The fourth world war. Scenario

 

<dl class=”media image”>Illustration: Kevin Koltz </dl>

Continued. Previous part is available here:

The fourth world war. Beginning

The fourth world war. Monster

Watch out for cyber attacks? Russia, USA, China, objects of strategic purpose and poor Hillary I guess that’s it, so long as said futurists, it happened! Through our technologyservices world fighting move from real battlefields into virtual fields for servers, databases, access codes, etc. Take control of the computer infrastructure of the enemy, and he is defeated. No modern state Goliath will not withstand hitting a stone flying from a sling of this.

This is our new Armageddon, but it is only an optical illusion. Cyber war, which we begin to inform, continues to be geopolitical. As before, assume that the US will fight against Russia, Russia against the United States, and China — along with all against all. But the truth is that this war is no longer needed. It is a war of the elderly (at least intellectually) generals, who, as you would say a wise Countess, “for too long lived in the Soviet Union”, or, if you are in a state of cold war.

That’s all changed. Yes, this time the favorite of American students — Bernie Sanders — lost, but for the next election and these students will grow and new ones will appear, so some demagogue-Sanders definitely win. About our students and I did keep quiet — if they want to conquer the world, it is only a personal biography, and somewhere in a decent foreign place. The inhabitants of the global network space do not know and want to know geopolitics. Spit on it wanted and transnational corporations, especially Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook.

Most of the entity — “geopolitics” — no more. Left only the figure and people — two real competitor for world domination, and the Fourth world war will be between them. The idea is that the Fourth world, of course, must be preceded by the Third global war on terror (see “the Fourth world. Beginning”). But, given the triumphant political obscurantism and the General idiocy of the Third world we can slip through.

Likely scenarios for the start of the Fourth world do not Shine a special grace, but they probably also need to be considered.

First scenario: cyberwar

When we hear something about cyber attacks, we envision a devastated credit card or hacked e-mail, but believe me, this is sheer nonsense. Yes, cybercrime is already a trillion industry, and its momentum has long exceed the revenues of the drug cartels, but the military attacks — is quite another matter. For military purposes is developed by the cyber weapon aimed at infrastructure: power grid, transportation network, financial sector, etc. — and all this is far beyond that pathetic credit cards or personal correspondence.

Imagine that the enemy robs us of electricity, paralyzing transport and landslide devalue our currency (for example, issuing to the Bank accounts of citizens unlimited amounts of money). And it’s not that without electricity, for example, we will not be able to watch movies at night, and that because of the technologization of our lives for the year from hunger and diseases die nine out of ten people. We lose water, heat, sewer, medicine, the manufacture of food products, flammable substances, etc. is so bad that even zombies won’t need. It’s just seems that the risk is minimal, saying that somehow we coped with the power outage in our apartment and no one died! But we never coped with the shutdown of all electricity all at once.

But who’s goal to deprive the whole country of its entire infrastructure?! The question is actually wrong and even stupid. The right question — how to save at least something in the world in a healthy state after the appropriate cyber weapons “shoot”? With this problem and faced our American-Israeli colleagues, hitting the computer worm Stuxnet on Iranian nuclear reactors. It was the first case in history where it was used not just virus-spy — thing is now absolutely trivial, and a special program, sharpened on the physical destruction of the actual production units.

Reconstruction of this history, nearly ended in global catastrophe, as follows. Probably some kind of spy-saboteur brought to the protected area of the Iranian plant at Natanz with Stuxnet flash drive and ran a virus into a local network. To login, the worm needed only the Windows whose so-called “exposure zero level” he knew. That’s why, incidentally, it is not surprising the requirements of Angela Merkel not to drive European Internet traffic through U.S. servers, as well as the national initiative to create its own operating system. All this is absolutely pointless and dead a poultice, but by itself this political panic, believe me, is not groundless.

However, back in Iran. Once in the internal network, this virtual animal found controller Siemens S7-300, running on gas centrifuge for uranium enrichment, and the play began. The virus has identified a program that signal employees about the status of centrifuges, and to scramble them. Now factory workers could no longer see what’s happening with the centrifuges in fact — it seemed that the reactor is working perfectly. Wearing the operators of these kind of blinders, the virus began to burn centrifuge: he dispersed them, then abruptly slowed down, and hardware fails. In just ten months, Stuxnet burned in this way from 1000 to 2000 centrifuges.

The irony is that the victim of this cybersangha — then Secretary of state Hillary Clinton triumphantly declared in 2011 that the project for the development of the Stuxnet virus was successful and the Iranian nuclear program has fallen years ago. We can only guess what’s going on in the mind of this woman, if she, knowing all this, decides to use personal email accounts for business correspondence… it Seems that politicians are clueless about what they say and what they are doing. They have to go to work on molompize and pigeons!

