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Q: Number of DAGs of order $n$ whose longest path has $k$ vertices Fix a set $V$ of cardinality $n$. I'm trying to determine the number of possible DAGs (directed acyclic graphs) whose vertex set is $V$ with a longest path containing $k$ nodes, which I will write as $D^n_k$. So far, I have $$ D^n_k = {n \choose k} (\ldots) $$ The $n \choose k$ is required because we have to choose the vertices which form the longest path. I also know that the part in the parentheses needs to give the number of possible subgraphs of order $n - k$ which don't extend the path to more than $k$ vertices, but I don't know how to even describe this. Although I am after a closed form, a recurrence, or help in obtaining one, would be very helpful for me. A: (Too long for a comment, not a full answer) If we forget about the $k$ parameter and just look at the number of DAGs on $n$ labeled nodes then the total number of DAGs is given by the recurrence $$ D_n = \sum_{k=1}^n(-1)^{k-1}\dbinom{n}k2^{k(n-k)}D_{n-k}.$$ If the nodes are not labeled, just divide by $n!$. This is also the OEIS sequence A003024. The first few numbers are $$1, 1, 3, 25, 543, 29281, 3781503, 1138779265, 783702329343, 1213442454842881, 4175098976430598143, 31603459396418917607425$$ so $D_n$ grows very quickly. As a very crude bound, if we only take the first term in the sum we get $$ D_n \approx 2^nD_{n-1}$$ so $D_n \approx 2^{n^2}$ (It grows even faster than this). If we make the bad assumption that all longest path lengths are equally likely, then the number of DAGs on $n$ labeled nodes with longest path having length $k$ is roughly $\frac{D_n}k.$ However, some longest paths are much more likely than others. More precisely, If we randomly pick a DAG out of all possible $D_n$ DAGs, what is the expected length of the longest path ? If we forget about labels, and also orientation of the edges, it is plausible to believe that the question is roughly the same as asking If we randomly pick a tree out of all possible trees with $n$ vertices, what is the height of the tree? This question has been answered here and the expected height is roughly $O(\sqrt{n}).$ Thus, for $k$ far away from $O(\sqrt{n})$, there might be much less than $D_n/n$ possibilities.

The Pinelands Commission requires fees for reviewing development applications. The Commission's fee schedule for different development types is summarized in a bulleted guide below. There is a $200 minimum application review fee for all applications. There is a $50,000 maximum threshold for all applications. Please see the Special Circumstances section for any additional calculations to apply to the application review fee. If applicable, the total required application review fee is based on the calculation for the proposal type and the formula for special circumstances. If you have further questions regarding application review fees, please contact the Commission's Regulatory Programs Office at (609) 894-7300 or e-mail questions to [email protected]. $150 per acre of all land included in the right-of-way (ROW) + $150 per acre of all land outside of the ROW to be disturbed as part of the development Forestry $5 per acre subject of forestry activities Golf Courses $150 per acre devoted to golf course facility Resource Extraction; Mining $1,500 + $30 per acre to be mined within each permit period Non-PDC Letter of Interpretation $200 Special Circumstances Public Development (Development Proposed by a Public Agency) 50% of the fee calculated based on development type Maximum fee of $25,000 Religious Association or Corporation or Non-profit Organization which is Exempt from Federal Income Taxation under Sections 501(c)3 or (d) ofthe Internal Revenue Code. (This does not apply to organizations that are solely exempt from State Taxation.) Maximum fee of $500 Review of Any Study/Survey (cultural, threatened/endangered species, etc.) Prior to Submission of Development Application 1/3 of the fee calculated based on development type Non-residential Development Proposing to Use an Alternate Design Septic System

[Study on the difference between components in volatile oil of Citrus reticulata before and after being processed]. To analyze the change of components in volatile oil of Citrus reticulata before and after being processed. The volatile oil of Citrus reticulata was extracted by steam distillation and comparatively studied by GC-MS. The content of volatile of Citrus reticulata after being steamed decreased from 1.13% to 1.06%. 34 components was detected in Citrus reticulata, 30 components was detected in the processed Citrus reticulata, 24 components in volatile oil of Citrus reticulata were identified. 15 components in volatile oil of Citrus reticulata before and after being processed were the same, 9 components were not detected after steamed, but there were 9 new kinds being detected. The relative contents of 4 components increased, 10 components decreased. There are many differences between the components in the volatile oil of Citrus reticulata before and after being processed and also the content of the components may offer some theoretical evidence for drug property transform and different clinical application.

Flow reversal reactors, in which the flow of the reactants and products is periodically reversed, are well known in the field of chemical engineering. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,478,808 to Matros et al. is directed to a method of preparing sulphur trioxide by the oxidation of sulphur dioxide. Matros et al. discloses heat exchange/reaction zones each consisting of a layer of catalyst between two layers of inert heat exchange material. The reaction mixture flow along the catalyst bed is reversed periodically. U.S. Pat. No. 2,946,651 to Houdry is directed to the catalytic treatment of gas streams containing relatively small amounts of oxidizable impurities and discloses a gas permeable bed of solids which operate as a heat exchanger by periodically reversing the direction of flow of gas stream through the bed at such intervals that the hot zone of the bed is maintained generally within the central portion thereof, while the outer portion of the bed with respect to the direction of gas flow is maintained at a relatively low temperature. US Patent Application No. 2009/0101584 to Bos et al. is directed to a reverse-flow reactor comprising at least one catalyst bed which is preceded and followed by at least one bed containing selectively adsorbing material. U.S. Pat. No. 6,019,952 to Haupt is directed to a process for destroying organic contaminants in exhaust gas. Haupt discloses two reactors arranged in parallel where each reactor contains a plurality of serially arranged reaction zones with each reaction zone containing an upstream catalyst, a downstream absorbent and a heater. The arrangement of the catalyst, absorbent and heater may be varied. In general, flow reversal reactors have heat media zones, the primary function of which is to pre-heat cold reactant gases to the proper temperature before the gases reach the reaction zone (i.e. the catalyst bed). In large-scale industrial reactors operating in dynamic regimes, radial in-homogeneities commonly arise. These radial in-homogeneities result in the formation of radial temperature gradients in the catalytic reaction zones of the reactor in which the central region of the reactor has a temperature greater than the temperature of a peripheral region of the reactor (i.e. near the reactor wall). In some instances, the temperature differential between these two regions may be more than 300° C. As a result of the temperature differential between the central region and peripheral region of the reactor, two different regimes of operation are found in the reactor. A high temperature regime in the central region of the reactor where chemical conversion approaches 100% and a low temperature regime near the reactor wall where chemical conversion may be less than 30%. The result of this disparity is a decrease in the overall rate of chemical conversion and increased reactor inefficiently. Several efforts have been made in order to alleviate this problem. For example, Canadian Patent No. 2,192,534 to Ratnani et al., directed to a method and apparatus for performing a gas phase exothermic reaction, discloses a reverse flow reactor in which a combustible feed gas mixture is passed through a first catalyst bed comprising a catalyst material having a low catalytic activity and subsequently passed through a second catalyst bed comprising a catalyst material having a high catalytic activity. However, passing the feed gas mixture through catalyst beds having different catalyst activity sequentially does not necessarily reduce or avoid radial in-homogeneities. To overcome this issue, it is known in the art to increase the volume of the catalyst bed in industrial reactors. Increasing the volume of the catalyst bed increases the amount of time that the reaction gas is in contact with the catalyst surface, which increases the conversion rate near the reactor wall and therefore increases the total chemical conversion rate of the reactor. However, increasing the volume of the catalyst bed is undesirable economically because it increases the capital costs and operating costs of the reactor due to the need for more catalyst. Additionally, when the concentration of the incoming reactant gas varies, an increase in the volume of catalyst is insufficient to reach a conversion rate of over 95%. It would therefore be desirable to have a flow reversal reactor in which the effect of radial in-homogeneities is reduced or avoided so that the chemical conversion rate is similar throughout the entire reactor.

You are here World Khurshid may cancel China trip/news/450414 Khurshid may cancel China trip AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE|Published — Sunday 5 May 2013 NEW DELHI: India’s foreign minister has hinted he could cancel a planned trip to Beijing if no progress is made in resolving a row over an alleged incursion by Chinese troops deep inside Indian-claimed territory. The reported Chinese infiltration across the disputed Himalayan border has strained ties between the nuclear-armed neighbors whose relations have long been checkered by mutual suspicion — a legacy of a 1962 border war. “I can’t say we have satisfaction (from Beijing) at this stage,” said foreign minister Salman Khurshid who announced last week he would head for China on May 8 to discuss the standoff. Speaking to Indian television channels while traveling to Iran on an official visit, Khurshid said in news footage aired yesterday that New Delhi was “keeping channels of communications open.” The minister, who has declared both countries have a mutual interest in not allowing the dispute to “destroy” long-term progress in ties, said his trip to Beijing was still on. But he suggested he might reconsider his travel plans if there is no progress in resolving the dispute. India has not “reached a stage where we need to review that decision (to visit Beijing),” said Khurshid, but added it would not be wise to use the word “certainty” in connection with his visit. “We remain in the dialogue process, we hope the dialogue will be successful. As of now, I can’t say that (dialogue) has been successful,” he said. The row is also casting a cloud over a planned visit to New Delhi by China’s new premier, Li Keqiang, later this month. The informal border separating China and India is known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC). While it has never been formally demarcated, the countries have signed two accords to maintain peace in frontier areas. Small incursions of a few kilometers across the contested boundary are common but it is rare for either country to set up camps in disputed territory. Both countries have been seeking to keep the row low-key, keen not to disrupt their booming bilateral trade. India has called the incursion a “localized problem” and says it believes it is possible to resolve the problem peacefully. Beijing has said both countries had the “capacity and wisdom” to defuse the row through “friendly consultation” but insist their troops have “not trespassed the line.”

Just another WordPress.com weblog Main menu Category Archives: Ode At the periphery of your consciousness it starts; an oozing fuzz lurking round corners, darkening the sky. The silent weapon of potent power, picks apart your strength and courage as you look up into the light. Something is wrong. A wave of lethargy descends and you know it it too late. Your head lifts, your eyes close and your mind freezes. 3.. 2.. 1 .. “Aitchoo” The signal has been given – the sensory assault is underway. Mucus reacts almost immediately, placing blockades at the nose and ears. Meanwhile the vision is impaired as the basel tears stream down your cheeks. The battle commences and as the casualties spill from your face, you know the drill; you know what you have to do. You. Must. Drop. Everything. Alerting all to the battle raging within, your primary objective is clear. Authorization is a mere formality and you plan your escape. From the room, down the stairs and out into the cold light of day, the defense falters. A vindicating “aitchoo, aitchoo, aitchoo” bursts from nowhere, bouncing off buildings and frightening strangers. A fuzzy brain peering through bleary eyes marks out the route. You start with small steps as you begin to manage your increasing vertigo and your terminal velocity is perhaps not what it once was. But you power on, keeping your goal in mind. Home. Your hands reach for the keys, your quivering body unable to hide its strife. The hallway. Bag drops to the ground and you head towards the kitchen. Supplies. You gather all you can carry in your arms and head for the stairs. Oh! the stairs. You drop to your knees and hang your head, casualties of war spilling all over the carpet. You start to crawl, utilising all your waning strength to maneuver the tiered mountain. After an age you pull yourself up to the last step. Your perfectly apportioned energy is drained and, running on empty, you inch your way across the landing towards your goal. A cruel twist of fate sees the bedroom door shut and you leave some supplies and take only what you immediately need. The bedroom. Heading towards the bed; the home straight. Somehow, your mind struggling to stay afloat in a sea of phlegm, your limbs pull together to deliver you to your fluffy infirmary. Horizontal now, the mist starts to clear. Your hand reaches shakily for the weapon and you press the button. The flatscreen before you springs to life, blasting through the haze that is your mind.

Eruv An eruv (; , , also transliterated as eiruv or erub, plural: eruvin ) is a ritual halakhic enclosure that some Jewish communities, and especially Orthodox Jewish communities, construct in their neighborhoods to allow the activity of hotzaah mereshut lereshut () which is prohibited on Shabbat: carrying objects from the private to the public domains and transporting objects four cubits (about two meters) in the public domain. An eruv accomplishes this by symbolically integrating a number of private and public properties into one larger "private domain" by surrounding it with mechitzas, thereby avoiding restrictions of transferring between domains. Often a group constructing an eruv obtains a lease to the required land from a local government. An eruv allows Jews to carry, among other things, house keys, tissues, medication, or babies with them, and to use strollers and canes. The presence or absence of an eruv thus especially affects the lives of strictly observant Jews with limited mobility and those responsible for taking care of babies and young children. Definition The prohibition of transferring between domains In Jewish tradition it is commonly said that "carrying" is forbidden on Shabbat. Specifically, "transferring between domains" () is considered one of the 39 categories of activity prohibited on Shabbat. The halacha of Shabbat divides spaces into four categories: Private domain (reshut hayachid), such as a house Public domain (reshut harabim), such as a very busy road Carmelit, which includes most other places Neutral domain (makom patur), such as the flat space on top of a pole A domain is defined as public or private based on its degree of enclosure, not its ownership. The rules here are complex, and expertise is needed to apply them. On Shabbat, it is forbidden to transfer an object from one domain to another, including from one person's house to another adjacent house. The only exception is transferring to or from a neutral domain (which is rarely relevant). In addition, it is also forbidden to transfer an object for a distance of 4 cubits (approximately 2 metres) within a public domain or carmelit. Eruv chatzerot The term eruv is a shortening of eruv chatzerot, literally a "merger of [different] domains" (into a single domain). This makes carrying within the area enclosed by the eruv no different from carrying within a single private domain (such as a house owned by a single person), which is permitted. The eruv typically includes numerous private homes, as well as a semi-public courtyard whose ownership is shared by them. To enact the merger of the homes and courtyard into a single domain, all home owners as well as owners of the courtyard must pool together certain foodstuffs, which grants the area of the eruv the status of a single private domain. As a precondition for this merger, the area must be surrounded by a wall or fence. In many cases (for example, within an apartment complex or walled city) the demarcation of the shared area consists of real walls or fences. Building walls may also be used, and in some cases so may a natural wall such as a river bank or steep hill. Walls may include doors and windows. As such, the wall may even consist of a series of "doorframes" with almost no wall between them. Poles in the ground form the "doorposts" of the doorframe, and rope or wire between the poles forms the "lintel" of the doorframe. In modern cities, it is typical for the majority of an eruv to consist of such doorframes, using utility poles and wires. When a "doorframe" is used as part of an eruv, it is required that the "lintel" rest on top of the "doorpost", rather than being attached to the side of the "doorpost". Since the "lintel" is frequently a utility wire which runs along the side of the utility pole, the pole cannot be used as "doorpost". In this case, an additional "doorpost", known in Hebrew as a lechi (pl. lechai'in), is attached to the side of the utility pole. This typically takes the form of a thin plastic pipe attached to the side of the utility pole, and the wire runs directly overhead of this pipe. Within the walled area, a property transfer is needed to create the shared domain. This is formally effected today by having one resident give some "bread" to another resident to keep, to create a joint ownership of food for the whole community. This is usually done by the rabbi of the community to ensure that it is done correctly, and the bread is usually matzo to ensure that it will be edible and usable for a long time. (It is usually replaced once each year.) In the Talmud and other classic rabbinic sources, the term eruv refers to the bread itself. A typical modern eruv encloses public streets as well as private houses, and thus requires agreement from the government authorities controlling those streets. Creating an eruv that involves public property requires a government entity to grant permission in order to be valid. This is often done by issuing a symbolic proclamation which has no weight in secular law (see Legal status). Sources In the Bible, calls on Jews "not to bring any burden into the gates of this city", suggesting that carrying a "burden" within the city was permissible, even though the city consisted of numerous separate private domains. The commentary of Radak suggests that such carrying was permitted because Jerusalem had an eruv and its walls formed the boundary, so carrying within the city was permitted. This view that an entire city could have an eruv influenced later views that an eruv could encompass a "courtyard" covering a wide area. Specific laws of eruv In general, authorities agree that eruvin are subject to certain restrictions. For example, they can be located in only certain places, and may not be of indefinite size. A prohibition against walking too far outside city boundaries (techum, see Eruv techumin) limits the possible size of an eruv. Also, the eruv walls or doorways must be at least ten tefachim (about 1 meter) in height. The laws of eruv differ depending on whether the eruv contains only private domains and carmelit, or else public domains (reshut harabim deoraita) as well. If public domains are not included, the eruv wall may include "doorways" constructed out of wire and posts, with no actual door in them. If public domains are included, the wall must be an actual wall – every "doorway" must have a door in it, and these doors must be closed each night. This situation was common in ancient walled cities, but is rare nowadays. So in practice, eruvin are only built in areas that do not include a public domain. What constitutes a "public area" is debated. The strict opinion holds that any road more than 16 cubits wide is a public domain, while the lenient opinion holds that a public domain must have both 16 cubits of width and 600,000 people passing through the road on a single day. In practice, communities that build eruvin accept the lenient opinion. However, in a few large cities such as New York City, it is possible that more than 600,000 people pass through certain roads in a single day. This would prevent building an eruv there even according to the lenient opinion. This possibility is the source of debates in New York City over whether a particular eruv, or any eruv is valid. In addition, the size of an eruv can be limited by a number of practical considerations. For example, the requirement that the eruv boundary be thoroughly checked each week and any needed repairs made before sunset on Friday limits the area that can be practically covered by a manageable eruv. The sensitivity of utility and public works crews about disturbing eruv-related attachments when making repairs can vary widely. Political and institutional differences, or differences about the correct interpretation of the relevant Jewish law, can also result in separate areas maintained by separate organizations. Checking the eruv The boundaries of an eruv must be checked regularly. If the boundary is not complete and contiguous in every element (i.e., one of the elements of the boundary is missing or broken), no valid eruv can exist that shabbat, and carrying remains prohibited. Eruv associations generally maintain hotlines or web sites informing communities of the status of the eruv on Friday afternoon. Activities prohibited even within an eruv Though a valid eruv enables people to carry or move most items outdoors on Shabbat, all other Shabbat restrictions still apply. These prohibitions include: Handling (or, according to some, moving) objects that are muktzah, whether indoors or outdoors. Opening an umbrella, which is analogous to erecting a tent, and falls under the category of construction. Since umbrellas may not be opened, they are muktzah. Typical weekday activities (uvdin d'chol), 'to protect the sanctity of Shabbat'. The precise scope of this prohibition is subject to a wide range of rabbinic opinion. Moving or carrying items in preparation for a post-Shabbat activity (hakhana), unless one has a legitimate use for them on Shabbat itself. Many sports and sport-related activities: Many authorities consider balls muktzah; others do not. In general, sports that result in holes or ruts being carved into the playing surface may be played only on surfaces that are not subject to such damage. Exercise of any kind is only permitted on Shabbat if done for the pleasure of the activity itself, rather than for other reasons such as health. Disagreements among Orthodox groups There exists disagreement between rabbis about some of the technical requirements of a valid eruv. Thus, there are instances where Orthodox rabbis dispute the validity of a particular eruv (and therefore instruct their followers not to use it), or even dispute whether any eruv can be built in a certain location. One of the oldest halakhic disputes in the United States revolves around the issue of an eruv in Manhattan, New York. In 1905, Rabbi Yehoshua Seigel created an eruv on Manhattan's Lower East Side, bounded by seawalls which once protected the island as well as the Third Avenue El; however, some other rabbis ruled the eruv to be invalid. In the 1950s, a proposal by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Kasher to establish an eruv in Manhattan gained the support of many prominent rabbis, including Rabbis Yosef Eliyahu Henkin, Dovid Lifshitz, and Ephraim Oshry, and the Kopishnitzer, Novominsker and Radziner Rebbes. Other authorities, such as Rabbis Aharon Kotler and Moshe Feinstein, raised objections, and a major controversy ensued. In the end, the opponents Agudas Horabonim issued a declaration opposing it. In June 2007, the East Side portion of the internal Manhattan Eruv was completed, offering an eruv within Manhattan to Orthodox Jews living on the East, Upper East, and Upper West Sides. There are also two eruvin in Manhattan's Washington Heights neighborhood, one covering the Yeshiva University area and another that is part of Mount Sinai Jewish Center and covers the Fort Washington area. Another ongoing dispute is the status of two inter-connected eruvin in Brooklyn: the Flatbush and Boro Park eruvin. The Boro Park eruv, from its initial construction, was rejected by most of the Hasidic community (though acceptance there has increased over time), and was rejected by most of the non-Hasidic "Lithuanian yeshiva" communities. The Flatbush eruv was originally built with the support of the Modern Orthodox community, and was later enhanced with the support of some local "non-Modern Orthodox" families. It was totally rejected by the many "Lithuanian yeshiva" communities led by the rosh yeshivas ("deans") of the large yeshivas Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin, Mir Yeshiva, and Yeshiva Torah Vodaas that are based in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. In the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, there is some dispute over the making of an eruv, with Rabbi Zalman Leib Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe of Williamsburg leading the opposition to an eruv. Eruv in Conservative and Reform Judaism Although Conservative Judaism's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards enacted an exception to the general rules of Sabbath observance to permit driving to attend a synagogue, it otherwise formally requires the same rules of Shabbat observance as Orthodox Judaism with respect to carrying a burden. Therefore, Conservative Judaism's rabbinate requires the use of an eruv for ordinary carrying outside this exception. Compliance with the formal requirements varies. In general, Conservative authorities and organizations have not attempted to build or develop rules for eruvin distinct from ones established by Orthodox authorities and organizations. Reform, Reconstructionist, and other more liberal branches of Judaism do not call for observance of the underlying traditional rules against carrying, and hence the issue of an eruv is not relevant. Coping without an eruv Many of those living in areas without an eruv are accustomed to life without one and have adapted their Shabbat practices accordingly. However, those who live in a place that has an eruv and are visiting a place without one, or if the eruv is temporarily out of service (perhaps due to wind or snow damage), may have difficulty making adjustments. Equally, those with young children, certain medical complaints and certain disabilities often feel trapped during Shabbat. Even without an eruv, there is no problem with wearing clothing outside, provided that it is normal clothing and being worn in its normal manner, as it is considered secondary to, and "part of," the person himself. The same is true for most medical items that are attached to the body and can be considered secondary to it, such as a cast, a bandage, or eyeglasses. Rabbinic authorities historically have differed about the use of a cane, wheelchair, or other similar devices by the less-able-bodied. Some have allowed their use even without an eruv and others have not. In recent years, however, the majority of poskim have leaned toward allowing these devices, since, if they were prohibited, disabled individuals might attempt to leave their homes on Shabbat without the device(s) and therefore risk serious injury. Loose medicines may not be carried; most authorities have agreed that it is preferable that one who constantly needs medication remain at home rather than transgressing Shabbat by carrying medication. But, if such a person leaves home, then comes in need of medication, it is permissible under the laws of Pikuach nefesh to break Shabbat and bring the medication to the person. A small number of authorities in recent years have been permitting carrying the medication, however, since such a person may be tempted to leave home without it, and then his/her life may be endangered thereafter. Many authorities allow the wearing of jewelry by women. As for a wristwatch, it could be seen either as an adornment (permitted to wear) or as a tool (forbidden to carry); therefore opinions are divided on whether men may wear wristwatches. In communities without an eruv, it is customary to create belts, bracelets, necklaces, or similar wearable objects incorporating housekeys so that the keys can be worn rather than carried when going outdoors. To be validly "worn" rather than "carried", the key needs to be an integral part of the belt, bracelet, or other item rather than simply attached to it. It may be either an adornment if worn in a manner visible to others or a component needed to keep the wearable object fastened. Special "shabbos belts" and similar items that incorporate this property are sold in religious stores. A tallit may be worn while walking to/from the synagogue, as it is considered clothing. Prayer books and other books may not be carried; either they must be brought to the synagogue prior to Shabbat or else the congregation's prayer books must be used. Communities with eruvin In Israel, almost every Jewish community is enclosed by an eruv. Outside Israel, there are over 150 community eruvin, as well as thousands of private ones enclosing only a few homes, or linking a synagogue to one or more nearby homes. Most major cities in North America have at least one, often surrounding only the Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods rather than the entire city. Outside North America, there are eruvin in Antwerp; Amsterdam; Bury, Greater Manchester (Whitefield); Gibraltar; Johannesburg; London; Melbourne; Perth; Rio de Janeiro; Strasbourg; Sydney; Venice and Vienna. Controversies The installation of eruvin has been a matter of contention in many neighbourhoods around the world, with notable examples including the London Borough of Barnet; Outremont, Quebec; Tenafly, New Jersey; Agoura Hills, California; Westhampton Beach, New York; and Bergen County, New Jersey. As the property-owner is the owner of the public streets, sidewalks and the utility poles on which symbolic boundaries are to be strung, some authorities have interpreted Jewish law as requiring the local government to participate in the process as one of the property owners by agreeing to creation of the eruv, and to give permission for the construction of a symbolic boundary on its property. In addition, because municipal law and the rules of utility companies, in general, prohibit third parties from stringing attachments to utility poles and wires, the creation of an eruv has often necessitated obtaining permissions, easements, and exceptions to various local ordinances. These requirements that government give active permission for an eruv have given rise to both political and legal controversy. Potential harm to birds In Oak Park, California, three hawks may have been injured by the eruv. However, there have been no reports of bird injuries associated with any other eruv. Demographic changes Jewish people who are not in favor of an eruv may feel that after an eruv is created they live in a symbolically segregated community. "It's like social engineering," said Arnold Sheiffer, founder of the opposition group Jewish People for the Betterment of Westhampton Beach. "We [the Jewish people] fought like hell to get out of the ghetto and now they want to create that again. The opposition in the village here is very, very high." Legal status In the United States, legal controversies about an eruv in a community often focus on provisions of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, which addresses relations between government and religion. Opponents of an eruv typically take the view that the government participation in the eruv process necessary to approve its construction violates the First Amendment's prohibition of governmental establishment of religion. Proponents take the view that it constitutes a constitutionally permissible accommodation of religion rather than an establishment. Proponents have also argued that the Free Exercise Clause affirmatively requires government acceptance, on the grounds that government interference with or failure to accommodate an eruv constitutes discrimination against or inhibition of the constitutional right of free exercise of religion. In the 2002 decision on Tenafly Eruv Association v. Borough of Tenafly, Judge Ambro, writing for the United States Third Circuit Court of Appeals, held that Eruv Association members had no intrinsic right to add attachments to telephone poles on Borough property and that the borough, if it wished, could enact a general, neutral ordinance against all attachments to utility poles that could be enforced against the eruv. However, Judge Ambro held that in this case, the Borough had not enacted a genuinely general or neutral ordinance because it permitted a wide variety of attachments to utility poles for non-religious purposes, including posting signs and other items. Because it permitted attachments to utility poles for secular purposes, the court held, it could not selectively exclude attachments for religious purposes. The United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case. It was subsequently cited as precedent by a number of other federal courts deciding disputes between an eruv association and a local government. In Outremont, a neighbourhood in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the city adopted a policy of removing eruv wires. In 2001, the Hasidic community obtained an injunction preventing such action by the city authorities. Between 2015 and 2018, there were ongoing issues with eruv markings extended on utility poles in a section of New Jersey. The adjoining municipalities of Mahwah, Upper Saddle River and Montvale, all border the state line on the other side of which is Rockland County, New York, where there are large communities of Orthodox Jews. After some eruvin were extended into Bergen County, allowing travel in the area, the municipalities took action in 2017 to dismantle the lechi markings. The matter was taken to court, and in January 2018 the presiding judge in the lawsuits made it clear he felt the municipalities did not have a strong case, and urged them to settle. The three municipalities have settled with the eruv association, allowing the eruv borders to remain in New Jersey, reimbursed the association's legal fees, received agreement from the association to adjust the color of the lechi mounted on local utility poles, and agreed to work through a few remaining route details. In general, state law has dealt with whether and to what extent government can permit or assist the erection and maintenance of boundary demarcations on public property. It has not dealt with the nature of the aggregation agreement or recognized an eruv as having legal effect or as implementing a meaningful change in real property ownership or tenancy. For purposes of accident liability, trespass, insurance, and other secular matters occurring on Shabbat, state law treats the properties within an eruv as continuing to be separate parcels. Other forms of eruv The term eruv is also used to refer to other, unrelated concepts in halakha. These include the eruv techumin which enables one to travel beyond the normal travel restrictions on Shabbat or holidays, and the eruv tavshilin which enables one to cook for Shabbat on a holiday which immediately precedes that Shabbat. Eruv techumin An eruv techumin (Hebrew: עירוב תחומין "mixing of borders") for traveling enables a traditionally observant Jew to travel by foot on Shabbat or a Jewish holiday beyond the 2,000-cubit (one biblical mile) limit imposed by rabbinic restriction. Eruv tavshilin An eruv tavshilin () is made in the home on the eve of a holiday with a work prohibition, if the holiday happens to fall on Friday. Since food cannot be cooked on Shabbat, the only way to eat freshly cooked food on Shabbat is to cook it on Friday, which in this case is a holiday. The eruv tavshilin allows this cooking to be done in a way that does not violate the holiday work restrictions. References External links General Eruv.org – Eruv Info, FAQ, and Global Eruv Directory BBC Eruv FAQ Eruvonline Blog Boston Eruv FAQ Introduction to the Modern Eruv – a detailed halachic overview by R' Hershel Schachter String Theory article, Harpers Magazine (paywalled) Barry Smith, The Ontology of the Eruv, from C. Kanzian (ed.), Cultures: Conflict – Analysis – Dialogue, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2007, 403–16. Video Adam Mintz, The History Of City Eruvin, 1894–1962 Textual resources Tractate Eruvin: Mishnaic text with the commentary of Rabbi Pinchas Kehati Tractate Eiruvin Category:Jewish courts and civil law Category:Laws of Shabbat Category:Orthodox Judaism Category:Shabbat innovations

30 Before 30 Update, with 5 Months to Go A few months ago, I started to include a 30×30 section in my Monthly Goals. I had hoped this would help me work more towards my 30 Before 30 list. My blogging friend Charlene recently revisited her own 30 Before 30 Bucket List. She has a few more years to accomplish her goals, so her list is more ambitious than my own. I like that she changed a few of her goals based on her own change in priorities. While I’ve progressed quite nicely in my own 30 Before 30 list, I’m following Charlene’s lead and changing a few goals. Some of these reflect a change in priorities. Others reflect my Crohn’s-caused limitations. Items I’ve completed are crossed out. Anything else I changed or added this year is in bold. 30×30 Travel Go to France with Dan (Done! November 17 to December 3, 2016) Go to Disney World and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter (Done! October 17-25, 2015) Discover Atlanta. Discover Georgia. Visit small towns, go hiking, explore. I changed this because Dan and I spend way more time hiking and visiting small towns than we do checking out Atlanta tourist destinations. Visit Harry and Celia in Charlotte (Done! January 31, 2016) 30×30 Career Finish my mom’s book and self-publish it. This has been too emotional for me so far. I wrote this goal about The Gifts of Brain Cancer. However, I’m working towards releasing Muddling Through Again, the second edition of my mother’s self-published book of prayers. I still think I can get this done before my 30th birthday. Write my first Kindle Single. This just will not happen in time. I’m changing this to help with my mom’s book. Write at least two content upgrades to promote Muddling Through Again. Sell 1,000+ books. These will be mother’s book and not mine plus her book, but I think I can do it. 30×30 Lifestyle Host a dinner party (I’m counting our family’s Christmas dinner for this goal, even if we ate at my dad’s house. I put together the menu, and I did most of the grocery shopping. I also cooked most of the food, although Jeremy contributed two dishes. Finally, I hand-washed all the fine china and crystal afterward, by myself. If that’s not hosting a dinner party for nine people, then I don’t know what is). Complete a 2K race. I have no idea why I wanted to start running. Ridiculous. Hold a plank for 60 seconds. Throw myself a fabulous birthday party (Done! While my 29th birthday party was not exactly what I wanted, I spent a great day with Libbi, Chelsea, and Dan. My Crohn’s did not cooperate, and I expected more friends to come, but I’m still counting the day-long party for this goal). Even with my changes, I still think this is a reasonably ambitious list. My 30th birthday will be this June, so I have about 5 months to accomplish everything. I hope this list reminds you that it’s okay to change your goals. Not checking something off your bucket list doesn’t mean you failed. You just discovered new priorities!

