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Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: can.general,can.ai
Subject: Re: Star Wars analysis
Message-ID: <5420@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 4-Apr-85 17:17:11 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.5420
Posted: Thu Apr  4 17:17:11 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 4-Apr-85 17:17:11 EST
References: <903@ubc-vision.CDN> <5407@utzoo.UUCP>, <410@utai.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 37

> ....  At some point the US system, which must make a decision [fast]
> decides to fire at the percieved missiles and *maybe* also at the Soviet
> surveillance satellites.  [emphasis added]

Firing on surveillance satellites is an insane thing to do, because (as
you point out) it's a very threatening move.  I would be very surprised
to see missile defence and antisatellite attack combined under the same
automatic-response system; it's too dangerous.  Furthermore, there is
no terribly good reason for it: the missile-warning satellites tend
to be in geostationary orbit, much too high for most proposed SDI
systems to attack them effectively, and hence it isn't even the same
hardware doing the job.

You have constructed a frightening scenario, all right, but it's based
on the same assumption I was attacking in the message you cited:  that
a system which *must* have super-fast and hence automatic response will
also command other, much more dangerous, systems into action.  This is
definitely a possibility which needs to be guarded against, but there
are enough false alarms in existing systems (as you point out) that it
is *most* unlikely that anything which didn't *absolutely* *have* to
have lightning response would be placed under fully automatic control.
There is no need for 60-second decisions about attacking satellites.

> ...  Because of [shortening decision times], our destiny will be put
> in the hands of ``expert'' computer systems. The Strategic Computing
> Initiative document makes clear that this is why they want these AI defence
> systems ...
> But nobody knows how to program common-sense either now or for the forseeable
> future.  So the ``expert'' systems will follow their rigid rules to their
> very end, as well as ours.

All the more reason to support a system that lengthens decision times
on the really bad weapons, by reducing the fear of sudden obliteration
that motivates worrisome ideas like "launch on warning".
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry