| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

The AI War

Page history last edited by PBworks 17 years, 4 months ago

Turkey Crisis of 2125- One for the History Books

 

 

The South American War
**Dates:2125
ACTORS:Turkey and Allies versus Russia
RESULTS:Russian Victory over Turkey; birth of the AI; changes in government in several European nations

 


Phase One- Robot Gallipoli in the Air

 

With Turkey mysteriously silent after the UAV incident, tensions rose, and Arabia and its allies began to ship troops and weapons to Arabia, mostly for the purpose of defending Arabia against repeated attacks. Arabia, on Turkey's southern border, was on a war footing, but committed itself to defensive operations only, unwilling to invade Turkey. African and even Venezuelan forces supported the Arabian defense. The Baltic Union, bordering western Turkey, did likewise. Only Russia, to the north, committed itself to offensive operations, consisting of air and naval strikes across the Black Sea. In the Mediterranean, Germany, assisted by the United Kingdom, began a controversial exclusion patrol over the Mediterranean, determined to keep out "belligerent" ships. This was wildly unpopular in both nations and throughout the maritime world, which had by 2125 learned that there was nothing so dangerous at sea as naval forces deployed "to keep the peace". Many shippers, aware of the possibility of being targeted in military error, ordered vessels away from the area.(1) A few powers, such as the United States, sent ships into the area only to demonstrate that they could.

 

Several nations were highly concerned over a spread of hostilities. Russia focused much of its attention on the Ukraine, which remained committed to "moral support" for the Turks, and provided humanitarian assistance. The United Kingdom sent a force to the Indian Ocean elevator site, although what they were expecting and why was never made clear. (2)

 

Turkish troops remained in defensive positions. Contact with Turks on the "private citizen" level existed in many forms throughout this period, even though government to government communications were strained. (3) In particular, the Iranian-Turkish border never closed, and the Iranians had a particular interest in finding out what was going on in the Turkish view. This often varied considerably with what was "known" in the world at large. Turks in general had no knowledge of the Damascus affair, and many doubted the veracity of the Arabian story. Turks were expecting an attack from Arabia, and surprised at the ability of the nations of the world to support a "rogue state" that doesn't even regard its peer governments as legitimate. The Turkish media frequently replayed the more outrageous rants from the Arabian government, and this served to drive up the fear level in Turkey. But rather than attacking, the Turks seemed more interested in preparing their defensive positions.

 

Russian launched the first attacks, but did not catch the Turks by surprise. The incoming Russian attrition attacks, initially carried out by UAV's and long range weapons, ran into a defensive wall- tightly controlled airspace with forces roughly equivalent to the attackers. The Russians targeted command, control, and communications facilities. The action was enormously expensive. The world hadn't seen a clash of "parity" forces in the air in some time, and memories had faded. Bit by bit, the Turkish computer network was cut, but each success cost the Russians dearly in expended machinery. Within three weeks most of the available Russian UAV inventory was expended.

 

The existence of approximate material parity between Turkish and Russian forces, given the decision of others not to push beyond a defensive posture, was foreseeable. The parity- or perhaps slight Turkish superiority- in intelligence was not. (4) Well into this phase, many Russian officers had the feeling that the Turks had access to far too much information, and super computer or not, there are some things you just don't learn without a world class intelligence system. But the Turks were learning these things.

 

Around the world, weapons moved towards Arabia. It is a matter of historical irony that the sheer volume of weapons deliveries, coupled with haste and inexperience, resulted in more far more damage and loss of life within Arabia than the bizarre UAV attack that prompted the war. The incident in the port of Bahrain, for example, resulted from a "cook-off" of rockets being delivered from the Andes- and later investigation showed that the event could be traced to damage sustained during shipment across the Pacific, poor inspection, and poor handling and storage in Bahrain. (5) Military shipments simply overwhelmed the availability of skilled logisticians.(6)

 

Perhaps the Russians had been expecting an air campaign like the US and allies against Iraq or Serbia in the 20th century. But the two sides were much better matched. It was more like the Battle of Britain- but more expensive, and more automated.(7) The Russian attacks exhausted much of the nation's ready capability, and Russians worried that rebuilding their arsenal would absorb much of the nation's budget for years to come, but war, after a while, becomes its own justification and Russia was not ready to give up. Neither was Turkey.