I Have so much meat in my freezer that i cant find the bacon 202,047 shares

--- abstract: 'A new procedure is constructed by means of APS in APLAN language. The procedure solves the initial-value problem for linear differential equations of order $k$ with polynomial coefficients and regular singularity in the initialization point in the interval $[a, b]$ and computes the algebraic polynomial $y_n$ of given order $n$. A new algorithm of Lanczos $\tau$-method is built for this procedure, the solution existence $y_n$ of the initial-value problem proved on this algorithm and also is proved the optimality by precision of order $k$ derivative of the initial-value problem solution.' --- **Lanczos $\tau$-method optimal algorithm in APS\ for approximating the mathematical functions** **P.N. Denisenko** Kirovograd State Technical University, Kirovograd, Ukraine\ Email: pnden\[email protected] [*Key words:*]{} special functions of mathematical physics, algebraic programming, linear differential equations with polynomial coefficients and singularity, initial-value problem, analytical approximative methods, Lanczos $\tau$-method, optimality by precision 1.  Introduction {#introduction .unnumbered} ================ [**Problem.**]{} To build the procedure with the following parameters: [**Input:**]{} 1. LDUMK — Linear differential equation of order $k$ $$LDUMK := ( D[ y ] = 0 ) ; \quad D[ y ] = A * y^{(k)} + \cdots + C * y + G ; \eqno(1)$$ The coefficients $A , \ldots , C$ , $G$ of this equation are known polynomials of independent variable $x$. The solution $y$ of this equation is a function of variable $x$. The zero point is a regular special point of equation (1): — the polynomial $A$ becomes zero in a zero point $$A( 0 ) = 0 , \eqno(2)$$ — the equation solution $y$ is a function analytical in the zero point. 2\. Initial conditions in the zero point $$init\_cond( y , d ) := \{ y( d ) = Y_0 , \ y'( d ) = Y_1 , \ \ldots , \ y^{(l)}( d ) = Y_{l} \}; \ \ d:=0;$$ These conditions are given in a form of Taylor series coefficients partial sum in the zero point $$T = T_{l}[ y ] = y(0) + y'(0) * x + \cdots + y^{(l)}(0) / l! * x^{l} ; \eqno(3)$$ The initial-value problem for equations (1), (2), (3) meets the following conditions: — the problem has a unique solution — the equation $$D[ T + V^s[ u ] ] = 0, \eqno(4)$$ where $$V[u] := \int_0^x u( t ) dt;$$ $$s := \max \{ l+1 , k \}; \eqno(5)$$ $$l := deg(T); \eqno(6)$$ $$k := ord\_equ(D[y]); \eqno(7)$$ — equivalent to the problem — has a recurrence relation system for defining the Taylor coefficients for the function $$u = c_0 + c_1 * x + \cdots + c_n * x^n + \cdots$$ of the form $$\{ \ coefTayl( D[ T + V^s[ u ] ] , i ) = 0 , \quad i = 0 , \ldots , m , \ldots \ \} := S_1 \& S_2;$$ relating to the function $\ u := y^{(s)} $; where $ S_1 $ — a system of $r$ equations like $0 = 0$; $ S_2 $ — a system of equations without equations like $0 = 0$. If the initial-value problem for equations (1), (2), (3) meets these conditions, the solution of this problem is $$y := solve( LDUMK , T) = T + V^s[ u ]; \eqno(8)$$ 3\. The approximation interval $[a,b]$. Initial point $d \in [a,b]$. 4\. The order $n$ of initial-value problem (1), (2), (3) solution (8) approximation sought within the interval $[a,b]$ is the polynomial $$y_n = opt. \, \tau\!-\!met( LDUMK , T, [a,b] , n ) = c_0 + c_1 * x + \cdots + c_n * x^n \eqno(9)$$ [**Output.**]{} The polynomial (9). This polynomial meets the initial conditions (3) $$y_n = T + V^s[ u_p ]; \eqno(10)$$ where $$u_p = y_n^{(s)}; \ \ p := n - s ; \eqno(11)$$ — a polynomial that approximates the equation (4) solution $u=y^ {(s)}$. The polynomial $y_n$ (9) derivative of order $k$ within the interval $[a,b]$ approximates the initial-value problem (1), (2), (3) solution (8) derivative of order $k$ optimally by precision $$\| y^{(k)} - y_n^{(k)} \|_{L_2(a,b;\rho)} / E[ n-k , y^{(k)} , L_2(a,b;\rho) ] < Const < \infty , \eqno(12)$$ where $$\| v \|_{L_2(a,b;\rho)}^2 := \int_a^b \ v^2(x) \ \rho(z(x)) \, dx ; \ \ \rho(z) := (1 - z^2)^(-1/2); \eqno(13)$$ $$z(x) := 2*(x-a)/(b-a) - 1; \eqno(14)$$ $$E[ n-k , y^{(k)} , H ] := \inf_{c_0, \ldots , c_{n-k} } \| y^{(k)} - (c_0 + \cdots + c_{n-k}*x^{n-k}) \|_H; \eqno(15)$$ — the value $y^{(k)}$ of best function approximation by the algebraic polynomials of order $n-k$ in the space $H$ If the polynomial $y_n$ meets the inequation (12) and the initial conditions (3), (10), it is optimal by order the joint problem (1), (2), (3) solution $y$ (8) approximation and its derivatives of order $i = 1, 2, \ldots , k$ — the following identities take place $$y^{(i)} - y_n^{(i)} = V^{k-i} [v - v_{n-k}] ; \ \ i = 0,1, 2, \ldots , k$$ where $v := y^{(k)}$; $\ v_{n-k} := y_n^{(k)}$ and $\| V \|_{C_{[a,b]}} = \max \{|a|,|b|\}$. [**Relevance of the problem.**]{} The equations (1), (2) define the most part of special functions of mathematical physics. The order $l$ (6) of polynomial $T$ (3) — the conditions of initial-value problem for equations (1), (2) — usually is not equal to $k-1$, where $k$ — the order (7) of equation (1). The Bessel function of order 0 is defined uniquely by the linear differential equation with polynomial coefficients of order 2 and the polynomial (3) of order 0. The Frenel integrals are defined uniquely by the linear differential equation with polynomial coefficients of order 3 and the polynomial (3) of order 3. Linear differential equations with polynomial coefficients comprise the mathematical modelling apparatus for physical and technical processes \[1\]. The computer algebra systems already became the natural mathematical modelling media. While analyzing the processes described by equation (1) the computer algebra systems usually perform analytical transformations of equation (1) solution. The equation (1) solution usually is not a composition of functions, that can be symbolically transformed by the computer algebra system. Thus the computer algebra system transforms the equation (1) solution approximation. Usually this approximation is a polynomial. The computer algebra systems have the efficient programming means of symbolic polynomial transformations. The main criterion for modeling is the model precision. According to this criterion the polynomial should approximate the solution optimally by precision order. The computer algebra systems have the procedure for computing the Taylor series of the initial-value problem solution for ordinary differential equations. The Taylor series is not the optimal function approximation apparatus — the order of function $y$ Taylor series remainder term is bigger than the value of this function best approximation $$\| y - T_n[y] \|_ {C_{[a,b]}} / E[ n , y , C_{[a,b]} ] = O(q^n), \ \ q > 2$$ Lanczos \[1\] developed the $\tau$-method of solving the initial-value problem for equation (1). Luke applied the Lanczos $\tau$-method for computing the Fourier-Chebyshev coefficients for special functions of mathematical physics. These coefficients are the foundation for the procedures of computing the special functions of mathematical physics in mathematical computer software. The importance of these procedures initiated the development of new approximative methods of solving the initial-value problem for the equation (1) — Clenslaw method, Miller method, V. K. Dzyadyk a-method \[2\] and others. V. K. Dzyadyk a-method \[2\] solves the the initial-value problem for the equations (1), (3) without the singularity (2) optimally by precision order. The analytical methods of solving the initial-value problem for equations (1), (2), (3) optimally by precision are not developed yet. 2.  APLAN-procedure for Lanczos $\tau$-method {#aplan-procedure-for-lanczos-tau-method .unnumbered} ============================================= [**Data structure.**]{} [**Input:**]{} 1. The equation (1) is LDUMK := ( A * dif( y , k ) + . . . + C * y + G = 0 ); where $y$ — an atom, coefficients $A$ , …, $C$, $G$ — polynomials of equation (atom) $x$. These polynomials are separate terms (they are not a multiplication of terms). Usually they have the natural form for mathematics and are taken in parenthesis. 2\. Polynomial $T$ (3) has natural form for mathematics T := d + e * x + . . . + f * x ^ q ; The argument $x$ of this polynomial is an atom. 3\. The approximation interval $[a,b]$ description is a list of interval ends. interval := (a , b) ; [**Output.**]{} The procedure computes the polynomial $y_n$ (9) with numeric coefficients. The form of this polynomial is identical to the form of polynomial $T$. [**Algorithm 1.**]{} 1\. To compute the equation (1) operator $D[ y ]$. 2\. To compute the differential operator $D[ y ]$ order $k$ (7). 3\. To compute the order $l$ (6) of the polynomial $T$ (3). 4\. To compute the algorithm parameter $s$ (5). 5\. To compute the order $p$ (11) of the polynomial $u_p$. 6\. To compute the polynomial of order $p$ with symbol coefficients $$u_p = c_0 + c_1 * x + \cdots + c_p * x^p; \eqno(16)$$ 7\. To compute the polynomial $u_p$ (16) transformation (10). 8\. To compute the transformation of polynomial $y_n$ (16), (10) by operator $D[ y ]$ (1) $$D[ y_n ] = D[ T + V^s[ u_p ] ] , \eqno(17)$$ 9\. To compute the zero order of the polynomial $D[ y_n ]$ (17) in the zero point $$r = deg\_nul(D[ T + V^s[ u_p ] ]) ; \eqno(18)$$ 10\. To compute the polynomial $D[ y_n ]$ (17) regularization $$D_0[y_n] = D[ T + V^s[ u_p ] ] / x^r ; \eqno(19)$$ the polynomial $D_0[y_n]$ does not have zeroes in zero point. 11\. To compute the polynomial $D_0[ y_n ]$ (19) order $$m = deg( D[ T + V^s[ u_p ] ] / x^r) ; \eqno(20)$$ 12\. To compute the auxillary V. K. Dzyadyk a-method \[2\] polynomial of power $m$ (20) and order $p$ (11) (the discrepancy) within the interval $[-1,1]$ $$E_m(x) = E( m , p , x ) = \tau_1 * f_{ p + 1 }( x ) + \cdots + \tau_{m-p} * f_m ( x ) ; \eqno(21)$$ The discrepancy basis consists of Chebyshev polynomials of first type \[2\] $$f_i ( x ) = cheb( i , x ) = cos( i * arccos( x ) ) ; \eqno(22)$$ 13\. To compute the linear transformation (14) of the interval $[ a , b ]$ into the interval $[ -1 , 1 ]$. 14\. To compute the auxillary V. K. Dzyadyk a-method \[2\] polynomial (21) transfer $z(x)$ (14) onto the interval $[a,b]$ $$E_m(z) = E(m,p,z) = subs(x=z,E(m,p,x)); \ \ z = z(x); \eqno(23)$$ 15\. To compute the V. K. Dzyadyk a-method \[2\] approximation of the left side of the regularized equation (4) — the sum of polynomials (19), (23) $$D[ T + V^s[ u_p ] ] / x^r + E_m(z) \eqno(24)$$ 16\. To compute the system of linear algebraic equations (SLAE) $$S = \{ \ coefTayl( D[ T + V^s[ u_p ] ] / x^r + E_m(z) , i ) = 0 , \quad i = 0 , \ldots , m \ \} ; \eqno(25)$$ The system variables are the coefficients of the polynomials $u_p$, $E_m$ $$c_0 , \ldots , c_p , \quad \tau_1 , \ldots , \tau_{m-p} \eqno(26)$$ 17\. To compute the SLAE (25) solution — the coefficients (26) values $$Coef := solve(S) := \{\ c_0 = d , \ldots , c_p = e , \ \tau_1 = f , \ldots , \tau_{m-p} = g \ \} ; \eqno(27)$$ 18\. To compute the polynomial $u_p$ (11) with numeric coefficients $$\ u_p \ := \ ser( \ Coef , p \ ) := d +\cdots+ e * x^p; \eqno(28)$$ The values of the polynomial $u_p$ coefficients (26) are defined by the identities (27). 19\. To compute the polynomial (28) transformation (10). This polynomial is the initial-value problem (1), (2), (3) solution (8) approximation sought within the interval $[a,b]$. [**Algebraic specification of algorithm 1.**]{} let( LDUMK , Dy = 0 ); /* operator Dy */ k := ord_equ( Dy ); /* order Dy */ s := deg( T ) + 1; /* order T + 1 */ ( k > s ) -> ( s := k ); /* parameter of the method - s */ p := n - s; /* power of the polynomial u_p */ u_p := main_pol(p); /* u_p with coefficients c(i) */ y_n := T + n_int( u_p , s ); /* T + V^s[u_p] */ Dn := canplf(sub_du(Dy , y_n)); /* polynomial D[y_n] */ r := deg_nul(canplf(ein_pol(Dn))); /* zeroes of D[y_n] */ Dn --> ndiv_x ( Dn , r ); /* Do[y_n] */ m := deg(canplf(ein_pol(Dn))); /* order Do[y_n] */ Em := Enl(p, m-p); /* E_m for [-1,1] */ z --> canplf( -1 + (2/(arg(interval,2) + (-1) * arg(interval,1)) * (x + (-1) * arg(interval,1)) ); Em --> canplf( subs( x = z, Em )); /* E_m(z) */ Dn --> canplf(Dn + Em); /* Do[y_n] + E_m */ S := pol_equ(Dn , m); /* SLAE - problem approximation */ Xn := c; Coef := solve(S); /* SLAE solution */ u_p := ser(p , Coef); /* approximation of dif(y,s) */ y_n := T + n_int( u_p , s ); /* approximation of y */ [**The structure of computations results obtained by procedure operators.**]{} The procedure solves SLAE (25) relative to the coefficients (26) of form c(0) , . . . , c(p) , c(p + 1) , . . . , c(m) These coefficients are indexed atoms. The procedure transforms the polynomials $u_p$ (16) è $E_m$ (21) with these symbol coefficients to obtain the system (25). The polynomial (16) with symbol coefficients looks like u_p := c( 0 ) + c( 1 ) * x + . . . + c( p ) * x ^ p ; The result of transforming this polynomial by operators $$T + n\_int( u\_p , s ) , \ \ canplf(sub\_du(Dy , y\_n)) , \ \ ndiv\_x ( Dn , r )$$ is a sum of addends like $ c( i ) * x ^ j \$ b$ , where \$ — the APLAN operation of multiplying the term by constant, constant $b$ is rational and looks like $ rat( p , q ) := p / q$ ; The discrepancy (21) with symbol coefficients looks like E_m := c(p + 1) * cheb(p + 1,x) + . . . + c(m) * cheb(m,x); The result of transforming this polynomial by operator\ $ canplf( subs( x = z, Em ))$ is a sum of addends like $ c( i ) * x ^ j \$ b$ . Thus SLAE (25) is a list of equations of form S := (... , c(m) $ f + . . . + c(0) $ e + d = 0 , ... ); The solution of SLAE (25) by the procedure is a list of identities Coef := ( c(0) = d , ... , c(p) = f , ... , c(m) = g ); The procedure transforms the list of identities $Coef$ into the polynomial $u_p$ with numeric natural form coefficients u_p := d + e * x + . . . + f * x ^ p ; [**Conclusions from the algebraic specification of the procedure and data structure:**]{} 1\. The procedure has known operators \[3\]. These operators perform computations in rational numbers arithmetics. The length of numerator and denominator of these numbers is not limited. Thus the procedure operators do not add into the computations result the errors of performing the floating point operations. 2\. The procedure has the polynomial complexity by parameter $n$ $$O( n * Q( canplf , n^2 ) ) + O( n^3 ) , \eqno(29)$$ where $Q( canplf , m )$ — the complexity of transforming by operator $canplf$ the polynomial $P$, $m$ — number of addends of the polynomial $canplf( P )$. The operator $canplf$ is the internal operator of the APS solver $gr\_solve.exe$. It reduces the polynomials into the canonical form for the APS. If $P$ is polynomial transformed by the procedure, then $canplf( P )$ is a sum of addends like $ c( i ) * x ^ j \$ b$ . [** Computational experiment with the procedure.**]{} The initial-value problem $$x * y'' - y' + 4 * x^3 * y = 0 , \ \ T \ = \ x^2; \eqno(30)$$ has the unique solution $y = sin(x)^2$. The APLAN-description of initial-value problem (30) and the interval $[-1,1]$ for the procedure implemented above is process[1] := ( LDUMK := ( x * dif(y , 2) + (-1) * dif(y , 1) + (4 * x^3) * y = 0 ); T := x ^ 2 ; interval := (-1 , 1) ; ...); The results of this initial-value problem transformation by the procedure built with the parameter value $n = 4$ are: let( LDUMK , Dy = 0 ) ; Dy := x * dif(y , 2) + (-1) * dif(y , 1) + (4 * x ^ 3) * y ; k := ord_equ( Dy ) = 2 ; s := deg(T) + 1 = 3 ; ( k > s ) -> ( s := k ); s := 3 ; p := n - s = 1; u_p := main_pol( p ) = c 0 + c 1 * x; y_n := T + n_int( u_p , s ) = c 1 * x ^ 4 $ rat(1,24) + c 0 * x ^ 3 $ rat(1,6) + x ^ 2 ; Dn := canplf( sub_du( Dy , y_n ) ) = c 1 * x ^ 7 $ rat(1,6) + c 1 * x ^ 3 $ rat(1,3) + c 0 * x^6 $ rat(2,3) + c 0 * x^2 $ rat(1,2) + x^5 $ 4 ; r := deg_nul( Dn ) := 2 ; Dn --> ndiv_x ( Dn , r ) = c 1 * x ^ 5 $ rat(1,6) + c 1 * x $ rat(1,3) + c 0 * x ^ 4 $ rat(2,3) + x ^ 3 $ 4 + c 0 $ rat(1,2); m := deg( canplf( ein_pol( Dn ) ) ) = 5 ; Em := Enl( p , m - p ) = c 5 * x ^ 5 $ 16 + c 5 * x ^ 3 $ -20 + c 5 * x $ 5 + c 4 * x ^ 4 $ 8 + c 4 * x ^ 2 $ -8 + c 3 * x ^ 3 $ 4 + c 3 * x $ -3 + c 2 * x ^ 2 $ 2 + c 4 + c 2 $ -1 ; z := x ; Em --> canplf( subs( x = z , Em ) ) := c 5 * x ^ 5 $ 16 + c 5 * x ^ 3 $ -20 + c 5 * x $ 5 + c 4 * x ^ 4 $ 8 + c 4 * x ^ 2 $ -8 + c 3 * x ^ 3 $ 4 + c 3 * x $ -3 + c 2 * x ^ 2 $ 2 + c 4 + c 2 $ -1 ; Dn --> canplf( Dn + Em ) = c 5 * x ^ 5 $ 16 + c 5 * x ^ 3 $ -20 + c 5 * x $ 5 + c 4 * x ^ 4 $ 8 + c 4 * x ^ 2 $ -8 + c 3 * x ^ 3 $ 4 + c 3 * x $ -3 + c 2 * x ^ 2 $ 2 + c 4 + c 2 $ -1 + c 1 * x ^ 5 $ rat(1,6) + c 1 * x $ rat(1,3) + c 0 * x ^ 4 $ rat(2,3) + x ^ 3 $ 4 + c 0 $ rat(1,2); S := pol_equ(Dn , m) = ( c 4 + c 2 $ -1 + c 0 $ rat(1,2) = 0 , c 5 $ 5 + c 3 $ -3 + c 1 $ rat(1,3) = 0 , c 4 $ -8 + c 2 $ 2 = 0 , c 5 $ -20 + c 3 $ 4 + 4 = 0 , c 4 $ 8 + c 0 $ rat(2,3) = 0 , c 5 $ 16 + c 1 $ rat(1,6) = 0 ) ; Coef := solve(S) = ( c 4 = 0 , c 5 = rat(1,14) , c 2 = 0 , c 3 = rat(-9,14) , c 0 = 0 , c 1 = rat(-48,7) ) ; u_p := ser(p , Coef) = rat(-48 , 7) * x ; y_n := T + n_int( u_p , s ) = x ^ 2 + x ^ 4 $ rat(-1 , 7); 3.  The solution existence by the procedure {#the-solution-existence-by-the-procedure .unnumbered} =========================================== [**The Hilbert space $H$.**]{} The equation (1) solution is the function analytical throughout the whole complex plane. It has the finite number of poles. Only the zeroes of the LDEPC (1) coefficients could be the poles of this function. Thus it is natural to consider the equation (4) and its approximation (25) in the space of functions analytical in the zero point. We will consider the algorithm 1, where the basis meets the following conditions: — the basis elements are the polynomials of power $i$ $$f_0(x) , \ f_1(x) , \ f_2(x) , \ldots \ \ deg( f_i(x) ) = i ; \eqno(31)$$ — the analytical functions have the Fourier series on the basis (31) within the interval $[a,b]$ $$u = c_0 * f_0(z(x)) + \cdots + c_m * f_m(z(x)) + \cdots ;$$ $$v = d_0 * f_0(z(x)) + \cdots + d_m * f_m(z(x)) + \cdots ;$$ Thus basis (31) defines the Hilbert space $H$ in the set of analytical functions. This space has the scalar product and norm $$( u , v )_H = c_0 * d_0 + \cdots + c_m * d_m + \cdots \ \ || u ||_H^2 = ( u , u )_H \eqno(32)$$ The basis (22) of V. K. Dzyadyk a-method is is a basis (31) special case. It defines the Hilbert space $L_2(-1,1;\rho)$. Linear transfer (14) of this basis onto the the interval $[a,b]$ — $\{ f_m(z(x))\}$ — defines the space $L_2(a,b;\rho)$. The space of algebraic polynomials of order $p$ $$H_p := S_p[H]; \ \ S_p[c_0 * f_0 + \cdots + c_p * f_p + \cdots ] := c_0 * f_0 + \cdots + c_p * f_p ;$$ — projecting operator by basis (31), is a subspace of the space $H$. [**Theorem 1.**]{} *Let SLAE (25) have the discrepancy basis (31), $p > p_0$ and equation (4) linear regularization operator $$(D[ T + V^s[ u ] ] / x^r = 0) := ( L[u] + f = 0); \eqno(33)$$ in the Hilbert space $H$ (32) meet the following conditions:* — operator $L$ definitional domain $D( L )$ is dense in the space $H$, — operator $L$ domain of values $R( L )$ is dense in the space $H$, — the operator $L$ transforms the domain $D( L )$ into $R( L)$ biuniquely, — the subspaces $H_p$ — of algebraic polynomials of order $p$ — $H_p$ and $L[ H_p ]$ are closed in the $H$ space, — the subspaces sequence $L[ H_p ]$ is dense in $H$ down to the limit; $$-\!- \ \ \lim_{p \to \infty} \gamma(p) > 0 , \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \ \ \gamma(p) := \inf_{ z_p \in L[ H_p ] , \ \|z_p\|_H = 1 } \| S_p[ z_p ] \|_H ;$$ then the SLAE (25) solution $Coef$ (27) exists and it is unique. [**Proof layout.** ]{} We proved the equivalence of the SLAE (25) with the basis (31) with equation (33) approximation by projective method with projecting operator by basis (31). Thus the theorem 1 is the consequence of main theorem of projectional method convergence. 4.  The solution optimality by the procedure {#the-solution-optimality-by-the-procedure .unnumbered} ============================================ To prove the inequation (12) we transform the integral equation (4) into the linear integral equation of the third type $$subs(y = T_{k-1}[y] + V^k[ v ], D[y] = 0 ) := (A*v + \cdots + C*V^k[ v ] + g = 0) ; \eqno(34)$$ The equation (34) solution is the function $$v = y^{(k)} := V^{s-k}[u] + T^{(k)};$$ The equation (34) is equivalent to the linear integral equation of the second type $$M[ v ] + g / A = 0 , \ \ M[v] := v + \cdots + C/A * V^k[ v ] ; \eqno(35)$$ and the initial conditions $$T_{s-k-1}[v] = T^{(k)}$$ Similar transformation of the integral equation (4) approximation (24) by V. K. Dzyadyk a-method lead to the equation $$M[ v_{n-k} ] + g / A + x^r / A * E(m,p,z(x)) = 0 ; \eqno(36)$$ where $ E(m,p,x)$ (21) is the auxillary V. K. Dzyadyk a-method \[2\] polynomial with the basis (31), and the initial conditions $$T_{s-k-1}[v_{n-k}] = T^{(k)}$$ Equation (36) is the equation (35) approximation by addition of the discrepancy $ x^r / A * E(m,p,z(x))$. This discrepancy basis is the transformation of basis (31). $$f_0(z(x)) *x^r/A , \ f_1(z(x)) *x^r/A , \ f_2(z(x)) *x^r/A , \ldots \eqno(37)$$ [**Theorem 2.**]{} *Let:* — linear operator $M[v]$ of the equation (35), $M : H \to H$, where $H$ — the Hilbert space of analytical functions with the scalar product (32) by the basis (31) with the initial conditions $ T_{s-k-1}[v] = 0 $ have reverse operator $ M^{-1}$; — the operator $M^{-1}$ (36) be uniformly limited on the basis (37) functions $$\| M^{ -1} [ f_i(z(x)) * x^r / A ] \|_H < W , \ \ \ i = l , l+1 , \ldots ; \eqno(38)$$ — SLAE (25) with the basis (31) have the unique solution (27); — for $ \ n = l+s+1 , l+s+2 , \ldots $ the matrices $$\{ Q_n \} = \{ ( M^{-1} [ x^r / A * f_{p+i}(z(x)) ] , f_{p+j}(z(x)) )_H , \ \ \ i , j = 1 , \ldots , m - p \} , \eqno(39)$$ where $ \ p = n - s , \ m = \deg( (D[ V^s[ u_p ] + T ] ) - r , \ r = deg\_nul( D[ V^s[ u_p ] + T ] ) ; $ have their reverse $ \{ Q_n \}^{-1} $ and the reverse matrices norms be uniformly limited by $ n $ $$\| \{ Q_n \}^{ -1} \| := \max_{|C_1|+\cdots+|C_{m-p}|=1 } \| \{ Q_n \}^{-1} \{ C_{1} , \ldots, C_{m-p} \}^T \|_{l_2} < Q \eqno(40)$$ Then assuming $n>l+s$ the inequation (12) is valid and its constant is $$Const = Q * W$$ [**Proof layout.** ]{} The dependence of equation (35) solution $v$ approximation by the equation (36) solution $v_{n-k}$ from the equation (36) discrepancy coefficients $$\| v - v_{n-k} \|_H < W * ( |\tau_1 | + \cdots + |\tau_{m-p}| )$$ and the dependence of discrepancy coefficients from Fourier coefficients of the equation (35) solution $v$ by the discrepancy basis $$( | \tau_1( p )| + \cdots + | \tau_{m-p}( p )| )^2 < Q^2 * ( ( v , f_{n-k + 1} )_H^ 2 + \cdots + ( v , f_{n-k+m-p} )_H^ 2 )$$ are established. Thus the inequation (12) appears directly from these inequations. [**Example 1.**]{} We solved the initial-value problem by the procedure built within the interval $[-1,1]$ with $ n = 4 \ , 6 \ , \ldots , 22$ and computed the polynomials $$y_n = opt.\ \tau\!-\!method( x * y'' - y' + 4 * x^3 * y = 0 , \ y(0) = 0 , \ T = x^2 , \ [-1,1] , \ n ) ;$$ For these polynomials the equation (12) constant $Const$ estimation in the space $C = C_{[-1,1]}$ has the following values $$\{ \ \| sin''(x^2) - y_n'' \|_C / E[n-2, sin''(x^2), C ] , \ n = 4, 6,\ldots , 22 ; \ \} \ =$$ $$\{ \ 1.6 \ , 1.5 \ , 2.1 \ , 1.5 \ , 2 \ , 1.7 \ , 2 \ , 1.7 \ , 2 \ , 1.8 \ , 1.9 \ \} ;$$ 5.  Postamble {#postamble .unnumbered} ============= A new algorithm of solving the initial-value problem for the equations (1), (2), (3) by Lanczos $\tau$-method is built in the article. The APLAN language procedure is built according to this algorithm by the programming technology in the APS. This procedure solves the initial-value problem for the equations (1), (2), (3) optimally by precision order. It illustrates the high efficiency of APS toolkit \[3\] for creating the new optimal analytical approximative methods of solving the functional equations. [3]{} Lanczos C., [*Applied Analysis*]{}, Prendtice Hall, Int. 1956. Dzjadyk V.K. [*Approximazionnye metody reshenija differenzialnych i integralnych uravnenij.*]{} Kyiv, Naukova dumka, 1988. Denisenko P.N. , Letichevski A.A. [*Algebraicheskoe programmirovanie*]{}, Kirovograd, KNNPK, 2002.

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Q: How do I reset a capacitor once I have a signal rise? Once the signal rises to a certain level, my capacitor starts getting charged. Once the signal falls back down to that same level, my capacitor stops charging. This way, I am using the voltage of my capacitor as an indication of how long the signal stays above that level. I call this time duration as "hump duration". My problem is, I have a train of such pulses. That means, after the 1st hump comes the 2nd hump and so on. In order to also get the "hump duration" of my 2nd hump, I believe I will have to reset that capacitor. So how can I reset my capacitor when my signal rises above a certain level (i.e., right before next hump comes)? A: What you are doing is called a "Time over Threshold" measurement that is very common in particle detection applications (for example in Nuclear Science). The problem you are having is called "pileup" and, as you noted, a direct consequence of not resetting the capacitor. You need to do what is called "baseline restoration". One common solution is to add a discharge path as clabacchio suggested. The stupid simple way to do that would be to put a resistor in parallel with the capacitor you are charging. Then, the capacitor would discharge based on the RC time constant of the value of the resistor and capacitor you are using. Doing this makes a brutal tradeoff though, and may not work. Here's the tradeoff: on one hand you want a small RC time constant so you can have a faster train of pulses. A small RC means the capacitor will bleed its charge quickly and be ready for another pulse. On the other hand, you want a large RC time constant so the capacitor holds the peak long enough for you to record the measurement. If the simple technique I described doesn't work, you can put a transistor switch across the capacitor. Once you've made the measurement, you pulse this transistor and do a hard reset, clearing the capacitor. This technique is a bit more complex (especially if you're not using a computer already to acquire the data) but can be effective. If you're not using a capacitor you need to have a comparator. One input will be the signal you're measuring and the other will be the threshold. The output of this comparator can then be connected to the switch.

--- abstract: 'Until now only for specific crossovers between Poissonian statistics (P), the statistics of a Gaussian orthogonal ensemble (GOE), or the statistics of a Gaussian unitary ensemble (GUE) analytical formulas for the level spacing distribution function have been derived within random matrix theory. We investigate arbitrary crossovers in the triangle between all three statistics. To this aim we propose an according formula for the level spacing distribution function depending on two parameters. Comparing the behavior of our formula for the special cases of P$\rightarrow$GUE, P$\rightarrow$GOE, and GOE$\rightarrow$GUE with the results from random matrix theory, we prove that these crossovers are described reasonably. Recent investigations by F. Schweiner *et al.* \[Phys. Rev. E **95**, 062205 (2017)\] have shown that the Hamiltonian of magnetoexcitons in cubic semiconductors can exhibit all three statistics in dependence on the system parameters. Evaluating the numerical results for magnetoexcitons in dependence on the excitation energy and on a parameter connected with the cubic valence band structure and comparing the results with the formula proposed allows us to distinguish between regular and chaotic behavior as well as between existent or broken antiunitary symmetries. Increasing one of the two parameters, transitions between different crossovers, e.g., from the P$\rightarrow$GOE to the P$\rightarrow$GUE-crossover, are observed and discussed.' author: - Frank Schweiner - Jeanine Laturner - Jörg Main - Günter Wunner title: 'Crossover between the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble, the Gaussian unitary ensemble, and Poissonian statistics' --- Introduction ============ It is now widely accepted that classical chaotic dynamics manifests itself in the statistical quantities of the corresponding quantum system [@GUE5; @QSC_29; @QSC_30]. All systems with a Hamiltonian leading to global chaos in the classical dynamics can be assigned to one of three universality classes: the orthogonal, the unitary or the symplectic universality class [@QSC]. To which of these universality classes a given system belongs is determined by the remaining symmetries of the system. Many physical systems are invariant under time-reversal or possess at least one remaining antiunitary symmetry. These systems show the statistics of a Gaussian orthogonal ensemble (GOE). Only if all antiunitary symmetries are broken, the statistics of a Gaussian unitary ensemble (GUE) occurs. The Gaussian symplectic ensemble will not be treated here and is described, e.g., in Ref. [@QSC]. Until now only few physical systems are known showing a crossover between GOE and GUE statistics in dependence on the system parameters: the kicked top [@QSC_K7_36], the Anderson model [@GUE4_21], and magnetoexcitons in cubic semiconductors [@175; @QC]. While the kicked top is a time-dependent system, which has to be treated within Floquet theory [@GUE3; @QSC_K7_36], and the Anderson model is rather a model system for a $d$-dimensional disordered lattice [@GUE4_21], we showed in Ref. [@225] that magnetoexcitons, i.e., excitons in magnetic fields, are a realistic physical system perfectly suitable to study crossovers between the Poissonian (P) level statistics, which describes the classically integrable case, GOE statistics, and GUE statistics. Only for the specific crossovers of P$\rightarrow$GOE, P$\rightarrow$GUE, and GOE$\rightarrow$GUE analytical formulas for the level spacing distribution function have been derived within random matrix theory [@GUE4]. We have recently investigated the crossovers P$\rightarrow$GUE and GOE$\rightarrow$GUE for magnetoexcitons [@225] and obtained a very good agreement with these functions. However, what has not been investigated so far are arbitrary crossovers in the triangle between all three statistics in dependence on two of the system parameters. In this paper we will investigate these crossovers in dependence on the energy and one of the Luttinger parameters, which describes the cubic warping of the valence bands in a semiconductor. Within random matrix theory it would be, in principle, possible to derive an analytical formula which describes these arbitrary crossovers and with which our results for magnetoexcitons could be compared. However, this derivation is very challenging and beyond the scope of the present work. On the other hand, crossovers between different symmetry classes are not universal [@GUE10]. Hence, we propose a function with two parameters for arbitrary crossovers and show that it describes these crossovers reasonably well by comparing it for the special cases of P$\rightarrow$GOE, P$\rightarrow$GUE, and GOE$\rightarrow$GUE with the analytical formulas known. We choose the two parameters such that one describes the crossover from regular to irregular behavior and that the other one describes the breaking of antiunitary symmetries. Hence, by evaluating the numerical results with the function proposed, we can distinguish between regular and chaotic behavior as well as between existent or broken antiunitary symmetries. Varying one of the two control parameters allows us to observe and discuss transitions between different crossovers, e.g., from the P$\rightarrow$GOE to the P$\rightarrow$GUE-crossover. {width="2.0\columnwidth"} The paper is organized as follows: In Sec. \[sec:Theory\] we propose the function for arbitrary crossovers in the triangle P-GOE-GUE and compare it with the results from random matrix theory for specific crossovers. After a short discussion of the model system of magneoexcitons in cubic semiconductors in Sec. \[sec:magnetoexcitons\], we present a comprehensive discussion of the numerical results for all possible crossovers in the triangle in Sec. \[sec:Results\]. Finally, we give a short summary and outlook in Sec. \[sec:summary\]. Crossover functions\[sec:Theory\] ================================= In this section we propose a formula for arbitrary crossovers in the triangle of Poissonian, GOE and GUE statistics. For crossovers between each two of the statistics analytical formulas have been derived within random matrix theory in Ref. [@GUE4]. They investigated the statistical properties of a $2\times 2$ random matrix of the form $$H=H_{\beta}+\lambda H_{\beta'}$$ with a coupling parameter $\lambda$. $H_{\beta'}$ describes the perturbation breaking the symmetry of the original system $H_{\beta}$. The Poisson process is defined by $$H_{0}=\left(\begin{array}{cc} 0 & 0\\ 0 & p \end{array}\right)$$ with a Poisson-distributed non-negative random number $p$. The GOE process and the GUE process are described by a real symmetric matrix $$H_{1}=\left(\begin{array}{cc} a & c\\ c & b \end{array}\right)$$ and a complex Hermitian matrix $$H_{2}=\left(\begin{array}{cc} a & c_0+ic_1\\ c_0-ic_1 & b \end{array}\right),$$ respectively. A detailed evaluation of the level spacing distribution yields the probability densities to find two neighboring eigenvalues at a distance $s$ [@GUE4]: $P_{\mathrm{P}\rightarrow\mathrm{GOE}}(s;\,\lambda)$, $P_{\mathrm{P}\rightarrow\mathrm{GUE}}(s;\,\lambda)$, and $P_{\mathrm{GOE}\rightarrow\mathrm{GUE}}(s;\,\lambda)$. These formulas are presented in detail in Refs. [@GUE4; @225]. It is important to note that the parameter $\lambda$ can have all values between $0$ and $\infty$. However, already for $\lambda\approx 1$ the crossover to the statistics of lower symmetry is almost completed [@225]. For the most general case of arbitrary crossovers between the three processes, one would have to choose the ansatz $$H=H_{0}+\lambda_1 H_{1}+\lambda_2 H_{2}$$ to derive the nearest-neighbor spacing distribution $P_{\mathrm{P}-\mathrm{GOE}-\mathrm{GUE}}(s;\,\lambda_1;\,\lambda_2)$. However, as already the exact analytical calculations of Ref. [@GUE4] are very complicated, we here present a different approach. We already stated in the introduction that the crossover between different symmetry classes is not universal. Besides the crossover formulas derived within random matrix theory there are also other interpolating distributions, e.g., for the crossover $\mathrm{P}\rightarrow\mathrm{GOE}$, which have been proposed in the literature [@GUE3_10a; @GUE3_10b; @GUE3_10c; @GUE3_10d; @GUE3_10e]. Hence, we also propose a new formula for the arbitrary crossovers based on the formulas of random matrix theory. We define the function $$\begin{aligned} P_{\triangle}(s;\,\alpha,\,\lambda) & \equiv & P_{\mathrm{P}-\mathrm{GOE}-\mathrm{GUE}}(s;\,\alpha;\,\lambda)\nonumber\\ & = & (1-\alpha) P_{\mathrm{P}\rightarrow\mathrm{GOE}}(s;\,\lambda)\nonumber\\ & & +\alpha P_{\mathrm{P}\rightarrow\mathrm{GUE}}(s;\,\lambda),\label{eq:Ptri}\end{aligned}$$ which is normalized $$\int_{0}^{\infty}\,\mathrm{d}s\,P_{\triangle}(s;\,\alpha,\,\lambda)=(1-\alpha)+\alpha=1$$ and fulfils the condition $$\int_{0}^{\infty}\,\mathrm{d}s\,s P_{\triangle}(s;\,\alpha,\,\lambda)=(1-\alpha)+\alpha=1$$ for the mean spacing. In Fig. \[fig:Ptri\] we show the function $P_{\triangle}(s;\,\alpha,\,\lambda)$ for different values of $\alpha$ and $\lambda$. ![The optimum values of the parameter $\lambda$ when fitting $P_{\mathrm{GOE}\rightarrow\mathrm{GUE}}(s;\,\lambda)$ to $P_{\triangle}(s;\,\alpha,\,10)$ for given values of $\alpha$. With these values the distance $\Delta_2$ has been calculated according to Eq. (\[eq:Delta\]). For further information see text. \[fig:Delta\]](Fig2.pdf){width="1.0\columnwidth"} It can be easily seen that this function correctly describes the crossovers P$\rightarrow$GOE (for $\alpha=0$) and P$\rightarrow$GUE (for $\alpha=1$). When setting $\lambda\gg 1$ and increasing $\alpha$ from $0$ to $1$ this function should also describe the remaining crossover GOE$\rightarrow$GUE. Therefore, we fit the function $P_{\mathrm{GOE}\rightarrow\mathrm{GUE}}(s;\,\lambda)$ from random matrix theory to $P_{\triangle}(s;\,\alpha,\,10)$ for given values of $\alpha$ using $\lambda$ as a fit parameter (cf. Refs. [@GUE4; @225], where the maximum value of $\lambda$ is 10). For the optimum values $\lambda(\alpha)$, we then calculate the $L_2$ distance $$\begin{aligned} \Delta_2(\alpha) & = & \left[\int_{0}^{\infty}\,\mathrm{d}s\,\left[P_{\mathrm{GOE}\rightarrow\mathrm{GUE}}(s;\,\lambda(\alpha))\right.\right.\nonumber\\ & & \qquad\qquad\left.\phantom{\int_{0}^{\infty}}\left.-P_{\triangle}(s;\,\alpha,\,1)\right]^2\right]^{1/2}\label{eq:Delta}\end{aligned}$$ as a measure of the fit quality [@GUE4]. The results for $\Delta_2(\alpha)$ and $\lambda(\alpha)$ are shown in Fig. \[fig:Delta\]. It can be seen that the value of $\lambda$ grows monotonically for increasing values of $\alpha$ and that $\Delta_2(\alpha)$ approaches zero for $\alpha\rightarrow 0$ and $\alpha\rightarrow 1$, which describe the limiting cases of GOE and GUE statistics, respectively, Both observations indicate that our function $P_{\triangle}(s;\,\alpha,\,10)$ describes the crossover GOE$\rightarrow$GUE reasonably well. It is understandable that our function deviates from $P_{\mathrm{GOE}\rightarrow\mathrm{GUE}}(s;\,\lambda)$ for $0<\alpha<1$. For $\alpha\approx 0.4$ the deviation is largest with $\Delta_2\approx 0.3$. Due to these findings and the fact that crossover functions are not universal, we are certain that the function $P_{\triangle}(s;\,\alpha,\,\lambda)$ provides an adequate description of crossovers in the triangle of Poisson, GOE, and GUE statistics. We finally note that the value of the parameter $\alpha$ in Eq. (\[eq:Ptri\]) is ambiguous for $\lambda=0$ since it is $$\begin{aligned} P_{\triangle}(s;\,\alpha,\,0) & = & (1-\alpha) P_{\mathrm{P}}(s)+\alpha P_{\mathrm{P}}(s)=P_{\mathrm{P}}(s).\label{eq:Ptri}\end{aligned}$$ Hence, when having fitted the function $P_{\triangle}(s;\,\alpha,\,\lambda)$ to numerical results, we always present the product $\alpha\lambda$ instead of $\alpha$. In Fig. \[fig:Pdom\] we show the triangle of Poissonian, GOE, and GUE statistics, which will be important when discussing the numerical results. Since we plot $\alpha\lambda$ against $\lambda$, the lower left corner corresponds to Poissonian statistics while the lower right corner and the upper right corner correspond to GOE statistics and GUE statistics, respectively. The green solid line shows the value of $\alpha=1$. ![The triangle of the different statistics with Poissonian $(\lambda=0)$, GOE $(\alpha=0,\,\lambda=1)$, and GUE statistics $(\alpha=1,\,\lambda=1)$ located at the corners. The green area shows the domain of the function $P_{\triangle}(s;\,\alpha,\,\lambda)$ . \[fig:Pdom\]](Fig3.pdf){width="0.68\columnwidth"} Magnetoexcitons\[sec:magnetoexcitons\] ====================================== Excitons in semiconductors are fundamental quasi-particles, which are often regarded as the hydrogen analog of the solid state. They consist of a negatively charged electron in the conduction band and a positivley charged hole in the valence band interacting via a Coulomb interaction which is screened by the dielectric constant. Especially for cuprous oxide $\left(\mathrm{Cu_{2}O}\right)$ an almost perfect hydrogen-like absorption series has been observed for the yellow exciton up to a principal quantum number of $n=25$ [@GRE]. This remarkable high-resolution absorption experiment has opened the field of research of giant Rydberg excitons, and stimulated a large number of experimental and theoretical investigations [@GRE; @QC; @QC2; @75; @76; @50; @28; @80; @100; @125; @175; @78; @79; @150; @74; @77; @200; @225; @275; @250; @300; @70; @94; @95; @96; @97]. When treating excitons in magnetic fields, i.e., magnetoexcitons, it is indispensable to account for the complete cubic valence band structure of a semiconductor in a quantitative theory [@125]. Very recently, we have shown that this cubic valence band structure breaks all antiunitary symmetries [@175] and that, depending on the system parameters, Poissonian, GOE and GUE statistics can be obeserved [@225]. The Hamiltonian of magnetoexcitons has been discussed thoroughly in Refs. [@125; @225; @275]. In this paper we use the simplified model of magnetoexcitons of Ref. [@225], in which the spins of the electron and the hole are neglected. Without the magnetic field the Hamiltonian of the relative motion between electron and hole reads in terms of irreducible tensors $$\begin{aligned} H_0 & = & -\frac{e^{2}}{4\pi\varepsilon_{0}\varepsilon}\frac{1}{r}+ \frac{\gamma'_{1}}{2\hbar^{2}m_{0}}\left[\frac{\delta'}{3}\left(\sum_{k=\pm4}\left[P^{(2)}\times I^{(2)}\right]_{k}^{(4)}\right.\right.\nonumber\\ \nonumber\\ & + & \left.\left.\frac{\sqrt{70}}{5}\left[P^{(2)}\times I^{(2)}\right]_{0}^{(4)}\right)+\hbar^{2}p^{2}-\frac{\mu'}{3}P^{(2)}\cdot I^{(2)}\right]\nonumber\\ \label{P2eq:H0}\end{aligned}$$ with the dielectric constant $\varepsilon$ and the parameters $\gamma_1'$, $\mu'$ and $\delta'$, which are connected to the Luttinger parameters of the semiconductor and describe the curvature of the uppermost valence bands [@25; @7; @100]. The tensor operators correspond to the Cartesian operators of the relative momentum $\boldsymbol{p}$ and the quasi-spin $I=1$, which is connected with the three uppermost valence bands. The parameter $\delta'$ is of particular importance since it describes the cubic warping of the valence bands and thus the breaking of the spherical symmetry of the remaining terms in the Hamiltonian. The magnetic field $\boldsymbol{B}$ can finally be introduced in the Hamiltonian $H_0$ via the minimal substitution [@125]. ![Cumulative distribution function for $\delta'=-0.04$ and $\hat{E}=-0.6$. The numerical data (red linespoints) is fitted by the cumulative distribution function $F_{\triangle}(s;\,\alpha,\,\lambda)$ corresponding to the level spacing distribution of Eq. (\[eq:Ptri\]). The optimum fit parameters are here $\alpha=0.65$ and $\lambda=0.261$. Hence, the statistics is in the middle between Poissonian, GOE, and GUE statistics. \[fig:eval\]](Fig4.pdf){width="1.0\columnwidth"} We have shown in Refs. [@175; @225; @275] that if the magnetic field is not oriented in one of the symmetry planes of the lattice, all antiunitary symmetries are broken unless $\delta'=0$ holds. For the subsequent calculations we choose the orientation of $\boldsymbol{B}$ given by the angles $\varphi=\pi/8$ and $\vartheta=\pi/6$ in spherical coordinates, which is far away from the symmetry planes (cf. Ref. [@225]). We also use the method of a constant scaled energy known from atomic physics [@GUE5_23]. Within this method the coordinate $r$, momentum $p$, and the energy $E$ are scaled by factor a $\gamma=B/B_0$ with $B_0=2.3505\times 10^5\,\mathrm{T}/(\gamma_1'^2\varepsilon^2)$ as described in detail in Ref. [@225]. The Schrödinger equation can then be written as a generalized eigenvalue problem $$\boldsymbol{D}\boldsymbol{c}=\gamma^{1/3}\boldsymbol{M}\boldsymbol{c}$$ using the complete basis of Ref. [@225]. The matrices $\boldsymbol{D}$ and $\boldsymbol{M}$ and, hence, also the solutions of the Schrödinger equation depend on the two parameters $\hat{E}$ and $\delta'$. It is well known from atomic physics that for small values of $\hat{E}$ the behavior of the system is regular while it becomes chaotic for larger values of $\hat{E}$. Consequently, $\hat{E}$ and $\delta'$ are the important parameters when describing arbitrary crossovers in the triangle of Poissonian, GOE, and GUE statistics. We investigate the level spacing statistics of the eigenvalues of the Hamiltonian $H(\delta',\,\hat{E})$ depending on these two parameters in the next section \[sec:Results\]. Results and discussion\[sec:Results\] ===================================== Having solved the Schrödinger equation corresponding to the Hamiltonian $H(\delta',\,\hat{E})$ of magnetoexcitons, we unfold the spectra according to the descriptions in Ref. [@225] to obtain a constant mean spacing [@GUE1; @QSC; @QC_1; @QC_16]. In doing so, we have to leave out a certain number of low-lying sparse levels to remove individual but nontypical fluctuations [@GUE1]. Since the number of level spacings analyzed is comparatively small and comprises about $250$ to $500$ exciton states, we use the cumulative distribution function [@GUE2] $$F(s)=\int_{0}^{s}P(x)\,\mathrm{d}x,$$ which is often more meaningful than histograms of the level spacing probability distribution function $P(s)$. ![Resulting values for the parameters $\alpha\lambda$ and $\lambda$ when fitting the function $F_{\triangle}(s;\,\alpha,\,\lambda)$ corresponding to the level spacing distribution of Eq. (\[eq:Ptri\]) to the cumulative distribution function of the magnetoexciton. Here we show the behavior of the two fit parameters when keeping the value $\delta'$ fixed (see label in the panels) and increasing the scaled energy $\hat{E}$ (color scale).  \[fig:Eincr\]](Fig5.pdf){width="1.0\columnwidth"} ![Same results as in Fig. \[fig:Eincr\] but shown for fixed values of the scaled energy $\hat{E}$ (see label in the panels) and decreasing values of $\delta'$ (color scale).  \[fig:dincr\]](Fig6.pdf){width="1.0\columnwidth"} The numerical results are then fitted by the cumulative distribution function $F_{\triangle}(s;\,\alpha,\,\lambda)$ corresponding to the level spacing distribution of Eq. (\[eq:Ptri\]). This is shown exemplarily in Fig. \[fig:eval\]. As can be seen, the agreement between the results and the function $F_{\triangle}(s;\,\alpha,\,\lambda)$ is reasonable. Note that this is generally true for all parameter sets. We evaluate numerical spectra for $\delta'=-0.02,\,-0.04,\,\ldots,\,-0.16$ and $\hat{E}=-0.4,\,-0.5,\,\ldots,\,-0.9$. The results for the fit parameters $\alpha$ and $\lambda$ are shown in Figs. \[fig:Eincr\] and \[fig:dincr\]. The two figures show the change in the fit parameters when keeping one of the two values $\delta'$ and $\hat{E}$ fixed and varying the other one. Let us start with Fig. \[fig:Eincr\] and the evaluation for fixed values of the parameter $\delta'$. In the limit $\delta'\rightarrow 0$ the influence of the cubic valence band structure vanishes and the system becomes hydrogen-like. It is well known that the hydrogen atom shows Poissonian statistics for small values of $\hat{E}$ and that a crossover to GOE statistics occurs when increasing the scaled energy [@GUE1]. Hence, we expect for very small values of $|\delta'|$ an almost horizontal line in the figures at small values of $\alpha\lambda$. This can be seen in Fig. \[fig:Eincr\] for $\delta'=-0.02$ and even better for $\delta'=-0.04$. Here we already want to state that due to the comparatively small number of exciton states, which can be used in the numerical evaluation, the numerical data shows some fluctuations as can be seen, e.g., for larger values of $s$ in Fig. \[fig:eval\]. Furthermore, when varying the parameters $\alpha$ and $\lambda$ only slightly, the shape of the function $P_{\triangle}(s;\,\alpha,\,\lambda)$ or $F_{\triangle}(s;\,\alpha,\,\lambda)$ hardly changes (cf. also Fig. \[fig:Ptri\]). Consequently, due to these facts the results shown in Figs. \[fig:Eincr\] and \[fig:dincr\] also show some fluctuations. However, one can nevertheless see the general behavior, when changing the $\delta'$ and $\hat{E}$. When increasing $|\delta'|$ the cubic valence band structure becomes important and all antiunitary symmetries are broken. Hence, we see from Fig. \[fig:Eincr\] that the points are shifted towards higher values of $\alpha\lambda$ indicating that the line statistics becomes more and more GUE-like. We also observe that the line for fixed values of $\delta'$ tends to change its shape from an almost horizontal line to a more diagonal line. The crossover for fixed values of $\delta'$ and increasing $\hat{E}$ becomes more and more P$\rightarrow$GUE-like as expected. Let us now turn to Fig. \[fig:dincr\]. We already observed in Ref. [@225] that the parameter $\delta'$ does not only break the remaining antiunitary symmetry of the hydrogen atom in external fields but also increases the chaotic behavior. When keeping the scaled energy $\hat{E}$ fixed at a very small value $\hat{E}=-0.9$ and increasing $\delta'$, the statistics does not remain Poisson-like but the value of $\lambda$ already increases. Since $\alpha$ furthermore remains constant with $\alpha=1$, this indicates the crossover from Poissonian to GUE statistics. On the other hand, it is known from the hydrogen atom in external fields that when increasing $\hat{E}$ the behavior of the system becomes more and more chaotic, as well. For large values of $\hat{E}$ the system stays completely in the chaotic regime independent of the value of $\delta'$. This can be seen in Fig. \[fig:dincr\] for $\hat{E}=-0.4$, where the value of $\lambda$ is always larger than $0.4$. For $\hat{E}\geq-0.4$ the statistics is GOE-like in the hydrogen-like case with $\delta'\rightarrow 0$. When increasing the value of $|\delta'|$ it becomes more and more GUE-like as expected from the results of Ref. [@175; @225]. Hence, we observe the crossover GOE$\rightarrow$GUE as an almost vertical line in the lower right panel of Fig. \[fig:dincr\]. For the intermediate values $-0.9\leq\hat{E}\leq-0.4$ of the scaled energy we observe the transition from the P$\rightarrow$GUE-crossover to the GOE$\rightarrow$GUE-crossover as a change in the lineshape from a diagonal to a more and more vertical line. Summary and outlook\[sec:summary\] ================================== We have proposed a new nearest-neighbor spacing distribution function, which allows to investigate arbitrary crossovers in the triangle of Poissonian, GOE, and GUE statistics. Comparing the behavior of this function for the special cases of P$\rightarrow$GOE, P$\rightarrow$GUE, and GOE$\rightarrow$GUE with the analytical formulas from random matrix theory, we could show that our function allows for a reasonable description of these crossovers. As excitons in external magnetic fields show all these statistics in dependence on the system parameters, they are ideally suited to investigate arbitrary crossovers between the three statistics. Evaluating numerical spectra for different values of the parameter $\delta'$ and the scaled energy $\hat{E}$ we could observe transitions from the P$\rightarrow$GOE-crossover to the P$\rightarrow$GUE-crossover when increasing $\delta'$ or from the P$\rightarrow$GUE-crossover to the GOE$\rightarrow$GUE-crossover when increasing $\hat{E}$. F.S. is grateful for support from the Landesgraduiertenförderung of the Land Baden-Württemberg. 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Q: How to add a new column with matching string from another file I have two files file1: chrom start end strand somecol1...somecol10 11 98566330 98566433 - 11 98566295 98566433 - 11 98566581 98566836 - file2 chrom start end strand gene_id gene_name 11 98566330 98566433 - ENSMUSG00000017210 Med24 11 98566295 98566433 - ENSMUSG00000017210 Med24 11 98566581 98566836 - ENSMUSG00000017210 Med24 desired output chrom start end strand gene_id gene_namesomecol1...somecol10 11 98566330 98566433 - ENSMUSG00000017210 Med24 11 98566295 98566433 - ENSMUSG00000017210 Med24 11 98566581 98566836 - ENSMUSG00000017210 Med24 How can I insert new columns with matching string values in my file1 with out changing the structure or elements in other columns (from somecol1...somecol10) A: If putting the output in a different file is not a problem you could do this: with open('file1.txt', 'r') as f1, open('file2.txt', 'r') as f2, open('file3.txt', 'w') as f3: lines2 = f2.readlines() for idx, line1 in enumerate(f1.readlines()): # for each line in f1, we get the same line from f2 line2 = lines2[idx] # compare that the first 4 columns are equal if line1.split()[:4] == line2.split()[:4]: # if so, combine the data and save it to file3. The format in which I wrote the data to file3 is irrelevant. f3.write(line2.strip() + '\t' + '\t'.join(line1.split()[4:]) + '\n')

