Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 1044

The U.N. Will Not Stand for Killer Robots

President Obama may have finally clarified the U.S. position on armed assassins in the sky, but the next wave of drone controversy may now center on whether robots on the field of battle are smart enough to gun down human beings. At a the meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on Thursday, a top U.N. official on execution gave the world his best Sarah Connor impression, urging for a moratorium on terminators Lethal Autonomous Robotics (LARs), a warning he hopes will stop a future of killer robots that may be past the point of no return if leading military technologists have anything to say about it. "War without reflection is mechanical slaughter.... A decision to allow machines to be deployed to kill human beings worldwide — whatever weapons they use — deserves a collective pause," said Heyns, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. That is one fancy title, but his message is simple, familiar, and likely in vain: Many advocates would still rather trust a human to pull a trigger than leave it to SkyNet, or, well, a machine set to autopilot by the U.S., Israeli, British, or Korean military.  

[image error]But, yes, the the United Nations listened to debate about killer robots. Thursday's session came just three weeks after the United States Congress conducted a hearing about other Earths because, well, the line between reality and science fiction are closing in fast enough for the world to truly weigh in. Currently, there are no fully autonomous and armed robots in action — early attempts have gone awry, and while the Pentagon has not been shy in wanting to develop stand-alone shooters, they've insisted by official policy that a human being will always be "in the loop." Human Rights Watch and Harvard Law School, gleaning information from the U.S. Air Force, have reported that "by 2030 machine capabilities will have increased to the point that humans have become the weakest component in a wide array of systems and processes." So, by the time Suri Cruise is 24, humans really starte to be the weakest links on the battlefield. In the meantime, a few superpowers and would-be-superpowers are building up their LAR arsenals. Here are some of the standouts currently in question:

The U.S. Phalanx can detect, track, and fire upon anti-ship and anti-air threats:

Israel's Harpy, as the AP reports, is a "Fire-and-forget autonomous weapon system designed to detect, attack and destroy radar emitters."

Britain's Taranis is a semi-autonomous stealth drone that can "think for itself," according to Sky News:

Korea's Techwin​ surveillance system and robots can detect targets through infrared. They're "operated by humans but have an 'automatic mode,'" the AP reports.

The robotic capabilities of China and Russia aren't as well known, as Nick Cumming-Bruce reports today at The New York Times.

So, we're still a little ways off from terminators, but the argument from the human rights community is more than relevant today: If we're killing people with drones being flown across the skies of Yemen and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan by pilots thousands of miles away, what happens to killing — and the human decision of war, and war crimes — when we have a "set it and forget it" robot roaming the Earth? The moratorium proposed on Thursday by Heyns, the U.N. official, would put a halt "on the production, assembly, transfer, acquisition, deployment and use of LARs, until a framework on the future of LARs has been established." He also asked the U.N. council to set up a high-level panel on LARs that would convene within a year to "to assess whether existing international laws are adequate for controlling their use," Cumming-Bruce reported.

Robots, of course, have their fans. Advocates for autonomous military helpers and/or overlords insist that our humanoid friends "process information faster than humans, and they are not subject to fear, panic, a desire for revenge or other emotions that can cloud human judgment," according to the Times. Whether humans get their revenge on robots before they can kill us, well, judgment day hasn't come yet.

       

Don't Bother Sending Ricin Letters. Gun Rights Advocates Are Already Winning.

Michael Bloomberg is not the first elected official to be threatened for his advocacy of increased legislation on gun ownership. Nor were the ricin-tainted letters targeting him and the gun control organization he founded the first threats he has received. The threat reported late Wednesday afternoon is the most high profile — and probably least representative — example of the furious, successful national pushback against new gun legislation, spearheaded by the National Rifle Association and making its way through the laboratories of democracy even as Washington prepares for a new vote.

