, but imagine the implementation. Would that be a ‘kill switch’ or a switch that kills?