LEVIATHAN Power of Universal Cyborg
“The POWER of a Man, (to take it Universally,) is his present means, to obtain some future apparent Good. And is either Originall, or Instrumentall.” – Thomas Hobbes
Penetration via Cyber establishing connection to APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) facilitate communication and remote access to linked systems. Identifying weaknesses of infrastructure or security, remote access is gained through neural networks, face recognition and voice-activated devices, defense and monetary systems.
Data retrieved from supply chains and logistical failures can provide critical information for future planned cyber locks. Demand for “cloud computing” software integration opens opportunities in the non-technical or ill equipped sectors.
It’s how you think. Holding a three-dimensional cube in my hand, I can do more than simply align the squares of a Rubik’s cube. I can reinvent, build and rebuild it. In multi-dimensional space, the possibilities are endless. Creation takes form in an array of novel projections.
Elon Musk may agree as he is noted in saying “A lot of people can be really good in a set-piece battle; my biggest differentiating skill is I can invent new pieces.”
“Artificiall Man” – Masters of Our Imagined Domain
Almost four thousand years ago, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes made his observations of the future of mankind, the STATE or what he termed “Artificiall Man.” Artificial Intelligence seems the natural successor of the Artificiall Man or are they simply one and the same? In either case, to call it a modern innovation is inaccurate.
“Understanding. The Imagination that is raysed in man (or any other creature indued with the faculty of imagining) by words, or other voluntary signes, is that we generally call Understanding; and is common to Man and Beast. For a dogge by custome will understand the call, or the rating of his Master; and so will many other Beasts.” – LEVIATHAN, By Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Paris APRILL 15/25 1651.
Future, in transition as I write, is producing the autonomous vehicle as the pedestrian autonomously connects with the world mobily by hand, wrist, voice, ears, and eyes. Communication and interaction is in unison and accelerated via multiple forms of artificial intelligence.
Japanese understood the use of a handheld control device. Their 1960’s “Jaianto Robo” or “Giant Robot” took command orders from a boy, Johnny Sokko. Equipped with weapons and radiation beam, the Robot seems an ideal mobile representation of an attack missile drone and defense system as that of Israel’s “Iron Dome.” Egypt may find interesting the Robot’s striking physical resemblance to that of a Pharaoh.
Machines, Real or Not?
Reading Greek Philosophy, we find Descartes, “Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason.” The following is from my 2010 class paper, “Man or Machine.” I rip to shreds Descartes’ “real” objections demonstrating the irony in his method.
“If there were machines which bore a resemblance to our body and imitated our actions as far as it was morally possible to do so, we should always have two very certain tests by which to recognise that, for all that, they were not real men.”
In the first test, Descartes sets the bar high for the machines: Unlike men, they cannot formulate words and expressions in response to others; simply unable to reason and think for themselves. The second test acknowledges the fact that although the machines can out-perform men in several ways, the machines’ winnings were not the fruits of their knowledge but just programmed responses.
Although Descartes makes a valid argument, he begs the question by his use of circular reasoning. His premise is inadequate which he alludes to be true, and restates it as the conclusion, “it is morally impossible that there should be sufficient diversity in any machine to allow it to act in all the events of life in the same way as our reason causes us to act.” The use of the word “morally” in his argument does not logically follow because he is giving the machines a human value that is inconceivable.
Noting his method, Descartes says that even brutes, while depraved and stupid, can still reason to formulate thoughts and communicate. Yet no animal, be it in the best of circumstances, can do the same. I take exception with this because he downgrades reason and undermines man. Moreover, he is suggesting that animals are unable to have thoughts and communicate. He does not know this as a matter of fact.
Of course Descartes may rebut my objections as when he says that birds may mimic our voices but cannot comprehend the words and yet men born without the use of their voices or deaf can still reason by creating another form of communication such as sign language. Again, Descartes is assuming that birds and machines do not and cannot be made to do the same.
The irony in all this is that man continues to play God and create machines in his image, “real men.” But is our similarity to machines and use of the word truly of concern? The perpetuating terms seem to deny this fear: Da Vinci’s flying machine, rise of the machines, sex machine, political machine and so on.
We as a society have been in admiration and fear of the machine. I would even venture as far as to say that Descartes‘ concern rests perhaps in his fear to live in a world similar to that dominated by the computing machine as in Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano.