The mayor has been a target of the NRA for months, since even before his group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, began targeting senators with ads pushing for increased background checks on gun sales. Earlier this month, USA Today suggested that Bloomberg was the NRA's "Public Enemy No. 2," second in line behind the president. Bloomberg's something of an ideal target: a (relatively) liberal East Coast politician who's been unrepentant in advocating for top-down solutions to problems. (Or, if you prefer, an advocate for the "nanny state.") Wednesday's was by no means the first physical threat to the mayor; on Tuesday, a New York man pled guilty to threatening him and other officials. In the face of the threat posed by the letters, Bloomberg was unchastened. "There’s 12,000 people that are going to get killed this year with guns and 19,000 that are going to commit suicide with guns," The Times reported Bloomberg saying yesterday, "and we're not going to walk away from those efforts."

What's worth noting is that, so far, the NRA has beaten Bloomberg. The Senate's proposed gun reforms were put on ice after a Republican filibuster halted a key compromise. Bloomberg's group keeps pressuring senators, but the NRA won round one in a unanimous decision.

Where the NRA hasn't won, in states where there has been gun legislation that's passed, the NRA is pursuing a two-part strategy: targeting lawmakers and targeting the laws. Most states that have passed new gun legislation, it's worth remembering, have passed laws loosening regulations. The NRA obviously has no interest in overturning those decisions.

The biggest fight is shaping up in Colorado. In March, the state's governor signed legislation broadly expanding gun restrictions. The signing happened hours after the shooting death of the state's prison director and after months of heated political debate, including physical threats sent to legislators.

Now that it's law, however, activists have begun an effort to recall legislators that supported the bill. One key participant in the push: the NRA, as reported by CNN.

[F]or the first time in almost two decades, the National Rifle Association is attempting to coordinate the recall of a top state legislator over his role in the passage of new gun restrictions, CNN has learned.

Morse told CNN he knew that local gun groups were going after him, but did not know at the beginning the NRA was involved.

The number of politicians who will actually face a recall vote is contingent upon opponents collecting enough signatures to get the measures on the ballot. In at least one case, activists employed an unusual method to increase the number of signatures they got: offering volunteers for the effort a chance to win prizes like gift cards, an extended magazine, or a pistol. (The groups offering the prizes are not directly affiliated with the NRA.)

Colorado is a swing state. In heavily-Democratic Connecticut, which in April passed its own sweeping set of laws, the NRA is focusing instead on the law. (Connecticut also doesn't have a similar procedure for recalls, not that it would likely matter.) The NRA's Institute for Legislative Action describes a lawsuit filed in the state last week.

This legal challenge focuses on Connecticut’s ban of more than 100 additional commonly-owned firearms, demonizing design features that provide improved safety, accuracy and ease-of-use features, including magazines that hold more than ten rounds of ammunition. This lawsuit also challenges the practical bans imposed by the new law on an even broader array of firearms due to the new law’s vague language and interpretative confusion combined with severe criminal penalties.

In New York, the only other state to have passed sweeping control legislation since the shootings in Newtown, the NRA has employed the same tactic.

And the gun lobby might as well send lawyers to California. The state legislature is considering expansive legislation that includes instituting a background check on ammunition purchases — legislation that has been introduced federally but stands no chance of passage. The California state senate passed the bill yesterday; it now heads to the Assembly.

The push for new gun legislation in the state has not been without incident. In March, a Santa Clara man was arrested after sending death threats to a pro-control legislator; police found 26 firearms in his home.

Again: violent threats are the exception. More commonly, new gun legislation is blocked before it's passed or, once it's passed, it becomes the focus of NRA action. And that, it turns out, is a much more effective strategy for blocking new gun control legislation.

Photo: NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre; New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. (AP)

       

The Grumpy Cat Movie Might Finally Be the End of Grumpy Cat

So, it's happened folks. Deadline's Mike Fleming Jr broke the news last night that Grumpy Cat (oh, please, you know the one) has a movie deal. Call us grumpy, but we're not exactly overjoyed about what happens when an Internet meme gets an actual feature film deal. 

Fleming reported that Todd Garner and Sean Robins of Broken Road Productions are joining up with Grumpy Cat's representatives—yes, Grumpy Cat has representatives—to "produce and assemble a package for a Garfield-like feature film with the famous frowning feline at the center." In the film, Fleming says, Grumpy Cat "will be given the power of speech." Jordan Zakarin of BuzzFeed, an Internet meme outlet which is obviously overjoyed by this development, reported that Grumpy Cat's manager said that the movie will star the real-life Grumpy Cat. 

