I don't remember the context of the post and whether I expressed it in the post or in the comments, but somewhere several weeks ago I offered the opinion that future wars will not be decided by tanks and battleships or heavy bombardment, but rather by drones, autonomous weapons, and cyberattacks. I cited this book, and this week I finally obtained a copy from the library.
Ted Koppel was a broadcast journalist, best known for hosting the ABC program Nightline for 25 years. In 2015 he published this book, which details the susceptibility of the United States to failure of critical infrastructure, especially the national electrical power grid. The opening chapter is an unrelentinlgy grim portrayal of what would happen if a large area of the country lost electrical power for more than a week. In 2015 his concern was that such an attack could be accomplished through cyberspace, with the malicious actor breaching the poor or nonexistent firewalls around central power stations. A second consideration was an electromagnetic pulse. Nowadays a perhaps easier attack could be achieved by someone in the country unleashing a swarm of explosive-carrying drones programmed to attack substations, trunk power lines, and critical office buildings.
Other chapters detail the inadequate response measures from civil authorities available in 2015 (and likely even less substantial now after the DOGE cost-saving cuts). Additional chapters include interviews with various levels of "preppers," from ramen-noodle-saving suburbanites to rural underground-bunker-builders.
No practical solutions are offered, so it's basically about 300 pages of Gloom and Doom, which I just briefly browsed through. It's a good book to know about; it's not a fun book to read.

Mandatory movie reference:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PMD6YenOEg
It is sad that the Arecibo Observatory, so beautifully featured in the movie, died of sad financial neglect and a hurricane instead of an exciting spy fight.
Mark Chadbourn on bluesky recommended this piece, and I kinda regret reading it. Since we're sharing un-fun things to read. https://johnwalter25.substack.com/p/the-eight-stages-of-civilizational
ReplyDeleteThe modern day scenario.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2oIFOm-XXQ
The 12 possible endings. It's funny (or maybe not) that they interview the lead people who want to slow this down and put up guardrails, but never interview top level people who want this to happen. I also like how they added the bubble bee segment to show how we as humans treat lesser species. Are we the AI to them? How would one of these scientist like it if I tackled them and tagged their ear, then placed a GPS unit around their neck? Would they like my parting words of, now just about daily life and ignore the collar?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLcrvMfHUJM
Wow. The first video was outstanding, both in terms of content and in terms of presentation. It's so clean and tidy that it looks like it was made by AI... "Claude, create a video explaining the dangers of AI...."
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