NYT Confirms Israel Killed an Iranian Nuclear Scientist with a Robot Sniper
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It was interesting when I was in college to see which degrees required ethics classes and which ones didn't. Computer Science required us to take ethics classes. I assume because of the effects technology can have.
It is really subtle too. As one of my professors noted: "I'm sure none of you would write a 'BombJerusalem()' function, but you might write a 'Target(city)' function without realizing the implications."
It was more so that we all understood that the people who used the fruits of our labor were trusting our knowledge of engineering with their own lives, in the hopes of preventing tragedies such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25
but yes if you failed the class, you didn't get the degree
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/06/world/middleeast/israel-i...
Not trying to put words in your mouth, but it feels like you're saying the rest of the world isn't allowed to care because this is what they do.
We sanction Iran for aggressive behaviour in the region. Our national reactions to this seem a little one-sided.
You're making their actions out to be equivalent. Iran is fomenting unrest in a whole region. Israel is trying to neutralize (not eliminate) an enemy that has vowed repeatedly to eliminate it from the planet.
Ah, just like how Israel is doing that to the Palestinians.
Laws are great when there's someone who enforces them. When there's no entity that makes sure those rules are obeyed they mean nothing.
I wonder why? It couldn't have anything to do with Western colonialism and meddling could it? Nah.
I've never found it compelling. The argument seems like a variant of begging the question: we just saw that X caused Y reaction, but the argument asserts (generally without any evidence) that if the roles were reversed, then X' would cause a massively different Y'. Would it? Why? If we agree that it would, what does that demonstrate?
> While the pickup truck exploded after the assassination, it failed to destroy the smart rifle system beyond recognition. This allowed the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to piece together what occurred
Using remote AI-assisted seems a logical conclusion. Heck I imagine they hire somebody fresh out of high school who enjoys playing CoD to pull the trigger. It's lower casualty than drones but higher risk if you can't dispose of your tech appropriately
(I am using the opportunity to reference the fact that the USA indeed has a “knife missile” and it is similar in principle if not in capability to the knife missile if the “Culture” series by Ian M. Banks.)
On the other more surgical strikes may promote use.
Guns only help if you've got the right person to start with.
At least the NYT article seems a bit better, and looking at the picture in the NYT article it seems like there were quite a few shots fired.
I wish there was some more detailed information here.
So most likely left there the night before (or even longer), they knew when he would be by (and it wasn’t going to be a one-off), and there you go.
The US Secret Service has had several folks who aren’t worried about consequences sneak through and severely injure - or depending on your pet theory regarding JFK - kill presidents.
> Fakhrizadeh was shot at least four times by the smart rifle, which was hidden in a pickup truck a short distance away.
> Israeli operatives smuggled the weapon and its parts piecemeal into Iran before reassembling it.
highly doubtful. More likely it was something like a good quality camera fitted to a scope, outputting around 1.5 to 2 Mbps H264 or H265 4:2:0 color space video, with a data link over satellite to a remote controller. Some person staring at a screen with ability to pan and tilt the weapon.
> The gun itself was connected to an Israeli command center via a satellite communication relay. There an operative was able to control the gun and take aim at its target via a computer screen.
Seems I misread that.
[NYT]> The time it took for the camera images to reach the sniper and for the sniper’s response to reach the machine gun, not including his reaction time, was estimated to be 1.6 seconds, enough of a lag for the best-aimed shot to go astray.
So aiming and firing was initiated by a human, but hardware and software attempted to mask the time delay in doing so against a moving vehicle. Which seems plausible: optical flow + basic vehicle vector and velocity calculations.
There's also some stuff in the various articles about facial recognition, but that sounds a bit far fetched and unreliable.
If you have a person in the loop with enough resolution to accurately aim, then why are you running facial recognition to discriminate targets?
It was said he liked to read poems and enjoy everyday life pleasures, maybe this was an escape he didn’t mind.
Either way this will not stop either country’s ambitions.
If those two countries could decide on peace (or rather, if the majorities in each country that want peace could push aside the warmongers), the Middle East and the entire world would be a much better place.
Amongst both peoples, it’s all love.
But if you look at food/diet changes, lifestyle changes, warfare changes, energy source/consumption changes, and so on, you can see we are working toward the end of humanity. Hopefully it will take a very long time, but there will be a tipping point where it becomes _very_ unpleasant.
Let's extrapolate with some current technologies a bit. We have these pretty cool gunshot locator systems; we have AI or robotic attack systems; we have broader control systems which can disable power and water from target zones. Heck we can control and overload industrial systems, potentially causing mass casualties.
No one sets out to end humanity. Well, most people don't. But degree by degree (pun not initially intended) we get closer to self-induced extinction.
Why?
Why is anyone at war with anyone else? Usually the answer is, "because they did this first". But if you follow all the trails, you ultimately come to the conclusion that the real answer is either, "well, they're not us". Or "they look different".
Or sadly amusingly, because "they claim they invented hummus, but WE invented hummus". Or "they wear their little caps differently from how we do".
But if you put two people from opposing sides together at a dinner table, or with musical instruments, or in a crisis situation, you may be surprised to see that they not only can get along but can become friends.