However, the story of Stuxnet does not end there. On the contrary, the fun begins. No one imagined that this cybersphere not be kept in a cage. Through the Internet, the virus has left the plant in Natanz and infected thousands of computers around the world. We were only saved by the fact that Stuxnet looked everywhere for the Siemens S7-300, and those in his way never showed up. A happy accident, I must admit (or, at Siemens there was some prior arrangement with the CIA). Now imagine — watch your hands (this is important!), — some autozeroing, and a notorious hacker catches this thing on the Internet, it slightly modifies and adjusts to the destruction of any industrial process.

In fact, in this scenario, there is nothing difficult, and even more incredible. For example, a government “world peace” for the sake of convinces some Microsoft to share information about the “exposure zero level” of its new operating system. In the calculation of the vulnerability and created the virus for military purposes, which is used against any “bloody regime”. Parallel to all this mess is on the Internet and, consequently, in the hands of some ignorant and bored programmers who decide to fool around a bit”. They block the self-destruction of the virus and release periphrasing predator into the wild.

It’s real. Absolutely. The same Stuxnet in the same 2010 was just that — accidentally — discovered the Internet unknown until then, a Belarusian programmer Sergey Olsenam. Thanks to his discovery Sergey, of course, gained fame and he was taken to “Kaspersky Lab”. But what if he didn’t have ambitions to work in a team of Evgeny Valentinovich? Imagine that Sergei was less humane and more ambitious — as Herostratus, for example. It is quite possible that we would have with you nice not talking, and neither here in “the Snob”, nor anywhere else. After all, the atomic bomb Oppenheimer looks at the background of this cybernostra not worse than the Kremlin Tsar cannon.

A year after the triumphant statement Hillary, the former head of the cyber defence unit of the Ministry of internal security of the United States Sean Mcgurk appeared on the program “60 minutes,” CBS, where the presenter directly asked him about Stuxnet: “This thing could use against us?” Apparently, the second Sean was very sorry that he decided to come on the show. His reply was muffled, “Yes.” All the actual infrastructure of our civilization through technologyservices already was under attack, which is unlikely to be able to withstand. So, while politicians and generals play their, as it seems, cyberliability, we serenely walk through Safari Park.

And you can’t dismiss that, say, mad-hackers, nothing can be done and the accidents will not insure. It’s one thing when a fool walks around with a machete in London or with a rifle at the gay club in Orlando, and quite another — the total vulnerability of infrastructure. And suddenly this madman will not some unknown hacker, and, for example, Sergey Brin? The crisis of middle age there is some sort of misanthropy developed on the basis of corporate wars and awakened endogenous depression… Why not?

Scenario two: the Internet-junta

Last time I talked about the revolutionary project of Elon musk to create an open artificial intelligence. Musk, but in his own way, afraid of that, afraid of what Assange and Snowden: control by “Big Brother”. However, if Assange and Snowden are afraid that we will have to control the government, Musk is confident that soon we will control the Network itself. He is not a politician or public figure, he is a technologist and a businessman. As a technologist, he understands that the future of sverhamin artificial intelligence, and as a businessman, knows that a spreading cranberries grow where money is an infinite number, and, in particular, Internet business and all the same notorious order.

Assange, as we know, flew for the fact that he made public the Pentagon papers, which he hardly wanted to declassify. And that’s what hurt Snowden? Comrade Edward told the world public about the secret program the national security Agency of the United States called PRISM in which NSA received a secret access to personal data of users of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Skype, YouTube, Apple, etc. In fact, it was absolutely phenomenal collusion between the leaders of the security services and top officials of Silicon valley — you play for us surveillance, and we will not touch.

Snowden sitting in a Moscow airport was a success: Internet giants were quick to distance themselves from the NSA and deliberately introduced additional encryption, the company Acxion, almost officially created for the NSA’s “personal Affairs” Americans researching their Internet traffic, was branded with disgrace, and Barack Obama urged the government to “take the initiative” and “an end to digital surveillance.” It looks very cool: our private life has decided to leave us, and we kind of rejoiced. Nobody seems to understand what a monstrous mine lay in the same moment for the building of our civilization.

When Eric Schmidt — former CEO of Google, was asked, does Google become a state and behave in the manner of the government, he replied: “No, we do not seek. The state has too many complex problems.” And it means literally the following: “Yes, we will state here only for welfare, education, law and order, collection of taxes and other nonsense is not to us but to those who for some reason continues to consider himself States.” Google, Apple, Facebook are already feeling its world domination, but they used to have to put up with government control (at least by some of US), and now, after the antics of Snowden, they may say the same of US: sorry, we should be completely independent.

In chess there is a concept of zugzwang (when the next player’s turn only worsens his position). So, the actions of Snowden have shown that we are all in the same digital zugzwang. The fact that all of the information we leave about ourselves on the Network, is a commodity. The Internet giants collect it, process and sell. They did, doing and will do — that’s the nature of their business. Just before they had to share this information with governments, and now they have legal grounds for refusal: they’re how to protect our personal data. And the key word here is “as if”, because they are not protected, they use them. And will now use “in one person”, so to speak.

