[HN Gopher] In America's Next War, Machines Will Do the Thinking
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       In America's Next War, Machines Will Do the Thinking
        
       Author : jonbaer
       Score  : 8 points
       Date   : 2021-10-02 22:28 UTC (31 minutes ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.bloombergquint.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.bloombergquint.com)
        
       | mercy_dude wrote:
       | I am not so sure about that. If Afghanistan and corona response
       | have shown anything, a complete and total failure of American
       | intelligence and military apparatus isn't really far fetched
       | anymore.
        
       | themihai wrote:
       | Will the machines work against Talibans as well?The best U.S tech
       | couldn't deter some medieval-like army. You can't talk about a
       | super army/next level army and forget Afghanistan...
        
         | dogma1138 wrote:
         | When the US invaded Afghanistan in the Taliban was defeated
         | within about 6 weeks. US deterrence very much remained in place
         | until it began to withdraw.
         | 
         | Winning against a force like the Taliban requires you to be
         | able to operate with much looser ROEs than the US as well as
         | operate against their enabled in the region and outside of it
         | which the US was unable and or unwilling to do.
         | 
         | The Taliban was formed in Pakistan and it drew many of its
         | fighters from there it was true in the late 80's and it's true
         | today.
         | 
         | Winning a war and sustaining occupation are also completely
         | different things, and most importantly this is about a peer or
         | near peer enemy.
         | 
         | An occupation that is actually being opposed can only be won by
         | extermination or expulsion whilst wars are won by making it too
         | costly to continue fighting and allowing for or forcing a
         | surrender.
        
           | crooked-v wrote:
           | The results of the US withdrawal make it pretty obvious that
           | the Taliban as an organization were in hiding rather than
           | defeated, and probably had backchannel communications going
           | with local leaders the entire time the US was there, given
           | that at least some of the rapid takeover of the country again
           | seems to have come from pre-negotiated surrender agreements.
        
       | atarikraken wrote:
       | "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."
        
       | crooked-v wrote:
       | > Autonomy -- enabled by artificial intelligence, edge computing
       | and other technologies -- allows you to operate at scales and
       | speeds that you simply cannot do under the traditional model of
       | big, expensive, heavily manned systems that, no matter how much
       | money you throw at them, will only be able to do a limited number
       | of things.
       | 
       | I can't wait to see the headlines in 2050 about a badly-trained
       | neural network leading to US warbots gunning down anyone carrying
       | a banana.
        
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       (page generated 2021-10-02 23:00 UTC)