 

Phase Two: It Slogs On.

 

In phase two, the Russians were forced to slow down their pace. With many of the combat robots out of action, commanders were forced to commit more manned aircraft to the operations. With access to a steady supply of expendables, much of it being diverted from Arabia where the front was distressingly quiet, the Russians countered their disadvantages with sheer logistic weight. The Turks continued a stubborn defense. Fighting over their own airspace, battle damage to a Turkish UAV or aircraft often meant landing, and a recovery. Damaged Russian craft, if they could not make it to friendly areas, often ditched in Turkey, or at sea. Use of Arabia as an emergency landing area was problematic- there was no perfect way to distinguish a damaged Russian craft from a Turkish sneak attack, and several mistakes were made. As neutral powers, Iran, Armenia, and Ukraine detained a number of Russian pilots, aircraft, and robots. Armenia also acquired several Turkish pilots, and a Russian special forces team, whose mission was aborted after a transport was damaged. (8)

 

Russian diplomatic attempts to coax a ground invasion out of their allies failed. (9) The fight would continue primarily in the sky. But, in Phase two, the Russians also committed naval and special forces to the fight. Success was limited, but the recovery of special forces teams brought to light information from within Turkey that was previously unavailable to the outside world. The extent to which the Turkish national computer system was running things was shocking- even more so was the ability of the system to control information, predict responses, and "edit" information to manipulate the populace. But knowledge of the problem was steadily growing in Turkey. In a suburb of Istanbul, riots broke out after the "National Electronic Democracy System" produced its latest tally of the "will of the people", showing the voting pattern in the suburb over the past two days, despite the fact that over the past THREE days, the neighborhood had been without power and data communications. This was not unique- similar patterns were seen elsewhere, including incidents where electronic voting was "recorded" in areas entirely isolated from the computer net due to battle damage to nodes. This became very prevalent in rural eastern Turkey, where the loss of the more loosely scattered network nodes had greater impact.

 

The Russians also ran into a number of Iranians, "investigating". The Iranians were busily trying to find a way to contact anyone in charge in Turkey. Having failed at this, they had a brainstorm and established a link between the Turkish computer network, and a facility used by the Iranian Xeno-Archeological Institute, where scientists had been modeling hypothetical forms of alien intelligence. (10)

 

The Turks took up a nasty habit of following Russian aircraft home, and actually launching attacks on Russian bases. Their success rate was much worse than the Russians, but the sight of smoke over Russian bases in the Caucasus, along with the huge expense of the war, turned many Russians against the war, which was rapidly being seen as a replay of many historical Russian campaigns. (11) Public support for the war dropped.

 

In Arabia, allied forces were anticipating the so far non-existent Turkish assault. Some weapons were re-routed to help the Russians, whose losses were mounting. Arrivals to Turkey had been limited to some Brazilians. Brazilian forces, where they did reach Turkey, went into defensive positions. (12) It would be later learned that one Brazilian unit near Lebanon was faced on the opposite side of the border by a Venezuelan unit. (13) The realization that through a tangle of alliances, commitments, and reactions, a relatively minor incident in Syria- which was at the time poorly understood- could possibly have resulted in warfare sweeping across South America, altered many South American perceptions.

 

 

Phase Three: What? It's Over?

 

Russian air commanders received reinforcements in the form of carrier born Russian Naval aviation, operating from "secure" locations in the Red Sea, and supplied with the plentiful weaponry collected in Arabia. (14) To strike at the carriers, the Turkish forces would have to fight over Arabian airspace, and they showed no intention of doing so. They doggedly defended their airspace, now under attack from two directions, as the Russians stepped up the attack.