Bayern Munich Rumors & News Express "ARSENAL have contacted Real Madrid to enquire about signing James Rodriguez, according to reports. But the Spanish giants would prefer to sell to Tottenham because they believe they could get Christian Eriksen in exchange. The Independent claim Arsenal are keen to take..." January 21 Daily Mail "Callum Hudson-Odoi is ready to reject Chelsea's offer of £85,000-a-week and hold out for a move to Bayern Munich because he believes he has more chance of developing in the Bundesliga. Bayern Munich, who have already bid £35million for the player, would be expected to..." January 20 The Telegraph "Pep Guardiola has admitted he was complicit in European football’s culture of spying while at Barcelona and Bayern Munich but insisted it was not a practice he would be repeating in England with Manchester City. The FA and Football League have launched investigations into the..." January 19 The Sun "CHELSEA face a fresh battle to keep Callum Hudson-Odoi as veteran strike ace Gonzalo Higuain closes in on joining. Bayern Munich are ready to tempt England ace Hudson-Odoi, 18, with an £85,000-a-week deal. While Maurizio Sarri’s Blues are on the verge of paying..." January 19 Express "JAMES RODRIGUEZ is set to stay at Bayern Munich for the remainder of the current season, dashing any hopes Arsenal had of signing him. The Colombian star has been linked with a move to the Emirates but ESPN claim a move is unlikely because Bayern now want to keep him. And it..." January 19 Bleacher Report "Bayern Munich sporting director Hasan Salihamidzic has said the club remain in negotiations with Chelsea regarding a deal for Callum Hudson-Odoi. According to Ed Aarons of the Guardian, the Bundesliga side lodged a bid of £35 million for the 18-year-old winger..." January 16 Football 365 "Bayern Munich sporting director Hasan Salihamidzic says the club will take the second half of the season to decide whether to take up their transfer option on James Rodriguez. The 27-year-old arrived at the Allianz Arena 18 months ago as part of a two-year loan deal with the..." January 16 Daily Mail "Chelsea winger Callum Hudson-Odoi will refuse to sign a new deal at the club and he is prepared to run his contract down and quit Stamford Bridge for next to nothing if the hierarchy continue to block his move to Germany. Hudson-Odoi is frustrated by a lack of first-team..." January 14 Daily Mail "Callum Hudson-Odoi wants Chelsea to allow him to leave this week in a £35million move to Bayern Munich, insisting that he needs to play in order to develop as a player. The 18-year-old, who is only now getting his chance under Maurizio Sarri since Bayern demonstrated their..." January 13 Daily Mirror "Arjen Robben has urged Callum Hudson-Odoi to move to Bayern Munich. Robben insists that it is always the hardest thing for any young player to get regular games with Bayern desperate to sign the Chelsea teenager. Bayern have made a £35m bid for 18-year-old Hudson-Odoi..." January 12 Daily Mirror "At various points in recent years, when Premier League clubs have been on the hunt for a new striker, the name of Robert Lewandowski has often been at the top of various shortlists. Chelsea , when eyeing a replacement for Diego Costa, were keen on the Polish..." January 11 Sky Sports "Bayern Munich forward Thomas Muller has been banned for both games against Liverpool in the Champions League round of 16. UEFA says its disciplinary panel imposed a two-game ban for Mueller's red card after a bad tackle against Ajax last month. The panel added one more..." January 11 ESPN "Chelsea are prepared to file a complaint against Bayern Munich to FIFA if evidence is found of an illegal approach to Callum Hudson-Odoi or his representatives, sources have confirmed to ESPN FC. Bayern are awaiting a response from Chelsea to a fourth bid believed to be..." January 10 Sky Sports "Bayern Munich have publicly confirmed interest in Chelsea's Callum Hudson-Odoi, following a fourth bid of £35m for 18-year-old. The offer meets Chelsea's valuation of Hudson-Odoi, Sky Sports Newsunderstands, and does not include a buy-back..." January 09 Calciomercato "Bayern Munich star Arjen Robben could have possibly dropped a hint about Inter having made an offer to sign the Dutch winger. The 34-year-old is set to leave Bayern at the end of the season, with he..." January 08 Daily Mail "Bayern Munich have made a fourth bid of £35million for Callum Hudson-Odoi, matching Chelsea's required asking price. The Bundesliga champions are very keen to sign the teenage forward, who is struggling for first team opportunities at Stamford..." January 08 Daily Mail "Manchester City, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain have all tabled an offer for Juventus superstar Paulo Dybala ahead of a potential move next summer. Reports in Italy suggest Juventus have so far ignored all interest in..." January 07 Daily Mail "Bayern Munich have made a third bid of £30million for Chelsea winger Callum Hudson-Odoi as they look to bring another young Englishman to the Bundesliga. According to The Sun, the German giants have improved their offer by £10m after seeing bids of..." January 03 Pro Soccer Talk "Sky Sports is reporting that Bayern Munich came back with an improved offer for Chelsea teenager Callum Hudson-Odoi, only to be rebuffed by the Blues. Chelsea is thinking it can get a lot more than the second offer of approximately $25 million for Hudson-Odoi, and is..." December 31 The Sun "BAYERN MUNICH have told Chelsea to cough up £30million by January 14 if they want Mats Hummels. The Germany centre-back is no longer an automatic pick with the Bundesliga giants and Chelsea want him to improve their back line. Hummels, 30, is interested in a move and..." December 30 Daily Mail "Chelsea's Callum Hudson-Odoi is the latest English youngster to be targeted by the Bundesliga’s elite. Sportsmail understands Bayern Munich are set to table a starting offer of £13million for the 18-year-old when the January transfer window opens. But Bayern..." December 29 Metro "Liverpool are in contention to sign RB Leipzig striker Timo Werner, according to reports in Germany. Earlier this week, the 22-year-old dropped a major hint that he could be moving clubs this summer and suggested Bayern Munich could be a potential destination. ‘I’ve had a nice two..." December 21 Metro "Arsenal target Cengiz Under is keen on a move to the Premier League despite Bayern Munich’s new position as front-runners to sign him. Bayern are reported by ESPN to have identified the 21-year-old as the perfect candidate to succeed Arjen Robben, who is set to end his..." December 19 Metro "Thomas Muller has apologised to Nicolas Tagliafico after kung-fu kicking the defender in the head during Bayern Munich’s 3-3 draw with Ajax. There were six goals and two red cards over the course of a dramatic 90 minutes at the Johan Cruijff Arena after both sides had already..." December 13 ESPN "Franck Ribery will leave Bayern Munich at the end of the season, sporting director Hasan Salihamidzic indicated on Tuesday. It comes after Arjen Robben said earlier this month that he would leave when his contract expires in the summer after a decade of success with the..." December 11 Bleacher Report "Bayern Munich have reportedly made first contact over a move to sign Real Madrid midfielder Isco after he's fallen out of favour at the Santiago Bernabeu. SportBild (h/t AS' Manolete) reported Bayern are targeting Isco as one piece of the..." December 10 Sky Sports "Arjen Robben says he may retire at the end of the season after confirming he will leave Bayern Munich when his contract expires in June. Bayern's senior management are planning a squad clear-out for next season and Robben, who turns 35 in January, says now is the right time to..." December 10 Bleacher Report "Bayern Munich have reportedly entered the race to sign Ajaxduo Frenkie de Jong and Matthijs de Ligt and aim to gazump rival suitors Barcelona and Manchester City with a €150 million (£133 million) bid. According to German outlet Sport..." December 05 Daily Mail "James Rodriguez has admitted he may have to leave Bayern Munich because of a lack of minutes for the Bundesliga club. The Real Madrid midfielder signed a two-year loan with the German giants in 2017 and Bayern reportedly have an option sign the..." December 04 BBC "Arjen Robben says he will leave Bayern Munich at the end of the season after 10 years with the German champions. The Dutch winger, 34, has scored 98 goals in 198 Bundesliga games for Bayern, winning seven league titles and a Champions League trophy. "I can say that this..." December 03 Daily Mail "James Rodriguez could be set to return to Real Madrid next summer despite an agreement being in place to make his loan move to Bayern Munich permanent. The Colombia star joined Bayern on an initial two-year loan in 2017 when the Bundesliga side paid around..." November 22 Daily Mail "Arjen Robben believes Bayern Munich are not currently good enough to think about winning the Bundesliga this season. For so long the dominant force in Germany, Bayern have started the new campaign in uncharacteristically poor form. Their 3-2 defeat..." November 19 Daily Mirror "Premier League clubs have been put on red alert with Bayern Munich not likely to sign James Rodriguez. The Colombian is currently in the second season of a two-year loan with Bayern from Real Madrid. There has been talk that he would sign permanently but Kicker reports..." November 17 Daily Mirror "Zinedine Zidane has emerged as a Bayern Munich target with the German giants sounding out the French manager as a replacement for Niko Kovac. Jose Mourinho has been under intense pressure at Manchester United in recent months, with Zidane linked to Old Trafford..." November 16 Daily Mail "German giants Bayern Munich are confident they have beaten Liverpool and Chelsea in the race for Arsenal midfielder Aaron Ramsey. The Wales international's contract runs out next summer and the Gunners took a new deal off the table in September,..." November 15 Express "BAYERN MUNICH have emerged as surprise front-runners in the pursuit of Welsh international Aaron Ramsey when he leaves Arsenal in the summer. The Gunners have told the midfielder that he won’t be offered a new deal when his contract runs out at the end of the season and he will..." November 04 Calciomercato "James Rodriguez is currently on loan with Bayern Munich from Real Madrid, having moved there on loan in 2017. The Colombian international joined Real Madrid from Monaco in 2014 after the FIFA World Cup in Brazil, signing for a fee of over €70 million. SportBildare reporting that..." October 30 Daily Mail "Robert Lewandowski insists he is 'very happy' at Bayern Munich and was quick to deflect praise onto his team-mates after their Champions League victory over AEK Athens. The Poland striker netted his third goal in two games as Bayern picked up three..." October 24 Express "ARSENAL are in pole position in the hunt for Roma’s highly-rated forward Cengiz Under, according to reports in Italy. Both the Gunners and Bayern Munich have been linked with the 21-year-old Turkey star. But Forza Roma claim Unai Emery’s side are ahead of the..." October 20 Bleacher Report "Juventus could reportedly move for Colombian superstar James Rodriguez as the Italian champions look to reunite the forward with Cristiano Ronaldo. The duo featured together for Real Madrid, as Los Blancos stormed to the La Liga title and two UEFA Champions League..." October 15 Daily Mirror "Bayern Munich have intensified their interest in Nicolas Pepe in a bid to beat competition from Manchester United and Arsenal for the Lille star. Pepe emerged as a target this month for Unai Emery at the Emirates, following the 23-year-old stunning start to the season in..." October 11 Sky Sports "After four games without a win, including a shock 3-0 home defeat at the weekend, there has been talk about a "crisis" at Bayern Munich. So what's gone wrong? And is new head coach Niko Kovac at fault? Or are there deeper issues? James Walker-Roberts takes a..." October 10 AS "Niko Kovac insisted James Rodréguez remains valued at Bayern Munich as he played down rumours of dressing-room unrest. Reports in Germany suggest star midfielder James has grown impatient with a lack of opportunities amid the club's unconvincing start under their new..." October 06 Daily Mail "Paris Saint-Germain boss Thomas Tuchel says he could've gone to Bayern Munichthis season instead, but had already decided on PSG. According to L'Equipe, Tuchel said Bayern Munich contacted him during his break from football, but they were too..." September 17 The Sun "FROM A refugee camp to the Champions League – Alphonso Davies has one incredible story to tell. The 17-year-old Canadian winger is to join Bayern Munich for £17million in January from Vancouver Whitecaps, the biggest fee ever paid for an MLS player. And it has..." September 14 Daily Mail "Jerome Boateng has revealed that he called Jose Mourinho to personally thank the Manchester United manager for trying to sign him this summer. The Germany defender was the subject of interest from United and French champions Paris Saint-Germain, but stayed at Bayern..." September 12

More than a trip—a journey When preparing for any trip, a checklist is a must. But preparing for a journey to a less developed country—a country full of disparities between those living in urban areas with access to health services and education and those in rural villages who lack basic necessities like clean water—takes more than a checklist. It takes mental preparation, research and a passion to help those most vulnerable—the children. I feel prepared for my journey to Cambodia, but I know I won’t be fully prepared to experience all that we will see. Cambodia is a mysterious place; a country on the verge of opportunity, but still lagging behind neighboring countries—more than a third of its citizens are struggling to survive on less than a dollar a day. It’s a country that endured years of civil war only to lose nearly two million people from 1975 to 1979, at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. These Cambodians, many well-educated members of society, died from torture, execution or starvation and untreated illness. Today, Cambodia is making progress, evidenced by the fact that the country has recently completed three rounds of a tetanus immunization campaign and is working its way toward MNT elimination. Still, there is much work left to do. Only one out of every two Cambodians has access to safe drinking water and less than one in four has access to a toilet. Many infants and children suffer from malnutrition. Progress still needs to be made to protect children from violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect. On our site visit, the Kiwanis delegation will learn how UNICEF is working with the Royal Government of Cambodia to address these and other challenges. We’ll visit health centers that provide treatment to malnourished children. We’ll learn about school-based sanitation programs. We’ll witness women and children in rural villages being immunized against preventable diseases. We’ll learn about efforts to protect children. We’ll observe mothers being trained to provide home-based early childhood education. We’ll learn how the country plans to achieve and maintain MNT elimination. We’ll visit a salt iodization plant and local salt market to see how children are protected from iodine deficiency disorder, the leading preventable cause of mental disability.

The Brooklyn Nets have waived swingman David Nwaba, who was lost for the season recently because of a ruptured right Achilles tendon. The move Friday frees up a roster spot for a Nets team that has lost a season-high four straight games while playing without injured starters Kyrie Irving and Caris LeVert. Nwaba was injured Dec. 19 in a loss at San Antonio and underwent surgery the next day in New York. He averaged 5.2 points and 2.3 rebounds in 20 games after signing with the Nets in July.

Readme :Seiko 6309-7040 & 6309-7049 both are successors of Vintage Seiko 6105. The 6309 watch cases have been produced in two or more different styles. The case had been slightly changed from big cushion into slimmed down version. Therefore, each style may have little difference, such as spring-bar-tip-hole dia. & hole-to-case distance. Our 6309 watch band have been tested can fit in a few 6309 models during production period however it may not fit all 6309 models. Suggestion:Our 6039 watch band comes with a pair of Dia. 2.5mm Fat spring bars. If you cannot install successfully, please try to change spring bars with diameter less than 2.5mm, eg. 1.78mm or send us your inquiry.

Q: JDBC how do you preform a '\. somesqlfile.sql'? How do you preform this type of action using jdbc? String x = ("\\. /home/user/Desktop/dbfile.sql"); Class.forName(Database.JDBC_DRIVER); Connection conn = (Connection) DriverManager.getConnection( Database.DB_URL + "localhost" + "/" + "mydatabase", "root", ""); Statement stmt = (Statement) conn.createStatement(); stmt.execute(x); Results: Exception in thread "main" com.mysql.jdbc.exceptions.jdbc4.MySQLSyntaxErrorException: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '. I've tried this public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { String x = readFileAsString("/home/user/Desktop/myDB.sql"); Class.forName(Database.JDBC_DRIVER); Connection conn = (Connection) DriverManager.getConnection( Database.DB_URL + "localhost" + "/" + "mydb", "root", ""); Statement stmt = (Statement) conn.createStatement(); System.out.println(x); stmt.execute(x); } private static String readFileAsString(String filePath) throws Exception { byte[] buffer = new byte[(int) new File(filePath).length()]; BufferedInputStream f = null; try { f = new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream(filePath)); f.read(buffer); } finally { if (f != null) try { f.close(); } catch (IOException ignored) { } } return new String(buffer); } Result Exception in thread "main" com.mysql.jdbc.exceptions.jdbc4.MySQLSyntaxErrorException: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'SET @OLD_CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS=@@CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS */; My file looks like -- MySQL dump 10.13 Distrib 5.5.21, for Linux (x86_64) -- -- Host: localhost Database: DOG -- ------------------------------------------------------ -- Server version 5.5.21 /*!40101 SET @OLD_CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT=@@CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT */; /*!40101 SET @OLD_CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS=@@CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS */; /*!40101 SET @OLD_COLLATION_CONNECTION=@@COLLATION_CONNECTION */; /*!40101 SET NAMES utf8 */; /*!40103 SET @OLD_TIME_ZONE=@@TIME_ZONE */; /*!40103 SET TIME_ZONE='+00:00' */; /*!40014 SET @OLD_UNIQUE_CHECKS=@@UNIQUE_CHECKS, UNIQUE_CHECKS=0 */; /*!40014 SET @OLD_FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=@@FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS, FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0 */; /*!40101 SET @OLD_SQL_MODE=@@SQL_MODE, SQL_MODE='NO_AUTO_VALUE_ON_ZERO' */; /*!40111 SET @OLD_SQL_NOTES=@@SQL_NOTES, SQL_NOTES=0 */; -- -- Table structure for table `DOG` -- DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `DOG`; /*!40101 SET @saved_cs_client = @@character_set_client */; /*!40101 SET character_set_client = utf8 */; CREATE TABLE `DOG` ( `DOG_ID` mediumint(9) NOT NULL, `OWNER_ID` mediumint(9) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (`DOG_ID`,`OWNER_ID`), KEY `CHANNEL_FK1` (`OWN_ID`) ) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1; /*!40101 SET character_set_client = @saved_cs_client */; A: You can't do that. You will need to open dbfile.sql yourself, and run all the lines though JDBC API. Provided you have ONE SQL SENTENCE PER LINE this might work: Class.forName(Database.JDBC_DRIVER); Connection conn = (Connection) DriverManager.getConnection( Database.DB_URL + "localhost" + "/" + "mydatabase", "root", ""); Statement stmt = (Statement) conn.createStatement(); BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader( new FileReader ("/home/user/Desktop/dbfile.sql")); String line = null; while( ( line = reader.readLine() ) != null ) { stmt.executeUpdate(line); } stmt.close(); conn.close();

1. Technical Field The present disclosure relates to lossless data compression, and more particularly to a variable-length decoder, a video decoder and an image display system having the same and a method of variable-length decoding. 2. Discussion of the Related Art Typically, a lossless data compressing technology reduces data redundancy. When using a lossless data compressing technology, original data is encoded without any data loss to generate compressed data. The compressed data may be decoded to restore the original data. Lossless compression or lossless coding is referred to as entropy coding. Entropy coding includes fixed-length and variable-length encoding methods. The variable-length encoding method is widely used in video compression such as in the moving picture experts group (MPEG) and H.261 standards. The variable-length decoding method may be classified into two groups, a tree searching algorithm and a lookup table algorithm. According to the tree searching algorithm, a code tree is used to determine a codeword and a length of the codeword. The tree searching algorithm has a relatively slow decoding speed. According to the lookup table algorithm, each codeword corresponds to an entry in the lookup table. The codeword matching the decoded data is searched in the lookup table, and a symbol corresponding to the codeword is determined. One symbol may be generated per clock cycle. The decoding speed of the lookup table algorithm, as compared with the tree searching algorithm, is much faster. Mobile devices such as cellular phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and portable media players (PMPs) are widely used. Such devices need to have low power consumption because battery capacity is limited. Typically, these devices have a high clock speed to enhance their performance, thereby increasing power consumption. FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a conventional variable-length decoder that is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,653,955. In FIG. 1, a variable-length decoder 100 may output two symbols per clock cycle. A partial code space decoder 112 may output one symbol and an entire code space decoder 152 may output the other symbol. However, the variable-length decoder 100 cannot always output two symbols per clock cycle. The variable-length decoder 100 has an irregular data flow and cannot output a uniform number of symbols per clock cycle. Thus, there is a need for a variable-length decoder which can uniformly output an increased number of symbols to improve decoding speed.

Magnetic resonance imaging in lewy body dementias. Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and Parkinson's disease dementia (PDD) share common clinical, neuropsychological and pathological features. In clinical diagnosis, distinguishing between these conditions and other dementia subtypes such as Alzheimer's disease (AD) can be difficult. Despite the development of consensus diagnostic criteria, sensitivity for diagnosis remains low, especially outside specialist centres. Neuroimaging techniques using magnetic resonance (MR) can assess changes in structure, microstructure through diffusion tensor imaging and metabolism using spectroscopy and cerebral perfusion. Identification of such changes may contribute to our understanding of the disease process, assist in refining ante-mortem diagnosis and allow disease progression to be measured. This may be both clinically useful and a tool for assessing outcome in therapeutic trials. DLB and PDD share a similar pattern of MRI changes including global brain volume loss, a predominantly subcortical pattern of cerebral atrophy and structural preservation of the medial temporal lobe compared to AD. This review summarises the application and findings from MR studies in DLB and PDD to provide further insight into the similarities between the conditions, highlight the potential for the clinical application of MR techniques and outline promising areas for further research.

Q: switch must be exhaustive in Recursive type enum Tree<Element: Comparable> { case empty indirect case node(Tree<Element>, Element, Tree<Element>) func forEach(withLooping fn: (Element) -> Void) { var stack = [self] while !stack.isEmpty { let current = stack.popLast() switch current { case .empty: break case let .node(left, value, right): fn(value) stack.append(left) stack.append(right) case .none: // !!! break } } } } Xcode force me to add .none case, but .none is not a constructor of Tree xxx.swift:9:7: error: switch must be exhaustive switch current { ^ xxx.swift:9:7: note: add missing case: '.none' switch current { Why? A: The problem is not that the enumeration is recursive, but that the popLast() method returns an optional (which is nil if the array is empty). Therefore the possible case for current are case .some(.empty): case .some(.node(left, value, right)): case .none: // Or equivalently: case nil: As of Swift 5.1, enum cases can be matched against non-optional enum patterns (compare SR-7799) so that this simplifies to case .empty: case .node(left, value, right): case .none: // Or equivalently: case nil: This explains the compiler error and the fix-it. However, the nil case cannot occur because you check that the array is not empty. Here are three possible solutions: Since you already checked that the stack is not empty you can force-unwrap safely while !stack.isEmpty { let current = stack.popLast()! switch current { // ... Use removeLast() instead. This method expects that the array is not empty, and returns a (non-optional) array element: while !stack.isEmpty { let current = stack.removeLast() switch current { // ... Use popLast() with optional binding in the while-condition: while let current = stack.popLast() { switch current { // ...

It is highly desirable and beneficial to provide pressure operated cartridge containers of the type used for storing and dispensing diverse products such as, sealants, adhesives, or lubricants and the like, and commonly known in the industry as a caulking cartridge, with an improved interior nozzle opening closure seal that includes a pressure activated self opening feature. These types of containers can be constructed of diverse materials such as plastic, paperboard, or metal, or combinations of one or more of the above. They generally consist of a hollow cylindrical tube sealed at one end by a sliding interior piston, with an opposite end sealed by a wall end that incorporates a hollow plastic exterior dispensing nozzle with an interior opening in its base. To dispense the contents the cartridge is loaded into an application gun comprised of a central body portion with one end forming a fixed perpendicular wall end that butts up against and holds the nozzle end of the cartridge. The opposite end of the gun incorporates a handle with a trigger that advances a mounted plunger into the bore of the cartridge when squeezed, thereby engaging and advancing the sliding interior piston which pressurizes the cartridge and forces the contents out through the dispensing nozzle. Because the bore of these plastic cartridge nozzles generally taper to a point, filling equipment is usually unable to completely fill the dispensing nozzle with the container material, leaving an air pocket in the nozzle. Certain types of contained products when exposed to even a small amount of air can dry out in the cartridge and become unusable. Other types of contained products can be adversely affected when coming into contact with the plastic of the nozzle itself and require a metallic lined cartridge with a metal end cap and piston to maintain product usability. To overcome these drawbacks manufacturers added a metal foil seal that is bonded over the interior opening of the nozzle and is very effective in preventing the cartridge contents from being ruined by coming into contact with the plastic nozzle or any air trapped inside. In order to dispense the cartridge contents, the user is required to follow three procedures. First, the cartridge is loaded into the application gun. Second, the nozzle has to be opened by cutting off the tip. And third, the foil seal inside the base of the nozzle has to be pierced to allow the cartridge contents to dispense out through the nozzle opening when the cartridge is pressurized. The first two procedures are straight forward and easily accomplished, however, the third procedure is not. The user is required to provide a rod shaped tool that has to be thin enough to insert into the nozzle opening, long enough to reach the foil seal, and then be strong enough to pierce it. This rod tool is not supplied with the cartridge. There are a number of disadvantages to this, such as; not having a tool available; if a thin bead of material is needed an oversized tool will stretch out the smaller opening of the tip when inserted into the nozzle; forgetting to pierce the seal and over pressurizing the cartridge to the bursting point which could be quite dangerous to the user; wasting time having to locate or fashion a piercing tool; the piercing tool becomes covered with sticky uncured material after each use and must be cleaned or discarded, or if the tool is thin the seal must be pierced numerous times to provide a large enough opening in the seal for the material to flow out properly. These disadvantages are well recognized and could be effectively eliminated by providing a leak proof self opening frangible seal for the interior opening of the nozzle that is both, sufficiently strong enough to remain intact from the internal pressure created in the cartridge during the filling operation, and, at the same time, sufficiently weak enough to allow the seal to fail and burst open from the additional pressure that can be brought to bear against the seal when the cartridge is pressurized by the application gun. There have been several prior art patents granted for self opening cartridge type containers that offer similar and differing design solutions, materials and methods in attempting to provide this feature. U.S. Pat. No. 2,646,906 to Jones describes a frangible cartridge nozzle seal comprised of a layer of polyethylene that is bonded over the nozzle opening. The seal bursts open in an undefined configuration when sufficient container pressure is created by advancing the interior piston of the cartridge with the application gun. U.S. Pat. No. 3,029,987 to Gronemeyer describes a plastic cup shaped frangible sealing device that is inserted into the base of the nozzle and held by a flange. The partition wall end of the cup contains various scored v shaped groove configurations forming weakened sectors that rupture when sufficient container pressure is created by advancing the interior piston of the cartridge with the application gun. U.S. Pat. No. 3,071,294 to Galbierz describes a frangible cartridge nozzle seal comprised of a layer of metal foil with a layer of polyethylene adhesive applied that allows the seal to be bonded over the nozzle opening and the seam where the nozzle flange joins the wall end cap of the cartridge. The seal bursts open in an undefined configuration when sufficient container pressure is created by advancing the interior piston of the cartridge with the application gun. U.S. Pat. No. 6,578,737 to Jackman describes a cartridge nozzle seal comprised of foil that is burst open by being stretched and forced into cutting serrations located at the base of the dispensing nozzle when sufficient container pressure is created by advancing the interior piston of the cartridge with the application gun. Each of these prior art patents present differing drawbacks in their method of operation, functionality, or the materials used such as; the use of a single layered polyethylene seal that bursts open in an undefined configuration when the cartridge is pressurized offers no provision for the possibility that seal material may break off and contaminate the contents of the cartridge when dispensed, such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,646,906 to Jones. The use of a cup shaped seal that is inserted into the nozzle and bursts open in the configuration of weakened grooves when the cartridge is pressurized requires an additional part that adds to the cost and complexity of the cartridge, such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,029,987 to Gronemeyer. The use of a single layer metal foil seal with a layer of adhesive that bursts open in an undefined configuration when the cartridge is pressurized offers no provision for the possibility that seal material may break off and contaminate the contents of the cartridge when dispensed, or that the burst pressure of the seal may vary beyond acceptable limits from inconsistencies formed in the adhesive layer from being heated during its installation, such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,071,294 to Galbierz. The use of a single layer metal foil seal with a layer of hot melt adhesive that bursts open when the seal is stretched and forced into serrated cutters at the base of the nozzle offers no provision for controlling the burst pressure of the seal which is determined by the tension left in the seal when the hot melt adhesive and metal foil cools which may cause the seal to prematurely burst from having too little tension to remain intact during the filling operation or from having too much tension that would cause the seal to burst at a pressure that is beyond acceptable limits, such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,578,737 to Jackman. Consequently, a need still exists for a cartridge closure seal that overcomes the aforementioned drawbacks inherent in the prior art. The advantages of my invention include features such as, but not limited to; the ability to precisely control the burst pressure of the seal, the ability of the seal to retain any broken material when the seal bursts; its low cost; and its compatibility with existing cartridges, manufacturing equipment and methods. These and other features and advantages of my invention will become more readily apparent to those skilled in the art by a reading of the detailed description of the device when done in conjunction with the drawings shown in the illustrated embodiments of the invention.

Mr. Heemskerk runs a great hotel and makes sure you are knowledgeable of his city. I absolutely recommend you stay here for the convenience and quality - the building also has beautiful architecture and a private garden. A great part of the city as it is located close enough to everything. Review by bruce stone excellent place to stay very clean norman is the best stayed 4 20 02 for six days i thought this was a little far out of yhe way but i really saw more of the city this way the single was a little small american standard but very clean and the shower had loads of hot water and the breakfast was very good norman and company rock the small pub across the street was great for the delicious beer recomend this place to all a very good find thanks again norman. say high to bob! bruce dallas tx Review by steven fantastic! my wife and i stayed there for our honeymoon last week and it was simply fantastic! norman is a wizard when it comes to making you feel at home when being in a big city could be otherwise intimidating. the room with a jaccuzi and balcony is a honeymooners paradise. you must stay at this great hotel because you will get to experience a taste of amsterdam few are really priviledged to see. if you are looking for others interests beside getting totally wasted and want to find a good mix of culture and partying, stay here. be sure to pet bob (norman's big black dog) because as intimidating as he looks, he is very pleasant. Review by Adam Comfortable, friendly, and in a nice part of town I stayed at the Heemskerk Hotel over this past New Year's holiday. The place was very comfortable, and very clean. The host, Norman, was a very nice person and makes you feel very welcome, and he's always very helpful in planning your day. Right across the street is the Vondelpark, and just beyond that the Van Gogh. It seemed to be a very nice part of town, and in fact Norman did say a lot of wealthy people live in the area. My only real complaint is that there weren't any places to buy grass in immediate walking distance, but that's what the tram is for! Thanks very much to Norman and everyone at the hotel for maiking this a great trip!