/headagainstwall
But who should judge which regime should have them, if only some should?
Most of us are born into a belief that our people are the best, the right people, and others may also be right... and many are wrong. But regardless, we are most right. As such, we often don't question some things. This is one of them.
So should we decide we are the best, most trustworthy holders of such technology and use just about any means to prevent others from getting the technology? However you narrate this, it is an ongoing history which visiting sentient beings would probably marvel at.
What makes it any different if Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel have them instead?
I am less concerned about the prospect of South Korea having nukes than North Korea if we are forced to choose. And I am less concerned about Israel having nukes than Iran, given the genocidal intentions the latter has expressed combined with the fact it's a theocratic dictatorship make it less than guaranteed that the MAD doctrine would apply.
I'd much, much, much prefer for Israel to also not have nukes, but those two situations aren't equally as bad.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PFHs3qhA6Hs/TwxioL65IxI/AAAAAAAAEg...
Of course Iran had a secular, non-communist, anti-colonial parliament and government in the early 1950s. The UK and US supported the mullahs as a base and had Mossadegh overthrown and put a dictator in. The CIA then worked to help SAVAK kill off the secular left. In the late 1970s Iran cast off its colonial shackles, but as the US had empowered the mullahs and killed off the secular left, they took over.
The US and Israel have nuclear weapons. The US has waged nuclear war. The US was helping Iran become a nuclear power. Now that colonialism has ended, they can't pursue the nuclear energy the US and Europe and China have? The only nuclear power in the Middle East allowed is one mostly made up of non-Muslims, most of whom are not even from the Middle East but from the west?
I suspect depending on where you live, your definition of "goal" will be different.
https://thebulletin.org/premium/2020-11/overview-nuclear-sci...
I value intelligence, and people who aren't demonstrating intelligence get to live through the most absurd circumstances. So it is really disturbing for me to see these meticulous targeted assassinations that at best only serves to delay the nuclear program, and at worst accelerates the irradiated glass theme park they're trying to avoid.
There would not be a problem of laatency, you would just state the expected result (shot the head you would point to first, or shot in the windshield, ...) and let the gun do it on autopilot.
As described in the NY times article it sounds like the gun was set up to shoot straight down the road into the windshield of the approaching car.
Distance is the largest normal factor, and is not mentioned in the article. Under 100 meters bullet drop and time to target are negligible; with a stabilized rifle (as in this case), it would just be a matter of putting the crosshairs over the target. The communications latency, however, would make even such a short shot extremely challenging. I wonder how the AI mentioned compensated for that. They imply the vehicle may have been moving during the shot. So during a 1.6 second (presumably round trip) delay, you would need to account for movement of the vehicle during that time, movement of the target during that time, movement of the target after firing (for longer distances), wind effects on the bullet (for longer distances), and bullet drop (usually trivial, but still).
I don't know what kind of help the AI provided, but I wouldn't want to be the one with my hand on the button (normal ethical questions of assassination aside).
While I think we ideally shouldn’t build any more nuclear weapons, I don’t think we should prevent any country from doing so.
It’s so hypocritical.
Aside from that, this machine is disturbing, but not more so than a reaper drone. I’m not quite sure why they’d go through the trouble.
That’s one strategy. Another, once the nuclear cat is out of the bag, is mutual assured destruction (MAD). If that’s your strategy then it is hypocritical because then the point is that everyone has enough power to destroy everyone else so no one will make a move.
I personally think that both strategies are stupid. The former will just breed current and future resentment and the latter is vulnerable to one unstable person with authority to use the weapons.
But I don’t have any sort of alternative so it seems like preventing others from getting nukes and then falling back to MAD is just the way the world is working.
Alliance networks are what gave us WW1.
The point is that the reason given is to protect the free world, when it is doing anything but. It’s just keeping the same people comfortably in power, capable of stepping on their enemies at will.
Even countries ruled by theocratic leaders who promote hate and obscurity ?
The problem with populist-leveraging theocracies with bad economies is that you need a shared national boogie man. For decades, Iraq, Israel, and the US have been that for Iran.
It’s like NK and the US. They keep bellowing about their rockets, but they’ll never fire them.
But if the tail gets ideas about wagging you? And your populace demands you eliminate the boogie man threat with all means at hand, because you've spent decades inculcating hatred in them and blaming ills on the man?
Well... better the boogie man's head than yours on the chopping block.
Does not seem that different from the past 4 years in the US? If NK can have nukes, I don’t see who can’t.
This is why major nuclear power invasions of non-nuclear powers are incredibly dangerous: they incentivize nuclear weapons development and disincentivize adhering to the NPT.
Where the NPT really failed was in handling actors with expansive, violent regional influence aspirations like Iran and Pakistan.
If you're inevitably going to come in conflict with the US and/or international community, your obvious move is to develop nuclear weapons. The NPT provides no carrot to balance out that reality.
So of course Israel wants to do what it can to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear state. This would be in its top 3 foreign policy goals.
If I understood the article correctly, it's because the Mossad didn't want to reveal it was them, which is why the gun attempted to self-destruct after use.
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