Now, let's be reasonable. There is no way a movie developed around the concept of a cat with a funny face is going to be high art. On the other hand, Grumpy Cat has a lot of goodwill on the Internet, and this might be a travesty that could bring her down. The movie might finally kill the meme—not the poor cat, just this year-long meme. Let's consider the facts. There's a good chance this movie could star Kevin James. Garner's     

Why'd the FBI Kill Tamerlan Tsarnaev's Accomplice-to-Be if He Was Unarmed?

Law enforcement officials are walking their claims of self-defense all the way back a week after the shooting of Ibragim Todashev — the 27-year-old man who was about to officially confess to a triple murder in Massachusetts and finger Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev while he was at it — in his Orlando home by an FBI agent. The Washington Post and Orlando's NBC affiliate   both now report that Todashev was unarmed and alone in a room with the single FBI agent when he was killed early on the morning of May 22, two evolving details that continue to raise questions about why investigators used lethal force against a man who may not have posed a lethal threat but who definitely had key information on Tsarnaev.

The Post's Sari Horwitz and Peter Finn report that Todashev "lunged at the agent and overturned a table," at which point, according to Orlando's WESH, "the FBI agent believed he could have possibly been going for his gun or the sword in the room, and that's when the agent opened fire." So, yes, there may have been a giant sword somewhere in Todashev's apartment near Universal Studios, and there could yet be missing pieces in the bizarre public puzzle of this terrorism subplot — the FBI said in a second statement about the case Wednesday that an internal review of the incident was still underway, and the Boston bombing investigation has not been short on misinformation coming from anonymous law enforcement officials. But some initial reports after the Jack Bauer-style saga surfaced last Wednesday insisted that Todashev, after orally confessing to a grisly 2011 killing in Waltham, Massachusetts, attacked the agent with a knife. Within a day, but under the radar, some of the anonymous officials began to change their story, backtracking about the Todashev confession standoff and telling outlets like the AP that "it was no longer clear what had happened." The FBI has only said in a statement that "a violent confrontation was initiated by the individual."

Todashev's family and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which pressed for a separate Department of Justice inquiry on Wednesday, have insisted that he did not have access to a weapon and that the killing "was not justified." Of course, at that point Todashev was a half-confessed murderer in the grisly throat-slitting of a drug-deal setup turned violent killing himself, but at his apartment late last Tuesday night, he was clearly outnumbered and outgunned: After weeks of cooperating with investigators, Todashev was being interviewed for multiple hours by multiple federal agents and, according to the FBI, at least two Massachusetts state police officers and other law enforcement officials. The narrative floating around the press had been that Todashev, a mixed martial arts fighter and friend of Tsarnaev back in Boston, was going to or could have killed someone. The Washington Post's sources may debunk that: 

An agent sustained non-life-threatening injuries, later described by one law enforcement official as "some cuts and abrasions."

An official said that according to one account of the shooting, the other law enforcement officials had just stepped out of the room, leaving the FBI agent alone with Todashev, when the confrontation occurred.

Again, pass the salt with this anonymous reporting, and we still don't have details on the confrontation between this would-be Bauer and Tsarnaev's would-be accomplice. But that "some cuts and abrasions" line does jibe with what FBI officials told CNN on May 23 — that the agent "sustained non-life-threatening injuries," and if Todashev was alone with one agent, well, maybe he wasn't exactly outnumbered and maybe he made his move. Increasingly this is becoming a sideshow between one agent and one strange man when it might have been something of a major break in the case against the Tsarnaev brothers — at the very least, a written confession from Todashev before he died would have provided a legally justified sign that Tsarnaev had been a drug dealer or a killer before he took what had been thought as the fateful trip to Russian in 2012, that he had been criminally violent before he was hypothetically radicalized. 