PHILADELPHIA — Sen. Bernie Sanders Bernie SandersNYT editorial board remembers Ginsburg: She 'will forever have two legacies' Two GOP governors urge Republicans to hold off on Supreme Court nominee Sanders knocks McConnell: He's going against Ginsburg's 'dying wishes' MORE (I-Vt.) urged his supporters to rally around Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonBiden leads Trump by 36 points nationally among Latinos: poll Democratic super PAC to hit Trump in battleground states over coronavirus deaths Battle lines drawn on precedent in Supreme Court fight MORE in a dramatic address on Monday that closed an extraordinary and divisive first day at the Democratic National Convention. It took several minutes for Sanders to quiet his most vociferous supporters, who roared at his introduction and delayed the beginning of his speech with chants and cheers. ADVERTISEMENT When he did, he pledged to continue his “political revolution” while offering a full-throated endorsement of Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, and warning that the election’s stakes were too high for voters to sit out. “Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding president, and I am proud to stand with her here tonight,” Sanders told a packed Wells Fargo Center. Speaking directly to the “Bernie or Bust” crowd — who have pledged to not support Clinton — Sanders said: “If you don’t believe this election is important, if you think you can sit it out, take a moment to think about the Supreme Court justices that [GOP presidential nominee] Donald Trump Donald John TrumpBiden leads Trump by 36 points nationally among Latinos: poll Trump dismisses climate change role in fires, says Newsom needs to manage forest better Jimmy Kimmel hits Trump for rallies while hosting Emmy Awards MORE would nominate and what that would mean to civil liberties, equal rights and the future of our country.” Cameras caught young supporters of Sanders openly weeping in the stands as the Vermont senator made clear his intention to push hard for Clinton in the fall. At the same time, Sanders said he would welcome the support of all of his delegates at a roll call vote for the Democratic nomination on Tuesday, which could serve as a last moment for Sanders backers to loudly cheer their candidate — or to boo Clinton. Tensions between Clinton and Sanders were high throughout Monday. Much of the tension centered on Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who resigned on Sunday after WikiLeaks released emails showing that DNC aides sought to help Clinton and hurt Sanders during the primary. She will step down from her role at the conclusion of the convention. Sanders supporters jeered and booed Wasserman Schultz at a breakfast meeting of Florida’s convention delegation on Monday morning and also interrupted other convention speakers at the Wells Fargo Arena. Before Sanders took the stage on Monday, there were several references to the need to bring his supporters on board for Clinton. Comedian Sarah Silverman said “Bernie or Bust” people were “being ridiculous,” while first lady Michelle Obama Michelle LeVaughn Robinson ObamaTo honor Justice Ginsburg's legacy, Biden should consider Michelle Obama National Urban League, BET launch National Black Voter Day The Hill's Morning Report - Sponsored by The Air Line Pilots Association - White House moves closer to Pelosi on virus relief bill MORE pointedly noted that Clinton did not sulk after she was defeated in the 2008 primary. Sanders did not mention Wasserman Schultz or the DNC email controversy in his own address. Instead, he stressed that Clinton is a better choice than Trump and highlighted that his supporters had been able to get progressive issues included in the party’s platform. “The struggle of the people to create a government which represents all of us and not just the 1 percent — a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice — that struggle continues. And I look forward to being part of that struggle with you,” he said. Sanders spent nearly the first half of his speech touting progressive policies, saving his first instance of making the case for Clinton until the 14th paragraph and roughly 800 words into his speech. “Hillary Clinton understands that if someone in America works 40 hours a week, that person should not be living in poverty. She understands that we must raise the minimum wage to a living wage,” the Vermont senator said. He framed Trump as a danger to the ideas that drove the Sanders campaign, arguing that Trump doesn’t support a federal minimum wage of at least $7.25 per hour and wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. “While Donald Trump is busy insulting one group after another, Hillary Clinton understands that our diversity is one of our greatest strengths,” he said. It’s unclear whether Sanders will be able to bring over his supporters. The Bernie Delegates Network — which as of Monday included nearly two-thirds of Sanders delegates — was actively looking to challenge Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine Timothy (Tim) Michael KaineNames to watch as Trump picks Ginsburg replacement on Supreme Court Barrett seen as a front-runner for Trump Supreme Court pick Biden promises Democratic senators help in battleground states MORE’s vice presidential nomination. Norman Solomon, a Sanders delegate from California, said while the group would consider suggestions from the Sanders campaign, it’s an independent group and will also act without the campaign's input. Jessa Lewis, a national delegate for Sanders, said that while the Vermont senator has been fighting for the progressive wing for months, when it comes to unifying around Clinton, "he can't bring the delegates along with him, because that's not where they are. "At this point, it's not [about] what I want to see from Bernie. He's been fighting,” she added. “The DNC needs to decide what kind of party it's going to be." Trump took aim at Sanders during his speech on Monday night — repeating criticism from earlier Monday — that Sanders has abandoned his revolution. Trump has aimed to stoke the flames of division among Democrats, hoping to win over some of the senator's supporters. “Hard to believe that Bernie Sanders has done such a complete fold. He got NOTHING for all of the time, energy and money. The V.P. a joke!” Trump tweeted earlier.

--- abstract: 'A recent high-field magnetization experiment found a phase transition of unknown character in the layered, frustrated antiferromagnet RbCuCl$_3$, in a transverse field (in the layers). Motivated by these results, we have examined the magnetic structures predicted by a model of RbCuCl$_3$, using the classical approximation. At small fields, we obtain the structure already known to be optimal, an incommensurate (IC) spiral with wave vector [**q**]{} in the layers. At higher fields, we find a staircase of long-period commensurate (C) phases (separated initially by the low-field IC phase), then two narrow IC phases, then a fourth IC phase (also with intermediate C phases), and finally the ferromagnetically aligned phase at the saturation field $H_S$. The three-sublattice C states familiar from the theory of the triangular antiferromagnet are never optimal. The C phases and the two intermediate IC phases were previously unknown in this context. The magnetization is discontinuous at a field $\approx0.4H_S$, in qualitative agreement with experiment, though we find much fine structure not reported.' address: 'Department of Physics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A7' author: - 'A. E. Jacobs and T. Nikuni' title: 'Magnetic structures of RbCuCl$_3$ in a transverse field' --- Introduction ============ The ABX$_3$ family of layered compounds has been studied extensively for several decades[@collins]. Much of this interest arises because the frustrated antiferromagnetic interactions in the $a$-$b$ layers give rise to unusual magnetic properties. Quantum and thermal fluctuations can have exceptionally large effects in these materials; for example, the stacked triangular antiferromagnet (TAFM) CsCuCl$_3$ exhibits novel fluctuation-induced magnetic phase transitions in both a longitudinal field[@nikuni; @motokawa] (in the $c$ direction, normal to the layers) and a transverse field [@werner; @schotte; @jacobs]. RbCuCl$_3$, another frustrated antiferromagnet of the ABX$_3$ family, is magnetically ordered for temperatures $T$ less than $T_N \approx 19$K [@tazuke]; the saturation field $H_S$ (above which the ferromagnetically aligned phase is stable) is inconveniently large however ($\approx 66$T) [@tanaka]. Like CsCuCl$_3$, RbCuCl$_3$ is ferromagnetically stacked (in the $c$ direction) and it has an incommensurate (IC) structure in zero field [@reehuis]. The Cu$^{2+}$ ions in the $a$-$b$ planes of RbCuCl$_3$ do not however form a regular triangular lattice. A room-temperature structural phase transition[@crama; @harada] distorts the structure, yielding a spatially anisotropic intraplane exchange (see Figure \[lattice\]). As a result, at zero field the spins do not adopt the familiar three-sublattice, $120^\circ$ structure of the TAFM; the structure is instead an IC helical structure along the $b$ direction with rotation angle $108^{\circ}$ between adjacent spins[@Mn]. A neutron-diffraction experiment[@reehuis] at $T=1.6$K in zero field found that the spins lie in the $a$-$b$ planes and are ferromagnetically aligned in the $c$ direction. The magnetic properties in large external field were recently investigated by means of magnetization measurements and by ESR[@tanaka]. A discontinuity was found in the magnetization at a transverse field of $H=21.2$T $(\approx 0.32H_S)$. The nature of this field-induced magnetic transition and the structure of the high-field state could however not be determined in these experiments. The following reports theoretical results for spin structures of RbCuCl$_3$ in a transverse magnetic field. We use the simplest model Hamiltonian and investigate it analytically and numerically within the classical approximation. In the field range below $H_S$, solution of the Euler-Lagrange equations yields four IC phases, and in addition many long-period commensurate (C) phases in both the low-field and high-field regions; the three-sublattice C states of the TAFM are never optimal. Of these C and IC phases, only the low-field IC (helical) phase and the high-field IC (fan) phase were known previously [@nagamiya]; the two intermediate IC phases occupy however only a very small field range. The magnetization is discontinuous, in qualitative agreement with experiment; the discontinuity occurs however at $H=0.41H_S$, rather than at $0.32H_S$ as observed, and the magnetization shows additional fine structure. Model Hamiltonian ================= The model Hamiltonian describing RbCuCl$_3$ in a transverse magnetic field (which we take to lie in the $x$ direction, to be explicit) is [@tanaka] $${\cal H}=-\sum_{in}2J_0{\bf S}_{in}\cdot {\bf S}_{in+1} -\sum_{in}2\Delta J_0 S^z_{in}S^z_{in+1} -\sum_{\langle ij\rangle,n}2J_1^{ij}{\bf S}_{in}\cdot{\bf S}_{jn} -g\mu_{\rm B}H\sum_{in}S^x_{in} . \label{eq:H}$$ The $x$ and $z$ axes are taken along the $a$ and $c$ directions respectively; ${\bf S}_{in}$ is the spin operator ($S={1\over2})$ of the $i$th Cu$^{2+}$ site in the $n$th $a$-$b$ plane, and the $\langle ij \rangle$ sum runs over nearest-neighbor sites in the $a$-$b$ plane. The first term in Eq. (\[eq:H\]) is the nearest-neighbor ferromagnetic exchange interaction ($J_0>0$) in the $c$ direction; the second, with $\Delta J_0 <0$, describes an anisotropy of easy-plane type. The third term, with $J_1^{ij}<0$, is the antiferromagnetic exchange interaction in the $a$-$b$ planes. As shown in Figure \[lattice\], $J_1^{ij}$ is anisotropic; $J_1^{ij}=-J'_1$ along the $b$ direction while $J_1^{ij}=-J_1$ in the other two directions. The fourth and last term is the Zeeman energy. The parameters in Eq. (\[eq:H\]) are $J_0=25.7$K, $\Delta J_0=-0.45$K, $J_1=10.6$K, $J_1'=17.4$K, and $g=2.14$ (for $H\perp c$). We investigate this Hamiltonian in the classical approximation. The spin operators ${\bf S}_{in}$ then become classical vectors of length ${1\over2}$, and the Hamiltonian becomes an energy function; the ground-state spin structures are those that minimize the energy. The classical ground state of Eq. (\[eq:H\]) in zero field is the helical structure [@nagamiya]: $${\bf S}_{in}=S\hat{\bf x}\cos({\bf q}\cdot{\bf r}_{in})+ S\hat{\bf y}\sin({\bf q}\cdot{\bf r}_{in});$$ the easy-plane anisotropy favors spins in the $a$-$b$ planes. The optimal wave vector is ${\bf q}=(0,q_0,0)$, with $\cos q_0=-J_1/2J_1'$; the above parameter values give $q_0/2\pi=0.2993$. In the special case $J_1'=J_1$, Eq. (\[eq:H\]) reduces to the Hamiltonian of the stacked TAFM. Classically, the TAFM ground states are three-sublattice structures; they evolve continuously with field $H$, from the zero-field $120^\circ$ structure (with $q_0/2\pi=1/3$ in the above picture) up to the aligned state at $H_S$. These states are continuously degenerate at all $H<H_S$; energy minimization gives only two relations for the three angles $\phi_i$ between the sublattice spins and the field, namely $$\cos\phi_1+\cos\phi_2+\cos\phi_3= g\mu_{\rm B}H/(6 J_1 S) \label{commen}$$ and $\sum_{i=1}^3 \sin \phi_i=0$. This degeneracy, which is nontrivial, is broken identically by thermal and quantum fluctuations omitted in the classical approximation [@kawamura; @chubukov]. We determine the spin structures of RbCuCl$_3$ in transverse fields with the help of two reasonable assumptions: the spins remain in the $a$-$b$ planes and they are aligned ferromagnetically along the $c$ and $a$ directions. We apply periodic boundary conditions in the $b$ direction, to reduce finite-size effects. Then, from Figure 1, we can use a chain description in which the classical energy per spin is $${\cal E}(\{\phi_l\})=\frac{1}{L}\sum_{l=1}^L \left[ 4 J_1 S^2\cos(\phi_l-\phi_{l+1}) + 2 J_1'S^2\cos(\phi_l-\phi_{l+2}) -g\mu_{\rm B}HS \cos\phi_l \right]; \label{chain}$$ the chain-site index $l$ runs in the $b$ direction, $\phi_l$ is the angle between ${\bf S}_l$ and the field, and the chain length $L$ is a multiple of 3. Equation (\[chain\]) is just the classical energy per spin for the axial next-nearest-neighbour Heisenberg chain, except for the restriction on $L$. The optimal solutions are never TAFM states, but they have related features, and so we use also the representation $\phi_{i,l'}\equiv\phi_{3l'+i}$ where $i=1,2,3$ is the sublattice index. The Euler-Lagrange equations are obtained from $\partial {\cal E}/\partial \phi_l=0$: $$\begin{aligned} 4 J_1 S^2\left[ \sin(\phi_l -\phi_{l+1}) -\sin(\phi_{l-1}-\phi_l) \right] &+2 J_1' S^2\left[ \sin(\phi_l -\phi_{l+2}) -\sin(\phi_{l-2}-\phi_l) \right]\nonumber \\ &=g \mu_B H S \sin\phi_l \ . \label{Euler}\end{aligned}$$ These are $L$ coupled, nonlinear difference equations with boundary conditions $\phi_{l+L}=\phi_l\pmod{2\pi}$. It is not in general legitimate to approximate them by differential equations; doing so would miss the sequences of C states that we find at both low and high fields. Equations (\[Euler\]) have several analytical solutions, namely the zero-field helical state $\phi_l=ql$, the aligned state $\phi_l\equiv 0$, and the TAFM states described by Eq. (\[commen\]) with $J_1$ replaced by $\bar J\equiv (2J_1+J'_1)/3$. Analytical progress is possible for small fields and for $H$ just below $H_S$ [@nagamiya]. In general Eq. (\[Euler\]) must be solved numerically; this led us to previously unknown solutions. The equations have in fact a multitude of solutions. This multiplicity results in part from a degeneracy not present in systems (like CsCuCl$_3$) where the IC phase is driven by a Dzyalshinskii-Moriya interaction. In RbCuCl$_3$, both right- and left-handed helices are degenerate in energy, at nonzero field as well as at $H=0$ (where the relation $\cos q_0=-J_1/2J_1'$ determines only the magnitude of $q_0$). The multiplicity results also from the many possible periods for fixed winding number (defined below). We solved the equations by Newton’s method, starting from approximations obtained by various means (for example solutions at a nearby field), using periods $L$ up to $\approx 3\times10^4$; we linearized the equations about the starting values and solved the linear equations to obtain the corrections, repeating the procedure until the root-mean-square residual was less than $10^{-11}$ or so. The field range from 0 to $H_S$ was covered in increments of $\Delta H\approx 2\times 10^{-4}H_S$. Properties of the IC states (such as the optimal chain length, the energy, and the magnetization) are easily obtained by interpolation; for this purpose it is useful to work with lengths corresponding to many periods. Periodic boundary conditions necessarily give structures with rational periods, but inspection usually suffices to distinguish commensurate from incommensurate structures. Magnetic structures =================== The effect of a transverse magnetic field on helical spin structures arising from competing exchange interactions, such as described by the classical Hamiltonian in Eq. (\[chain\]), was studied analytically in detail by Nagamiya [*et al*]{}. [@nagamiya]. They found a distorted helical phase at low fields and an IC fan phase at high fields. In the latter, the spins oscillate about the field direction; the oscillations decrease with increasing field, vanishing continuously at $H_S$. If the transition from the low-field helical phase occurs directly to the high-field fan phase, then it is first-order and occurs at a reduced field estimated as [@nagamiya] $H_c/H_S=\sqrt{(1+\beta)(2+\beta)}-(1+\beta)$ with $\beta=(1-J_1/J_1')^2$, or $H_c=0.423H_S$ for RbCuCl$_3$. The structures in intermediate fields depend however on the ratio $J_1/J'_1$. For $J_1/J'_1\lesssim 1$, as in RbCuCl$_3$, a TAFM state has lower energy than either IC phase for fields near ${1\over2}H_S$. Our numerical solution of the Euler-Lagrange equations (\[Euler\]) gives the helical IC and fan IC phases at small and large fields respectively, as in Ref. [@nagamiya]. Our results differ however at intermediate fields, from $H=0.29H_S$ to $0.64H_S$. For $0.29<H/H_S<0.41$, we find many helical commensurate (C) phases not previously known in this context. These are not TAFM states (with period 3 in the chain description) but rather lock-in phases with larger periods; they alternate with the helical IC phase, and within our field resolution ($\Delta H \approx 2\times 10^{-4} H_S$) eventually supplant it completely. The behavior is similar in some respects to that found in the axial, next-nearest-neighbour Ising model [@bak]. At $H=0.41H_S$, a strong first-order transition occurs to a previously unknown, second IC phase (we call it the IC2 phase); this appears to be the transition observed in Ref. [@tanaka]. Two weaker first-order transitions follow swiftly, to a third IC phase (the IC3 phase, also previously unknown) and then to fan phases (both C and IC, intermingled). Finally, there is a second-order transition to the aligned phase; we derive an analytical expression for the saturation field, in terms of the parameters in the Hamiltonian. Figure \[m\_plot\], our main result, shows the field dependence of the reduced magnetization $$m={1 \over L}\sum_{l=1}^{L}\cos \phi_l.$$ A discontinuity ($\Delta m\approx 9\times 10^{-3}$) occurs at $H=0.405H_S$; this field is however somewhat larger than the $H=0.32 H_S$ where a magnetization jump is found experimentally [@tanaka], and there is a lot of fine structure not reported in Ref.[@tanaka]. We now describe the phases in more detail. Low-field region: $0<H<0.405H_S$ -------------------------------- The structures are helical, with three equivalent sublattices; each sublattice phase winds through $2\pi$ a total of $N/3$ times, where the total winding number $N$ is a multiple of 3, like the chain length $L$. The helical phase can be treated analytically at small $H$, as in Ref. [@nagamiya]. The magnetic field distorts the zero-field spin structure $\phi_l=q_0l$, modulating the phases. In weak fields, $$\phi_l \approx ql+a \sin ql,$$ where the optimal amplitude $a$ and wave number $q$ are field-dependent; they are determined so as to minimize the energy ${\cal E}$. As the magnetic field is increased, the spin structure distorts further as higher harmonics are generated. Figure \[IC1\_plot\] shows the order parameters (the angles $\phi_{i,l'}$ in the three-sublattice representation) found from numerical solution of Eq. (\[Euler\]) at $H=0.33H_S$. The wave number $q$ of the helical phase is $$q={ 2\pi\over3} \left( 1-{ N\over L}\right),$$ in terms of the total winding number $N$ and the chain length $L$; one must distinguish between $q$ and the wave number $2\pi N/L$ of the chain. &gt;From Figure \[qlow\_plot\], at low fields $q$ increases with the field, initially quadratically, as the higher harmonics grow. At $H=0.293H_S$, however, a lock-in transition takes place to a helical C phase with $L/N=13$; this phase extends to $H=0.296H_S$ where the helical IC phase becomes optimal again. Other lock-ins occupying comparable field intervals occur at $L/N=16$, 19, [*etc*]{} in steps of 3, up to $L/N=52$ at the transition to the IC2 phase. Minor lock-ins (occupying much smaller field ranges) occur at $L/N=$ 29/2, 35/2, 18, 20, 41/2, 21, 85/4, 91/4, 23, 47/2, 24, 53/2, 59/2 and 65/2; others likely exist but require a finer field step to be detected. Windows of the helical IC phase exist at higher fields, but they eventually become too narrow to detect (at our field step) and we see a staircase of C states which terminates at $H=0.405H_S$ in a strong first-order transition ($\Delta m\approx 9\times 10^{-3}$) to the IC2 phase. IC2 phase --------- This phase is optimal in the very narrow range $0.405<H/H_S<0.419$. Figure \[IC2\_plot\] shows the order parameters at $H=0.410H_S$. The structure resembles that of the helical phase (as shown in Figure \[IC1\_plot\]); the three sublattices are however no longer equivalent, for the spins on only one of them wind through $2\pi$ (rather than all three as in the helical phase). The optimal chain period increases monotonically with the field, from $\approx 180$ to $\approx 1800$ at the transition to the IC3 phase; the latter transition is weakly first-order, with $\Delta m \approx 8\times 10^{-4}$. IC3 phase --------- This phase is also optimal over only a very small field range, $0.419<H/H_S<0.428$. The three sublattices are inequivalent, as in the IC2 phase, but here none of the three winds through $2\pi$. Figure \[IC3\_plot\] plots the order parameters at $H=0.424H_S$; one sees that the IC3 phase is a rippled commensurate phase, in which the order parameter oscillates about a particular TAFM state. The IC3 state can be expressed in terms of the amplitude $a_i$ and the phase $\delta_i$ of the oscillation on the $i$th sublattice as $$\phi_{i,l'}\approx\phi_i+a_i\sin\left[\frac{2\pi l'}{(L/3)}+\delta_i\right],$$ where $\phi_1=\phi_3$; the amplitudes are zero for the TAFM state in question. As the field increases, the oscillations become smaller and the period $L$ increases (from $\approx 80$ to $\approx 260$); correspondingly, the TAFM state becomes more favourable, but before it becomes optimal there occurs a very weak first-order transition ($\Delta m \approx 2\times 10^{-5}$) to the fan phase. The IC3 phase (like the IC2 phase) requires a full numerical solution of Eq. (\[Euler\]); it should be possible however to demonstrate analytically that the TAFM state becomes unstable to these perturbations at some field $>0.428H_S$ (the upper limit of the IC3 phase). We point out a remarkable connection with the theory of fluctuations in the TAFM [@kawamura; @chubukov]. Both thermal and quantum fluctuations break the classical degeneracy in the same way; for $H>{1\over3}H_S$, two angles are identical in the optimal state, say $\phi_1=\phi_3$ [@kawamura; @chubukov]. Our point is that this same state serves as the basis for the IC3 state in RbCuCl$_3$; the lattice distortion induces the spins to fluctuate spatially, and the energy is minimized when the fluctuations occur about the state with two angles identical, just as for thermal and quantum fluctuations. High-field region: $0.428H_S<H<H_S$ ----------------------------------- As shown in Figure \[IC4\_plot\], the spins oscillate about the field direction, without winding through $2\pi$; the three sublattices are again equivalent. The amplitude of the oscillation decreases as $H$ increases, going to zero at the transition, at $H_S$, to the aligned phase. The wave number $q$ in this region is obtained from the chain period $L$ as $$q=\left( {2\pi / 3} \right)\left( 1-3/L\right) .$$ As the field increases, the optimal chain length decreases from an estimated value $>10^5$ at the IC3-fan transition, to the interpolated value $\approx 29.4$ at $H_S$. Correspondingly $q$ decreases monotonically from $\approx 2 \pi/3$ to $\approx 1.88 (\approx 2\pi\times 0.299)$; Figure \[qhigh\_plot\] gives numerical values. The structure is incommensurate in most of the fan region, but we find also narrow lock-in phases; these are less prominent than in the helical region at low fields. The widest C phase, with $L/3=16$ and width $0.006H_S$, occurs near $0.64 H_S$. Seven others occur at smaller $H$, at $L/3=22,$ 28 [*etc*]{}; smaller field steps would likely find many more. The transition at $H_S$ is second-order and so the fan phase can be treated analytically in this region, as in Ref. [@nagamiya]. Expanding the energy function ${\cal E}$ in $\phi_l$, one finds $$\begin{aligned} {\cal E} &=& S^2(4J_1+2J_1'-g\mu_{\rm B}H/S) \cr &&+\frac{S^2}{2L}\sum_l \left\{\left[g\mu_{\rm B}H/S-\left(8J_1+4J'_1\right)\right]\phi_l^2 +8J_1\phi_l\phi_{l+1}+4J_1'\phi_l\phi_{l+2}\right\} +O(\phi^4). \label{E_2}\end{aligned}$$ Introducing the Fourier transform $\phi_l=\frac{1}{\sqrt{L}}\sum_q \phi_q e^{iql}$, one can write (\[E\_2\]) as $${\cal E} = S^2\left(4J_1+2J_1'-g\mu_{\rm B}H/S\right)+ \frac{S^2}{2L}\sum_q\left\{g\mu_{\rm B}H/S-2[J(0)-J(q)]\right\}|\phi_q|^2 +O(\phi^4) \label{E_q}$$ where $J(q)\equiv 4J_1\cos q+2J'_1\cos 2q$. Obviously the optimal state of (\[E\_q\]) is given by $\phi_q=0$ for all $q$ if $H>H_S=2[J(0)-J(q_0)]S/g\mu_{\rm B}$, where $q_0$ gives the minimum value of $J(q)$, [*i.e.*]{}, $\cos q_0=-J_1/2J_1'$. Surprisingly, the optimal IC wave number in the limit $H\to H_S$ is identical to the value at $H=0$, even though the structures are quite different. Our analytical result $$H_S=(8J_1+ 2 J_1^2/J_1'+8J_1')S/g\mu_{\rm B} \label{HS}$$ evaluates to $H_S=66$T on using the parameter values given below Eq. (\[eq:H\]). For $H\lesssim H_S$, the optimal solution is given by $$\phi_l\simeq a \cos (q_0 l+\delta),$$ where $\delta$ is an arbitrary phase; the optimal amplitude $a$ is determined by taking into account the fourth-order terms in the energy function ${\cal E}$. The difference between our result (\[HS\]) and the field $(12J_1+6J_1')S/g\mu_{\rm B}$ (below which the aligned state is unstable with respect to TAFM states) is $2\left(J_1-J_1'\right)^2 S /g \mu_{\rm B} J_1'$. It is then obvious that the transition at $H_S$ with decreasing field is to a modulated state, except in the spatially isotropic case $J_1'=J_1$. The TAFM states are then rather fragile. They are unstable also at $H=0$ when $J_1'\neq J_1$, and we show above that they are never optimal for the anisotropy appropriate to RbCuCl$_3$; it remains to be determined whether they survive at intermediate fields for general anisotropy. By using the classical approximation, we have omitted the effects of quantum fluctuations. One can argue that quantum fluctuations are not important for RbCuCl$_3$, for their effect in CsCuCl$_3$ in transverse field is to give rise to a plateau in the IC wave number [@nikuni2], rather than a new phase. On the other hand, quantum and thermal fluctuations in CsCuCl$_3$ stabilize states that are otherwise not optimal, in longitudinal [@nikuni] and transverse [@jacobs] fields respectively. We made a preliminary effort to understand the effects of quantum fluctuations, using a biquadratic term in the energy[@nikuni2]. Not unexpectedly, we find that the magnetization develops plateaus, in conflict with experiment, but we did not search extensively for other states. Summary ======= The classical theory of spin structures of RbCuCl$_3$ in a transverse magnetic field is surprisingly rich. We found four IC phases and as well two series of C phases. We showed that the wave number of the helical IC phase at $H=0$ is identical to that of the fan IC phase as $H\to H_S$, and we pointed out a remarkable connection between one of the IC phases and the effects of thermal and quantum fluctuations in the TAFM. We showed that the TAFM states of the isotropic case are fragile; infinitesimal anisotropy makes them non-optimal at both small and large fields, and they are non-optimal at all fields for RbCuCl$_3$. We found that the magnetization is discontinuous at $H\approx0.41H_S$, in qualitative agreement with experiment. Direct observation of the two intermediate IC phases and the C phases will be difficult; they occupy only small field intervals, and the large value of $H_S$ requires demanding pulsed experiments. Our predictions for the structure of the high-field fan phase are likely more easily tested. [**Acknowledgements**]{} We thank H. Tanaka for useful correspondence. This research was supported by NSERC of Canada and JSPS of Japan. For a review, see for example M. F. Collins and O. A. Petrenko, Can. J. Phys. [**75**]{}, 605 (1997). H. Shiba and T. Nikuni, [*Recent Advances in Magnetism of Transition Metal Compounds*]{}, ed. A. Kotani and N. Suzuki (World Scientific, 1993) p. 372; T. Nikuni and H. Shiba, J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. [**62**]{}, 3268 (1993). M. Motokawa, M. Arai, H. Ohta, M. Mino, H. Tanaka, and K. Ubukata, Physica B [**211**]{}, 199 (1995). T. Werner, H. B. Weber, J. Wosniza, A. Kelnberger, M. Meschke, U. Schotte, N. Stü[ß]{}er, Y. Ding, and M. Winkelmann, Solid State Commun. [**109**]{}, 609 (1997). U. Schotte, A. Kelnberger, and N. Stü[ß]{}er, J. Phys.: Condens. Matter [**10**]{}, 6391 (1998). A. E. Jacobs and T. Nikuni, J. Phys.: Condens. Matter [**10**]{}, 6405 (1998). Y. Tazuke, S. Kinouchi, H. Tanaka, K. Iio, and K. Nagata, J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. [**55**]{}, 4020 (1986). S. Maruyama, H. Tanaka, Y. Narumi, K. Kindo, H. Nojiri, M. Motokawa, and K. Nagata, J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. [**70**]{}, 859 (2001). M. Reehuis, R. Feyerherm, U. Schotte, M. Meschke, and H. Tanaka, J. Phys. Chem. Solids [**62**]{} 1139 (2001). W. J. Crama, J. Solid State Chem. [**39**]{}, 168 (1981). M. Harada, J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. [**52**]{}, 1646 (1983). T. Kato, K. Iio, T. Hoshino, T. Mitsui, and H. Tanaka, J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. [**61**]{}, 275 (1992) observed a similar IC structure in RbMnBr$_3$, but here the intrachain exchange interaction appears to be antiferromagnetic. T. Nagamiya, K. Nagata, and Y. Kitano, Prog. Theor. Phys. [**27**]{}, 1253 (1962). H. Kawamura, J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. [**53**]{}, 2452 (1984). A. V. Chubukov and D. I. Golosov, J. Phys. C[**3**]{}, 69 (1991). P. Bak, Rep. Prog. Phys. [**45**]{}, 587 (1982). T. Nikuni and A. E. Jacobs, Phys. Rev. B[**57**]{}, 5205 (1998). [The exchange interactions $J_1$ (broken lines) and $J_1'$ (solid lines) in the distorted triangular lattice in the $a$-$b$ plane.]{} \[lattice\] [The field dependence of the reduced magnetization $m$.]{} \[m\_plot\] [The order parameter (the angles $\phi_{i,l'}$ in the three-sublattice representation, as defined below Eq. (4)) in the helical phase at $H=0.33H_S$.]{} \[IC1\_plot\] [The field dependence of the wave number $q$ in the low-field region $0<H<0.405H_S$.]{} \[qlow\_plot\] [The angles $\phi_{i,l'}$ in the IC2 phase at $H=0.41H_S$.]{} \[IC2\_plot\] [The angles $\phi_{i,l'}$ in in the IC3 phase at $H=0.424H_S$.]{} \[IC3\_plot\] [The angles $\phi_{i,l'}$ in the fan phase at $H=0.66H_S$.]{} \[IC4\_plot\] [The field dependence of the wave number $q$ in the high-field region $0.428H_S<H<H_S$.]{} \[qhigh\_plot\]

All-Bran All-Bran is a high-bran, high-fibre, wheat bran breakfast cereal manufactured by Kellogg's and marketed as an aid to digestive health. History The introduction of All-Bran in 1916 came on the heels of the success of Kellogg's Bran Flakes a year earlier. It was sold in a red and green box, similar to most Kellogg's cereals at the time. After finding great success in the U.S. market, Kellogg's began distribution in the United Kingdom and other markets in 1922. Advertising With the rising popularity of patent medicine in advertising, The Kellogg Company of Canada published a book named A New Way of Living that would show readers "how to achieve a new way of living; how to preserve vitality; how to maintain enthusiasm and energy; how to get the most out of life because of a physical ability to enjoy it." It touted the All-Bran cereal as the secret to leading "normal" lives free of constipation. Ingredients The current ingredients of All-Bran Original are wheat bran, sugar, malt flavor, and salt, in addition to fortified vitamins and minerals. Some countries allow the addition of chemical vitamins. It contains 33% fiber, 78% of natural wheat bran's 43%. All-Bran Buds is similar with added psyllium; its 39% fiber analysis is close to that of natural wheat bran. Despite the name, the principal ingredient in All-Bran Flakes is whole grain wheat, not bran. It contains only 15% fiber, equivalent to 34% wheat bran. All-Bran received five stars out of five on the Australian Government's health star ratings. Varieties All-Bran comes in different varieties; many are available to specific countries: All-Bran Original (Australia, Canada, France, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latin America, South Africa, UK, U.S.) All-Bran Bran Flakes/All-Bran Flakes/Petales (Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, UK) All-Bran Bran Buds (Canada, U.S.) All-Bran Strawberry Buds (Canada) All-Bran Strawberry Medley (Canada, U.S.) All-Bran Extra Fiber/All-Bran Plus (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden,) All-Bran Flakes Chocolate (Italy, Spain) All-Bran Guardian (Canada) All-Bran Honey Nut Flavor (Canada, South Africa) All-Bran Cereal Bars (Belgium, Canada, Italy, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, UK) All-Bran Choco/Chocolat (Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Spain, UK) All-Bran Splitz (Spain) All-Bran Plus (Belgium, Greece, The Netherlands) All-Bran Plus Yogur/Iogurte (Portugal, Spain) All-Bran Plus Fruit 'n Fibre/Fruta & Fibra (Belgium, France The Netherlands, Portugal) All-Bran Figue & Pomme (France) All-Bran Fruit 'n Oats (Australia) All-Bran Tropical (Australia) All-Bran Snack Bites (Canada, U.S.) All-Bran Dual (Australia) Discontinued varieties All-Bran Complete Oat Flakes cereal All-Bran Extra Fiber cereal All-Bran Yogurt Bites See also List of breakfast cereals References External links All-Bran United States All-Bran Canada All-Bran United Kingdom All-Bran Japan Graces Guide Category:Kellogg's cereals Category:Products introduced in 1916

Q: Example of a recursively enumerable set as a limit of recursive sets I am reading Soare's book and I am trying to understand the following statement: A function f has r.e. degree iff it is the limit of a recursive sequence ${f_{s}}_{s \in \mathbb{N}}$ and its modulus of convergence $m \leq_{T}f$. However, I am trying to find an example to illustrate this theorem. Is it useful to identify the difference between recursive sets and r.e. set? A: Sure! The classic example of this is the characteristic function of the Halting Problem, which is recursively enumerable but not recursive. This function, $f$, is defined as: $f(x)=1$ if $\varphi_x(x)$ halts, and $f(x)=0$ otherwise (where $\{\varphi_e: e\in\mathbb{N}\}$ is some standard enumeration of the partial computable functions). Now $f$ is a limit of recursive functions in a natural way. Let $f_s(x)=1$ if $\varphi_x(x)$ halts in at most $s$ stages, and $f_s(x)=0$ otherwise. Then each $f_s$ is recursive, and their limit is $f$: $f(x)=1$ iff for all sufficiently large $s$, we have $f_s(x)=1$. So the quoted result says that $f$ has r.e. degree (and indeed, $f$ itself is r.e.). So this is an example of a function with r.e. degree being the limit of a sequence of recursive functions. In general, though, such an $f$ need only have $\Delta^0_2$ degree! (This is Shoenfield's Limit Lemma.) And there are lots of $\Delta^0_2$ degrees which are not r.e. degrees. In order to ensure that the limit of a sequence of recursive functions is of r.e. degree, we need to add a technical condition; this is the requirement that the modulus of convergence (that is, at what point $t=m(n)$ we see $f(n)$ "stabilize" - $f_s(n)=f(n)$ for all $s>t$) be "simple". And indeed, it's easy to see that in the example above, the modulus of convergence of $f$ is indeed $\le_Tf$.

