Disruptive IT technologies explode traditional moral principles.
Before entering the civilian market, any new technology is carefully studied by military specialists. First of all, the issue of security for the defense capability of the state is being resolved in the event of its entering the free sale. The second question is to consider the possibility of making this technology part of this very defense. This is also the case with our favorite direction – telecommunications equipment, including consumer technologies such as communications and XR (AR + VR).
In place of the Pokemon there can be a reticle or a ballistic calculation for an underbarrel grenade launcher
When one of the states has some kind of breakthrough in the military sphere, which could potentially lead to a sense of false superiority and subsequent aggression, then the humanists inside the system transfer the secret technology to the competing state. Such actions go far beyond the framework of ordinary patriotic morality and can only be understood by the person in whose scale of values the person takes the first place, and only then the state, nation or religion. History gives us many such examples, among them a married couple of Rosenbergs who were not subordinate to the intelligence of the USSR, but at the same time voluntarily transferred the technology of atomic weapons from the United States to the Soviet state, from recent examples – Mr. Julian Assange, languishing in the Ecuadorian embassy since 2011.
Eternal memory to the heroes, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg …
The last example is the most striking, because to transfer information, the voluntary peacemaker used telecommunication technologies (the Internet), which allow not to take physical risks, but simply press a button and open the eyes of the whole world in one fell swoop. Another representative of the Western world, Mr. Edward Snowden, was a patriot of the United States and therefore in 2013 leaked information about the system of total surveillance of citizens of more than 60 countries (PRISM) to the local media, which led to his accusation of high treason. There was Bradley Manning, who revealed information about the US military crimes in Iraq. Since then, the concept of public authorities' approach to the disclosure of information about the creation of new means of defense and attack has changed a lot. No one can publicly accuse the state of hiding information if it has already leaked a small piece of it through the media, by analogy with relieving pressure in a steam boiler. Why such a long run? In addition, dear reader, if there was not a certain open letter from more than 100 employees, the news of the end of 2018 would be lost in the browser bookmarks and be forgotten. So what is all the fuss about?
Increase mortality
The beginning of the 21st century showed the desire of mankind to solve interstate conflicts with the help of economic pressure and limited military operations. In the second case, equipping a tactical unit with all available technologies, including digital ones, comes first. A platoon of soldiers, equipped only with tactical radios, can get lost on rough terrain or fail to notice the enemy in the fog in time, the result will be invariably sad. This immutable truth of all times and peoples is still valid. We can pump the intelligence of a soldier, teach him to determine the cardinal points, time and his approximate position relative to landmarks, but in the conditions of modern military operations, the decisive factor is the speed of decision making, which is directly related to the speed of obtaining information about the environment. The winner is the soldier who has a battle map with possible paths of movement in front of him, who sees the enemy through a night vision device and whose electronic rifle sight will not let you miss. A similar program based on Microsoft HoloLens was launched by the United States in November 2018, just look at the goals and objectives that military virtual reality glasses should solve and which were announced in Bloomberg as a quote from the government program:
… increase mortality by increasing the ability to detect (the enemy), identify (the enemy) and outrun (shoot first) the enemy …
The Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) program requires the US Army to receive at least 100,000 HoloLens, valued at $ 480 million. But this is only the tip of the iceberg, much larger amounts figure in the field of writing software for the military based on AI and cloud computing. In the second case, it is not possible to indicate the exact amount of purchases due to secrecy. Perhaps this secrecy was caused by the moral and ethical scandals around Microsoft, which lasted the entire last year. The domestic reader was not spoiled by information on this topic, and this is very strange. Meanwhile, in July 2018, a petition was written to management Microsoft on behalf of 300,000 people (including 500 employees of the company itself), demanding that they end their support for the infamous government program on ICE settlers. This bureaucratic system often divided refugee families, taking away children from their parents. The petition itself can be read here, and the result was a complete refusal of Satya Nadella (head of MS) from the suspicions presented and the subsequent classification of all the company's interactions with government structures. New technologies are always a big risk, there is always a possibility that they will become a punitive tool against human life and health, against his rights and freedoms.
A new explosion of outrage occurred in October 2018 and concerned HoloLens and murder-related computing. It is very easy to imagine a young man or a girl who joined the company to make the world a better place, and to make money at the same time, there is nothing wrong with that. But in order to become a participant in the murder of thousands and thousands of people, probably innocent of anything, only completely frostbitten individuals will agree to this. Actually, this is what the open appeal says, the credibility of which is questioned only by the media affiliated with the government. But credibility is even lent by the form these media are 'doubting' – words like 'supposedly' and 'possibly'.
The situation is clearly spiraling out of government control, and such open letters began to appear regularly. One of the last was written quite recently.
An example of HoloLens integration into a tactical helmet
Let's now take a look at what exactly military technology Microsoft is in relation to HoloLens and what kind of advantages they give the soldier.
Microsoft for Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS)
The only downside to a good pair of binoculars is that a soldier has both hands occupied while surveying the battlefield. HoloLens VR headsets digitally zoom, and inevitable image distortions are mitigated by AI-based post-processing in the remote cloud. Perhaps one of the squadron soldiers will carry such a 'cloud' server.
Another part of IVAS is to broadcast a tactical map to the inside of the eyepiece showing intelligence, the position of allies and opponents. While studying this topic, I often came across a mention of the automatic identification of the 'friend or foe' object, and, perhaps, this causes the greatest concern. Similar technologies are being used for US drone strike programs and have already led to the deaths of thousands upon thousands of innocent people. Probably everyone remembers the case when a drone killed a man with a shovel (which he took for a weapon), and the bombing of a wedding. In the case of the use of HoloLens on the battlefield, we can say that the soldier himself became the drone, and he can always blame his war crimes on AI.
XR Points turn any real fight into a PC game
There is nothing more to say about this program, everything is classified.
And what about Russia?
In the Russian army, there are all the individual components of the XR Combat Points. There are electronic maps on tactical tablets, there are electronic binoculars and communication equipment. But I hope we will never have a transfer of powers from man to machine to the right to kill. Of the electronic innovations in tactical combat, I would like to note the recent news about the beginning of the design of a large-caliber jet rifle of the Felt-marker project with a new generation of electronic sight. Perhaps, this scope will implement some developments similar to the XR-glasses HoloLens.
Afterword
I ask you to refrain from accusations of “pumping” and take an unbiased look at the bare figure of 100,000 HoloLens (which were sold on the civilian market from 2016 to the end of 2018, only about 50,000 pieces) for the US Army. Doesn't such an army look like an army clowns clones from the movie 'Star Wars'? And one more argument in favor of concern: it is not the militarization of a single state that is embarrassing, but the moral and ethical standards on which its leadership relies when deciding to use force. And not even that, but the limited ability to influence such a decision from the outside.
On the other hand, as the conflict between the management Microsoft and its own employees grows, the scenario of leaking classified information into public networks, a la Snowden, becomes more and more likely.
Comrades, please express your opinion in the comments on the questions:
– Are you ready to continue buying the products of the company that arms the state, whose officials call us the “main threat” and “enemy”?
– Are you ready to forgive the soldier who killed an innocent due to a technical failure of the HoloLens?