But if we are now discounting stories about the knife and a standoff with multiple agents, what makes us so sure those stories about how Todashev was supposed to sign a confession implicating him and Tsarnaev are so solid themselves? Todashev's father is now stating that the 2011 triple homicide in Waltham, which Todashev reportedly confessed to, was not part of Todashev's earlier interrogations with the FBI. No, that's not supposed to make you feel better.

       

David Petraeus Joins the Private Equity Game

Former General and CIA boss David Petraeus     

Syria Has Its New Russian Missiles

Emboldened by recent gains on the ground and a new wave of support from his allies, Bashar al-Assad gave a new interview today, boasting about the arrival of new Russian missiles meant to scare off foreign intervention. In the interview, which will air on Lebanese television later tonight, Assad says his army has received the first shipment of S-300 missiles that were recently promised to them by Russia, a move the Moscow foreign office called "stabilizing."

The arrival of the rockets seems to have dashed hopes for any serious attempt at peace negotiations, since Russia's decision to supply more heavy weaponry — in the face of loud protests from other nations — appears designed to prolong the war rather than end it. (Or, more likely, tip the outcome in Assad's favor.) Assad makes that claim himself in the interview, saying that "Our armed forces have regained the momentum" and "the balance of power is now with the Syrian army."

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Israel has already stated that they consider the new missiles to be threat, claiming that despite their defensive nature, the weapons can be used for attack and could reach deep into Israel. Defense Minister Moshe Yaalo warned earlier this week that the arrival of the missiles would be considered a threat, adding, "If, by some fortune, they arrive in Syria, we will know what to do."

Assad, of course, had an answer for that as well, saying in the interview that Syria will respond to any Israeli attack on its soil. Israeli forces have previously gone across their border to take out Syrian weapons, without retaliation, but again, the overt support of Russia may make Assad more confident about acting out.

On Saturday, a European arms embargo on Syria will expire, opening the door for new weapons shipments to the rebel side as well. So while some diplomats push for talks, the flood of new weapons will only escalate the violence and a make a peaceful solution a near impossibility. 

       

Mount Everest Is Too Crowded

The world's highest peak is so crowded with climbers that some are seriously considering installing a ladder on the famed Hillary Step to ease congestion. While the ladder is intended for use for those descending from the peak, the proposal still casts Mt. Everest's long-running overcrowding issue into stark relief. 

Here's The Guardian, on the ladder proposal: 

"Most of the traffic jams are at the Hillary Step because only one person can go up or down. If you have people waiting two, three or even four hours that means lots of exposure [to risk]. To make the climbing easier, that would be wrong. But this is a safety feature," said Sherpa, who co-ordinates the work to prepare the traditional route up the mountain for clients who pay between $45,000 and $75,000."

The story of Everest's epic traffic jam has been bubbling under the surface for awhile. National Geographic, for instance, has a great piece on Everest crowds in their June issue, marking the 60th anniversary of Edmund Hillary's ascent to the peak. Apparently, the path to ascent is now littered with garbage, and corpses: 

"We were forced to move at exactly the same speed as everyone else, regardless of strength or ability. In the swirling darkness before midnight, I gazed up at the string of lights, climbers’ headlamps, rising into the black sky. Above me were more than a hundred slow-moving climbers. In one rocky section at least 20 people were attached to a single ratty rope anchored by a single badly bent picket pounded into the ice. If the picket popped, the rope or carabiner would instantly snap from the weight of two dozen falling climbers, and they would all cartwheel down the face to their death.

Panuru, the lead Sherpa of our team, and I unclipped from the lines, swerved out into open ice, and began soloing—for experienced mountaineers, a safer option. Twenty minutes later, another corpse. Still attached to the line of ropes, he was sitting in the snow, frozen solid as stone, his face black, his eyes wide open."

The magazine proposes several other options for fixing Everest's crowd problem, none of which involve a ladder. Their solutions include fewer permits, certifying climbers for experience, reducing team size, and making sure litter (and bodies) are removed from the mountain. 

       

John McCain Knows Who the 'Good Guys' Are In Syria, Wants to Arm Them

John McCain is pretty sure we can identify the "good guys" in the Syrian conflict after his secret visit to the country this week. Now, he wants us to arm rebel forces — but only the good ones.