Carlos Thompson (American football) Carlos Thompson (born February 16, 1992) is an American football outside linebacker who is currently a free agent. He was signed by the Houston Texans as an undrafted free agent in 2015. He played college football at Ole Miss as a defensive end. Professional career Houston Texans Thompson signed with the Houston Texans after going undrafted in the 2015 NFL Draft. On August 30, 2016, Thompson was waived by the Texans. Los Angeles Rams On April 5, 2017, Thompson signed with the Los Angeles Rams. He was waived on September 2, 2017 and was signed to the Rams' practice squad the next day. He was promoted to the active roster on December 2, 2017. On May 14, 2018, Thompson was waived/injured by the Rams and placed on injured reserve. He was released on October 3, 2018. References External links Ole Miss Rebels bio Category:1992 births Category:Living people Category:American football linebackers Category:People from Hollandale, Mississippi Category:Players of American football from Mississippi Category:Ole Miss Rebels football players Category:Houston Texans players Category:Los Angeles Rams players

--- abstract: 'We present method for detail-preserving human avatar creation from monocular video. A parameterized body model is refined and optimized to maximally resemble subjects from a video showing them from all sides. Our avatars feature a natural face, hairstyle, clothes with garment wrinkles, and high-resolution texture. Our paper contributes facial landmark and shading-based human body shape refinement, a semantic texture prior, and a novel texture stitching strategy, resulting in the most sophisticated-looking human avatars obtained from a single video to date. Numerous results show the robustness and versatility of our method user study illustrates its superiority over the state-of-the-art in terms of identity preservation, level of detail, realism, and overall user preference.' author: - 'Thiemo Alldieck^1,2^' - Marcus Magnor^1^ - Weipeng Xu^2^ - Christian Theobalt^2^ - 'Gerard Pons-Moll^2^' title: Detailed Human Avatars from Monocular Video --- oldmaketitlemaketitle Introduction {#sec:introduction} ============ The automatic generation of personalized 3D human models is needed for many applications, including virtual and augmented reality, entertainment, teleconferencing, virtual try-on, biometrics or surveillance. A personal 3D human model should comprise all the details that make us different from each other, such as hair, clothing, facial details and shape. Failure to faithfully recover all details results in users not feeling identified with their self-avatar. To address this challenging problem, researchers have used very expensive recording equipment including 3D and 4D scanners [@pons2015dyna; @dfaust:CVPR:2017; @smpl2015loper] or multi-camera studios with controlled lighting [@robertini2017multi; @leroy2017multi]. An alternative is to use passive stereo reconstruction [@fuhrmann2014mve; @Newcombe2011DTAM] with a camera moving around the person, but the person has to maintain a static pose which is not feasible in practice. Using depth data as input, the field has seen significant progress in reconstructing accurate 3D body models [@Bogo:ICCV:2015; @weiss2011home; @zhang2014quality] or free-form geometry [@zollhofer2014real; @newcombe2015dynamicfusion; @orts2016holoportation; @dou2016fusion4d] or both jointly [@DoubleFusion2018]. Depth cameras are however much less ubiquitous than RGB cameras. Monocular RGB methods are typically restricted to prediciting the parameters of a statistical body model [@omran2018neural; @kanazawa2018endtoend; @pavlakos2018humanshape; @bogo2016smplify; @bualan2008naked; @hasler2010multilinear]. To the best of our knowledge, the only exception is a recent method [@alldieck2018video] that can reconstruct shape, clothing and hair geometry from a monocular video sequence of a person rotating in front of the camera. The basic idea is to fuse the information from frame-wise silhouettes into a canonical pose, and optimize a free-form shape regularized by the SMPL body model [@smpl2015loper]. While this is a significant step in 3D human reconstruction from monocular video, the reconstructions are overly smooth, lack facial details and the textures are blurry. This results in avatars that do not fully retain the identity of the real subjects. In this work, we extend [@alldieck2018video] in several important ways to improve the quality of the 3D reconstructions and textures. Specifically, we incorporate information from facial landmark detectors, shape-from-shading, and we introduce a new algorithm to efficiently stitch partial textures coming from frames of the moving person. Since the person is moving, information (projection rays from face landmarks and normal fields from shading cues) can not be directly fused into a single reconstruction. Hence, we track the person’s pose using SMPL [@smpl2015loper]; then we apply an inverse pose transformation to frame-wise projection rays and normal fields to fuse all the evidence in a canonical T-pose; in that space, we optimize a high-resolution shape regularized by SMPL. Precisely, with respect to previous work, our approach differs in four important aspects that allow us better preserve subject identity and details in the reconstructions: **Facial landmarks:** Since the face is a crucial part of the body, we incorporate into the 3D reconstruction objective. **Illumination and shape-from-shading:** Shading is a strong cue to recover fine details such as wrinkles. Most shape-from-shading approaches focus on adding detail to static objects. Here, we perform shape-from-shading at every frame, obtaining frame-wise partial 3D normal fields **Efficient texture stitching:** Such assignment problem can be formulated as a multi-labeling assignment, where number possible labels grows with the number of views. Consequently, the computational time and memory becomes intractable for – we define a *texture update energy function* which can be minimized with a graph cut for every new incoming view. **Semantic texture stitching:** Aside from stitching artifacts, texture spilling is another common problem. For example texture that corresponds to the clothing often floods into the skin region. To minimize spilling we add an additional semantic term into the texture update energy. The term penalizes updating a texel with an RGB value that is unlikely under a part-based appearance distribution. This semantic appearance term significantly reduces spilling, and implicitly “connects” texels belonging to the same part. The result is the most sophisticated method to obtain detailed 3D human shape reconstructions from single monocular video. Since metric based evaluations such as scan to mesh distances do not reflect the perceptual quality, we performed a user study to assess the improvement of our method. The results show that users prefer our avatars over state-of-the-art $89.64 \%$ of the times and they think our reconstructions are more detailed $95.72 \%$ of the times. Related work {#sec:related} ============ **Modeling the human body** is a long-standing problem in computer vision. Given a densely distributed multi-camera system, one can make use of multi-view stereo methods [@koch1998multi] for reconstructing the human body [@fuhrmann2014mve; @galliani2015massively; @jancosek2011multi; @zheng2014patchmatch]. More advanced systems allow reconstruction of body shape under clothing [@zahng2017shapeundercloth; @yang2016estimation; @wuhrer2014estimation], joint shape, pose and clothing reconstruction [@ponsmoll2017clothcap], or capture body pose and facial expressions [@joo2018total]. However, such setups are expensive and require complicated calibration. Hence, monocular 3D reconstruction methods [@newcombe2011kinectfusion; @Newcombe2011DTAM] are appealing but require depth images from many view points around a static object and humans can not hold a static pose for a long time. Therefore, nonrigid deformation of the human body has to be taken into account. Many methods are based on depth sensors and require the subject to hold the same pose. For example, in [@3Dportraits; @cui2012kinectavatar; @shapiro2014rapid; @zeng2013templateless], the subject alternatively makes a certain pose and rotates in front of the sensor. Then, several depth snapshots taken from different view points are fused to generate a complete 3D model. Similarly, [@tong2012scanning] proposes to use a turntable to rotate the subject to minimize pose variations. In contrast, the methods of [@Bogo:ICCV:2015; @weiss2011home; @zhang2014quality] allow a user to move freely in front of the sensor. In recent years, real time nonrigid depth fusion has been achieved [@newcombe2015dynamicfusion; @innmann2016volume; @slavcheva2017killingfusion]. These methods usually maintain a growing template and consist of two alternating steps, i.e. a registration step, where the current template is aligned to the new frame, and a fusion step, where the observation in the new frame is merged to the template. However, these methods typically suffer from “phantom surfaces” artifacts during fast motion. In [@DoubleFusion2018], this problem is alleviated by using SMPL to constraint tracking. Model based monocular methods [@bogo2016smplify; @dibra2017human; @guan2009estimating; @bualan2008naked; @hasler2010multilinear; @Pons-Moll_MRFIJCV; @ponsmollModelBased] have recently been integrated with deep learning [@omran2018neural; @kanazawa2018endtoend; @pavlakos2018humanshape]. However, they are restricted to predicting the parameters of a statistical body model [@smpl2015loper; @anguelov2005scape; @hasler2009statistical; @zuffi2015stitched; @pons2015dyna]. There are two exceptions, that recover clothing and shape from a single image [@guo2012clothed; @chen2013deformable] but these methods require manual initialization of pose and clothing parameters. [@alldieck2018video] is the first method capable of reconstructing full 3D shape and clothing geometry from a single RGB video. Users can freely rotate in front of the camera while roughly holding the A-pose. Unfortunately, this approach is restricted to recover only medium-level details. The fine-level details such as garment wrinkles, subtle geometry on the clothes and facial features, which are essential elements for preserving the identity information, are missing. Our goal is to recover the missing fine-level details of the geometry and improve the texture quality such that the appearance identity information can be faithfully recovered. Another branch of work in human body reconstruction is more focused on capturing the dynamic motion of the character. Works either recover articulated skeletal motion [@stoll2011fast; @mehta2017vnect; @gavrila1996; @sigal2004tracking; @alldieck2017optical; @huang2017towards], or surfaces with deformed clothing, usually called performance capture. In performance capture many approaches reconstruct a 3D model for each individual frame [@starck2007surface; @inria_2017; @collet2015high] or fuse a window of frames [@orts2016holoportation; @dou2016fusion4d]. However, these methods cannot generate a temporal coherent representation of the model, which is an important characteristic for many applications. To solve this, methods register a common model to results of all frames [@cagniart_meshdeform], use volumetric representation for surface tracking [@InriaVolumetric_2015; @huang2016volumetric], or assume a pre-built static template. Again, most of those methods are based on multi-view images [@deAguiar2008performance; @gall2009motion; @plankers2001articulated; @carranza2003free; @rhodin2016general; @robertini2017multi]. There are attempts on reducing the number of cameras, such as the stereo method [@wu2013set], single view depth based method [@zollhofer2014real] and the recent monocular RGB based method [@MonoPerfCap_SIGGRAPH2018]. Note that the result of our method can be used as the initial template for above-mentioned template based performance capture methods. **Shape-from-shading** is also highly related to our method. A comprehensive survey can be found in [@zhang1999shape]. We only discuss the application of shape-from-shading in the context of human body modeling. Geometric details, e.g. folds in the non-textured region, are difficult to capture with silhouette or photometric information. In contrast, shape-from-shading captures such details [@wu2013set; @wu2011shading; @haefner2018fight]. There are also approaches for photometric stereo which recover the shape using controlled light stage setup [@vlasic2009dynamic]. **Texture generation** is an essential task for modeling a realistic virtual character, since a texture image can describe the material properties that cannot be modeled by the surface geometry. The key of a texture generation method is how to combine texture fragments created from different views. Many early works blend the texture fragments using weighted averaging across the entire surface [@bernardini2001high; @debevec1996modeling; @Ofek:1997:MTI:616045.618417; @pighin2006synthesizing]. Others make use of mosaicing strategies, which yields sharper results [@baumberg2002blending; @lensch2001silhouette; @niem1997automatic; @rocchini1999multiple]. [@lempitsky2007seamless] is the first to formulate texture stitching as a graph cut problem. Such formulation has been commonly used in texture generation for multi-view 3D reconstruction. However, without accurately reconstructed 3D geometry and registered images, these methods usually suffer from blurring or ghosting artifacts. To this end, many methods focus on compensating registration errors [@eisemann2008floating; @bi2017patch; @waechter2014let; @FuYanYangEtAl; @zhou2014color]. In our scenario, the registration misalignment problem is even more severe, due to our challenging monocular nonrigid setting. Therefore, we propose to take advantage of semantic information to better constrain our problem. Method {#sec:method} ====== In this paper, our goal is to create a detailed avatar from an RGB video of a subject rotating in front of the camera. The focus lies hereby on fine-level details, that model a subject’s identity and individual appearance. As shown in Fig. \[fig:pipeline\], our method reconstructs a textured mesh model in a coarse-to-fine manner, which consists of three steps: First we estimate a rough body shape of the subject, similar to [@alldieck2018video], where the medium-level geometry of the clothing and skin is reconstructed. Then we add fine-level geometric details, such as garment wrinkles and facial features, based on shape-from-shading. Finally, we compute a seamless texture to capture the texel-level appearance details. In the following, we first describe our body shape model, and then discuss the details of our three steps. ![Our method 3-step method: We first estimate a medium level body shape based on segmentations (a), then we add details using shape-from-shading (b). Finally we compute a texture using a semantic prior and a novel graph cut optimization strategy (c).[]{data-label="fig:pipeline"}](method.jpg){width="1\linewidth"} a)b)c) Subdivided SMPL body model -------------------------- Our method is based on the SMPL body model [@smpl2015loper]. However, the original SMPL model is too coarse to model fine-level details such as garment wrinkles and fine facial features. To this end, we adapt the model as follows. The SMPL model is a parameterized human body model described by a function of pose ${{\boldsymbol{\theta}}}$ and shape ${{\boldsymbol{\beta}}}$ returning $N=6890$ vertices and $F=13776$ faces. As SMPL only models naked humans, we use the extended formulation from [@alldieck2018video] allowing offsets ${{\mathbf{D}}}$ from the template ${{\mathbf{T}}}$: $${M}({{\boldsymbol{\beta}}},{{\boldsymbol{\theta}}},{{\mathbf{D}}}) = {W}({T}({{\boldsymbol{\beta}}},{{\boldsymbol{\theta}}},{{\mathbf{D}}}), {J}({{\boldsymbol{\beta}}}), {{\boldsymbol{\theta}}}, {{\mathbf{W}}}) \label{eq_smpl_coarse}$$ $${T}({{\boldsymbol{\beta}}},{{\boldsymbol{\theta}}},{{\mathbf{D}}}) = {{\mathbf{T}}}+ {B}_s({{\boldsymbol{\beta}}}) + {B}_p({{\boldsymbol{\theta}}}) + {{\mathbf{D}}}$$ where ${W}$ is a linear blend-skinning function applied to a rest pose ${T}({{\boldsymbol{\beta}}},{{\boldsymbol{\theta}}},{{\mathbf{D}}})$ based on the skeleton joints ${J}({{\boldsymbol{\beta}}})$ and after pose ${B}_p({{\boldsymbol{\theta}}})$ and shape dependent ${B}_s({{\boldsymbol{\beta}}})$ deformations. The inverse function ${M}^{-1}({{\boldsymbol{\beta}}},{{\boldsymbol{\theta}}},{{\mathbf{D}}})$ *unposes* the model and brings the vertices back into the canonical T-pose. As we aim for fine details and a subject’s identity, we further extent the formulation. As shown in Fig. \[fig:sfssmpl\], we subdivide every edge of the the SMPL model twice. Every new vertex is defined as: $$\small {{\boldsymbol{v}}}_{N+e} = 0.5({{\boldsymbol{v}}}_i + {{\boldsymbol{v}}}_j) + {s}_{e}{{\boldsymbol{n}}}_{e}, \quad (i, j) \in {{\mathcal{E}}}_e$$ where ${{\mathcal{E}}}$ defines the pairs of vertices forming an edge and ${{\boldsymbol{n}}}_{e}$ is the average normal between the normals of the vertex pair. ${s}\in {{\mathbf{s}}}$ defines the displacement in normal direction ${{\boldsymbol{n}}}_{e}$. ${{\boldsymbol{n}}}_{e}$ is calculated at initialization time in unposed space and can be posed according to ${W}$. The new finer model ${{M}_f}({{\boldsymbol{\beta}}},{{\boldsymbol{\theta}}},{{\mathbf{D}}}, {{\mathbf{s}}})$ consists of $N=110210$ vertices and $F=220416$ faces. To recover the high-res smooth surface we calculate an initial set ${{\mathbf{s}}}_0 = \{{s}_0, \dots , {s}_e\}$ by minimizing $$\small \operatorname*{arg\,min}_{{{\mathbf{s}}}} \Bigl({\mathbf{L}} {{M}_f}= \sum_{j \in {{\mathcal{N}}}(i)} w_{ij} ({{\boldsymbol{v}}}_i - {{\boldsymbol{v}}}_j)\Bigr)$$ where ${\mathbf{L}}$ is the Laplace matrix with cotangent weights $w_{ij}$ and ${{\mathcal{N}}}(i)$ defines the neighbors around ${{\boldsymbol{v}}}_i$. Medium-level body shape reconstruction {#sec:medium} -------------------------------------- In recent work, a pipeline to recover a subject’s body shape, hair and clothing in the same setup as ours has been presented [@alldieck2018video]. They first select a number of key-frames ($K \approx 120$) evenly distributed over the sequence and segment them into foreground and background using a CNN [@caelles2017oneshot]. Then they recover the 3D pose for each selected frame based on 2D landmarks [@cao2017realtime]. At the core of their method they transform the silhouette cone of every key-frame back into the canonical T-pose of the SMPL model using the inverse formulation of SMPL. This allows efficient optimization of the body shape independent of pose. We follow their pipeline and optimize for the subjects body shape in unposed space. However, we notice that the face estimation of [@alldieck2018video] is not accurate enough. This prevents us from further recovering fine-level facial features in the following steps, since precise face alignment is necessary for that. To this end, we propose a new objective for body shape estimation (dependency on parameters removed for clarity): $$\operatorname*{arg\,min}_{{{\boldsymbol{\beta}}}, {{\mathbf{D}}}} E_{\text{silh}} + E_{\text{face}} + E_{\text{regm}} \vspace{-1mm}$$ The silhouette term $E_{\text{silh}}$ measures the distance between boundary vertices and silhouette rays. See [@alldieck2018video] for details and regularization $E_{\text{regm}}$. The face alignment term $E_{\text{face}}$ penalizes the distance between the 2D facial landmark detections and the 2D projection of 3D facial landmarks. We use [@simon2017hand] to detect 2D facial landmarks for every key-frame. In order to incorporate the detections into the method, we establish a static mapping between landmarks and points on the mesh. Every landmark ${{\boldsymbol{l}}}$ is mapped to the surface via barycentric interpolation of neighboring vertices. During optimization, we measure the point to line distance between the landmark ${{\boldsymbol{l}}}$ on the model and the corresponding camera ray ${{\mathbf{r}}}$ describing the 2D landmark detection in unposed space: $$\vspace{-1mm} \delta({{\boldsymbol{l}}}, {{\mathbf{r}}}) = {{\boldsymbol{l}}}\times {{\boldsymbol{r}}}_n - {{\boldsymbol{r}}}_m$$ where ${{\mathbf{r}}}= ({{\boldsymbol{r}}}_m, {{\boldsymbol{r}}}_n)$ is given in Plucker coordinates. The face alignment term finally is: $$E_{\text{face}} = \sum_{l,r \in {{\mathcal{L}}}} w_l \rho(\delta({{\boldsymbol{l}}}_l, {{\mathbf{r}}}_r)) \vspace{-1mm}$$ where ${{\mathcal{L}}}$ defines the mapping between mesh points and landmarks, $w$ is the confidence of the landmark given by the CNN and $\rho$ is the Geman-McClure robust cost function. To speed up computation time, we use the coarse SMPL model formulation (Eq. \[eq\_smpl\_coarse\]) for the medium-level shape estimation. Modeling fine-level surface details {#sec:fine} ----------------------------------- (10, 5.8) (0,0)[![One face of the new SMPL formulation. The displacement field vectors ${\boldsymbol{d_\ast}}$ and the normal displacements $s_\ast{{\boldsymbol{n}}}_\ast$ form the subdivided surface.[]{data-label="fig:sfssmpl"}](sfs_smpl.pdf "fig:"){width="\linewidth"}]{} (1.5,1.3)[${\boldsymbol{d_i}} \in {{\mathbf{D}}}$]{} (5.1,5)[$s_e{{\boldsymbol{n}}}_e$]{} In Sec. \[sec:medium\], we capture the medium-level details by globally integrating the silhouette information from all key-frames. Now our goal is to obtain fine-level surface details, which cannot be estimated from silhouette, based on shape-from-shading. Note that estimating shape-from-shading globally over all frames would lead to a smooth shape without details. Thus, we first capture the details for a number of key-frames individually, and then incrementally merge the details into the model as new triangles become visible in a consecutive key-frame. We found that the number of key-frames can be lower than in the first step and choose $K=60$. Now we describe how to capture the fine-level details for a single key-frame $k$ based on shape-from-shading. To make this process robust, we estimate shading normals individually in a window around the key-frame and then jointly optimize for the surface. **Shape-from-shading:** For each frame, we first decompose the image into reflectance ${I}_r$ and shading ${I}_s$ using the CNN based intrinsic decomposition method of [@nestmeyer2017reflectanceFiltering]. The function $H_{{{\boldsymbol{c}}}}$ calculates the shading of a vertex with spherical harmonic components ${{\boldsymbol{c}}}$. We estimate spherical harmonic components ${{\boldsymbol{c}}}$ that minimize the difference between the simulated shading and the observed image shading ${I}_s$ jointly for the given window of frames [@sfs:Wu:CVPR2011]: $$\operatorname*{arg\,min}_{{{\boldsymbol{c}}}} \sum_{i \in {{\mathcal{V}}}} \left| H_{{{\boldsymbol{c}}}}({{\boldsymbol{n}}}_i) - {I}_s({{\mathbf{P}}}{{\boldsymbol{v}}}_i) \right|, \vspace{-2mm}$$ where ${{\mathcal{V}}}$ denotes the subset of visible vertices, i.e. the angle between the normal and the viewing direction is $0 < \alpha \leq \alpha_\text{max}$. ${{\mathbf{P}}}$ is the projection matrix. Having the scene illumination and the shading for every pixel, we can now estimate auxiliary normals $\tilde{{{\mathbf{N}}}} = \{\tilde{{{\boldsymbol{n}}}}_0, \dots, \tilde{{{\boldsymbol{n}}}}_N\}$ for every vertex per frame: $$\operatorname*{arg\,min}_{\tilde{{{\mathbf{N}}}}} E_\text{grad} + w_\text{lapn} E_\text{lapn}. \vspace{-2mm}$$ The Laplacian smoothness term $E_\text{lapn} = {\mathbf{L}}\tilde{{{\mathbf{N}}}}$ enforces the normals to be locally smooth. $E_\text{grad}$ penalizes shading errors by calculating the difference between the gradient between a shaded vertex and its neighbors ${{\mathcal{N}}}$ and the image gradient at the projected vertex positions: $$\small E_\text{grad} = \sum_{i \in {{\mathcal{V}}}} \sum_{j \in {{\mathcal{N}}}(i) \cap {{\mathcal{V}}}} \left|\left| \Delta_{H_{{{\boldsymbol{c}}}}}(\tilde{{{\boldsymbol{n}}}}_i, \tilde{{{\boldsymbol{n}}}}_j) - \Delta_{{I}_s}({{\mathbf{P}}}{{\boldsymbol{v}}}_i, {{\mathbf{P}}}{{\boldsymbol{v}}}_j) \right|\right|^2$$ with $\Delta_f(a, b) = f(a) - f(b)$. ![We calculate a semantic segmentation for every key frame. The semantic labels are mapped into texture space and combined into a semantic texture prior.[]{data-label="fig:semantictexture"}](semantic_texture.jpg){width="0.86\linewidth"} **Surface reconstruction:** In order to merge information about all estimated normals within the window, we transform the normals back into the canonical T-pose using the inverse pose function of SMPL ${M}^{-1}$. Then we optimize for the surface which explains the merged normals. Further, we include the silhouette term and face term of Sec. \[sec:medium\] to enforce the surface to be well aligned to the images. Specifically, we minimize: $$\footnotesize \operatorname*{arg\,min}_{{{\mathbf{D}}}, {{\mathbf{s}}}} \sum_{j \in {\mathcal{C}}}^{} \left( \lambda_j E_{\text{silh},j} + \lambda_j w_\text{face} E_{\text{face},j} \right) + w_{\text{sfs}}E_{\text{sfs}} + E_{\text{regf}} \vspace{-1mm}$$ with weights $w_\ast$ and $\lambda_j =1$ for $j=k$ and $\lambda_j<1$ otherwise. $E_{\text{silh}}$ and $E_{\text{face}}$ are evaluated over a number of control frames ${\mathcal{C}}$ and matches in $E_{\text{silh}}$ are limited to vertices in the original SMPL model. The shape-from-shading term is defined as: $$\small E_\text{sfs} = \sum_{f = k - m}^{k + m} \sum_{i \in {{\mathcal{V}}}} ||{{\boldsymbol{n}}}_{i} - \tilde{{{\boldsymbol{n}}}}^f_{i}||^2$$ where $k$ is the current key-frame and $m$ specifies the window size, usually $m=1$. $\tilde{{{\boldsymbol{n}}}}^f_{i}$ denotes the auxiliary normal of vertex $i$ calculated from frame $f$. All normals are in T-pose space. $E_{\text{regf}}$ regularizes the optimization as described in the following: $$\footnotesize E_{\text{regf}} = w_{\text{match}}E_{\text{match}} + w_{\text{lap}}E_{\text{lap}} + w_{\text{struc}}E_{\text{struc}} + w_{\text{cons}}E_{\text{cons}} \label{eq_reg}$$ $E_{\text{match}}$ penalizes the discrepancy between two neighboring key-frames. Specifically, for a perfect estimation, the following assumption should hold: When warping a key-frame into a neighboring key-frame based on the warp-field described by the projected vertex displacement, the warped frame and the target frame should be similar. $E_{\text{match}}$ describes this metric: First we calculate the described warp. Then we calculate warping errors based on optical flow [@brox2004high]. Based on the sum of the initial warp-field and the calculated error, we establish a grid of correspondences between neighboring key-frames. Every correspondence $c$ should be explained by a particular point of the mesh surface. We first find a candidate for every correspondence: $$\small \operatorname*{arg\,min}_{i \in {{\mathcal{V}}}} \frac{\cos (\alpha^i_k) \delta({{\boldsymbol{v}}}_i^k, {{\mathbf{r}}}_c^k) + \cos (\alpha^i_j) \delta({{\boldsymbol{v}}}_i^j, {{\mathbf{r}}}_c^j)}{\cos (\alpha^i_k) + \cos (\alpha^i_j)} \label{cor_match}$$ where $\alpha^i_k$ is the viewing angle under which the vertex $i$ has been seen in key-frame $k$ and ${{\mathbf{r}}}_c^k$ is the projection ray of correspondence $c$ in posed space of key-frame $k$. Then we minimize point to line distance in unposed space: $$E_{\text{match}} = \sum_{i,c \in {\mathcal{M}}} \rho(\delta({{\boldsymbol{v}}}_i, {{\mathbf{r}}}_c)) \vspace{-2mm}$$ where ${\mathcal{M}}$ is the set of matches established in Eq. \[cor\_match\]. The remaining regularization terms of Eq.\[eq\_reg\] are as follows: $E_{\text{lap}}$ is the Laplacian smoothness term with anisotropic weights [@sfs:Wu:CVPR2011]. $E_{\text{struc}}$ aims to keep the structure of the mesh by pruning edge length variations. $E_{\text{cons}}$ prunes large deviations from the consensus shape. We optimize using a *dog-leg* trust region method using the chumpy autodifferentiation framework. We alternate minimizing and finding silhouette point to line correspondences. Regularization is reduced step-wise. ![Based on part textures from key frames (left), we stitch a complete texture using graph-cut based optimization. The associated key frames for each texel are shown as colors on the right.[]{data-label="fig:texturestitch"}](texture_stitch.jpg){width="\linewidth"} Texture generation ------------------ A high quality texture image is an essential component for a realistic virtual character, since it can describe the material properties that cannot be modeled by the surface geometry. In order to obtain a sharp and seamless texture, we solve the texture stitching on a per texel level (Fig. \[fig:texturestitch\]), in contrast to that on a per face level as in other works [@lempitsky2007seamless]. In other words, our goal is to color each pixel in the texture image with a pixel value taken from one out of $K$ key-frames. However, this makes the scale of our problem much larger, and therefore does not allow us to perform global optimization. To this end, we propose a novel texture merging method based on graph cut, which translates our problem to a series of binary labeling subproblems that can be efficiently solved. Furthermore, meshes and key-frames are not perfectly aligned. To reduce color spilling and artifacts caused by misalignments, we compute a semantic prior before stitching the final texture (Fig. \[fig:semantictexture\]). **Partial texture generation:** For every key-frame, we first project all visible surface points to the frame and write the color at the projected position into the corresponding texture coordinates. In order to factor out the illumination in the texture images, we *unshade* the input images by dividing them with the shading images as used in Sec. \[sec:fine\]. The partial texture calculation can easily be achieved using the OpenGL rasterization pipeline. Apart from the partial color texture image, we calculate two additional texture maps for the merging step, i.e. the viewing-angle map and the semantic map. For the viewing-angle map, we compute the viewing angle $\alpha^t_k$ under which the surface point $t$ has been seen in key-frame $k$. **The semantic prior** is generated by re-projecting the human semantic segmentation to the texture space. Specifically, we first calculate a semantic label for every pixel in the input frames using a CNN based human parsing method [@liang2015humanparsing]. Each frame is segmented into 10 semantic classes such as *hair*, *face*, *left leg* and *upper clothes*. Then the semantic information of all frames is fused into the global semantic map by minimizing for labeling ${\boldsymbol{x}}$: $$\vspace{-2mm} \small \operatorname*{arg\,min}_{{\boldsymbol{x}}} \sum_{t = 0}^{T} \varphi_t(x_t) + \sum_{t,q \in {{\mathcal{N}}}} \psi(x_t, x_q) \label{graphcutsegment}$$ $$\small \varphi_t(x_t) = 1 - \frac{\sum_{k=0}^K X_k(\cos^2 \alpha^t_k)}{K}$$ Here $\varphi$ is the energy term describing the compatibility of a label $x$ with the texel $t$, where $X_k$ returns the given value if the texel was labeled with $x$ in view $k$ and $0$ otherwise. $\psi$ gives the label compatibility of neighboring texels $t$ and $q$. We solve Eq. \[graphcutsegment\] by multi-label graph-cut optimization with alpha-beta swaps [@boykov2001fast]. While constructing the graph, we connect every texel not only with its neighbors in texture space but with all neighbors on the surface. In particular this means texels are connected across texture seams. To have a strong prior for the texture completion, we calculate Gaussian mixture models (GMM) of the colors in HSV space per label using the part-textures and corresponding labels. **Texture merging:** Next, we calculate the complete texture by merging the partial textures. While keeping the same graph structure, the objective function is: $$\small \operatorname*{arg\,min}_{{\boldsymbol{u}}} \sum_{t = 0}^{T} \theta_t(u_t) + \sum_{t,q \in {{\mathcal{N}}}} \eta_{t, q}(u_t, u_q) \label{texture_stitch} \vspace{-2mm}$$ where the labeling ${\boldsymbol{u}}$ assigns every texel to a partial texture $k$. The first term seeks to find the best image for each texel: $$\begin{aligned} \small \theta_t(k) = w_\text{vis} \sin^2 \alpha_k^t + w_\text{gmm} m({\mathbf{U}}_k^t, x_t) \nonumber \\ + w_\text{face} d({\mathbf{U}}_k^t) + w_\text{silh} E_{\text{silh}, k} \end{aligned}$$ with weights $w_\ast$. $m$ returns the Mahalanobis distance between the color value for $t$ in part-texture $k$ given the semantic label $x_t$. $d$ calculates the structural dissimilarity between the first and the given key-frame. $d$ is only evaluated on texels belonging to the facial region and ensures consistent facial expression over the texture. The smoothness-term $\eta$ ensures similar colors for neighboring texels. For neighboring texels assigned to different key-frames $u_t \neq u_q$, while belonging to the same semantic region $x_t = x_q$, $\eta_{t, q}$ equals the gradient magnitude between the texel colors $||{\mathbf{U}}_{u_t}^t - {\mathbf{U}}_{u_q}^q||$. Since the number of combinations in $\eta$ is very high, it is computationally not feasible to solve Eq. \[texture\_stitch\] as a multi label graph-cut problem. Thus, we propose the following strategy for an approximate solution: We convert the multi-label problem to a binary labeling decision $b \in \{\text{\emph{update}}, \text{\emph{keep}}\}$. We initialize the texture with ${\mathbf{M}} = {\mathbf{U}}_0$. Then we randomly choose a key-frame $k$ and test it against the current solution. The likelihood of selecting a key-frame is inversly proportional to its remaining silhouette error $E_{\text{silh}, k}$ in order to favor well-aligned key-frames. Further, $\eta$ is approximated with: $$\footnotesize \eta_{t,q} = \begin{cases} \max(||{\mathbf{M}}^t - {\mathbf{U}}^q_k||, ||{\mathbf{M}}^q - {\mathbf{U}}^t_k||),& \text{if } b_t \neq b_q \land x_t = x_q\\ 0, & \text{otherwise} \end{cases}$$ Convergence is usually reached between $2K$ to $3K$ iterations. Finally, we cross-blend between different labels to reduce visible seams. Experiments {#sec:experiments} =========== We evaluate our method on two publicly available datasets: The People-Snapshot dataset [@alldieck2018video] and the dataset used in [@Bogo:ICCV:2015]. To validate the perceived quality of our results we performed a user study. ![Side-by-side comparisons of our reconstructions (b) and the input frame (a). As can be seen from (b), our method closely resembles the subject in the video (a).[]{data-label="fig:sidebyside"}](male-3-sport_sidebyside.jpg "fig:"){width="0.33\columnwidth"} ![Side-by-side comparisons of our reconstructions (b) and the input frame (a). As can be seen from (b), our method closely resembles the subject in the video (a).[]{data-label="fig:sidebyside"}](male-5-outdoor_sidebyside.jpg "fig:"){width="0.33\columnwidth"} ![Side-by-side comparisons of our reconstructions (b) and the input frame (a). As can be seen from (b), our method closely resembles the subject in the video (a).[]{data-label="fig:sidebyside"}](female-3-casual_sidebyside.jpg "fig:"){width="0.33\columnwidth"}\ ![Side-by-side comparisons of our reconstructions (b) and the input frame (a). As can be seen from (b), our method closely resembles the subject in the video (a).[]{data-label="fig:sidebyside"}](female-8-plaza_sidebyside.jpg "fig:"){width="0.33\columnwidth"} ![Side-by-side comparisons of our reconstructions (b) and the input frame (a). As can be seen from (b), our method closely resembles the subject in the video (a).[]{data-label="fig:sidebyside"}](male-2-outdoor_sidebyside.jpg "fig:"){width="0.33\columnwidth"} ![Side-by-side comparisons of our reconstructions (b) and the input frame (a). As can be seen from (b), our method closely resembles the subject in the video (a).[]{data-label="fig:sidebyside"}](male-9-plaza_sidebyside.jpg "fig:"){width="0.33\columnwidth"} a\)  b) Qualitative results and comparisons {#sec:qualiresults} ----------------------------------- We compare our method to the recent method of [@alldieck2018video] on their People-Snapshot dataset. The approach of [@alldieck2018video] is the only other monocular 3D person reconstruction method. The People-Snapshot dataset consists of 24 sequences of different subjects rotating in front of the camera while roughly holding an A-pose. In Fig. \[fig:sidebyside\], we show some examples of our reconstruction results, which precisely overlay the subjects in the image. Note that the level of detail of the input images is captured by our reconstructed avatars. In Fig. \[fig:cvprcmp\], we show side-by-side comparison to [@alldieck2018video]. Our results (right) reconstruct the face better and preserve many more details, e.g. clothing wrinkles and t-shirt stamps. Additionally, we compare against the state-of-the-art RGB-D method [@Bogo:ICCV:2015], also using their dataset of people in minimal clothing[^1]. While their method relies on depth data, we only use the RGB video which makes the problem much harder. Despite this, as shown in Fig. \[fig:kinectcap\], our results are comparable in quality to theirs. ![Our results (b) in comparison against the RGB-D method [@Bogo:ICCV:2015] (a). Note that the texture prior has not been used (see Sec. \[sec:qualiresults\]).[]{data-label="fig:kinectcap"}](kinectcap.jpg){width="0.7\linewidth"} a)b) ![In comparison to the method of [@alldieck2018video] (left), the faces in our results (right) have finer details in the mesh and closely resemble the subject in the photograph.[]{data-label="fig:face"}](face.jpg){width="1\linewidth"} One goal of our method was to preserve the individual appearance of subjects in their avatars. Since the face is crucial for this, we leverage facial landmarks detections and shape-from-shading. As seen in Fig. \[fig:cvprcmp\] our method adds a significant level of detail to the facial region in comparison to state-of-the-art. In Fig. \[fig:face\] we show the same comparison also for untextured meshes. Our result closely resembles the subject in the photograph. Ablation analysis ----------------- In the following we qualitatively demonstrate the effectiveness of further design choices of our method. **Shape-from-shading:** In order to render the avatars under different illuminations, detailed geometry should be present in the mesh. In Fig. \[fig:sfs\], we demonstrate the level of detail added to the meshes by shape-from-shading. While the mesh on the left only describes the low-frequency shape, our refined result on the right contains fine-grained details such as wrinkles and buttons. **Influence of the texture prior:** In Fig. \[fig:texprior\] we show the effectiveness of the semantic prior for texture stitching. While the texture on the left computed without the prior contains noticeable color spills on the arms and hands, the final texture on the right contains no color spills and less stitching artifacts along semantic boundaries. ![Comparison of a result of our method before (left) and after (right) applying shape-from-shading based detail enhancing.[]{data-label="fig:sfs"}](sfsv2.jpg){width="0.78\linewidth"} ![The semantic prior for texture stitching successfully removes color spilling (left) in our final texture (right).[]{data-label="fig:texprior"}](colorspill.png){width="0.72\linewidth"} User study {#user_study} ---------- Finally, we conducted a user study in order to validate the visual fidelity of our results. Each participant was asked four questions about 6 randomly chosen results out of the 24 reconstructed subjects in People-Snapshot dataset. The avatars shown to each participant and the questions asked were randomized. In every question the participants had to decide between our method, and the method of [@alldieck2018video]. The four question were: - Which avatar preserves the identity of the person in the image better? (*identity*) - Which avatar has more detail? (*detail*) - Which avatar looks more real to you? (*realism*) - Which avatar do you like better? (*preference*) At questions *identity* and *realism* we showed the participants either textured or untextured meshes. When asking for *detail* we only showed untextured meshes, and when asking for *preference* we only showed textured results. Additionally, we asked for the level of experience with 3D data (*None*, *Beginner*, *Proficient*, *Expert*). 74 people participated in our online survey, covering the whole range of expertise. The results of the study are summarized in Table \[tab:study\]. The participants clearly preferred our results in all scenarios over current state-of-the-art. Admittedly, when asked about identity preservation in untextured meshes, users preferred our method, but this time only $65.70\%$. Further inspection of the results shows that users with high experience with 3D data think our method preserves the identity better with $90.48\%$ versus $60.49\%$ for novice users. We hypothesize that unexperienced users find it more difficult to recognize people from 3D meshes without textures. Most importantly, by a large margin, our results are perceived as more realistic (92.27%), preserve more details (95.72%) and where preferred 89.64% of the times. Identitiy Details Realism Preference -------------------- ----------- --------- --------- ------------ Textured Avatars 83.12 % - 92.27 % 89.64 % Untextured Avatars 65.70 % 95.72 % 89.73 % - : Results of the user study. Percentage of answers where users preferred our method over [@alldieck2018video]. We asked for four different aspects. See Sec. \[user\_study\] for details.[]{data-label="tab:study"} ![In comparison to the method of [@alldieck2018video] (left), our results (right) look much more natural and have finer details.[]{data-label="fig:cvprcmp"}](cmp_female-1-casual.jpg "fig:"){width="1\linewidth"}\ ![In comparison to the method of [@alldieck2018video] (left), our results (right) look much more natural and have finer details.[]{data-label="fig:cvprcmp"}](cmp_male-3-casual.jpg "fig:"){width="1\linewidth"}\ ![In comparison to the method of [@alldieck2018video] (left), our results (right) look much more natural and have finer details.[]{data-label="fig:cvprcmp"}](cmp_male-4-casual.jpg "fig:"){width="1\linewidth"} Discussion and Conclusion {#sec:conclusion} ========================= We have proposed a novel method to create highly detailed personalized avatars from monocular video. We improve over the state-of-the-art in several important aspects: Our optimization scheme allows to integrate face landmark detections and shape-from-shading from multiple frames. Experiments demonstrate that this results in better face reconstruction and better identity preservation. This is also confirmed by our user study, which shows that people think our method preserves identity better 83.12% of the times, and capture more details 95.72% of the times. We introduced a new texture stitching binary optimization, which allows us to efficiently merge the appearance of multiple frames into a single coherent texture. The optimization includes a semantic texture term that incorporates appearance models for each semantic segmentation part. Results demonstrate that the common artifact of color spilling from skin to clothing or viceversa gets reduced. We have argued for a method to capture the subtle, but very important details to make avatars look *realistic*. Indeed *details matter*, the user study shows that users think our results are more realistic than the state of the art 92.7% of the times, and prefer our avatars 89.64% of the times. Future work should address capture of subjects wearing clothing with topology different from the body, including skirts and coats. Furthermore, to obtain full texturing, subjects have to be seen from all sides – it may be possible to infer occluded appearance using sufficient training data. Another avenue to explore is reconstruction in an un-cooperative setting, e.g. from online videos of people. Having cameras all around us, we can now serve the growing demand for personalized avatars in virtual and augmented reality applications e.g. in the fields of entertainment, communication or e-commerce. [^1]: The deep learning based segmentation [@gong2017look] only works for fully clothed people so we had to deactivate the semantic prior in this dataset.

539 So.2d 1182 (1989) Kenneth C. BACHMAN, Appellant, v. Cynthia A. BACHMAN, Appellee. No. 88-0620. District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fourth District. March 22, 1989. Martin L. Haines, III, North Palm Beach, for appellant. Paul F. King of Edna L. Caruso, P.A., West Palm Beach, for appellee. PER CURIAM. The husband's appeal of the final judgment claims that the trial court erred in the economic aspects, in failing to grant husband's motion to recuse, and in permitting the wife to move with the children to New Jersey. We affirm. The distribution of marital assets was in accord with the husband's wishes, and the alimony and support award does not reflect an abuse of the court's discretion. Canakaris v. Canakaris, 382 So.2d 1197 (Fla. 1980). The motion to recuse came about as a result of a hearing concerning the husband's desire to take the parties' minor children (then 8 and 5 years old) on a camping trip along with the husband's girlfriend. That hearing occurred several months prior to the final hearing, and the trial judge then believed that he did not have the authority to interfere with the husband's plans. The judge nevertheless expressed his negative opinion of the idea, and added: Remember, he's going to appear before me eventually when we talk about custody and a whole bunch of other things. I don't think it's real wise for him to do things that are not in the best interest of the children... . The judge revised his opinion as to his authority, and prohibited the camping trip. After denial of a motion for rehearing, the husband moved for recusal, suggesting the *1183 court's bias and a predisposition to rule adversely to the husband. Ordinarily, if there is a doubt as to the impartiality of the judge, a motion to recuse should be granted. Fischer v. Knuck, 497 So.2d 240 (Fla. 1986). The motion should be timely, however, and to wait for the outcome of a motion for rehearing on the matter precipitating the recusal motion suggests an attempt at two bites of the apple. Although including this point in plenary appeal is permitted, one cannot help but wonder whether a third bite was contemplated when the husband did not seek a writ of prohibition immediately when the motion to recuse was denied. Our holding here should not be construed as foreclosing a future timely motion to recuse if an appropriate basis appears hereafter. The final judgment provided for shared parental responsibility with the primary physical residence of the children to be with the wife, and the husband to "have frequent and continuing contact with the children." The judgment specifically permitted the wife to remove the children from Florida, and if the wife were to move to New Jersey, the husband would receive "at least six weeks of continuous visitation each summer and one week during the Christmas holidays." The cost of the children's transportation is to be divided between the parties. We find no abuse of discretion by the trial court. Although the husband's ready physical access to the children will be curtailed, he will have contact by phone. During the extended vacation time the girls spend with him, there will be a much better opportunity for quality parenting, as distinguished from the more quickie type of visitations largely practiced heretofore by the husband (somewhat of necessity because of his job as a deputy sheriff). It is apparent that a considerable part of the wife's motivation for the move to New Jersey, was her desire to distance herself from the husband, and to make a fresh start with the emotional support of her family. There was evidence that the wife had better employment opportunity in New Jersey as well as refresher job training there. There was no indication of any desire to defeat or frustrate the husband's contact with the children. Parenthetically, we note that factors to be considered in permitting a move from the close proximity of the nonresidential parent are detailed in Matilla v. Matilla, 474 So.2d 306 (Fla. 3d DCA 1985). Matilla endorsed the criteria set forth in D'Onofrio v. D'Onofrio, 144 N.J. Super. 200, 365 A.2d 27 (Ch. Div.), aff'd per curiam, 144 N.J. Super. 352, 365 A.2d 716 (App.Div. 1976), as do we. It should be recognized that New Jersey had an anti-removal statute (N.J.S.A. 9:2-2) which provided that children could not be removed from the jurisdiction without consent of the non-custodial parent "unless the court, upon cause shown, shall otherwise order." D'Onofrio's laundry list, therefore, clarified what was necessary to overcome the statutory prohibition of removal. Although Florida has no such statutory prohibition, the same factors should apply to the trial court's consideration of that issue either at trial, or post-judgment when the question had not been addressed earlier. Also, the application of those standards apply not only to removal from the jurisdiction, but in any intra-state move to a distance that interferes with ready access by the nonresidential parent. Further, D'Onofrio's factors are not the only ones to be considered by the trial court. We can envision others such as the effect on the children by the new blended family (the nonresidential parent with new spouse and that spouse's existing children or new ones) vis-a-vis their moving away with the residential parent alone to an environment noncompetitive for love and affection. New and creative considerations should be welcomed by trial courts when faced with the vexing dilemma of children's relocation away from the nonresidential parent. We commend the bench and bar to the Winter 1989 issue of Family Advocate for a thorough examination of relocation issues. *1184 GLICKSTEIN and GARRETT, JJ., and KAHN, MARTIN D., Associate Judge, concur.