Although Descartes sets man apart from machines, he notes their superiority; a clock does what it was built to do, tell “time more correctly than we can do with all our wisdom.” It seems that Descartes’ method serves almost as a frightening reassurance that machines are not real, or are they?
Deceptive Disruptive Power
“If one Prophet deceive another, what certainty is there of knowing the will of God, by other way than that of Reason?” – Thomas Hobbes
Financial and Intellectual Property gains have been made from cyber infiltrations. Now, imagine repurposing this power on space and defense. Commanding and controlling one’s neural system is innate and naturally taken for granted. Cyborgs, remotely commanding and controlling other systems is an applied science in the use of space and defense technology.
Hermann Hauser points to A.I., Genetics, Quantum Computing, and Synthetic Biology. But what is applied to mass population v selective groups? Few question what they do not know or as Hobbes writes, “As when Ecclipses of the Sun and Moon have been taken for supernaturall works, by the common people…” Similarly, Management of patients’ health continues amidst advances in medicine. For “That Which Seemeth A Miracle To One Man, May Seem Otherwise To Another.”
Satellite or fighter jet computer access or shut down counters the effectiveness of legacy groups as DARPA, NASA or international defense affiliates, NATO. Systems of information in the form of data, computer components and sources, energy power plants infrastructure and nuclear reactor blueprints have built-in vulnerabilites. Repossession in clandestine markets demonstrates how players and their “Democracies” can “turn on a dime.”
Cycles of so called “flare ups” between Nation States continue as the powers that be possess the most advanced nuclear weapons to destroy the enemy. Naturally, “safety measures” were built into these same weapons and systems to command and control them.
“Kill Switch” – Command & Control
“Kill Switch” is found on air crafts, weapons and nuclear power plants. Who controls the “safety control rod axe man” (SCRAM) of a Cyborg? Will it be treated as a robot or smartphone? If so, will the cost be injury, torture or destruction?
“Or, as when a man, by confederacy, and secret intelligence, getting knowledge of the private actions of an ignorant, unwary man, thereby tells him, what he has done in former time; it seems to him a Miraculous thing; but amongst wise, and cautelous men, such Miracles as those, cannot easily be done.” – Thomas Hobbes
Hobbes’ observation in his time, 17th century, has changed very little in the art of spying against the enemy. Deep tech has opened up a new space whereby the “mirrors” are exponential.
Complexity runs parallel to the building blocks of weapons and military systems.
The 21st century lightning speed of China’s emerging power is all but relative. Physical space of Tzu’s Art of War was sketched into the cyberspace domain by China where it sits at the hierarchy of all others. China cyphers past the speed of light with 5G………..
Success of Russia’s Campaign of 1812 continues as Russian War Horses charge the WWW with their strategic use of Matryoshka Complex and Uslovnyi.
Twists of fate and irony have sat Russia and China in command and control positions. One has superseded the U.S. by harnessing high hypersonic speed. The other stands to profit by funding U.S. Defense to build the new F-35 “supercomputers.”
Irony may be U.S. reliance on supplies of semiconductor chips from overseas, especially China and Taiwan. China capitalized on U.S. incessant building of “war machines” becoming its Creditor. Russia and China’s command of cyberspace is par excellence rivaled only by Israel and Iran, long-time adversaries.
Stealth Bombers and Fighter Jets are the trademark of U.S. military aircraft. Security Analysts forecasts of Lockheed Martin building 4,000 F-35 in 50 years points to Defense concern of the advancements of Russia, China, Iran, India, and North Korea.
Vulnerability of the F-35 or “flying supercomputer” is in its high-tech computing strength – it can be shut down. Key for adversaries is to find its “Achilles’ heel,” gain access to the code and lock it down. Time will tell if Lockheed Martin’s “supercomputer” is impregnatable.
Structures towering above ground are measured in miles reaching air space. Soldiers on foot, Navy fighters, or cyber warriors need to heed the lesson, “A machine can hunt, but it cannot think.”
Descartes would be taken aback to discover that the concept of machines being or not being “real men” would prove to be unreasonable in an unrealistic world and its immoral methods. Only in the presence of death can one come close to “real men.” And yet, in the face of mortality, one finds one’s power is neither “Originall, or Instrumentall.”
Hobbes would frown upon seeing the peoples’ loss of reason where uncertainty permeates. Deception amongst the Prophets leaves God, the real LEVIATHAN Power of Universal Cyborg in control, no choice but to command the “kill switch.”