That's all as the latest planned international talks on Syria are over before they started: as Syrian president Bashar al-Assad indicates his interest in running for re-election, opposition groups currently meeting in Istanbul appear headed towards a stalemate among themselves. 

As McCain told Anderson Cooper on CNN this evening: "We can identify who these people are. We can help the right people," he said. He downplayed the fears of extremists among rebel fighters in the country, saying, "They're flowing in all the time, these extremists. But they still do not make up a sizeable portion." 

While McCain might be in full intervention mode, the rest of the latest discourse on Syria is much more complicated, according to a New York Times story outlining the latest rotation in the spinning top of Syrian diplomacy. They explain that the Syrian Coalition hasn't yet committed to July talks organized by the U.N., in part because Assad and company have no plans of stepping down, and in fact have re-committed themselves to at least sticking out the rest of Assad's presidential term.

But the opposition is also dealing with some significant internal conflict, as well as a perilous tactical situation. Syrian forces, backed by Hezbollah, are reportedly getting closer to getting control of a strategically important smuggling route for rebel forces, who have asked the U.S. and other western countries to arm them. But the coalition is currently dominated by Islamist groups, McClatchy reports, and the coalition failed to add representatives from the more liberal wings of Syrian opposition this week, something the U.S. had asked them to do. Meanwhile, Robert Ford, the U.S. ambassador to Syria, will reportedly step down this summer. He is reportedly "exhausted" by his efforts, conducted outside of the country, to help unite opposition groups. 

Rand Paul, notably, had an op-ed on CNN this evening saying pretty much the opposite of everything John McCain said. 

       

The Bedside Manner of James Comey, Obama's FBI Pick

President Obama will reach back into the Bush administration and pick former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey as the new head of the FBI, according to unnamed sources speaking to     

Some D.C. Bureau Chiefs Aren't Interested in Holder's Off-the-Record Meeting

The Justice Department's hearts and minds campaign to the media just hit a snag: The Associated Press and the New York Times have refused to attend a meeting with Eric Holder on law enforcement and the first amendment, because the department wants the session to be off the record. Given that the AP and the New York Times were both recently the subjects of DOJ leaks investigations that involved subpoenas for communication records of journalists, it's kind of hard to blame them. 

News broke on the specifics of the planned meetings earlier today, which were also referenced in Obama's big national security speech last week. Apparently the DOJ reached out to the Washington bureau chiefs of several major news outlets, inviting them to a meeting with Holder on the current rules governing federal leaks investigations. But the department wants to keep the newsworthy meeting off the record. This evening, Jill Abramson at the New York Times gave her response to the invite, via Politico: 

“We will not be attending the session at DOJ. It isn’t appropriate for us to attend an off the record meeting with the attorney general. Our Washington bureau is aggressively covering the department’s handling of leak investigations at this time...Evidently, there will be a future session with department officials on the substance of how the law should be applied in leak cases and I am hopeful that our counsel, David McCraw will be able to participate in that meeting."

And the Associated Press soon followed suit, also via Politico: 

"We believe the meeting should be on the record and we have said that to the Attorney General’s office. If it is on the record, AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll will attend. If it is not on the record, AP will not attend and instead will offer our views on how the regulations should be updated in an open letter. We would expect AP attorneys to be included in any planned meetings between the Attorney General’s office and media lawyers on the legal specifics."

According to the Huffington Post's Michael Calderone, HuffPo is also out of the meeting if it's off the record, while the Washington Post is in: 

WaPo's Baron will attend Holder meeting; HuffPost's @ryangrim says "off-the-record would not fly." wapo.st/113fSyW

— Michael Calderone (@mlcalderone) May 29, 2013

Politico will attend, too, because of course they will: 

Politico will attend the DOJ meeting, along with WaPo. (NYT, AP, HuffPost all declining at this point) politi.co/1768Xxf

— HuffPost Media (@HuffPostMedia) May 30, 2013

Now, it's time to wait and see what the other invited bureau chiefs will do. Or, if Holder and co. will decide to put the meeting on the record after all.