Role of linezolid therapeutic drug monitoring in the treatment of MRSA tracheo-pulmonary infection in a 10-month-old infant. The paper reports on the use of therapeutic drug monitoring for linezolid in the decision-making process to continue or not its administration in an infant. Linezolid is effective against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus but is off-label in pediatrics. The use of therapeutic drug monitoring, as in our case, allows an informed decision on administration of the drug (in this case on withdrawal) increasing patients safety.

Award-winning M&A advisory firm One of the hottest industry sectors for M&A activity right now is health care. Even though there are quite a few variables clouding the horizon (the impact of the Healthcare Reform Act, for example), the reality is the U.S. population is growing older. And as we grow older, the demand for health care services and products will continue to expand exponentially. Right now strategic players and equity firms are both positioning themselves to take advantage of an ever-aging population and the need for health care. If you own a company that is in the health care field, congratulations, you may be sitting on a goldmine. The first step in determining if your company could be of value to buyers is to hire an M&A advisory firm. In some industries it is quite possible to sell your company for the most profit on your own. However, in the health care field, the complexities of the deal almost make an M&A advisor a necessity. There are several compelling reasons why M&A advisors are vital to closing optimal deals in the healthcare field. Knowledge Based on Completed Deals The first is experience. You are an expert in your niche of health care. You have successfully started and grown a company in a very competitive field. However, you are not an expert in selling companies—you will probably only sell one company in your entire life. Do you really want to “learn on the job” as you are marketing your most valuable possession? If you are like most business owners, a significant amount of your personal net worth is tied up in two items: your home and your business. If you use a real estate agent to sell your home, you do so because of the person’s experience and skill in selling houses. The same is true of using an M&A advisory firm. Find a firm that has successfully sold businesses and chances are good you will find an optimal buyer. How Much Free Time Do You Have? Time (or lack of time) is the second reason to use an M&A advisor when selling your health care company. Closing a deal is more than a full-time job. We estimate that if you try to sell your company on your own that you will spend at least 1,000 hours doing so over a nine- to 18-month period. Since you are probably working more than full-time running your company today, chances are good that you simply don’t have the hours to spare to effectively market it. An M&A advisor will do the heavy lifting, allowing you to continue running your company. And that really is key. You need to maintain your company’s growth and profitability during the marketing phase in order to ensure that you are hitting your projected numbers while buyers are looking at you. Having an M&A advisor working for you will allow you to do so. Know Your Company’s Market Value Before going to market you will need to have a good idea what your company is worth. If you don’t know what the economic value of your company is, how can you know which offers to accept? This is a fundamental reason why you will need an M&A advisor: They will provide you with an objective, third-party evaluation of your company. Contacts, Contacts, Contacts! But perhaps the most compelling reason to hire an M&A advisory firm is the reach and scope of contacts that they will have (assuming you hire an M&A advisory with extensive experience). At the outset, if you are like most business owners, you will make an assumption regarding who the most likely buyer will be. However, an experienced advisory firm will go beyond that assumption and will expand your buyer list to include companies and targets that you may not have considered in the past. This is a key strength that they will bring to the table for you. The contacts they have in the buying universe far surpass any list of possible contacts that you may have. This is vital in finding an optimal buyer for your company. More Information to Consider These are just a few of the reasons why you should hire an M&A advisory firm if you are considering the sale of your health care-related company. There are lots of others but time and space do not allow me to list them all. If you would like to learn more about selling your health care company, I would invite you to attend a Generational Equity workshop. We hold these around the country and they are designed to help the middle-market business owner learn more about the M&A process. The investment of your time will be well worth it. If you would like to see if you qualify to attend, please click here for a no-obligation consultation with one of our professionals. The bottom line is this: Don’t attempt to sell your company on your own, especially if you want to maximize the value through a professional marketing campaign.

Casa di Patsi ® home design Our collaboration with the best furniture manufacturer in Greece and the importer of leading brands of furniture such as Moroso, Ligne Roset, Zalf and more started in 2012. Casa di Patsi trusted us with their campaigns, which vary according to the company’s strategies for each product. We have also taken photos of the entire product line giving each product the appropriate appearance in order to be in harmony with the company culture.

YAC rescue of downless locus mutations in mice. Mice with mutations at the downless (dl) locus have defects in hair follicle, tooth, sweat gland, preputial gland, Meibomian gland, and tail development. The dl phenotype is analogous to the human genetic disorder termed autosomal hypohidrotic (or anhidrotic) ectodermal dysplasia (HED). On the basis of the identification of two related transgenic insertional mutations in the downless gene, yeast artificial chromosomes (YACs) were identified that map to the critical region of mouse Chromosome (Chr) 10. To determine which of the YACs contain the dl gene, we generated YAC transgenic mice by mouse embryo microinjections. The 200-kb YAC B25.D9 was found to rescue all of the downless defects. In addition, the transgenic YAC rescued the dominant Sleek (Dlslk) allele. Since the sequences within the YAC are entirely deleted in one of the transgenic mutants, our results establish that Sleek encodes a dominant-negative protein whose effects can be reversed by expression of extra copies of the wild-type locus.

UPDATE (Matt): Via Justin, CBS News has released photos of the shooter, along with reporting that the suspect had rushed into the FBI's office in Anchorage, Alaska, saying that he was being forced to fight for ISIS. NEW: In Nov. 2016, FLL suspect walked into FBI office in Anchorage, claiming he was being forced to fight for ISIS, sources tell CBS News. — CBS News (@CBSNews) January 6, 2017 UPDATE (3:31 EST): The shooter was a passenger on a flight that had recently landed at FLL. NBC saying Santiago got his gun from a checked bag, went into the bathroom to load it, came out and started shooting. Security fail. — Ethan Ralph (@TheRalphRetort) January 6, 2017 UPDATE (2:58 EST): Reports of a second shooter are still unconfirmed. Active search: Unconfirmed reports of addt'l shots fired on airport property. — Broward Sheriff (@browardsheriff) January 6, 2017 UPDATE (2:49 EST): A man was seen being led away in handcuffs from the parking garage. NOW: someone in handcuffs at Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International. Still lots of activity in parking garage. @wsvn pic.twitter.com/kjHA1QNI3Z — Brian Entin (@BrianEntin) January 6, 2017 UPDATE (2:47 EST): The TSA's official Twitter account is tweeting about an active shooter at FLL; however, it is not known if this is in reference to the original shooting or a second shooting. Update: Active shooter at #FLL. Shelter in place. Airport closed. — TSA (@TSA) January 6, 2017 UPDATE (2:46 EST): Also per Sen. Nelson, the suspect emptied three magazines before sitting down. Senator Bill Nelson: shooter is Esteban Santiago. He was carrying a military ID. Motive is unknown. When finished 3 magazines, he sat down — Will Carr (@WillCarrFNC) January 6, 2017 UPDATE (2:30 EST): Possible reports of a second shooter have emerged. The casualty total has been updated to five dead, eight wounded. 5 dead, 8 injured at FLL airport. Now reports of second active shooter in Terminal 3, BSO says. People still being evacuated on tarmac. — Phillip Valys (@PhilValys) January 6, 2017 Witnesses reporting more shots fired at Fort Lauderdale International Airport. Not confirmed by authorities #FoxNews — Will Carr (@WillCarrFNC) January 6, 2017 UPDATE (2:28 EST): According to Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), the shooter has been identified as "Esteban Santiago" by his military ID. Senator Bill Nelson on MSNBC right now. Says shooter has been identified as Esteban Santiago - carrying a military ID #FortLauderdale — Stewart Moore (@Stewartmoore) January 6, 2017 UPDATE (1:59 EST): The death toll has been revised to five. UPDATE (1:46 EST): The shooting took place at the baggage claim. UPDATE: Shooting took place at Terminal 2 baggage claim, @NBCNews' @prodjay reports — WCSH 6 (@WCSH6) January 6, 2017 UPDATE (1:37 EST): Per NBC, three people are now reported dead. NBC's Pete Williams, citing federal officials, says 3 dead in shooting at Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood Int'l Airport — Jesse Rodriguez (@JesseRodriguez) January 6, 2017 UPDATE (1:33 EST): The person in custody is the shooter, according to federal officials. UPDATE (1:27 EST): "At least" nine people have been wounded, with one person in custody. One person is reported dead. ---Original Post--- There are reports of shots fired at Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. Details are scarce at the moment, but former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer is on the scene and tweeting updates. Passengers have been evacuated. I'm at the Ft. Lauderdale Airport. Shots have been fired. Everyone is running. — Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) January 6, 2017 The police said there is one shooter and five victims. — Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) January 6, 2017 All seems calm now but the police aren't letting anyone out of the airport - at least not the area where I am. — Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) January 6, 2017 Other travelers were tweeting that they were told to get back on their planes. Holy crap. Shooter at airport in ft Lauderdale. We were just about to get off plane and they made everyone get back on plane. — PuzzlePen (@PuzzlePen) January 6, 2017 This story has been updated.

431 So.2d 899 (1983) Joseph W. BARHAM, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. DEPARTMENT OF HIGHWAYS (a/k/a Transportation & Development Department, Division of Administration), Defendant-Appellant. No. 15359-CA. Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Second Circuit. May 3, 1983. Rehearing Denied June 8, 1983. *900 William W. Irwin, Jr., Robert L. LeDoux, Bernard L. Malone, Jr., Bryan Miller, Baton Rouge, for defendant-appellant. James W. Berry, Rayville, for plaintiff-appellee. Before PRICE, HALL and MARVIN, JJ. PRICE, Judge. This is an appeal by the defendant of the judgment of the trial court fixing the common boundary between its property and the contiguous tract owned by plaintiff. Plaintiff is owner of a tract of land on the southern boundary of Section 28, T 17 N, R 7 E. The state owns the parcel of land situated on the northern boundary of Section 33, T 17 N, R 7 E directly south of plaintiff's tract. It is undisputed that the ideal boundary between the two tracts is the section line between sections 28 and 33. The dispute which prompted the filing of this suit is the proper location of the section line. The state erected a highway barn on its property soon after its acquisition in 1954 and placed a fence along what it contends to be the north boundary of Section 33, consistent with the location of the northwest corner of that section on the plat of a 1953 survey. *901 Plaintiff filed this suit to compel fixing of the boundary, contending that the state's fence, being located north of the true section line, encroached on his property and requesting that the court appoint a surveyor to locate the line. The court appointed Registered Surveyor John Maroney who duly returned the plat of his survey and the process verbal thereof for homologation by the court. The state opposed the homologation and at trial of the matter presented the plat of a 1976 survey made for the state by Registered Surveyors Ken McKay and James Wheat, contending it showed the correct location of the section line. The trial court approved the Maroney survey which placed the section line 284.6 feet south of the highway department's north fence line. Neither this survey nor the survey relied on by the state in opposing its approval was based on the location of established government corners. After the first hearing, the state filed a motion to reopen the case so that newly discovered evidence could be presented. The motion was granted and a new plat was introduced into evidence by the state which it contended showed a reconstruction of the township by reference to an established government corner discovered in Section 5. The trial court found the evidence introduced in support of this reconstruction insufficient to prove the reliability of the location of its lines. Reaffirming its approval of the Maroney survey, the court then fixed the section line as per its location on the plat thereof. Defendant appeals this judgment, contending for the first time on appeal that the trial court lacks subject matter jurisdiction in a boundary action involving lands owned by the state. It is argued in the alternative that the trial court erred in using the Maroney survey to fix the boundary in preference to the state's plat showing the location of an established government corner. In support of its contention that the district court has no jurisdiction over the subject matter of this suit, the defendant relies on La.R.S. 41:1131-1136. These statutes provide a method for the fixing of the boundary between lands belonging to the state and contiguous lands belonging to another person by mutual consent. Section 1131 reads as follows: Whenever there arises a controversy with respect to the boundary line between lands belonging to the state and contiguous and abutting lands belonging to another person, or boundary lines which have never been definitely ascertained, defined or fixed, the state and the party may proceed to the ascertainment, determination and fixing of the boundary by mutual consent, as set forth in this Chapter. (Emphasis added) It was stated in the introduction of the statute when passed by the Louisiana Legislature as Act No. 332 of the regular session of 1938 that the purpose of this act was to provide an additional method of procedure for determining boundaries between lands belonging to the state and contiguous or abutting landowners. The state argues that the mandatory language in La.R.S. 41:1133, providing that if an amicable agreement cannot be arrived at as set forth in Section 1132, the differences in question shall be submitted to a specified group of commissioners, removes from the district court the power to adjudicate such a matter. However, in light of the language of Section 1131 and the above-mentioned comment which is indicative of the legislative intent behind this enactment, it is this court's view that the parties are not required to follow the cited procedure. The statute merely provides an alternative to the institution of court proceedings to settle such controversies. The language of the act as a whole indicates that the provisions of Section 1133 come into play only if the parties have first mutually agreed to settle their boundary dispute according to the prescribed procedure, but cannot reach a satisfactory agreement on their own. There was no agreement to fix the boundary by mutual consent in the instant case. Therefore, inasmuch as we are of the view that La.R.S. 41:1131-1136 does not divest the district court of original jurisdiction of boundary actions in which the state *902 is a defendant, and there was no agreement between the parties to fix the boundary according to the statutory provisions, we find no merit in defendant's plea of lack of subject matter jurisdiction. See La.Const. of 1974, Article 5, Section 16(A). Defendant further maintains the trial court failed to apply the proper legal criteria to its determination of the respective reliability of the opposing surveys and plats in fixing the boundary. The following general principles of surveying for purposes of resolving boundary disputes were stated by this court in Horneman v. Giles, 381 So.2d 892 (La.App.2d Cir.1980), writ. denied 385 So.2d 268 (La.1980): ... In establishing a disputed boundary along a section line, it is the surveyor's duty to reproduce the lines of the original government survey as originally run, as closely and accurately as possible. Smith v. Almond, 157 La. 265, 102 So. 330 (1924); Bodcaw Company v. Spurlin, 341 So.2d 1266 (La.App. 2d Cir.1977). If an established corner or monument can be found within the township, then that corner should be used as a starting point. Fournet Land Co. v. Martin Fish Co., 184 La. 537, 166 So. 666 (1936). See also LSA-R.S. 50:125 and 50:154. Id., at 893. The state maintains that the plat introduced at the second hearing was begun from an established government corner. It is conceded that no government corner was located as a reference point for the Maroney survey. Defendant argues that its plat is therefore more reliable and the boundary should have been fixed accordingly. We do not agree. First, we are not satisfied that the defendant has shown with the requisite degree of certainty that the corner it relies upon is indeed an original government corner. The original marker of the southeast corner of Section 5 which the state contends it has located has long since disappeared. What the state's surveyor found was an iron post which he identified as having been set in a previous survey by a well-respected surveyor named Selman, now deceased, retracing the old government survey. However, there was no evidence to show that the iron marker found was in fact the post set by Selman at the location of the witness tree which originally marked the corner in question. Second, even if this point was established to be an original government corner, the plat developed by the state with reference to that point was a mere mathematical reconstruction of part of the township by the state surveyor in accordance with the distance calls of the old government survey. No markers were located on the ground to verify the location of the lines as drawn on the plat by the state's surveyor. It is well settled that if the original corners and lines have been obliterated, natural objects and monuments should be followed in identifying prior surveys. The general rule is that calls for natural or permanent objects in an entry, survey, or conveyance will control other and conflicting calls. Such calls are thus considered more important than courses and distances in ascertaining the location of disputed lines. See Barrataria Land Co. v. Louisiana Meadows Co., 146 La. 999, 84 So. 334 (1920); City of New Orleans v. Joseph Rathborne Land Co., 209 La. 93, 24 So.2d 275 (1945); Cheramie v. Vegas, 194 So.2d 189 (La.App. 1st Cir.1966), writ. denied 250 La. 907, 199 So.2d 918 (La.1967). Therefore, the reliability of a plat which is unsupported by any effort to retrace the lines on the ground is questionable at best. The Maroney survey was based on accepted corners on the ground located by using the plats of three previous surveys. No original government corners could be found in the area surrounding the properties of the parties. Mr. Maroney and his party chief testified they therefore tried to find every marking on the ground in that area which had been used in other surveys and accepted in the community as established corners. It was also testified that the variances between distance calls of the surveys used to establish reference points and the markers found on the ground were very slight. *903 No marker was found to verify the location of the southwest corner of Section 33, but the section corners on either side of this point were located so that the surveyor was able to reconstruct the lost corner by the double proportionate method of surveying. In applying this method of locating lost corners, any difference between the actual measurement and the distance calls of the original government plat is allocated equally between the two sections located between the outer corners. This is the method preferred by the General Land Office of the United States Department of the Interior as shown by its handbook on Reconstruction of Lost or Obliterated Corners. Each step undertaken in locating each point designated in the Maroney survey is precisely listed in a document designated by Mr. Maroney as a proces verbal. This document was returned with the survey and entered into the record to further support the accuracy of the court-ordered survey, although the formal proces verbal is no longer required. See La.C.C.P. Art. 3692; Roy v. Rasbury, 425 So.2d 1284 (La.App.2d Cir. 1983). Defendant argues that the trial court erred in accepting the survey by the court-appointed surveyor because it was not begun from an established government corner. As stated above, it has not been satisfactorily proven that there exists an original government corner in the township in question. Furthermore, a survey made by a court-appointed surveyor is presumed to be correct unless rebutted by the opposition. Bodcaw Co. v. Spurlin, 341 So.2d 1266 (La. App.2d Cir.1977), writ denied 344 So.2d 381 (La.1977). Where there is opposing testimony from other surveyors and differing opinions among the experts, the court's decision must be based on what it considers the preponderance of the evidence. Holt v. Morgan, 344 So.2d 84 (La.App.2d Cir.1977). The reliability of the section line established by the Maroney survey was borne out by the markers located on the ground in the area. These were established to be corners of long-standing recognition which correlated almost precisely with prior surveys of the area. The trial court found that defendant's plat showing its location of the line with reference to the corner located in Section 5 was insufficient to rebut the presumed accuracy of the Maroney survey. All the surveyors testified that original government surveys are seldom accurate in their distance calls of one square mile per section because the measuring tools used at that time were much less accurate than those available today. Yet the defendant's location of the boundary was based on a calculation of exactly 5280 feet per section. Furthermore, no physical markings were located to tie the state's plat in with the actual conditions on the ground. As stated by this court in Smith v. Scarpengos, 56 So.2d 757 (La.App.2d Cir. 1952), a survey predicated on sound surveying principles and procedures, as was the Maroney survey should be accepted unless the record shows it is incorrect. Furthermore, the determination of a disputed boundary is a question of fact which should not be disturbed on appeal in the absence of manifest error. See McCullin v. Sumners, 401 So.2d 458 (La.App.2d Cir.1981), writ denied 406 So.2d 610 (La.1981); Leblanc v. Laborde, 368 So.2d 1126 (La.App.2d Cir. 1979), writ denied 369 So.2d 1377 (La.1979). In the instant case, there were no clearly identifiable government markers within a reasonable distance of the disputed line, the state's plat was not verified by markings on the ground, and the Maroney survey was tied in meticulously to well recognized corners found on the ground. Under these circumstances, we find the judgment of the trial court fixing the boundary in accordance with the Maroney survey amply supported by the record. For the reasons assigned, the judgment appealed is affirmed. All costs of this appeal are assessed against defendant-appellant. AFFIRMED.

Bartołty Małe Bartołty Małe () is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Barczewo, within Olsztyn County, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It lies approximately east of Barczewo and east of the regional capital Olsztyn. Before 1772 the area was part of Kingdom of Poland, 1772-1945 Prussia and Germany (East Prussia). The village has a population of 70. References Category:Villages in Olsztyn County

SuperKid Blog 3D Learning FOR FOCUS SKILLS June 12, 2019 by Janai Mestrovich, M.S. Aka Grandma Boom According to PBS.org for parents, “Concentration is like a muscle that requires regular exercise to strengthen. Some kids are born “stronger” in this area than others, but all kids can learn strategies and engage in practices that help improve their… Published in Oregon Association for the Education of Young Children newsletter 3D Earth Care Empathy May 20, 2019 by Janai Mestrovich, M.S. Aka Grandma Boom “Do you like trash thrown on you?” The 3 to 5 year olds responded a resounding “NO!!” I had just put some (clean) recycled items such as envelope pieces, aluminum… https://www.acesconnection.com/blog/self-regulation-begins-with-dogs-tense-knots-and-calm-socks (originally published on ORAEYC website/state newsletter) Self-Regulation Begins with Dogs, Tense Knots and Calm Socks Originally posted to ORAEYC, February 19, 2019 |Janai Mestrovich, M.S. We were all barking like dogs that were upset on all fours in the preK classroom. Then I used the Breathing Sphere to guide 20 preK children to take slow,… (Originally published on website of ORAEYC 1/29/19 – Oregon Association for Education of Young Children – where I blog monthly.) The 2 year old girl fell flat and began screaming. The 3 year old boy ran over to her, concerned and wanted to help. He gently demonstrated how to take slow deep breaths to feel… 25 kindergarten children ran around the gym like crazy tense cars with me after we made our paper plate INNER STEERING WHEELS to show Tension X’s and Calm smiley faces. When I signaled, we took deep belly button breaths to SWITCH GEARS from tense to calm. It is the foundation for self regulation. Earlier in… CHEERLEADING FOR PRESCHOOLERS learning and practicing Superkid Power positive self talk Skills means having experiences so they KNOW for themselves. We drummed to the song about what we think impacts our feelings and bodies. WHEN I THINK I CAN’T, I FEEL I CAN’T! WHEN I THINK I CAN, I KNOW AND FEEL I CAN! AND… “Success stories are always a delight, witnessing young children practicing self regulation and being empowered. A teacher in a preschool class with 3 and 4 year olds where I teach Superkid Skills happily shared this story. “Two very active little boys were playing in the dramatic play area. Both saw a police officer uniform that… Kindergarten children practicing self regulation skills and remaining calm in the midst of others being mean to them or arguing around them is one of the techniques I teach to EMPOWER SUPERKIDS. Their experiences are depicted in their wonderful artwork. They get to hear, see, feel a choreographed experience and then express their experiences on… Because a child’s brain develops 85% of its capacity by the age of 5, it is the optimal time to teach skills to manage stress. With the increase of ACES (Adverse Childhood Experiences) on the rise in our country, mental health is declining. Early prevention with self regulation and self help skills strengthens children mentally… Forgiveness can be abstract for young children. Teaching them not to carry a grudge is easily accomplished with GRUDGE SACKS….Imagine every time you carried a grudge and did not forgive that there was a big rock or a bag of rocks tied around your neck weighing you down. That is exactly what a grudge does…

The coming of age of international health history is attested by the increasing number of scholars studying the relationship in various countries between US philanthropies and science and medicine, investigating global organizations, or embarking on such topics as borders and health. Latin America, Russia, Europe and India have recently been the main areas under scrutiny. Anne-Emanuelle Birn\'s excellent and highly readable *Marriage of convenience* is one more example of the growing success of this research programme, initially developed in 1991 at a conference on 'Science, Philanthropy and Latin America' sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and Indiana University Center on Philanthropy (see Marcos Cueto, *Missionaries of science*, 1994). The book under review pays special attention to the local reception of and response to US philanthropy. It may be read as a history of Mexican public health in the post-revolutionary era as well as an investigation into one of the Rockefeller Foundation\'s most significant ventures. Neither of these issues, however, is central for Birn. Rather, it is the long-lasting, fruitful and conflictual encounter between Mexico and the Rockefeller Foundation which is crucial. From the 1920s to the 1940s, the Foundation conducted a high-budget yellow fever campaign along the Gulf of Mexico and a far-reaching (though much less expensive) hookworm disease eradication campaign in the centre and in the south of the country. It established local health units in three states, sent sixty-eight public health fellows to North American universities and trained about 600 health workers in two training stations founded in Mexico. The relationship proved to be an "elastic and mutually beneficial marriage". Imperialism, charity (international assistance), catalysis (foreign intervention to boost development), coincidence (foreign aid as a concomitant factor in the process of endogenous modernization), these are all concepts that explain such a relationship only to a certain extent. Accordingly, the book offers a fresh interpretation, which highlights interaction and competition alike between both partners. Birn explores the inherently national and nationalistic nature of modernity. Just as the creation of the Rockefeller charities had aimed to placate populist critics of Standard Oil, the intervention in Mexico was motivated by the necessity to ease tensions aroused by US invasions in 1914 and 1916. Birn rightly describes Rockefeller intervention in Mexico as a sort of "ersatz diplomacy" aka "invisible diplomacy" elsewhere (France). Of course, public health campaigns were put on display in order to protect foreign assets. But the Foundation took the nationalization of oil in 1938 as an opportunity visibly to demonstrate that its activities and commitment to Mexico were by no means connected with business interests. In appearance, the "Good Neighbor" policy of the mid-1930s might be regarded as a logical outcome of the Rockefeller Foundation strategy towards Mexico. Unlike Porfirio Díaz\'s regime, the post-revolutionary republic blended a pre-existing sense of ethnic heritage with the revolutionary values of political participation and autonomy. A militant intelligentsia keen on social medicine favoured a "vernacular mobilization" of Indian culture, associated with the spread of medical services in agricultural cooperatives (*ejidos)*. The Rockefeller Foundation officers never felt at ease with this bottom-up nationalism. Another nationalist vision, the top-down building of a nation-state, united the Mexican medical elite and the Rockefeller officers. Heirs of the Porfiriato *científicos*, although with a profoundly new face, and forerunners of the *técnicos* of the 1970s, though with a socialist-populist ideology, well-educated doctors (thanks to Rockefeller fellowships) peopled the higher ranks of central public health bureaucracy. This double-barrelled nationalism helped bring about a more moderate sense of national identity among doctors whose traditional anti-Americanism had been aroused by the demanding standards imposed by the Rockefeller officers in their newly established health units (training, full-time commitment). It also helped to defuse the resistance of the rural population. Although by no means hostile towards the health units, villagers sometimes reacted with violence at the implementation of sanitary measures (smallpox vaccination, quarantine, DDT spraying). Certainly, Mexican and American physicians clashed more than once: upon the interpretation of the determinants of hookworm disease, and about the operating principles of the sanitary campaigns and the rural health service. Nevertheless, bureaucratic interest and a thirst for international prestige tied the modern professionalized state to US philanthropy. A proper balance was successfully achieved between Rockefeller aid and the preservation of the country\'s sovereignty---what Birn aptly calls "Rockefeller with a Mexican face". In the end, did "Mexico shape the Rockefeller Foundation"? The Foundation\'s original style of governance remained untouched in many ways. In its usual manner, it played an "influential role" in Mexico, though "not a dominant one". New York chose to circumscribe its activities to a limited section of the country and to a limited range of health problems. This does not deviate in the least from the road taken by the Foundation in 1915: "to pick up small things and do small things". Birn would have it that "in Mexico, health revolutionaries and the \[Rockefeller Foundation\] took public health to be a technical force residing at the intersection of state building, economic growth, and material betterment" (p. 237). The question is, how can we reconcile this functionalist description (from politics to expertise) with the elitist nationalism that transformed technical issues into contentious high politics? In Mexico by and large, the Rockefeller Foundation\'s methods were remarkably similar in their patterns to those set in motion in the New South, or even in France for that matter. As the book itself demonstrates, the Foundation would first display ambitious campaigns (yellow fever, hookworm, tuberculosis), only subsequently to establish modern health units with exclusive and full-time personnel. And the whole effort would be embedded in a grand strategy of rural betterment, which the Foundation wished to spread throughout the world. This book will set the pace on the subject for many years to come. It is arranged with extraordinary care (not a single error could be found in the French references) and written in an inviting style, making it a real pleasure to read. Last, but not least, are the richness and high quality of the illustrations (apart from the map on p. 35, difficult to interpret).

Vach station Vach station is a railway station in the city of Fürth, located in Bavaria, Germany. References External links Category:Railway stations in Bavaria Category:Buildings and structures in Fürth

Major Breakthrough: First Photos of Planets Around Other Stars This 3D representation of the three planets orbiting the star HR 8799 shows the system is located 90 degrees away from the Milky Way galactic center, lower than the sun. (All orbital diameters are greatly exaggerated.)Credit: 2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/NASA/NSF Astronomers have taken what they say are the first-ever direct images of planets outside of our solar system, including a visible-light snapshot of a single-planet system and an infrared picture of a multiple-planet system. Earth-like worlds might also exist in the three-planet system, but if so they are too dim to photograph. The other newfound planet orbits a star called Fomalhaut, which is visible without the aid of a telescope. It is the 18th brightest star in the sky. The massive worlds, each much heftier than Jupiter (at least for the three-planet system), could change how astronomers define the term ?planet,? one planet-hunter said. Breakthrough technology Until now, scientists have inferred the presence of planets mainly by detecting an unseen world's gravitational tug on its host star or waiting for the planet to transit in front of its star and then detecting a dip in the star's light. While these methods have helped to identify more than 300 extrasolar planets to date, astronomers have struggled to actually directly image and see such inferred planets. The four photographed exoplanets are discussed in two research papers published online today by the journal Science. "Every extrasolar planet detected so far has been a wobble on a graph. These are the first pictures of an entire system," said Bruce Macintosh, an astrophysicist from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, and part of the team that photographed the multi-planet system in infrared light. "We've been trying to image planets for eight years with no luck and now we have pictures of three planets at once." Astronomers have claimed previously to have directly imaged a planet, with at least two such objects, though not everybody agreed the objects were planets. Instead, they may be dim, failed stars known as brown dwarfs. Multi-planet snapshots Macintosh, lead researcher Christian Marois of the NRC Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Canada, and colleagues used the Gemini North telescope and W.M. Keck Observatory on Hawaii's Mauna Kea to obtain infrared images. Infrared radiation represents heat and, along with everything from radio waves to visible light and X-rays, is part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The trio of worlds orbits a star named HR 8799, which is about 130 light-years away in the constellation Pegasus and about 1.5 times as massive as the sun. The planets are located at distances from their star of 24, 38 and 68 astronomical units (AU). (An astronomical unit equals the average Earth-sun distance of 93 million miles, or about 150 million km.) Other planet-finding techniques work out to only about 5 AU from a star. The planet closest to the star weighs in at 10 times the mass of Jupiter, followed by another 10 Jupiter-mass planet and then, farther out, a world seven times the heft of Jupiter. By astronomical standards, the planets are fresh out of the oven, forming about 60 million years ago. That means the orbs are still glowing from heat leftover from their formation. Earth, by comparison, is about 4.5 billion years old. The most distant planet orbits just inside a disk of dusty debris, similar to that produced by the icy objects of the solar system's Kuiper belt, which lies just beyond the orbit of Neptune. The setup of this planetary system, along with its dusty belt, suggests it is a scaled-up version of our solar system, Macintosh said. That means other planets closer in to the host star could be waiting for discovery. "I think there's a very high probability that there are more planets in the system that we can't detect yet," Macintosh said. "One of the things that distinguishes this system from most of the extrasolar planets that are already known is that HR 8799 has its giant planets in the outer parts ? like our solar system does ? and so has 'room' for smaller terrestrial planets, far beyond our current ability to see, in the inner parts." Hubble's discovery University of California, Berkeley, astronomer Paul Kalas led the team of astronomers who took the visible-light snapshot of the single-planet system. The exoplanet has been named Fomalhaut b, and is estimated to weigh no more than three Jupiter masses. The Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys was used to make the image. The camera is equipped with a coronagraph that blocks out the light of the host star, allowing astronomers to view a much fainter planet. "It's kind of like if driving into the sun and suddenly you flip down your visor, you can see the road easier," Kalas said during a telephone interview. In fact, Fomalhaut b is 1 billion times fainter than its star. "It's not easy to see. That kind of sensitivity has never been seen before," he added. Fomalhaut b is about 25 light-years from Earth. Photos taken in 2004 and 2006 show the planet's movement over a 21-month period and suggest the planet likely orbits its star Fomalhaut every 872 years at a distance of 119 astronomical units (AU), or 11 billion miles (nearly 18 billion km). That's about four times the distance between Neptune and the sun. Kalas suspected the planet's existence in 2004 (published in 2005) after Hubble images he had taken revealed a dusty belt that had a sharp inner edge around Fomalhaut. The sculpted nature of the ring suggested a planet in an elliptical orbit was shaping the belt's inner edge. And it was. "The gravity of Fomalhaut b is the key reason that the vast dust belt surrounding Fomalhaut is cleanly sculpted into a ring and offset from the star," Kalas said. "We predicted this in 2005, and now we have the direct proof." Kalas' team also suspects that the planet could be surrounded by a ring system with the dimensions of Jupiter's early rings, before the dust and debris coalesced into the four Galilean moons. What's a planet? The successful image results could change how planets are defined, said Sara Seager, an astrophysicist at MIT who was not involved in the discoveries. Until now, mass has been one of the critical pieces of information that could place an object into or out of the planet club. Objects that are too massive, above about 13 Jupiter masses, are considered brown dwarfs. But now formation could also be part of the formula. Both of the new planetary systems revealed dusty disks and suggest the planets must have formed similar to how planets in our solar system and elsewhere are thought to have formed. So, most astronomers would call the four objects planets, although their masses are only inferred from the luminosities seen in the images. "Taken together, these discoveries are going to change what we call a planet," Seager told SPACE.com. "Until now people have been arguing about how big can an object be and still be a planet." Seager added, referring to the multi-planet system, "People want to call the upper mass 12 Jupiter masses. I think it's going to force us to reconsider what a planet is, because even if they are more massive than what we want to call a planet, they're in a disk." In addition, she said, nobody has ever spotted three stars orbiting a host star, as would have to be the case if you were to call the three planets something other than planets. Aiming for Earth-like planets These recent direct images reveal giant, gaseous exoplanets in a new light for the first time, revealing not the effects of the planets but the planets themselves. The next goal would be direct images of an Earth-like planet, the astronomers say. "The discovery of the HR 8799 system is a crucial step on the road to the ultimate detection of another Earth," Macintosh said. The problem is that terrestrial (Earth-like) planets are orders of magnitude fainter than the giant Jupiter-like worlds, and they are much closer in to their host stars. That means the glare from the star would be overwhelming with today's technology. The pay-off could be big, though, as such rocky planets could orbit within their habitable zones (where temperatures would allow the existence of liquid water). "There is plenty of empty space between Fomalhaut b and the star for other planets to happily reside in stable orbits," Kalas said. "We'll probably have to wait for the James Webb Space Telescope to give us a clear view of the region closer to the star where a planet could host liquid water on the surface."