Now think, why so worried about Elon Musk is that he decided to invest personal billion dollars in free and open artificial intelligence? All to banality is simple: even if not verhuny, but the smart artificial intelligence first will be in the hands of Google or Facebook, all our personal data that these companies already have and continue to grow by leaps and bounds) will turn into a great way to control our behavior. Sociologist Zeynep Tufekci shows that social networks now have the ability to “shape our identity and our weaknesses”, “urge and shape our thoughts, desires and dreams.” Need only slightly enhanced artificial intelligence engine, and the prediction of Aldous Huxley’s production of “the society needs people” will become a reality.

Now the so-called “cognitive architecture” have companies such as AGIRI, Cycorp, Google, IBM, Novamente, Numenta, Self-Aware Systems, Vicarious Systems, and the list goes on. Plus the omnipresent government DARPA — the Agency for futuredefence research and development” — which we already owe the Internet, and thousands of other digital items, including, for example, baby Siri. Yes, it’s still not the artificial intelligence that is able to cope with the “Turing test”, but, maybe, that there is no special need? Isn’t that the same effect will be achieved if an artificial intelligence and not becoming a full-fledged personality, will destroy our?

An outstanding scientist, Professor of sociology at new York University and the London school of Economics Richard Sennett says: “the time has Come to break Google into pieces,” and for this “we need brave policy.” And everything seems to be logical: it is necessary to destroy the emerging giant Internet monopolies before they began to shape us. But if these monopolies will be able soon to control our behavior (in fact, it’s already happening), then what do you think will be the outcome of world war I these “brave politicians” with these newvirtual rulers?

Or someone believes that Brin or Zuckerberg, salepepe the camera on his own laptop with tape, give up power just like that, without a fight, for nothing? Give and even bows — after all, Madam President, Frau kanzlerin, lady Prime Minister… the very Brin and Zuckerberg, which I judged from the situation in their companies male chauvinism?! Fear God. Not these guys. Definitely not.

And this, of course, the most disgusting scenario. For my taste.

Scenario three: exchange the Apocalypse

Another scenario of an emergency Fourth world can (and probably should) to talk long and hard, but I will show mercy… Until recently, I naively believed that “quanta” is indivisible portion of energy. But on wall street, as it turns out, their understanding of physics: there “quanta” called specialists in financial mathematics — those that already left without work and thrown on the street still, so far as we know, film and news HR brokers. Exchange halls rapidly emptying — change people come up with mathematical algorithms.

If you believe Harvard scholar and business angel Alexander Wissner-the gross, the money that banks and hedge funds spend on the creation of artificial intelligence, already exceed the total costs of the IT companies for the same purpose. And there is nothing surprising: money must make money, and if you have to spend money to make money, the money will not be found. Some of the existing algorithms are already able to communicate with each other and carry out transactions in milliseconds. No one is able to compete in this the largest financial the game. This is the new reality of “systems of high-frequency trading” (HFT).

That’s the monster, the world learned in 2010, when a (then) trader at the same time managed to sell the European futures contracts and investment funds in the amount of 4.1 billion dollars. As a result of its error value of the respective contacts on the E-Mini S&P 500 fell 4% in 4 minutes. The HFT algorithms get the drop and began automatically selling the other algorithms are immediately began to purchase accompanied by sale of other securities to obtain funds for these purchases.

Start a terrible chain reaction mechanism, in which for twenty minutes, the Dow Jones fell a thousand points. No one had time to understand what is happening, to intervene and stop this cyber-panic. By and large, it is, of course, nonsense: someone lost, someone found it. It always happens so. But as a result of this “nonsense” Greece was on the verge of default, exposing the systemic crisis of the entire European economy. And it was only the first case “panic” primitive exchange artificial intelligences, subsequently, the same episodes are repeated.

It is understandable why banks and hedge funds are throwing money at “quanta.” It is unclear how this will end. I wonder if some of the punters will create artificial intelligence, if not Turing, but is able to beat the other algorithms in the market before others? It would happen — someone, inevitably, will be the first. But whether he will be a winner when his monster of artificial intelligence, published in the world financial market, will bring down the whole system, and with it the world economy?

Algorithm to spit on Greek pensions, and indeed in the entire real economy. If his goal is to earn, no compassion, and the more “social responsibility”, to expect from it. Yes, work some security systems, stop trading, etc. But can they then be renewed? And how all this will work if not? Given the fact that international exchanges are, in principle, have long sell the air of a giant bubble, the emergence of such a player threatens the entire system of total collapse. Work the same “speed of no confidence”, which I have already talked in the article “the Crisis of Capital 2.0″”, and then… Back to the first scenario — no electricity, transportation and money.

What a stupid death.

***

Three given scenario, of course, do not exhaust the entire spectrum of possibilities. But they all, admittedly, some derogatory. Hard to imagine that on such a inglorious death of the present civilization that our distant descendants will compose a beautiful legend. Yes, the Fourth world may be a war between intelligent machines and people-heroes. But find ourselves whether we are smart enough to reach the moment when machines will acquire your mind and our Armageddon will be really beautiful?

All this we will probably talk next time.