 

Within Turkey, some of the Russian special forces teams had been hunted down, or extracted. Others made contact with Turks who had been trying to destroy the Turkish computer communications network. To their surprise, this included elements within the Turkish military, which felt that a return to direct human to human control was a military necessity. Intelligence networks began to piece together a bizarre story of a computer network that ran things its own way, making decisions it had never been expected or even designed to, gradually and effectively shutting out human control. Further evidence came in the form of reported contacts with Turkish ground forces. This was very limited, throughout the war, and consisted solely of very brief border contacts, and operations between Russian special forces and Turkish forces. Wherever this occurred, Turkish ground forces reacted entirely differently than Turkish air forces, showing much less readiness to engage in combat. Although the Iranians had taken the lead in investigative footwork, the Russians began to bring back the picture: the entire affair seemed to be the creation of the Turkish computer system: but was it accidental or intentional, and was the system being controlled by "hijackers" as some were beginning to suggest? (15)

 

The Russian attacks on the network, once aided by the Turkish "human resistance", became much more effective, and Turkish central control began to crumble. As this occurred, yet another force made its presence known in Turkey. The Dutch had sent a team of expert "Net Agents" into Turkey (where they could operate from within Turkey's national network). This group was, from the beginning, working on the assumption that Turkey's actions were computer directed, and not the direct policy of the Turks themselves. The Dutch learned that in the run-up to war, the complex programs that directed the Turkish national computer system had completely reconfigured themselves, distributing themselves across the Turkish network, and "backing themselves up". As a result, at no point was there a single machine that could be disconnected.(16) It was the Dutch that had actually begun to The Russians apparently anticipated that at some point, a ground force would have to establish control, and they feared this moment. But the ground force that took control of Turkey was Turkey's own army. Fourteen weeks after the war began, the general staff of the Turkish armed forces announced that the Turkish military was establishing an emergency government- to consist of a "cabinet" of Turkey's senior elected civilian officials- the mayors of its major cities. With national communications failing, the Turkish military relied on relays of tactical communication systems to link its new government.

 

The establishment of a Turkish government that could actually be talked to, followed by Turkish promises to investigate the events that led up to war, lead to an official ceasefire within days. The Turkish claim that the UAV attack was anomalous computer directed event that in no way represented the will of the people of Turkey seemed to mollify most Arabs, although in Russia, there was the sense that this was letting Turkey off the hook to easily. But the Russian military saw this as a way to achieve a quick political victory, claim the honor of having saved the Turks from a corrupt government (whether machine or human, it didn't matter), and get out of the war as graciously as possible.

 

The Russians still had a lot of explaining to do, to their own people, the majority of whom had lost a lot of faith in the government, and were very concerned by the incredible cost of the war. So did the Arabs: their leaders received a stern dressing down by a number of media commentators and opposition figures, who declared that the directors of a corporate state had no business delivering all manner of controversial political judgments regarding the leadership of other nations. Such rude behavior is bad for business, after all, as many important customers live in those nations, and politically abusive outbursts should be left to movie stars, as per tradition. The British government suffered the most: in the aftermath of the war, there were allegations, investigations, a vote of no confidence, and a mass of resignations.

 

Globally, the war shifted attitudes. The pace at which the world was plunged towards war was perceived as reckless. Popular support for confrontational policies dropped. And people became much, much more suspicious of artificial intelligence research, and advanced communications and automation in general.

 

Notes

 

(1) Shipping costs rose sharply but briefly in the Mediterranean, but returned to near-normal levels quickly afterwards. Most shipping insurers and carriers recognized that whether or not any actual military activity occurs, the very issuance of a "license to kill" across a heavily traveled international sea lane is an extreme risk factor in and of itself. There were brief shortages of some commodities in many Mediterranean nations, Israel in particular, but the lasting impact was far more psychological than economic. There was also a noticeable decline in the cruise ship industry in the Mediterranean, sparking hostility from the tourism industry. Many people were left concerned- what if this had gone on longer? As it was, no "belligerent" naval force challenged the blockade as far as is known, although British and German ships spent a lot of time shadowing a variety of contacts, ruined a number of Tunisian fishing nets, and annoying merchant ship captains across the area.

 

(2) Throughout this whole sordid affair, the British deployment to Diego Garcia was one of the few things that actually turned out beneficial. With the Mediterranean unsafe, most of the vast amount of military cargo destined for Arabia was shipped in via the Indian ocean to Persian Gulf ports. The scope of this operation, lack of clear leadership, and inexperience on the part of many was a problem, but the British admiral at Diego Garcia was a "take charge" kind of guy and hammered some order out of the incoming ships.