Q: Give some command to View in MVVM Let's imagine I have some user control. The user control has some child windows. And user control user wants to close child windows of some type. There is a method in user control code behind: public void CloseChildWindows(ChildWindowType type) { ... } But I can't call this method as I don't have direct access to the view. Another solution I think about is to somehow expose user control ViewModel as one of its properties (so I can bind it and give command directly to ViewModel). But I don't want user control users to know anything about user control ViewModel. So what is the right way to solve this problem? A: I feel I just found a rather nice MVVM solution to this problem. I wrote a behavior that is exposing a type property WindowType and a boolean property Open. DataBinding the latter allows the ViewModel to open and close the windows easily, without knowing anything about the View. Gotta love behaviors... :) Xaml: <UserControl x:Class="WpfApplication1.OpenCloseWindowDemo" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:local="clr-namespace:WpfApplication1" xmlns:i="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/2010/interactivity" mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="300"> <UserControl.DataContext> <local:ViewModel /> </UserControl.DataContext> <i:Interaction.Behaviors> <!-- TwoWay binding is necessary, otherwise after user closed a window directly, it cannot be opened again --> <local:OpenCloseWindowBehavior WindowType="local:BlackWindow" Open="{Binding BlackOpen, Mode=TwoWay}" /> <local:OpenCloseWindowBehavior WindowType="local:YellowWindow" Open="{Binding YellowOpen, Mode=TwoWay}" /> <local:OpenCloseWindowBehavior WindowType="local:PurpleWindow" Open="{Binding PurpleOpen, Mode=TwoWay}" /> </i:Interaction.Behaviors> <UserControl.Resources> <Thickness x:Key="StdMargin">5</Thickness> <Style TargetType="Button" > <Setter Property="MinWidth" Value="60" /> <Setter Property="Margin" Value="{StaticResource StdMargin}" /> </Style> <Style TargetType="Border" > <Setter Property="Margin" Value="{StaticResource StdMargin}" /> </Style> </UserControl.Resources> <Grid> <StackPanel> <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal"> <Border Background="Black" Width="30" /> <Button Content="Open" Command="{Binding OpenBlackCommand}" CommandParameter="True" /> <Button Content="Close" Command="{Binding OpenBlackCommand}" CommandParameter="False" /> </StackPanel> <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal"> <Border Background="Yellow" Width="30" /> <Button Content="Open" Command="{Binding OpenYellowCommand}" CommandParameter="True" /> <Button Content="Close" Command="{Binding OpenYellowCommand}" CommandParameter="False" /> </StackPanel> <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal"> <Border Background="Purple" Width="30" /> <Button Content="Open" Command="{Binding OpenPurpleCommand}" CommandParameter="True" /> <Button Content="Close" Command="{Binding OpenPurpleCommand}" CommandParameter="False" /> </StackPanel> </StackPanel> </Grid> </UserControl> YellowWindow (Black/Purple alike): <Window x:Class="WpfApplication1.YellowWindow" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" Title="YellowWindow" Height="300" Width="300"> <Grid Background="Yellow" /> </Window> ViewModel, ActionCommand: using System; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Windows.Input; namespace WpfApplication1 { public class ViewModel : INotifyPropertyChanged { public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged; private void OnPropertyChanged(string propertyName) { if (this.PropertyChanged != null) PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(propertyName)); } private bool _blackOpen; public bool BlackOpen { get { return _blackOpen; } set { _blackOpen = value; OnPropertyChanged("BlackOpen"); } } private bool _yellowOpen; public bool YellowOpen { get { return _yellowOpen; } set { _yellowOpen = value; OnPropertyChanged("YellowOpen"); } } private bool _purpleOpen; public bool PurpleOpen { get { return _purpleOpen; } set { _purpleOpen = value; OnPropertyChanged("PurpleOpen"); } } public ICommand OpenBlackCommand { get; private set; } public ICommand OpenYellowCommand { get; private set; } public ICommand OpenPurpleCommand { get; private set; } public ViewModel() { this.OpenBlackCommand = new ActionCommand<bool>(OpenBlack); this.OpenYellowCommand = new ActionCommand<bool>(OpenYellow); this.OpenPurpleCommand = new ActionCommand<bool>(OpenPurple); } private void OpenBlack(bool open) { this.BlackOpen = open; } private void OpenYellow(bool open) { this.YellowOpen = open; } private void OpenPurple(bool open) { this.PurpleOpen = open; } } public class ActionCommand<T> : ICommand { public event EventHandler CanExecuteChanged; private Action<T> _action; public ActionCommand(Action<T> action) { _action = action; } public bool CanExecute(object parameter) { return true; } public void Execute(object parameter) { if (_action != null) { var castParameter = (T)Convert.ChangeType(parameter, typeof(T)); _action(castParameter); } } } } OpenCloseWindowBehavior: using System; using System.Windows; using System.Windows.Controls; using System.Windows.Interactivity; namespace WpfApplication1 { public class OpenCloseWindowBehavior : Behavior<UserControl> { private Window _windowInstance; public Type WindowType { get { return (Type)GetValue(WindowTypeProperty); } set { SetValue(WindowTypeProperty, value); } } public static readonly DependencyProperty WindowTypeProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("WindowType", typeof(Type), typeof(OpenCloseWindowBehavior), new PropertyMetadata(null)); public bool Open { get { return (bool)GetValue(OpenProperty); } set { SetValue(OpenProperty, value); } } public static readonly DependencyProperty OpenProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("Open", typeof(bool), typeof(OpenCloseWindowBehavior), new PropertyMetadata(false, OnOpenChanged)); /// <summary> /// Opens or closes a window of type 'WindowType'. /// </summary> private static void OnOpenChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e) { var me = (OpenCloseWindowBehavior)d; if ((bool)e.NewValue) { object instance = Activator.CreateInstance(me.WindowType); if (instance is Window) { Window window = (Window)instance; window.Closing += (s, ev) => { if (me.Open) // window closed directly by user { me._windowInstance = null; // prevents repeated Close call me.Open = false; // set to false, so next time Open is set to true, OnOpenChanged is triggered again } }; window.Show(); me._windowInstance = window; } else { // could check this already in PropertyChangedCallback of WindowType - but doesn't matter until someone actually tries to open it. throw new ArgumentException(string.Format("Type '{0}' does not derive from System.Windows.Window.", me.WindowType)); } } else { if (me._windowInstance != null) me._windowInstance.Close(); // closed by viewmodel } } } } A: I have handled this sort of situation in the past by bringing in the concept of a WindowManager, which is a horrible name for it, so let's pair it with a WindowViewModel, which is only slightly less horrible - but the basic idea is: public class WindowManager { public WindowManager() { VisibleWindows = new ObservableCollection<WindowViewModel>(); VisibleWindows.CollectionChanged += OnVisibleWindowsChanged; } public ObservableCollection<WindowViewModel> VisibleWindows {get; private set;} private void OnVisibleWindowsChanged(object sender, NotifyCollectionChangedEventArgs args) { // process changes, close any removed windows, open any added windows, etc. } } public class WindowViewModel : INotifyPropertyChanged { private bool _isOpen; private WindowManager _manager; public WindowViewModel(WindowManager manager) { _manager = manager; } public bool IsOpen { get { return _isOpen; } set { if(_isOpen && !value) { _manager.VisibleWindows.Remove(this); } if(value && !_isOpen) { _manager.VisibleWindows.Add(this); } _isOpen = value; OnPropertyChanged("IsOpen"); } } public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged = delegate {}; private void OnPropertyChanged(string name) { PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(name)); } } note: I'm just throwing this together very haphazardly; you'd of course want to tune this idea to your specific needs. But anywho, the basic premise is your commands can work on the WindowViewModel objects, toggle the IsOpen flag appropriately, and the manager class handles opening/closing any new windows. There are dozens of possible ways to do this, but it's worked in a pinch for me in the past (when actually implemented and not tossed together on my phone, that is) A: A reasonable way for purists is creating a service that handles your navigation. Short summary: create a NavigationService, register your view at the NavigationService and use the NavigationService from within the view model to navigate. Example: class NavigationService { private Window _a; public void RegisterViewA(Window a) { _a = a; } public void CloseWindowA() { a.Close(); } } To get a reference to NavigationService you could make an abstraction on top of it (i.e. INavigationService) and register/get it via a IoC. More properly you could even make two abstractions, one that contains the methods for registration (used by the view) and one that contains the actuators (used by the view model). For a more detailed example you could check out the implementation of Gill Cleeren which heavily depends on IoC: http://www.silverlightshow.net/video/Applied-MVVM-in-Win8-Webinar.aspx starting at 00:36:30

Trump is attractive precisely because the Establishment fears and loathes him because 1) they didn't pick him and 2) he might upset the neoconservative Empire that the Establishment elites view as their global entitlement. The Establishment is freaking out about Donald Trump for one reason: they didn't pick him. The Establishment is freaking out because the natural order of things is that we pick the presidential candidates and we run the country to serve ourselves, i.e. the financial-political elites. Donald Trump's candidacy upsets this neofeudal natural order, and thus he (and everyone who supports him) is anathema to the Establishment, heretics who must be silenced, cowed, marginalized, mocked and ultimately put back in their place as subservient debt-serfs. With Trump ascendant, the serfs are selecting the noble in the castle on the hill. Outrageous! Unheard of! You know the Establishment is freaking out when Establishment pundit mouthpieces like David Brooks and Francis Fukuyama are freaking out about Trump. David Brooks could not restrain his disdain for Trump on a recent Charlie Rose segment, in which he intoned (and I paraphrase) that Trump can't put eight words together without referring to himself, i.e. he is not just a narcissist, but he is (take this, Trump!) a fragile narcissist-- unlike people like Brooks, of course, who are solid, secure, wise, well-educated, erudite water-carriers for the status quo. Policy heavy-hitter Fukuyama confesses the political system in the U.S. is broken but he can't understand why the citizenry has selected the "singularly inappropriate instrument" (his description of Trump in the pages of Foreign Affairs) of Donald Trump to express their disdain for their neofeudal lords. Well, Mr, Fukuyama, let me explain it to you: the debt-serfs have selected Trump precisely because the neofeudal financial-political nobility you represent consider him a "singularly inappropriate instrument". But, the pundits rage, he's a narcissist. He's fragile. (Now isn't that a classic middle-brow slam from the hopelessly middle-brow ("I only sound middle-brow due to my starring role in the mainstream media; actually I'm brilliant beyond words") Brooks. Policy guru Fukuyama has a much better turn of phrase, of course: "narcissist" is way too common and middle-brow a critique at his level. Thus we get "singularly inappropriate instrument" (ooh, now there's a sharpened blade that slips easily between the ribs). Dear Establishment pundits, flacks, hacks, sycophants, apparatchiks, toadies, lackeys, functionaries, leeches and apologists: the more you label Trump as "singularly inappropriate," the more attractive he becomes to the 81% who've been left behind by the financialized-globalized-neofeudal order that has so greatly enhanced your own wealth, influence and power. Trump is attractive because the Establishment fears and loathes him. Why? 1) They didn't pick him and 2) he might upset the neoconservative liberal hegemony Empire that the Establishment elites view as their global entitlement. The elitists like Brooks and Fukuyama admit that politics have failed. But they believe the solution is more people like us in power. You know, reasonable, well-educated elitists who won't stoop to get our hands dirty with laundered millions (for example, the Clinton Foundation). The utter cluelessness of the professional apologists and punditry would be laughable if it wasn't so pathetic: the more you fume and rage that Trump is unqualified, narcissistic, singularly inappropriate, etc. etc. etc., the more appealing he becomes to everyone who isn't inside the protective walls of your neofeudal castle. The people outside the cozy walls of the protected elites don't care if he is unqualified (by the standards of those who get to pick our presidents for us) narcissistic, singularly inappropriate, and so on--they are cheering him on because you, the multitudes of water-carriers for the Imperial elites, the teeming hordes of well-paid, I-got-mine-so-shut-the-heck-up pundits, flacks, hacks, sycophants, apparatchiks, toadies, lackeys, functionaries, leeches and apologists, are so visibly afraid that your perks, wealth, influence and power might drain away if the 80% actually get a say. Dear pundits, flacks, hacks, sycophants, apparatchiks, toadies, lackeys, functionaries, leeches and apologists: we're sick of you, every one of you, and the neofeudal Empire you support. We want you cashiered, pushed outside the walls with the rest of us, scraping by on well-earned and richly deserved unemployment. My new book is #5 on Kindle short reads -> politics and social science: Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform ($3.95 Kindle ebook, $8.95 print edition)For more, please visit the book's website. We want you cashiered, pushed outside the walls with the rest of us, scraping by on well-earned and richly deserved unemployment. NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Background {#Sec1} ========== Anatomic and histological observation has shown that the cerebral venous wall is thin and the course is flat \[[@CR1]\]. During the operation process of a given neurosurgical approach, issues such as the separation of blood vessels, cerebral traction, and expansion of the operation space may necessitate electrocoagulation and ligation of the cerebral veins, resulting in intraoperative bleeding and differing degrees of postoperative complications \[[@CR2]--[@CR8]\]. It has been proven that after damage to the bridging veins, which are the final segment of cerebral veins bridging between brain and dural sinus, venous occlusion and regional blood flow decreased, leading to cerebral edema, cerebral hemorrhage, cerebral venous infarction, and other postoperative complications \[[@CR9]--[@CR11]\]. In addition, cerebral traction and injury to the bridging veins will further aggravate the injury to the vascular endothelial cells and affect postoperative rehabilitation \[[@CR11]\]. The vein of Labbé is a type of bridging vein that is first discovered and should be protected during the operation. It was originally defined as one of a group of anastomosis veins that connect the superficial middle cerebral vein around the lateral sulcus and the lateral sinus. It was also called the inferior anastomotic vein \[[@CR12]\] which drained the blood from lateral temporal lobe and the gyrus around lateral sulcus. In the clinical supratentorial surgical approaches, the separation of blood vessels, cerebral traction, expansion of the operation space and other risks, may injure the vein of Labbé and result in aphasia, logagraphia, encephaledema, and other complications. Neurosurgeons should protect the vein of Labbé as much as possible \[[@CR13], [@CR14]\]. The drainage portion of the vein of Labbé varies \[[@CR15]--[@CR17]\], so it is difficult to predict whether the operation is likely to damage this vein. Preoperative imaging can evaluate the number, diameter, distribution, and drainage of the cerebral veins \[[@CR18]\], which play an important role in the design of the operative approach. However, there have been few reports on imaging studies of the vein of Labbé. Therefore, the aim of this study was to correlate the microanatomy of the vein of Labbé with venograms as obtained by digital subtraction angiography (DSA) and computed tomographic venography (CTV), in order to provide a basis for the preservation of the vein of Labbé during supratentorial surgical approaches. Methods {#Sec2} ======= Microanatomy {#Sec3} ------------ Thirty cadavers fixed with formalin were provided by the Department of Anatomy of Anhui Medical College. There were 23 male cadavers and 7 female. The age range was 40 ± 11 years old (16--59 years). After removing the cranium, cavity congestion in the superior sagittal sinus and internal jugular veins was flushed by intubation, and blue latex was perfused through these vessels. The dura mater near the temporal occipital lobe was carefully separated from the skull after 48 h, in order to protect the veins below them. The skull above the transverse sinus was removed along both sides of the mastoid. The dura mater was cut 25 mm above the transverse sinus. According to the Rhoton standard \[[@CR19]\], the maximal anastomotic branch between the superficial middle cerebral vein and the transverse sinus is defined as the vein of Labbé. The pattern by which the vein of Labbé entered dural sinus were observed, the location of the dural entrance was noted, and the diameter was measured at the site 5 mm before the dural entrance. When the vein of Labbé indirectly entered transverse sinus through the veins in dura mater, the length of this veins was measured (Fig. [1](#Fig1){ref-type="fig"}). If the dural entrance was in the dural sinus, the shortest distance from the dural entrance to the confluence of sigmoid sinus, transverse sinus, and superior petrosal sinus (STP junction) was measured. If the dural entrance was not in the dural sinus, the shortest distance from the vertical projection of the dural entrance on the transverse sinus to the STP junction was measured (Fig. [1](#Fig1){ref-type="fig"}).Fig. 1Sketch map of dural entrance of veins of Labbé. The part behind the transverse sinus shows the dura mater above the transverse sinus. The dural entrances (*filled circle*) were in the surface of transverse sinus (TSG, transverse sinus group), superior petrosal sinus (PRG, petrosal group), tentorium cerebelli (TNG, tentorial group) or dura mater above the transverse sinus (UTG, upper-transverse sinus group). *CS* confluence of sinuses, *D* distance from dural entrance to STP, *L* length of meningeal vein, *MV* meningeal vein, *SPS* superior petrosal sinus, *SS* straight sinus, *STP* confluence of sigmoid sinus, transverse sinus and superior petrosal sinus, *T* tentorium cerebelli, *TS* transverse sinus Digital subtraction angiography {#Sec4} ------------------------------- DSA views of veins from 60 sides with no cerebral venous diseases were selected from 36 patients. There were 22 male patients and 14 female. The age range was 45 ± 16 years old (11--76 years). The indications for examination were aneurysm (8 patients), lacunar cerebral infarction (21 patients), and only suspicion of an intracranial lesion (7 patients). In 12 patients, only unilateral vein was obtained. In other 24 patients, bilateral veins were obtained. A 500 MA digital subtraction X machine and a Siemens Axiom Artis DSA machine were used. In addition, selective cerebral angiography was performed by puncturing the femoral arteries using the Seldinger technique. The contrast medium was Omnipaque from GE Healthcare AS, and the imaging rate was three frames per second. Views were taken of the bilateral internal carotid artery and from the venous phase of a series of anteroposterior and lateral radiography. The flow rates of the internal carotid artery and vertebral artery angiography were 3--5 and 2--4 ml/s, respectively. The total amounts of the contrast medium were 7--l0 and 5--7 ml, respectively. Computed tomographic venography {#Sec5} ------------------------------- CTV images of 25 cases (50 sides) with no cerebral venous diseases were observed. There were 14 male patients and 11 female. The age range was 45 ± 17 years old (14--74 years). The indications for examination were aneurysm (5 patients), lacunar cerebral infarction (12 patients), and only suspicion of an intracranial lesion (4 patients). Spiral CT scanning was performed with 64-slice GE-light speed CTV. The scanning parameters were as follows: screw pitch was 0.531, layer thickness was 2.5 mm, tube voltage was 120 kv, tube current was 335 mA, intravenously injected Omnipaque was 100 ml (350 mg I/ml), flow velocity was 4 ml/s, and the delay time was 50 s. The scanning range was from the inferior border of the mandible to the calvarium. After the scanning was completed and the images were reconstructed into 0.625 mm, the data were transferred to an AW 4.2 workstation, and 3D images of the cerebral veins were reconstructed with volume rendering. Statistical treatments {#Sec6} ---------------------- The statistical analysis was performed with SPSS 19.0 statistical software. The numerical values of both the left and right sides were obtained with a t test. The observed microanatomy and the results of DSA and CTV were analyzed with a one-way analysis of variance or Chi square test. The statistical results were shown in $\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\bar{x}_{{{ \pm\text{s}}} \left( {\text{min} -\text{max} }\right)}$$\end{document}$. Results {#Sec7} ======= The groupings, numbers, and diameters of the veins of Labbé {#Sec8} ----------------------------------------------------------- The patients were divided into four subgroups based on the pattern and the location of the entrance of a vein into dura mater (Fig. [2](#Fig2){ref-type="fig"}). The direct entry group comprised patients for whom the veins of Labbé directly entered transverse sinus (transverse sinus group, Fig. [3](#Fig3){ref-type="fig"}) or superior petrosal sinus (petrosal group, Fig. [4](#Fig4){ref-type="fig"}). The entrance was located in the dura mater where the transverse sinus or superior petrosal sinus formed. For the indirect entry group, the veins of Labbé indirectly entered transverse sinus or superior petrosal sinus. The entrance was located in the tentorium cerebelli (tentorial group, Fig. [5](#Fig5){ref-type="fig"}) or the dura mater above the transverse sinus (upper-transverse sinus group, Fig. [6](#Fig6){ref-type="fig"}).Fig. 2Scatter plots of the distribution of veins of Labbé. The part behind the transverse sinus shows the dura mater above the transverse sinus. *Filled circle* Cadaver, *filled square* DSA, *filled triangle* CTV, *CS* confluence of sinuses, *SPS* superior petrosal sinus, *SS* straight sinus, *STP* confluence of sigmoid sinus, transverse sinus and superior petrosal sinus, *T* tentorium cerebelli, *TS* transverse sinus Fig. 3Vein of Labbé in transverse sinus group. The vein of Labbé (*arrow*) directly entered transverse sinus in Cadaver (**A**), DSA (**B**), and CTV (**C**). *SS* sigmoid sinus, *SSS* superior sagittal sinus, *T* tentorium cerebelli, *TS* transverse sinus Fig. 4Vein of Labbé in petrosal group. The veins of Labbé (*arrow*) directly entered the superior petrosal sinus in Cadaver (**A**), DSA (**B**), and CTV (**C**). *SPS* superior petrosal sinus, *STP* confluence of sigmoid sinus, transverse sinus and superior petrosal sinus, *SS* sigmoid sinus, *SSS* superior sagittal sinus, *T* tentorium cerebelli, *TS* transverse sinus Fig. 5Vein of Labbé in tentorial group. The veins of Labbé (*arrow*) indirectly entered transverse sinus through the meningeal veins on the tentorium cerebelli in Cadaver (**A**), DSA (**B**), and CTV (**C**). *MV* meningeal vein, *SS* sigmoid sinus, *SSS* superior sagittal sinus, *T* tentorium cerebelli, *TS* transverse sinus Fig. 6Vein of Labbé in upper-transverse sinus group. The veins of Labbé (*arrow*) indirectly entered transverse sinus through the meningeal veins on the dural mater above transverse sinus in Cadaver (**A**), DSA (**B**), and CTV (**C**). *MV* meningeal vein, *SS* sigmoid sinus, *SSS* superior sagittal sinus, *T* tentorium cerebelli, *TS* transverse sinus In DSA and CTV images, the superficial middle cerebral veins intersected with the transverse sinus through the veins of Labbé (Figs. [3](#Fig3){ref-type="fig"}, [4](#Fig4){ref-type="fig"}, [5](#Fig5){ref-type="fig"}, [6](#Fig6){ref-type="fig"}), except for no vein of Labbé was present in one case. In this patient, the left inferior cerebral vein entering transverse sinus was very small and there was no anastomotic branch between transverse sinus and superficial middle cerebral veins. There was no significant difference in the number and diameter of the veins of Labbé as measured by CTV and DSA (Fig. [2](#Fig2){ref-type="fig"}; Table [1](#Tab1){ref-type="table"}), when compared with that of the cadavers.Table 1Number and diameter of the veins of LabbéGroupsCadavers (n = 60)DSA (n = 60)CTV (n = 50)Direct2.7 ± 0.7 (1.5--4.4) \[48\]2.9 ± 0.5 (1.7--4.2) \[50\]2.8 ± 0.4 (1.9--4.2) \[41\]TSG2.7 ± 0.7 (1.5--4.4) \[46\]2.9 ± 0.5 (1.7--4.2) \[45\]2.8 ± 0.5 (1.9--4.4) \[39\]PRG2.7 ± 0.4 (2.5--3.0) \[2\]2.8 ± 0.5 (2.4--3.7) \[5\]3.1 ± 0.0 (3.1--3.1) \[2\]Indirect3.3 ± 0.8 (2.2--4.6) \[12\]2.7 ± 0.5 (2.0--3.5) \[10\]2.6 ± 0.4 (2.0--3.1) \[8\]TNG3.0 ± 0.8 (2.2--3.8) \[3\]2.7 ± 0.3 (2.3--3.1) \[6\]2.4 ± 0.6 (2.0--2.8) \[2\]UTG3.4 ± 0.8 (2.4--4.6) \[9\]2.6 ± 0.8 (2.0--3.5) \[4\]2.7 ± 0.3 (2.2--3.1) \[6\]Total2.8 ± 0.7 (1.5--4.6) \[60\]2.8 ± 0.5 (1.7--4.2) \[60\]2.8 ± 0.4 (1.9--4.4) \[49\]In the bracket was the number of veins of Labbé in each group. No difference in comparison with the number of cadavers, DSA and CTV (Chi square test, *p* \> 0.05). No difference in comparison with the diameter of cadavers, DSA and CTV of (ANOVA, *p* \> 0.05); No difference was found between two sides (*t* test, *p* \> 0.05)*TSG* transverse sinus group, *PRG* petrosal group, *TNG* tentorial group, *UTG* upper-transverse sinus group Morphology of meningeal veins {#Sec9} ----------------------------- In microscopic anatomy, 20% of the veins of Labbé indirectly entered transverse veins through the meningeal veins. The dural veins went between the dural layers, with a flat shape, and their diameter was larger than that of the veins of Labbé. The average length was 10.0 ± 7.2 mm, with a range up to 23.6 mm (Table [2](#Tab2){ref-type="table"}). This was called the tentorial sinus when it was located in the tentorium, while it was called the upper-transverse sinus when it was located in the dura mater above the transverse sinus.Table 2Length of the meningeal veinsMeningeal veinsCadavers (n = 60)DSA (n = 60)CTV (n = 50)Tentorium sinus7.5 ± 3.2 (5.2--11.1)6.1 ± 2.4 (3.8--10.2)5.6 ± 2.0 (4.2--7.0)Upper-transverse sinus10.9 ± 8.1 (1.7--23.6)10.3 ± 6.1 (5.4--19.3)10.4 ± 6.5 (4.4--21.8)Total10.0 ± 7.2 (1.7--23.6)7.8 ± 4.5 (3.8--19.3)9.2 ± 5.9 (4.2--21.8)No difference in comparison with the cadavers, DSA and CTV (ANOVA, *p* \> 0.05); No difference was found between two sides (*t* test, *p* \> 0.05) In the DSA and CTV images, there was a flat part with a large diameter before the entrance where the veins of Labbé entered the transverse sinus in 17 and 16% of patients, respectively. The tentorium sinus was located in front of the transverse sinus, and entered the transverse sinus backward (Fig. [5](#Fig5){ref-type="fig"}). The upper-transverse sinus was located above the transverse sinus, and entered transverse sinus downward (Fig. [6](#Fig6){ref-type="fig"}). There was no statistical difference when comparing the length of meningeal veins obtained by DSA and CTV with observations from cadavers (Table [2](#Tab2){ref-type="table"}). Distance between the veins of Labbé and the STP junction {#Sec10} -------------------------------------------------------- The dural entrance of veins of Labbé were distributed near the STP junction, and there were no entrance around the confluence of sinuses (Fig. [2](#Fig2){ref-type="fig"}). The average distance between the veins of Labbé and the STP junction was 16.8 mm, and the distance exceeded 35 mm in 6% of cases. There was no statistical difference when comparing the combined results obtained by DSA and CTV with measurements from cadavers (Table [3](#Tab3){ref-type="table"}).Table 3Distance between the veins of Labbé and STP junctionGroupsCadavers (n = 60)DSA (n = 60)CTV (n = 50)Direct18.7 ± 10.0 (0--40.1)19.2 ± 11.0 (1.4--42.6)15.4 ± 8.4 (0--3.4)TSG19.4 ± 9.6 (1.8--40.1)19.9 ± 11.3 (1.4--42.6)16.2 ± 7.8 (3.6--34.0)PRG2.0 ± 2.8 (0--4.0)12.5 ± 5.6 (6.4--18.8)\*0^a^Indirect9.4 ± 7.6 (0.7--25.5)22.8 ± 13.8 (1.4--46.9)\*18.7 ± 11.2 (1.4--33.1)TNG9.9 ± 0.6 (9.2--10.4)14.0 ± 8.1 (1.4--26.3)23.9 ± 6.1 (19.6--28.2)UTG9.2 ± 8.9 (0.7--25.5)36.0 ± 9.0 (26.7--46.9)\*17.0 ± 12.4 (1.4--33.1)Total16.8 ± 10.2 (0--40.1)19.7 ± 11.4 (1.4--46.9)16.0 ± 8.8 (0--34.0)\* Compared with cadavers, *p* \< 0.05; No difference was found between two sides (*t* test, *p* \> 0.05)^a^Two veins drained into the STP junction (confluence of sigmoid sinus, transverse sinus and superior petrosal sinus) However, in some special groups, there was a significant difference between the distance obtained by DSA and that of cadavers. When the veins of Labbé indirectly entered, the average distance observed in cadavers was 9.4 mm, and the DSA result was 22.8 mm. In the veins of Labbé of the petrosal group, the average distance in cadavers was 2.0 mm, and the DSA result was 12.5 mm. In the veins of Labbé in the upper-transverse sinus group, the average distance in cadavers was 9.2 mm, and the DSA result was 36.0 mm. Both of these difference were statistically significant (Table [3](#Tab3){ref-type="table"}). Discussion {#Sec11} ========== Design of supratentorial surgical approaches {#Sec12} -------------------------------------------- With the rapid development of medical imaging, clinicians have gradually directed their attention to the cerebral veins. In previous surgeries, methods that sacrificed the cerebral veins were used to gain ideal surgical fields. This caused venous infarction, brain edema, cerebral hemorrhage, and other complications. Recovery after surgery was seriously affected, and death even resulted due to these complications \[[@CR6], [@CR13], [@CR14]\]. Therefore, neurosurgeons have begun to protect the cerebral veins during operations. The commonly used methods are as follows \[[@CR20]\]. Free bridging veins: during the operation, the veins bridging the arachnoid mater and the dura mater are dissociated in order to increase the activity degree and enlarge the surgical field to a certain extent, in the case of no damage to the bridging veins. Avoid large bridging veins: the larger-diameter veins have a wider drainage area, leading to serious complications after injury, so the larger-diameter veins are avoided in the surgical approach. The vein of Labbé is the main drainage vein of the temporal lobe, and the diameter is relatively large. Complications such as aphasia, agraphia, and brain edema appear after an injury to this vein \[[@CR13], [@CR14]\]. Most neurosurgeons believe that to avoid complications and promote postoperative recovery, the vein of Labbé should be protected as much as possible \[[@CR21]\]. Drainage of the vein of Labbé varies, and it is difficult to predict whether the operation is likely to damage the vein. Preoperative imaging can evaluate the number, diameter, distribution, and drainage of the cerebral veins \[[@CR22]\]. These are the key factors that affect the design of operative approaches. This paper found that most of the veins were distributed near the STP junction, and the average distance from the vein to STP junction was less than 20 mm. There was no vein of Labbé around the confluence of sinuses. Therefore, in an operation on the cerebellum, the median approach has the lowest chance of injuring the vein of Labbé. During the operation, after cutting the dura mater covering the occipital lobe, the vein of Labbé is dissociated, to raise the occipital lobe to a certain extent. This also permits the operative field to be expanded without injuring the vein. However, the median approach should not be used in two specific situations. First, the median approach should be avoided if the dural entrance of the vein of Labbé is far from the STP junction and close to the confluence of sinuses. This situation can be identified when the distance between the vein of Labbé and the STP junction is more than 35 mm. This case is relatively rare, and it accounts for only 6% of cases. Nevertheless, the vein of Labbé will be easily injured in these cases, because it is too close to the median operative approach. Secondly, the median approach is contraindicated if the vein of Labbé indirectly entered the transverse sinus through the meningeal veins and has a greater length. The dural veins go between the dural layers, so it is difficult to separate these from the dura mater. The average length of the dural veins is 10 mm, while the longest is 23.6 mm. The appearance of meningeal veins reduces the length of the free segments of the vein of Labbé, and limits the raise of occipital lobe, then the operative field is greatly reduced. When either of these two issues is observed in radiographic images, a change in approach is recommended, such as by relying on the inferior cerebellar approach or the posterior approach through the corpus callosum. Clinical significance of DSA and CTV for the veins of Labbé {#Sec13} ----------------------------------------------------------- Reports differ on the sensitivity of imaging for the varying positions of cerebral veins in imaging observation. Using the microsurgical anatomy as a standard, the sensitivity of the DSA for observation of the Galen venous system is only about 40% \[[@CR22]\]. However, the sensitivity of DSA for the bridging veins draining into the superior sagittal sinuses reaches 80% \[[@CR23]\], which may be related to the diameters or the different positions of cerebral veins. In this study, the superficial middle cerebral veins intersecting with the transverse sinus through the veins of Labbé were observed in DSA and CTV images, except in one case where the left inferior cerebral vein entering transverse sinus was very small and there was no vein of Labbé present. The sensitivity observed in this study was nearly 100%. DSA could distinguish those blood vessels with diameters of more than 0.2 mm. The 64-slice spiral CT could distinguish blood vessels with diameters between 0.3 and 0.5 mm \[[@CR24]\]. The average diameter of the veins of Labbé was 2.8 mm, which is greater than the spatial resolution of DSA and CTV. As a result, these veins can be clearly observed in DSA and CTV images. There was no significant difference in the diameter of the veins of Labbé as measured by CTV and DSA, when compared to direct observation in cadavers. This further demonstrates that the most important factor that affects the observation of vascular images is the diameter \[[@CR25]\]. This study found that it is difficult to distinguish the four groups in the DSA and CTV images. In these images, there was a flat part with a large diameter before entering transverse sinus, called the meningeal veins. As the dura mater cannot be displayed in these forms of imaging, the tentorium sinus and the upper-transverse sinus are distinguished through the location of meningeal veins and the entry direction to the transverse sinus. In CTV, the location of the meningeal veins is identified accurately through rotation of 3D images, and the tentorium sinus and upper-transverse sinus are next distinguished. However, when the diameter of the meningeal veins is small, it is difficult to distinguish the meningeal veins due to the interference of high-density bone. The spatial resolution of DSA is higher than that of CTV, and there is no interference of bone. The sensitivity for meningeal veins is higher, but there are two problems. First, the tentorium is high in some cases, and the dural veins in the images travel downward. It is easy to mistake the tentorium sinus for the dural sinus. Secondly, when the upper-transverse sinus is short, it is difficult to accurately identify whether it travels downward or backward in radiographic images. It is easy to mistake the upper-transverse sinus for the tentorium sinus. Based on the pattern that a vein enters dural sinus, the veins of Labbé were divided into two groups: the direct entry group and the indirect entry group. There was no significant difference in the number of the veins of Labbé and the length of the meningeal veins as measured by CTV and DSA in comparison with results from cadavers. Therefore, this study suggests that in the preoperative imaging examinations before supratentorial surgical approaches, there is no need to divide the patients into four groups. It is only necessary to classify them into two groups according to the way in which the vein of Labbé enters the dura mater, identify the meningeal veins and measure the length of them. DSA is the gold standard for cerebral vascular imaging, but it is an invasive test. In order to obtain the ideal cerebral venous images, it usually necessary to increase the dosage of the contrast agent and the X-ray irradiation time, which limits the application of DSA in the observation of cerebral veins \[[@CR25], [@CR26]\]. By contrast, CTV scanning is very fast, and the price is relatively low. The advent of a new type of 64-slice spiral CT has greatly improved the spatial resolution of the images, and it can display smaller vessels. Magnetic resonance imaging has no radiation effect, and images of blood vessels are developed without a contrast agent. This study shows that the observation effect of CTV on the vein of Labbé is the same as with DSA, and CTV is even better than DSA in measuring the distance between the vein of Labbé and the STP junction. Overall, the distance between the vein of Labbé and the STP junction as measured by DSA and CTV has no significant difference when compared with cadavers. By contrast, the distances of the veins of Labbé measured by DSA in the petrosal group and the upper-transverse sinus group have significant differences when compared with cadavers. However, the veins in the petrosal group are located in the STP junction or superior petrosal sinus. Thus, this difference will not affect supratentorial median surgical approaches. In the veins of Labbé in the upper-transverse sinus group, the length of the meningeal veins is usually greater. The average length is more than 10 mm, indicating that the median approach should not be used whenever possible. Therefore, this difference also didn't influence the design of supratentorial surgical approaches. Conclusions {#Sec14} =========== This study provides an important basis for the design of operative approaches that will ensure the protection of the vein of Labbé, through observation via DSA and CTV of the microanatomy of the vein of Labbé. The results suggest that DSA or CTV examination before the operation is helpful to design the operative approach. For example, in an operation on the cerebellum, the lowest chance of injury to the vein of Labbé is with the median approach. However, when the imaging examination reveals that the vein of Labbé is too close to the confluence of sinuses or the dural veins are too long, the operative approach should be redesigned. DSA : digital subtraction angiography CTV : computed tomographic venography STP : confluence of sigmoid sinus, transverse sinus, and superior petrosal sinus WT contributed to the experimental design, analysis and interpretation of data. AHJ participated in acquisition of the DSA and CTV data. QF, LX and WT carried out the experiments and the statistical analysis. WT provided final approval of the version of submitted manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. Acknowledgements {#FPar1} ================ Not applicable. Competing interests {#FPar2} =================== The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Availability of data and materials {#FPar3} ================================== The data supporting the conclusions of this article are included within the article. Any queries regarding these data may be directed to the corresponding author. Ethics approval and consent to participate {#FPar4} ========================================== The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Anhui Medical College. All the participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study. Funding {#FPar5} ======= The project was funded by the Natural Science Research Project of Anhui Colleges and Universities (Reference No: KJ2016A373), the Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province (Reference Nos: 2013A022100036 and 2014A020212257), and Science and Technology Program of Guangzhou City (Reference No: 201704020079). Publisher's Note {#FPar6} ================ Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon met with President Obama to discuss concerns about Arizona's new immigration law and U.S. drug policy. Margaret Warner reports on Wednesday's visit in Washington. Read the Full Transcript JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight: two reports about Mexico. We begin with the state visit by the country’s president. Margaret Warner has that story. MARGARET WARNER: It was a full-scale White House welcome for Mexican President Felipe Calderon, with all the traditional pomp and color. The leader set a tone of cordial understanding with statements that mirrored each other. U.S. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The United States and Mexico are not simply neighbors, bound by geography and history. We are, by choice, friends and partners. FELIPE CALDERON, Mexican president (through translator): We are friend and partner nations, nations that work together and trade, and that complement each other economically, nations that dialogue and that are intertwined by geography and history. MARGARET WARNER: But their friendly words couldn’t hide the fact that U.S.-Mexican relations are beset by some contentious issues right now, first and foremost, the new immigration law in Arizona. The new statute, signed last month by Governor Jan Brewer, makes it a crime to be in Arizona without proper documentation. It directs state and local police to enforce it, stopping people and checking documents if necessary. In a country with 12 million illegal immigrants, polls show more Americans support the law than oppose it. But it has sparked protests by people on both sides of the border, especially in Mexico. Pollster Jorge Buendia in Mexico City says, the Mexican people wanted President Calderon to use this visit to confront the Obama administration on the issue. JORGE BUENDIA, pollster: They think that Mexican immigrants are not treated fairly, and the Arizona law just reinforces that perception. So, they want the president to be very critical of the way that the U.S. authorities are dealing with this issue. When they see a U.S. authority a making very critical law against Mexican immigrants, they also think that the president, Barack Obama, is behind it. They don’t perceive a clear distinction between the Arizona government, the Congress, or the U.S. presidency. MARGARET WARNER: The two presidents emerged from their meeting stressing the agreements they had made to cooperate on energy, border security, and other matters. But, not surprisingly, the immigration issue, and in particular the Arizona law, hijacked their post-meeting news conference. President Calderon hit at it again. FELIPE CALDERON (through translator): We will retain our firm rejection to criminalize migration, so that people that work and provide things to this nation will be treated as criminals. And we oppose firmly the Arizona law given unfair principles that are partial and discriminatory. MARGARET WARNER: That brought a direct question to President Obama and an equally critical response. QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. President Calderon called again the Arizona law discriminatory. You have called it misdirected. Do you agree with him? BARACK OBAMA: I think a fair reading of the language of the statute indicates that it gives the possibility of individuals who are deemed suspicious of being illegal immigrants from being harassed or arrested. And the judgments that are going to be made in applying this law are troublesome. MARGARET WARNER: The president said he had asked the Justice Department to review the law. Then Mr. Obama pivoted to make a pitch for sweeping immigration reform. BARACK OBAMA: The Arizona law, I think, expresses some of the frustrations that the American people have had in not fixing a broken immigration system, and, frankly, the failures of the federal government to get this done. MARGARET WARNER: Former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Jeffrey Davidow isn’t surprised that this latest immigration dispute assumed such prominence today. JEFFREY DAVIDOW, former U.S. ambassador to Mexico: For Calderon, it served a great purpose, in the sense that, if he had come up here, and not mentioned the Arizona law, and made something of a big deal about it, he would, on his return, be put on a spit and roasted slowly by the Mexican public. This is a big issue for them. MARGARET WARNER: President Obama also lent his support to Calderon on another big issue, the bloody war he and the Mexican army are waging against the country’s drug cartels. It’s a war that has triggered a wave of violence, cartel against cartel and the cartels against the authorities. An estimated 23,000 people have been killed since Calderon took office in late 2006. JEFFREY DAVIDOW: This is a policy that Calderon has been pursuing for three years. He’s really tough on it. Somebody called him the Eliot Ness of Mexico. But it’s a policy that is being criticized in Mexico, for a variety of reasons, by some of his political opponents and others. And, so, to get a firm statement of support from President Obama is important. MARGARET WARNER: He got that from the president and a promise to do more on the U.S. end of the drug trade. BARACK OBAMA: We’re working to stem the southbound flow of American guns and money, which is why, for the first time, we are now screening 100 percent of southbound rail cargo. And guided by our new national drug control strategy, we’re bringing new approaches to reducing the demand for drugs in our country. MARGARET WARNER: But, despite the greater cross-border cooperation and U.S. funding support, the Mexicans have a long struggle on their hands, Davidow says. JEFFREY DAVIDOW: If it were easy, it would have already been done. I think we have to understand this situation in Mexico has taken more than a generation to — to become ensconced, and it may take as much as a generation to dig it out. MARGARET WARNER: Drug policy and immigration are likely to be featured when President Calderon addresses a joint session of Congress tomorrow.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former FBI Director James Comey on Sunday withdrew his bid to quash a congressional subpoena compelling him to testify in secret about the bureau’s decisions on investigations ahead of the 2016 presidential election, his lawyer said. FILE PHOTO: Former FBI director James Comey arrives at the Irish Film Institute for for a public interview in Dublin, Ireland June 22, 2018. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne Comey agreed to sit down for a closed-door deposition on Friday. Republicans on the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee pledged to provide Comey with a full transcript within 24 hours of his testimony, and he will be permitted to “make any or all of that transcript public,” Comey’s lawyer David Kelley told Reuters in a statement. In addition, a representative from the FBI will attend to help advise Comey on what matters related to the bureau he may divulge. Comey and the Republican lawmakers reached the new agreement the day before lawyers were to appear at a court hearing. Earlier on Sunday, committee chairman Bob Goodlatte said he expected Comey to drop the legal challenge. A judge had been set to issue a ruling on Comey’s request to quash the subpoena and halt congressional proceedings - a request that has never previously been granted by a judge in the United States. At the heart of the case is whether the panel should be able to force Comey to testify in secret about the FBI’s investigations into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and whether President Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia. The Republican-led inquiry has been lambasted by Democrats as a partisan effort to undermine Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. Moscow denies meddling and Trump denies campaign collusion, calling the Mueller investigation a political witch hunt. Comey, who was fired by Trump in May 2017, is seen as an important witness into whether Trump tried to obstruct the special counsel’s investigation. Republicans have said the FBI is biased against Trump, pointing to Comey’s decision to publicly announce the FBI would not bring charges against Clinton. They have also claimed that the FBI made missteps when it applied for a warrant to place former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page under surveillance. A Justice Department inspector general report earlier this year criticized Comey for his handling of the Clinton matter, but said he did not exhibit political bias. Kelley argued in court on Friday that Republicans are violating U.S. House rules by not holding a public hearing where all committee members can ask questions. Kelley accused lawmakers of pushing for a closed hearing so they can selectively leak portions of Comey’s testimony to undermine Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the election. But Thomas Hungar, a lawyer for the U.S. House of Representatives, said a 1975 Supreme Court case known as Eastland v. U.S. Servicemen’s Fund made it clear that the Speech or Debate Clause in the U.S. Constitution provides for complete immunity for the issuance of such subpoenas. The Republican-led inquiry into the FBI will be shuttered in the coming weeks, as Democrats prepare to take over control of the House of Representatives in January having won the majority in November’s congressional elections. The Republicans have little time to wrap up their inquiry and produce a report. Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who was in office in 2016, was also subpoenaed and ordered to appear this week for closed-door testimony. A representative for Lynch declined comment last Friday when asked about the subpoena.

