When Thinking Machines Break the Law …

Comme l’expose le documentaire Dirty Wars, à partir des attentats du 11 septembre 2001, la Maison Blanche a mis en œuvre de nouveaux moyens dans la guerre contre le terrorisme. Le Joint Operation Special Command est l’un d’entre eux. Cette unité d’élite qui opère sous la seule supervision de la Maison Blanche est chargée des assassinats ciblés ou des enlèvements de cibles particulières.

The Disposition Matrix is a database that United States officials describe as a "next-generation capture/kill list".[1] Developed by the Obama Administration beginning in 2010, the "Disposition Matrix" goes beyond existing kill lists, and creates a blueprint for tracking, capturing, rendering, or killing suspected enemies of the US government.

So who’s going to protect us from the real-life rise of the machines? Step forward a little-known body called the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER). CSER is based at the University of Cambridge, and is a multidisciplinary group of individuals – mainly scientists – whose mission, as defined on their website, is “the study and mitigation of risks that could lead to human extinction”.CSER was set up with funding from Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, which arguably makes him the real-life John Connor, making a lone stand against the real-life Skynets.

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Enter Skynet. Along with his tech-savvy partner on the project, the electronics engineer Grant Bajema, Burchat has designed a barcoded and GPS-tagged net that he believes could be mounted on the homes, balconies and backyards of the near future. The opulent gulf state wants to lead what it predicts will be a $10bn industry by 2025, and has offered a US$1m prize to the most promising concept.

In 1984, just 40 percent of SWAT teams were serving warrants. By 2012, the number was 79 percent. In all, the number of SWAT raids across the country has increased 20-fold since the 1980s, going from 3,000 per year to at least 60,000. And SWAT teams are no longer limited to large cities: In the mid-1980s, only 20 percent of towns with populations between 25,000 and 50,000 had such teams. By 2007, 80 percent did. In the end, the driving factor behind the police arms race may be not so much greater risk, but greater spending. This year, Homeland Security will give out $1.6 billion to state agencies and local police departments for counterterrorism and disaster preparedness.

This paper examines policy, legal, ethical, and strategy implications for national security of the accelerating science, technology, and engineering (ST&E) revolutions underway in five broad areas: biology, robotics, information, nanotechnology, and energy (BRINE), with a particular emphasis on how they are interacting. The paper considers the timeframe between now and 2030 but emphasizes policy and related choices that need to be made in the next few years to shape the future competitive space favorably, and focuses on those decisions that are within U.S. Department of Defense’s (DOD) purview. The pace and complexity of technological change mean that linear predictions of current needs cannot be the basis for effective guidance or management for the future. These are issues for policymakers and commanders, not just technical specialists.

The organizations, technologies, and people behind Google's autonomous vehicles