 

(3) The official "communications blackout" imposed by the Turkish computer system has not been fully explained. As with many of theories regarding these events, different ideas regarding the actions of the computer system are divided along the following lines: The "Electronic Coup" explanation, the "Systemic Failure" explanation, the "Soft AI" explanation, and the "Extreme AI" explanation. The "Electronic Coup" explanation holds that the Turkish computer system was actually under the control of a select group of system hijackers, and contact was avoided as it would have helped authorities identify them. In the "Systemic Failure" explanation, programming errors caused the computer system to classify crisis communications with foreign states as items requiring a national democratic consensus, but there was no functional procedure for providing this by way of a conversation, only occasional messages. In the "Soft AI" explanation, the computer's own emergent behavior caused it to classify all such communications as "threats", and it ignored them, while in the "Extreme AI" explanation, the computer system was steadily trying and failing to communicate with what it regarded as its peers- the computer systems of other nations- on levels invisible to humans.

 

(4) The nature of Turkish intelligence successes have still not been adequately understood. Several schools of thought have developed. One is that Turkey received intelligence aid from one or more allied nations. How these nations were able to pass information to the Turkish defense network when communications on a government to government level had essentially ceased to exist remains unknown. A second school of thought, following the "Extreme AI" interpretation of events, is that the Turkish computer system on its own developed and ability to gather and process intelligence information, probably relying on subtle cues gained from "open source" information around the world. Other theories exist as well.

 

(5) The immediate level of destruction due to the Andean rocket incident was worse than the UAV attack in Damascus. But this was compounded when a Bahraini mob confronted the Andean sailors at the port. Some of the Andeans responded with weapons, and Arabian police called in defuse the situation managed to do so only after blood had been spilled. The incident led to an Andean media celebrity saying that the whole affair only proved that the Arabs over react to everything, and whatever had happened in Damascus, the Arabs probably deserved it. Arab street opinions towards the Andeans have been bitter ever since. Strangely, Arab opinions towards the Turks haven't been nearly so intense. Arab commentators have explained it thusly: The Arabian government directly impugned the honor of the Turks. Action had to be taken. Arabs understand.

 

(6) The backlog of weapons to be offloaded in Arab ports was so great that some ships waited, fully loaded, for the entire duration of the conflict. A number of these eventually returned home, their stores having remained on board. Fear that the Turks, or their allies, or other trouble makers, would find and attack these ships was a nightmare throughout the course of the war, but no attacks on these ships ever occurred.

 

(7) In hindsight, the Russians had chosen the exact battle strategy which the Turkish computer system could best deal with. The air war was a battle of contacts, identifications, intercepts and electronically coordinated combats with little human interaction. As opposed to the blur of detail found in ground combat communications, long range aerial combat features data that is limited and abstract- so many contacts at such and such speed, altitude, and bearing, etc. It is likely that had a ground campaign been fought, the Turks would not have relied on the computer system- or possibly, the computer system would not have been able to control the battle- and the restoration of Turkey to "human control" would have been quicker. On the other hand, it is also probable that such an operation would have been even more destructive.

 

(8) Throughout the course of the war, the Turks handled their captives with utmost adherence to military custom and law, and allowed them communications through humanitarian organizations, which operated in Turkey through Ukraine and Iran. The "professional courtesy" shown the Russians is considered a factor in the decision by the Russian military not to press its advantage in the final phase and push for a decisive ground victory- it was realized that the Turks were amenable to solving problems on the face to face level.

 

(9) Other nations were not nearly so eager for a war with Turkey, and limited their goals to security for Arabia. It was perhaps a strategic mistake for the Russian government to admit that its war plans had "ulterior motives" including a pre-emptive strike against a clearly far fetched Brazilian invasion. In the aftermath of the war, so many "pre-emptive" moves against the presumed actions of others proved to be based on completely erroneous assumptions- neither the Ukraine, Iran, nor Brazil were considering launching attacks- that the entire concept of "we had to this because the other nation was going to…" became politically untenable as public opinion changed.

 

(10) Rumors persist of Iranian records of "conversations" between their isolated "contact computer" and the Turkish computer network. The "Extreme AI" theorists doubt these recordings will show any real light on the emergence of a true artificial sentience, as the Iranian computer would not have been able to sustain it's end of a conversation. The disparity in network power and complexity would mean any communication would have been the equivalent of a human leaving messages on a simple menu driven recording system.

 

(11) Journalists have known for two centuries that the *appearance* of battle damage is generally far worse than the damage itself. Black smoke may blanket a city- and it may be caused by just a few building fires. A relative handful of Turkish hits on Russian bases therefore had massively disproportionate effect in the media.

 

(12) The German-United Kingdom action in the Mediterranean was limited to forces that were intended to be belligerents, not forces that just intended to "be there" (if that was the case, they'd have been forced to chase *each other* out of the area!). It was through this loophole that a Brazilian task force arrived, with its commander patiently reviewing his orders with German and British counterparts, demonstrating that "being there" was the sole Brazilian objective. As the Brazilians had no intent of engaging either side, the passed. They did, in fact, land troops in Turkey, but at no point did they take part in any combat or combat support operations- scrupulously observing the letter of the law, as a German commander put it.

 

(13) Again it must be emphasized that while the Venezuelan contingent was deployed defensively, the Brazilian force was simply there- most of the time, hanging out on the beach. Contact would have been impossible unless the Venezuelans been given the order to advance into Turkey, something their government did not support. Because of this, there was no actual chance of contact between the Venezuelans and the Brazilians with one very small exception. Appearances, however, count for a lot, and the appearance of a possible conflict worried many in South America. The sole contact occurred after the Venezuelans, having avoided the import of pork into the area to show sensitivity to local customs, learned that the Brazilians had not been so politically correct. Towards the end of the conflict, a Venezuelan supply officer overcome with jealousy struck a deal with a Brazilian counterpart and smuggled several tons of pork- as well as a lime and avocado based barbecue sauce- into Lebanon.

 

(14) This was one of the greatest political risks taken by the Russian/Arab sides. Attacking Turkey directly from Arabian airspace opened up the possibility that Turkeys defenses would engage the aircraft while still over Arabia. This was judged an unacceptable risk of escalation. Russian aircraft, would turn west, then attack Turkey from over the Mediterranean. This was in conflict with the mission of British and German ships, which occasionally, but never too strenuously, interfered.

 

(15) As computer researchers advanced various theories concerning the behavior of the Turkish system, the one that caused the most concern in Russia was the Electronic Coup/Hijacked System theory. The possibility was raised that Russian, having already announced an "ulterior motive" for the war, might be considered a suspect in the subversion of the Turkish computer system. Publicly, Brazil had already fingered Arabia, but most experts agreed that Russia, and not Arabia, was the more serious Cyber-threat to Turkey. The Russian government was forced to consider the possibility that it may have been a Russian effort even without official Russian plans- it was possible that such a hijacking could have been carried out by a sophisticated underworld group. The possibility of a "the enemy is us" scenario became a real concern.

 

(16) The Dutch team also advanced the "hard AI" theory. They suggested that in "distributing itself", the battery of programs that made up the Turkish command system was forced to create routines that would allow itself to recognize its own elements, and deal with them as something apart from the rest of the world. In short, the system learned to recognize itself, be aware of itself, and understand itself, and crossed the boundary from "sophisticated set of machine instructions" into sentience. They theorized that the intelligence this created would have been undetectable to humans, because seeking it in a single program or machine would have been like trying to find a human personality in a cluster of frontal lobe cells. Instead, they claimed, the true sentience of the system consisted of patterns of information - thought- and was distributed across the entire network. Despite its being officially rejected in most circles, the "hard AI theory" has a following, enough for the whole war to be dubbed, in some books, "The First AI War". This implies the rather disturbing prediction that there will be more. Naturally, this popular credence given to the Hard AI explanation is a major factor in the many popular "anti network" movements that have appeared since the war.

 

Late war, Istanbul, a Dutch computer network expert: "Oh, there's the problem. Turkey bought Windows for Democracies, but everyone knows its full of bugs. Microsoft cut a lot of corners by re-using the code from Windows for Paranoid Dictatorships.

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.