Need to transport bikes and stuff and go to races (a lot in the summer) therefore need something that can get dirty and is efficient and plenty of space == a van BUT don't want to drive a van all day every day THEREFORE would like something smaller, less efiicient and more, well, fun == a 911 GT3. My wife strangely agrees. So the WRX is now officially the company car (for my business so the boys are now fighting over it) and i am on the hunt for a van ! I know, incredible although for a bird she is quite logical (she is an engineer after all). This is the woman that bought me a cheaper Ti wedding ring .... and a Fenn surfski - her logic being i would prefer that to a more expensive platinum ring. splendid, hence i married her... There was a 912 parked in my road a few years ago. I'd never heard of one so I googled it. Steel wheels and definitely betraying its beetle origins. I'd rather have one of those flat Porsche/VWs with the collapso rear suspension. Buy it with your eyes open. Get someone who knows the cars (nots just cars, but specifically Porsches) to pre-inspect it. They're cheaper than 911s of the same age (because they aren't as desirable) but people can use that to hide some right howlers. And accept that it will be when it goes wrong (not if) and when it breaks down (not if). And that it will be more expensive than bog-standard cars when it does go wrong. I can't believe anyone is actually that interested in a 912. Do you guys actually know what they are? I can see no good reason to own one over an early 911. Slower, about as expensive to run and "not a 911". I can't believe anyone is actually that interested in a 912. Do you guys actually know what they are? I can see no good reason to own one over an early 911. Slower, about as expensive to run and "not a 911". I know exactly what it is, basically a low-spec narrow bodied 911 with the 4 cylinder from the 356, about 100hp. not a lot slower due to lighter weight and actually has better weight distribution due to the shorter engine. The plain unfussy finish and steel wheels give it a nice retro look, it appears older than it is due to older 356 and VW bits here and there. If you're not determined to keep it 100% original there's plenty of options for grunty boxers around these days. I like them. I've started foolishly looking into getting a 944 as well and a search on the forum found me this thread. Do you guys with experience of 924s and 944s know if one'll take a couple of bikes plus gear in the back with the rear seats down?

Introduction {#Sec1} ============ Eukaryotes are characterized by a remarkable degree of coordination between different steps of their gene expression program^[@CR1],[@CR2]^. Most mRNA precursors (pre-mRNAs) are modified by the addition of a 7-methylguanosine cap to the 5′ end, excision of introns by the spliceosome, and 3′-terminal cleavage and polyadenylation. Aberrant RNA species are degraded by specialized quality control mechanisms. All these events can occur co-transcriptionally, receiving regulatory inputs from elongating RNA polymerase II (Pol II) but also modulating the efficiency of RNA synthesis through various forms of functional feedback^[@CR3]--[@CR7]^. Co-transcriptional capping of Pol II transcripts followed by the assembly of the nuclear cap-binding complex (CBC) provides a critical line of communication between RNA synthesis and subsequent processing events^[@CR8],[@CR9]^. The two core subunits of the CBC, Ncbp1/Cbc80 and the Ncbp2/Cbc20, can recruit several additional co-factors including the conserved multipurpose adapter protein Srrt/Ars2 (refs. ^[@CR10]--[@CR13]^). Srrt has been shown to mediate degradation of promoter-proximal transcripts in an exosome-dependent manner, promote termination/3′-terminal maturation of replication-dependent histone mRNAs and several other Pol II transcripts, and control production of small noncoding RNAs^[@CR10]--[@CR12],[@CR14]--[@CR16]^. Of note, CBC can stimulate pre-mRNA splicing by recruiting U1 snRNP and other components of the spliceosome complex to cap-proximal introns^[@CR17]--[@CR19]^, but whether this activity depends on Srrt is an open question. Unlike the core CBC components expressed at relatively stable levels across different conditions, Srrt tends to be substantially more abundant in proliferating cells than in their differentiated or quiescent counterparts. Consistent with this behavior, Srrt has been shown to promote proliferation of mammalian cells both in vitro and in vivo^[@CR14],[@CR20],[@CR21]^. These effects may be facilitated by the microRNA or/and histone mRNA regulation activities of Srrt^[@CR10],[@CR14],[@CR22],[@CR23]^. On the other hand, Srrt contributes to maintenance of mouse neural stem cells (NSCs) in a microRNA-independent manner, by promoting expression of the critical transcription factor Sox2 (ref. ^[@CR24]^). Notably, Srrt is critical for early development in vertebrates^[@CR25],[@CR26]^. However, molecular mechanisms underlying this effect remain poorly understood. Pre-mRNA cleavage and polyadenylation is another crucial point of gene regulation. These two coupled reactions involve co-transcriptional assembly of multisubunit protein complexes at a 6-nt polyadenylation signal (PAS) and its adjacent sequences, cleavage of the nascent transcript at the cleavage/polyadenylation site (CS) located typically 10--30 nt downstream of the PAS, and subsequent addition of a poly(A) tail to the newly formed 3′ end^[@CR27]--[@CR29]^. Co-transcriptional cleavage/polyadenylation triggers a rapid release of the elongating Pol II complex from the DNA template^[@CR30]^. Interestingly, recruitment of U1 snRNP to 5′ splice sites (5′ss) or other cognate motifs can repress downstream CSs through a splicing-independent mechanism known as telescripting^[@CR31],[@CR32]^. Telescripting is required for normal expression of relatively long mammalian genes^[@CR33]^, and its efficiency can be modulated by global changes in transcriptional activity of the cell altering the ratio between free and pre-mRNA-associated U1 (ref. ^[@CR32]^). However, it is unclear if telescripting can be controlled in a more nuanced cell type-specific manner. Similarly, the emerging link between telescripting and early steps of Pol II elongation awaits further experimental characterization^[@CR34]--[@CR36]^. Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are developmentally early progenitors capable of self-renewal and differentiation into the three germ layers of the embryo proper. Several transcription factors including Pou5f1/Oct4, Nanog, and Sox2 are known to play a key part in specifying molecular identity of this and other types of pluripotent stem cells^[@CR37]--[@CR39]^. Here we identify Srrt as a top candidate in a screen for additional regulators involved in ESC maintenance. We show that Srrt functions in this context by suppressing premature termination of transcription at cryptic cleavage/polyadenylation sites in first introns. This mechanism affects hundreds of genes active in ESCs and is mediated by CBC-dependent recruitment of U1 snRNP to 5′-proximal pre-mRNA sequences. In addition to its possible contribution to evolutionarily conserved gene regulation events, this activity limits deleterious effect of retrotransposable elements (RTEs) accumulating in first introns of its target genes. Overall, our work uncovers a transcriptome-wide antitermination circuitry with important roles in ESC biology. Results {#Sec2} ======= ESC maintenance depends on naturally high expression of Srrt {#Sec3} ------------------------------------------------------------ To understand possible role of RNA-based regulation mechanisms in maintenance of mouse ESCs, we inspected genes downregulated during neuronal and spontaneous differentiation of this cell type^[@CR40],[@CR41]^ (Fig. [1a](#Fig1){ref-type="fig"}). A stringent shortlisting procedure identified 84 top candidates with expression levels decreasing monotonically in both differentiation models (Supplementary Data [1](#MOESM5){ref-type="media"}). The list contained several previously characterized ESC-enriched transcription factors including but not limited to Pou5f1/Oct4 and Sox2 (Supplementary Data [1](#MOESM5){ref-type="media"}). Among putative regulators of RNA processing Srrt was a particularly promising candidate since its knockout (KO) results in preimplantation embryonic lethality^[@CR25]^ but its role in ESCs, i.e. cells matching this stage of mouse development, has not been investigated systematically.Fig. 1Srrt is required for mouse ESC maintenance.**a** Bioinformatics workflow used to identify putative regulators of mouse ESC identity. **b** Top: immunoblot analysis of Srrt expression in mouse ESCs, cortical NSCs, and cortical neurons prepared and cultured in vitro as described^[@CR86]^. Bottom: Srrt protein expression was quantified from three independent experiments (mean ± SD) and compared using a two-tailed *t*-test. **c** Top: ESCs were transfected with an Srrt-specific siRNA mixture (siSrrt) or a non-targeting control siRNA (siCtrl) and Srrt knockdown efficiency was analyzed by immunoblotting 48 h later. Bottom: the experiment was repeated twice (mean ± SD) and the samples were compared using a two-tailed *t*-test. **b**, **c** Erk1/2 is a lane loading control. **d** ESCs were transfected with siSrrt as in **c** and assayed for alkaline phosphatase (AP) activity. Note pronounced changes in morphology of colonies and individual cells and a decrease in the AP staining intensity. Scale bar, 100 μm. **e**, **f** Colony assay data showing that **e** siSrrt does not change the overall number of ESC colonies but **f** significantly increases the fraction of flattened differentiated colonies compared to siCtrl. The assay was repeated three times (mean ± SD) and analyzed by a two-tailed *t*-test. **g** Left: RT-qPCR data showing that, while Srrt knockdown does not change expression of pluripotency markers Pou5f1, Sox2, Nanog, and Zfp42/Rex1, it leads to significant downregulation of Nr0b1, Pecam1, and Zic2 and upregulation of early differentiation markers Etv4, Otx2, and Runx1 (refs. ^[@CR39],[@CR43],[@CR87]^). Right: targets strongly downregulated by siSrrt include additional examples of known ESC markers and factors with possible regulatory roles in proliferating cells^[@CR43]--[@CR47]^. All RT-qPCR experiments were done at least in triplicate and shown as mean ± SD. The expression levels in siCtrl-treated samples were set to 1, and the *p* values were calculated using a two-tailed *t*-test. Source data are provided as a Source Data file. Srrt protein was readily detectable in mouse ESCs and its levels were substantially reduced in proliferating NSCs \[fold change (FC) = 2.9; *t*-test *p* = 1.3e-04\] and post-mitotic neurons (FC = 5.8; *t*-test *p* = 8.8e-04; Fig. [1b](#Fig1){ref-type="fig"}). Srrt expression was also downregulated upon withdrawal of 2i inhibitors and LIF, the compounds required to maintain ESCs in an undifferentiated naïve state (Supplementary Fig. [1a, b](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}; FC = 2.4; *t*-test *p* = 0.034; ref. ^[@CR42]^). Of note, the expression of the CBC subunit Ncbp1 remained constant under these conditions (Supplementary Fig. [1a, b](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}; *t*-test *p* = 0.78). To address functional significance of the naturally high expression of Srrt in ESCs, we downregulated it to a level comparable to that observed in more differentiated cells using a mixture of four Srrt-specific siRNAs (siSrrt; Fig. [1c](#Fig1){ref-type="fig"}; compare with Fig. [1b](#Fig1){ref-type="fig"} and Supplementary Fig. [1a, b](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). This led to a loss of the characteristic rounded morphology of ESC colonies and reduced ESC-specific alkaline phosphatase activity compared to cultures treated with a control siRNA (siCtrl; Fig. [1d](#Fig1){ref-type="fig"}). Srrt knockdown also led to a readily detectable differentiation effect in a colony formation assay (Fig. [1e, f](#Fig1){ref-type="fig"}, Supplementary Fig. [1c--f](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). Moreover, siSrrt triggered a modest but statistically significant decrease in the expression of ESC-enriched surface markers SSEA1 and Pecam1/CD31 (Supplementary Fig. [1g, h](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). This suggests that maintenance of ESCs depends on relatively high expression of Srrt. Srrt knockdown has a global effect on the ESC transcriptome {#Sec4} ----------------------------------------------------------- RNA-sequencing (RNA-Seq) analysis uncovered considerable changes in the transcriptome of siSrrt-treated ESCs with 1828 downregulated and 1590 upregulated genes \[FC ≥ 1.5 and false discovery rate (FDR) \< 0.05; Supplementary Data [2](#MOESM6){ref-type="media"}\]. The regulated genes showed a partial overlap with those changing their expression during spontaneous differentiation of ESCs (Supplementary Fig. [2a](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). Although expression of many pluripotency markers including Pou5f1/Oct4, Sox2, and Nanog remained unchanged in response to siSrrt, some examples of this category (e.g. Nr0b1, Pecam1, and Zic2) were detectably downregulated (Supplementary Fig. [2b](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). Conversely, expression of many developmental and differentiation markers increased (Supplementary Fig. [2b](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}), in line with enrichment of corresponding gene ontology (GO) terms among the upregulated genes (Supplementary Data [3](#MOESM7){ref-type="media"}). For example, the GO terms developmental process, multicellular organismal development, and cell differentiation were enriched with FDRs 3.6E-6, 7.4E-6, and 1.5E-5, respectively (Supplementary Data [3](#MOESM7){ref-type="media"}). We confirmed RNA-Seq expression data for 20 pluripotency and differentiation markers selected for RT-qPCR validation (Fig. [1g](#Fig1){ref-type="fig"}, Supplementary Fig. [1c](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). Notably, downregulated genes were over-represented among the most reliable changes triggered by siSrrt (Supplementary Fig. [2d](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). Although we did not detect significantly enriched GO terms for this category of genes, some of the especially robust downregulation targets (FC ≥ 2 and FDR \< 1E-50; dark red dots in Supplementary Fig. [2d](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}) encoded known ESC markers and positive regulators of cell proliferation. Relevant examples included alkaline phosphatase Alpl (the enzyme assayed in Fig. [1d](#Fig1){ref-type="fig"} and Supplementary Fig. [1c--e](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}), epigenetic regulator Cdyl2, activin receptor Acvr1b/Alk4, nuclear receptor co-activator Dcaf6/NRIP, and a conserved RAGNYA domain protein Ammecr1 mutated in the Alport syndrome with mental retardation, midface hypoplasia, and elliptocytosis^[@CR43]--[@CR47]^. Downregulation of these genes was confirmed by RT-qPCR (Fig. [1g](#Fig1){ref-type="fig"}). Thus, Srrt may help ESCs to maintain their undifferentiated status by regulating extensive sets of genes. Srrt limits expression of prematurely terminated transcripts {#Sec5} ------------------------------------------------------------ We noticed that many genes responded to Srrt knockdown by accumulating RNA-Seq reads in first (5′-proximal) introns (Supplementary Fig. [3a](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). This often coincided with downregulation of the corresponding genes (the lower right quadrant in Supplementary Fig. [3b](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"} and the blue line in Supplementary Fig. [3c](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}) and when it did, the increase in the RNA-Seq coverage was strongly biased towards the 5′ end of the first intron (Supplementary Fig. [3d](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). Relevant examples included the genes in the right plot in Fig. [1g](#Fig1){ref-type="fig"} (see below). To check if this behavior could be due to premature termination of transcription, we mapped the position of cleavage/polyadenylation sites (CSs) using 3′-proximal RNA-sequencing (3′RNA-Seq). This revealed a widespread activation of CSs within first introns in siSrrt-treated ESCs (Fig. [2a](#Fig2){ref-type="fig"}, Supplementary Fig. [4a](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}).Fig. 2Srrt blocks cleavage/polyadenylation in first introns of many genes.**a** Srrt knockdown in mouse ESCs promotes utilization of cryptic CSs in first introns. **b** Upregulated CSs tend to localize close to the 5′ end of fist introns. **a**, **b** CSs with FC ≥ 2 and FDR \< 0.05 were considered significantly regulated. **c** Scatter plot showing that siSrrt-mediated activation of intronic CSs strongly correlates with downregulation of gene expression. Genes with significant changes in relative CS efficiency in first introns (FDR \< 0.05) and expression levels (FC ≥ 1.5 and FDR \< 0.05) are shown in red. Other genes, gray. **d** Examples of genes regulated by Srrt via intronic cleavage/polyadenylation. Read-per-million (rpm)-normalized RNA-Seq coverage plots are shown in gray, and rpm-normalized 3′RNA-Seq data are in red. Note simultaneous activation of CSs in first introns and a decrease in RNA-Seq and 3′RNA-Seq signals in the corresponding 3′ untranslated regions (3′UTRs). Red arrowheads, CSs preceded by canonical polyadenylation signals (PASs), AATAAA, or ATTAAA. **e** RT-qPCR verification of the siSrrt effect on genes in **d** using primer pairs designed against sequences upstream or downstream of regulated iCSs. Gene-specific signals were normalized to Cnot4 housekeeping gene and the expression levels in siCtrl-treated sample were set to 1. Data were averaged from three experiments ± SD and compared by a two-tailed *t*-test. Source data are provided as a Source Data file. Significant changes in premature cleavage/polyadenylation were less common in other introns and lacked the upregulation trend observed for first introns (Fig. [2a](#Fig2){ref-type="fig"}). Upregulated CSs in first introns tended to occur relatively close to the 5′ splice site (5′ss) (Fig. [2b](#Fig2){ref-type="fig"}). Significantly fewer of these CSs were previously annotated in the polyA_DB3 database^[@CR48]^ compared to their counterparts located in 3′UTRs of the same genes (30.1% vs 81.4%; Fisher's exact test *p* = 3.9E-179). However, the incidence of canonical cleavage/PAS AATAAA or its common variant ATTAAA upstream of these two CS categories was virtually indistinguishable (Supplementary Fig. [4b](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). Hence, Srrt dampens the expression of multiple transcripts terminated at a poorly characterized class of CSs in first introns. Srrt blocks cleavage/polyadenylation in first introns {#Sec6} ----------------------------------------------------- Two possibilities could account for accumulation of prematurely terminated transcripts in response to Srrt knockdown: (1) enhanced pre-mRNA cleavage and polyadenylation at the corresponding intronic positions or (2) increased stability of these relatively short RNA species. The former mechanism should lower the production of full-length mRNA isoforms, while the latter is unlikely to produce this effect. Notably, activation of CSs in first introns strongly correlated with an overall decrease in expression levels of the corresponding genes (Fig. [2c](#Fig2){ref-type="fig"}, Supplementary Fig. [4c](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}, Supplementary Data [4](#MOESM8){ref-type="media"}) and downregulation of CSs in their 3′UTRs (Supplementary Fig. [4d](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). There were 284 genes with intronic CS (iCS) upregulated ≥2-fold, FDR \< 0.05 and expression level reduced ≥1.5-fold, FDR \< 0.05, and an even larger number of genes showing this trend was detected using less stringent cutoffs (Supplementary Data [4](#MOESM8){ref-type="media"}). Genes upregulated despite the activation of iCSs were clearly a minority, and the increase in the overall expression levels in this case tended to be due to accumulation of prematurely terminated isoforms (e.g. the *Ttll11* gene in Supplementary Data [4](#MOESM8){ref-type="media"}). RNA-Seq and 3′RNA-Seq coverage plots for individual targets were consistent with our transcriptome-wide analyses (Fig. [2d](#Fig2){ref-type="fig"}, Supplementary Fig. [5a](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). We used the 3′-terminal version of rapid amplification of cDNA ends (3′RACE) to map the regulated iCSs for three genes selected for experimental validation, *Ammecr1*, *Cdyl2*, and *Dcaf6* (Supplementary Fig. [5b](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). In all three cases, siSrrt increased the RT-qPCR signal upstream of the iCSs and simultaneously reduced the abundance of downstream RNA sequences (Fig. [2e](#Fig2){ref-type="fig"}). This corresponded to a \~3--7-fold decrease in the ratio between the full-length and prematurely terminated transcripts, a statistic that we refer to as iCS readthrough efficiency (Supplementary Fig. [5c](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). A similar decrease in readthrough efficiency was evident when we substituted the siSrrt mixture with any of its three most efficient constituents, siSrrt\#1, siSrrt\#2, or siSrrt\#3 (Supplementary Fig. [6a, b](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). The three individual siRNAs also caused largely similar to siSrrt effects on the expression of pluripotency and differentiation markers (Supplementary Fig. [6c--e](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). To directly test the impact of intronic cleavage/polyadenylation on gene expression, we focused on *Ammecr1*. The overall expression of this biomedically important gene^[@CR45]^ decreased while the relative abundance of the iCS-terminated species increased during ESC differentiation into neurons, consistent with the *Srrt* downregulation trend (Supplementary Fig. [7a--d](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). Furthermore, knockdown of the full-length Ammecr1 transcripts induced detectable upregulation of a subset of the siSrrt-induced differentiation markers (Supplementary Fig. [7e, f](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). *Ammecr1* is encoded on the X chromosome, which also makes it an easy target for reverse genetics in male ESCs. Importantly, when we deleted *Ammecr1* sequence containing two PASs upstream of the strongest Srrt-regulated iCS using CRISPR-Cas9 (Fig. [3a, b](#Fig3){ref-type="fig"}), the mutant allele (*ΔPAS*) lost its ability to undergo premature cleavage and reduce its expression output following Srrt knockdown (Fig. [3c--e](#Fig3){ref-type="fig"}). Together, these data suggest that Srrt promotes expression of full-length mRNAs by blocking premature cleavage/polyadenylation in first introns.Fig. 3Intronic cleavage/polyadenylation is required for *Ammecr1* regulation by Srrt.**a** Top: Ammecr1 wild-type (WT) intronic sequence regulated in response to Srrt knockdown. Canonical PAS motifs are highlighted in pink. Also shown are positions of CRISPR gRNAs used to generate the *ΔPAS* allele. Sequence deleted in *ΔPAS* is in lowercase. Bottom: Sanger sequence analysis of the ΔPAS Ammecr1 allele. **b** PCR genotyping result comparing WT and ΔPAS ESCs. **c** Passage-matched WT and ΔPAS ESC clones were treated with either siSrrt or siCtrl and the efficiency of Srrt knockdown was analyzed by RT-qPCR 48 h later. Note that Srrt levels decrease to a comparable extent in both genetic backgrounds. **d**, **e** The effect of siSrrt on the expression of Ammecr1 sequences **d** upstream and **e** downstream of the iCS in the *WT* (and the deleted intronic region in the *ΔPAS* allele). Note that deletion of the CS region in ΔPAS cells abolishes **d** siSrrt-induced upregulation of the truncated 5′-proximal transcript and **e** downregulation of the full-length isoform. Data in **c**--**e** were averaged from three experiments ± SD, normalized to the WT/siCtrl samples, and compared by a two-tailed *t*-test. Source data are provided as a Source Data file. iCS repression does not depend on the exosome or small RNAs {#Sec7} ----------------------------------------------------------- Since Srrt has been previously shown to destabilize transcription start site (TSS)-proximal transcripts in an exosome-dependent manner^[@CR12]^, we compared our 3′RNA-Seq data with results of 3′ end-proximal RNA-Seq (2P-Seq) for mouse ESCs where the exosome complex was inactivated by knockout of its core subunit Exosc3^[@CR36]^. Metaplot analysis of siSrrt-regulated genes showed a robust accumulation of TSS-proximal RNAs transcribed in the sense but not the antisense direction (Supplementary Fig. [8a](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). On the other hand, Exosc3 KO increased the abundance of both sense and antisense transcripts in the same genomic regions (Supplementary Fig. [8b](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}), as described previously^[@CR36]^. In stark contrast to siSrrt, Exosc3 KO had no detectable effect on the abundance of full-length mRNAs transcribed from Srrt-dependent genes (Supplementary Fig. [8c](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). Although downregulation of the catalytic exosome subunits Exosc10 and Dis3 by corresponding siRNAs promoted some accumulation of prematurely terminated Ammecr1 RNA (Supplementary Fig. [8d, e](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}), neither these nor an Exosc3-specific siRNA decreased the abundance of full-length Ammecr1 transcripts (Supplementary Fig. [8d, e](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). Conversely, exosome-specific siRNAs caused more efficient accumulation of TSS-proximal upstream antisense transcripts compared to siSrrt (Supplementary Fig. [8e](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). To check the possibility that intronic cleavage/polyadenylation might be controlled through Srrt-stimulated production of small noncoding RNAs^[@CR10],[@CR14],[@CR16]^, we turned to published RNA-Seq data for Dicer1/Dicer KO in mouse ESCs with a validated effect on microRNA activity^[@CR49]^. The gene expression changes induced by Srrt knockdown and Dicer1 KO showed no global correlation (Supplementary Fig. [9a](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}) and the expression of Srrt-regulated genes did not generally change in response to Dicer1 KO (Supplementary Fig. [9b](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). Moreover, inspection of RNA-Seq coverage profiles for individual Srrt targets showed no evidence for iCS regulation by Dicer (Supplementary Fig. [9c](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). Thus, neither the exosome nor small RNAs appear to be required for Srrt-mediated repression of intronic cleavage/polyadenylation in mouse ESCs. Srrt-mediated repression of iCSs relies on the CBC {#Sec8} -------------------------------------------------- To examine possible contribution of the CBC to the Srrt-dependent antitermination activity, we knocked down Ncbp1 in mouse ESCs and compared the effect of this treatment with that induced by siSrrt (Fig. [4a](#Fig4){ref-type="fig"}). RNA-Seq and 3′RNA-Seq analyses revealed a noticeable correlation between the siNcbp1- and the siSrrt-treated samples in terms of overall gene expression changes and activation of CSs in first introns (Fig. [4b, c](#Fig4){ref-type="fig"}, Supplementary Fig. [10a--c](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}).Fig. 4Srrt-mediated repression of iCSs depends on the CBC.**a** Workflow used to compare transcriptome-wide effects of siSrrt and an siRNA targeting Ncbp1. **b** Scatter plot showing a correlation (Pearson's *r* = 0.74, *p* = 0) between the effects of siSrrt and siNcbp1 on CSs in first introns. Note that most iCSs significantly regulated by both siSrrt and siNcbp1 (FDR \< 0.05; red) show an increase in relative efficiency (top right quadrant). **c** Scatter plot showing that, similar to siSrrt (Fig. [2c](#Fig2){ref-type="fig"}), siNcbp1-mediated activation of iCSs often coincides with downregulation of corresponding genes. Red, genes with significant changes in relative CS efficiency in first introns (FDR \< 0.05) and expression levels (FC ≥ 1.5 and FDR \< 0.05). Gray, the rest of the genes. **d** ESCs containing a human SRRT transgene (SRRT-Tg; *TRE-SRRT-r3*′*UTR*) or a control expression cassette (Control-Tg; *TRE-EGFP-r3*′*UTR*) were pre-treated with 2 µg/ml Dox for 24 h and transfected with siCtrl, siNcbp1, or siSrrt. Expression levels of the Ncbp1 and Srrt proteins were analyzed by immunoblotting 48 h later. Note that, compared to siCtrl, siNcbp1 and siSrrt reduce the abundance of the corresponding proteins in both transgenic backgrounds. However, the combined Srrt/SRRT expression in the SRRT-Tg/siSrrt sample still exceeds the Srrt levels in Control-Tg/siCtrl. Erk1/2, lane loading control. *TRE*, Dox-inducible promoter; *r3*′*UTR*, recombinant 3′UTR from SV40 virus. For quantification of this experiment see Supplementary Fig. [10d](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}. **e**, **f** RT-qPCR analysis showing that **e** both siSrrt and siNcbp1 decrease transcriptional readthrough of iCS in the *Ammecr1* gene in the Control-Tg background. **f** Recombinant SRRT rescues the effect of siSrrt but not siNcbp1 in the SRRT-Tg cells suggesting that Ncbp1 is essential for Srrt-mediated repression of iCSs. Data in **e**, **f** were averaged from three experiments ± SD and compared by a two-tailed *t*-test. Source data are provided as a Source Data file. To test if Srrt and Ncbp1 functioned in the same pathway, we generated an ESC line containing a doxycycline (Dox)-inducible human SRRT transgene (SRRT-Tg) resistant to mouse-specific siSrrt (Fig. [4d](#Fig4){ref-type="fig"}, Supplementary Fig. [10d](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). Importantly, SRRT-Tg was sufficient to rescue termination of Ammecr1 transcripts in the first intron induced by siSrrt but not by siNcbp1 (Fig. [4e, f](#Fig4){ref-type="fig"}). In line with this functional interaction between the two proteins and published data for their human counterparts^[@CR11],[@CR12]^, Srrt and Ncbp1 interacted physically in mouse ESCs in a nucleic acid-independent manner (Supplementary Fig. [10e](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). RNA immunoprecipitation (RIP) with Ncbp1-specific antibodies showed that siSrrt did not alter the ability of Ncbp1 to interact with (pre-)mRNAs (Supplementary Fig. [10f](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}), suggesting that Ncbp1 might be required for recruiting Srrt to its targets but not the other way around. We concluded that the ability of Srrt to repress cleavage/polyadenylation in first introns depends on its interaction with the CBC. Srrt facilitates U1-binding upstream of regulated iCSs {#Sec9} ------------------------------------------------------ CBC can promote recruitment of U1 to cap-proximal introns, and this snRNP can in turn antagonize cleavage/polyadenylation via telescripting^[@CR18],[@CR31]^. To assess possible contribution of these mechanisms, we mapped U1-binding sites in formaldehyde-crosslinked ESCs using RNA antisense purification-sequencing (RAP-Seq; ref. ^[@CR50]^; Fig. [5a](#Fig5){ref-type="fig"}). We ascertained that the U1 pull-down procedure worked successfully by monitoring enrichment of U1 snRNA precursors and depletion of the 45S ribosomal RNA (Supplementary Fig. [11a](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). Reflecting the known U1 interaction preferences, input-normalized RAP-Seq reads showed a detectable bias towards the 5′ end of all introns and first introns containing Srrt-repressed iCSs (Supplementary Fig. [11b, c](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}).Fig. 5Srrt stimulates U1-binding upstream of CSs in first introns.**a** Outline of the U1 RAP-Seq experiment. **b** Boxplot of U1 RAP-Seq cluster coverage showing stronger binding of U1 snRNP in a 250-nt window upstream of Srrt-regulated iCSs than in a similarly sized window downstream of these sites in siCtrl-treated samples. Note that U1-binding efficiency is diminished following Srrt knockdown. *P* values were calculated using a two-tailed Wilcoxon signed rank test. The box bounds represent the first and the third quartiles and the thick black lines at the bottom of the boxes show the medians. Since the distributions are skewed towards 0, only the top whisker is evident, extending to 1.5× of the range between the third and the first quartiles (interquartile range). Open circles, outliers. **c** Consistent with the data in **b**, the 250-nt window upstream of Srrt-repressed CSs tends to contain stronger putative U1-binding motifs (measured as the maximum 5′ss MaxEnt value) than the 250-nt downstream window or similarly sized windows abutting CSs in the corresponding 3′UTRs. *P* values were calculated using a two-tailed Wilcoxon rank sum test. Violin plot outlines show kernel density estimates of probability densities; open circles, the medians; and bounds of the black boxes, the first and the third quartiles. Whiskers extend from the first and the third quartile to the lowest and highest data points or, if there are outliers, 1.5× of the interquartile range. **b**, **c** iCSs were considered regulated if they were upregulated ≥2-fold, FDR \< 0.05 and their host gene was downregulated ≥1.5-fold, FDR \< 0.05 in response to siSrrt. **d** Input-normalized RAP-Seq coverage profile and Piranha clusters (U1-1 and U1-2) showing strong interaction of U1 snRNP with at least two intronic positions preceding the Srrt-repressed CS in the *Ammecr1* gene in the siCtrl- but not siSrrt-treated ESCs. Sequences enriched in RAP-Seq vs input are shown in black and those depleted are in gray. Primers used in the RT-qPCR validation experiment in **e** are shown at the bottom. **e** RT-qPCR validation of RAP-Seq results using primer pairs matching U1 Piranha clusters in **b** and Supplementary Fig. [11e](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}. Note that input-normalized signals are significantly higher in siCtrl U1 RAP samples than in their siSrrt-treated counterparts for the two regulated Ammecr1 clusters but not for a control cluster in the Ncbp2 pre-mRNA. Data were averaged from three experiments ± SD and compared by a two-tailed *t*-test. Source data are provided as a Source Data file. Although the siCtrl- and the siSrrt-treated ESCs showed generally similar U1-binding profiles (Supplementary Fig. [11b, c](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}), we noticed a discernable U1 peak upstream of the Srrt-regulated iCSs in the siCtrl but not the siSrrt sample (Supplementary Fig. [11d](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). Supporting this observation, the incidence of U1 clusters deduced using a previously described approach^[@CR51]^ was significantly higher in a 250-nt window upstream of Srrt-repressed iCSs than in a similarly sized downstream window in the siCtrl-treated cells (Fig. [5b](#Fig5){ref-type="fig"}). This was consistent with enrichment of relatively strong U1-binding motifs upstream of iCSs compared to corresponding downstream positions and 250-nt windows adjoining CSs in 3′UTRs of the same genes (Fig. [5c](#Fig5){ref-type="fig"}). Importantly, Srrt knockdown led to a significant drop in U1 cluster coverage upstream of the regulated iCSs (Fig. [5b](#Fig5){ref-type="fig"}). The above effects were also detectable for individual Srrt targets. For example, two prominent U1 RAP-Seq peaks between the 5′ss and the strongest Srrt-repressed CSs in the first intron of the *Ammecr1* gene were significantly enriched over the input in the siCtrl- but not the siSrrt-treated samples (Fig. [5d](#Fig5){ref-type="fig"}). RT-qPCR analyses of the pull-down and the input fractions confirmed that U1 binding to the corresponding intronic positions was significantly reduced by Srrt knockdown (Fig. [5e](#Fig5){ref-type="fig"}). In contrast, U1 occupancy in the first intron of *Ncbp2*, a control gene not regulated by Srrt, showed no significant difference between the siCtrl and siSrrt samples (Fig. [5e](#Fig5){ref-type="fig"}, Supplementary Fig. [11e](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). The siSrrt effect on U1 recruitment was not due to major changes in U1 snRNA steady-state levels or its processing efficiency (Supplementary Fig. [12a, b](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). The levels of the U1 snRNP proteins Snrpa/U1-A and Snrp70/U1-70K were also unaffected (Supplementary Fig. [12c, d](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). Furthermore, we compared our 3′RNA-Seq data for siSrrt-treated samples with a similar analysis published for mouse ESCs where U1 was inactivated by an antisense morpholino oligonucleotide (AMO)^[@CR36]^. Although both treatments promoted premature cleavage/polyadenylation in first introns, inactivation of U1 clearly differed from Srrt knockdown by additionally inducing this effect in non-first introns on a transcriptome-wide scale (Supplementary Fig. [12e, f](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). These data suggest that Srrt facilitates U1 recruitment upstream of regulated CSs in first introns rather than substantially altering overall activity of this snRNP in mouse ESCs. Srrt-recruited U1 can promote telescripting {#Sec10} ------------------------------------------- As a direct test of the U1 effect on iCSs, we treated ESCs with a U1-specific AMO (amoU1; Fig. [6a](#Fig6){ref-type="fig"}). This enhanced the efficiency of premature cleavage/polyadenylation in the first intron of Ammecr1 pre-mRNA compared to samples treated with a non-targeting control (amoCtrl) or an antisense morpholino against another spliceosomal snRNA, U2 (amoU2). The noticeably stronger effect of amoU1 than that of amoU2 suggested that Srrt-stimulated recruitment of U1 snRNP could inhibit iCSs through telescripting rather than the spliceosome assembly pathway.Fig. 6Srrt-mediated readthrough of Ammecr1 iCS depends on telescripting.**a** Mouse ESCs were nucleofected with a control morpholino oligonucleotide (amoCtrl) or antisense morpholinos targeting either U1 or U2 snRNA (amoU1 and amoU2) for 8 h and the effect of these treatments on the iCS readthrough was analyzed using RT-qPCR. Note that amoU1 leads to a robust decrease in the CS readthrough efficiency compared to amoCtrl and amoU2. **b** Ammecr1-based minigene constructs used in telescripting assays in **c**. *PSV40*, SV40 enhancer, and early promoter; *E1*, the first exon of *Ammecr1* gene; *r3*′*UTR*, recombinant 3′UTR from SV40 virus. **c** ESCs transiently transfected with wild type (*WT*) or mutant (*Mut-5*′*ss*, *Mut-4motifs*, or *ΔPAS*) minigenes from **b** were treated with either siCtrl or siSrrt and the Ammecr1 intronic CS efficiency was assayed as a ratio between downstream \[mini_F2/mini_R2 primers in **b**\] and upstream RT-qPCR signals \[mini_F1/mini_R1 primers in **b**\]. Note that Srrt stimulates CS readthrough in the WT minigene, similar to its effect on the endogenously encoded *Ammecr1*. Mutation of a single U1-binding motif corresponding to the 5′ss at the beginning of the first intron (*Mut-5*′*ss*) does not alter the minigene response to Srrt knockdown; however, mutation of 5′ss and three additional sites potentially interacting with U1 (*Mut-4motifs*) results in a constitutive cleavage/polyadenylation phenotype. Conversely, deletion of the two PAS motifs (*ΔPAS*) leads to constitutive readthrough. Data on **a** and **c** were averaged from three experiments ± SD and compared by a two-tailed *t*-test. Readthrough efficiencies in the amoCtrl and *WT*/siCtrl samples, respectively, were set to 1. Source data are provided as a Source Data file. To test this hypothesis, we prepared a minigene construct by fusing the exon 1-intron 1 junction and the Srrt-regulated iCS region of the *Ammecr1* gene with a recombinant 3′UTR containing a constitutive CS (Fig. [6b](#Fig6){ref-type="fig"}). Since it lacked a functional 3′ss, this cassette allowed us to assay telescripting in the absence of pre-mRNA splicing. The minigene was expressed in ESCs pre-treated with siSrrt or siControl, and the use of the Ammecr1 iCS was analyzed by RT-qPCR (Fig. [6c](#Fig6){ref-type="fig"}). Recapitulating the behavior of endogenous Ammecr1 pre-mRNAs, minigene-derived transcripts showed more efficient iCS readthrough in the siCtrl than in the siSrrt samples (Fig. [6c](#Fig6){ref-type="fig"}). Mutation of the 5′ss, i.e. the site where U1 binds to initiate splicing of endogenous Ammecr1 transcripts, had no detectable effect on the minigene response to siSrrt (Fig. [6c](#Fig6){ref-type="fig"}). However, when we mutated three additional positions predicted to interact with U1, the minigene was terminated at the iCS regardless of the Srrt expression levels (Fig. [6c](#Fig6){ref-type="fig"}). On the other hand, deletion of the PAS hexamers (ΔPAS) preceding the iCS led to a constitutive readthrough phenotype (Fig. [6c](#Fig6){ref-type="fig"}). These results confirm that Srrt can block intronic cleavage/polyadenylation through a U1-dependent telescripting mechanism. Many iCSs emerged through retrotransposition {#Sec11} -------------------------------------------- Our data so far suggested that productive transcription of a large subset of genes active in ESCs depends on Srrt abundance. To understand evolutionary mechanisms underlying this regulation, we examined interspecies conservation scores^[@CR52]^ for 50 nt windows bounded by 40 nt upstream and 10 nt downstream of Srrt-regulated iCSs (Fig. [7a](#Fig7){ref-type="fig"}). A fraction of these sequences (39.6%) showed detectable conservation (average PhastCons score ≥ 0.1). This category included *Ammecr1*, *Cdyl2*, and *Dcaf6*, which had their iCS-associated PAS hexamers present in several mammalian species (Supplementary Fig. [13](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}).Fig. 7Regulated iCSs often appear as a result of retrotransposition.**a** Fisher's exact test showing that Srrt-regulated iCSs are less frequently conserved across placental mammals as compared to their 3′UTR counterparts. **b** Metaplots showing strong enrichment of retrotransposable elements (RTEs) in sense orientation immediately upstream of regulated iCSs (red line ± SEM) and their relative depletion in the CS-proximal region on the antisense strand (blue line ± SEM). Note that the antisense RTE density values were multiplied by −1. **c** iCS-associated RTEs (sense-strand RTEs terminating in ±50 nt vicinity of regulated iCSs) are enriched for SINEs as compared to the overall incidence of these elements in regulated first introns or the entire genome. **a**--**c** iCSs were considered regulated if they were upregulated in response to siSrrt ≥2-fold, FDR \< 0.05 and their host gene was downregulated ≥1.5-fold, FDR \< 0.05. **d**, **e** Examples of Srrt-dependent genes with iCSs matching 3′ ends of sense-strand **d** SINEs or **e** LINEs. RNA-Seq coverage plots are shown in gray and 3′RNA-Seq data are in red. Similar to the genes with conserved iCSs in Fig. [2d](#Fig2){ref-type="fig"}, upregulation of RTE-associated iCSs in response to siSrrt leads to a pronounced decrease in the RNA-Seq and 3′RNA-Seq signals in corresponding 3′UTRs. Red arrowheads, CSs preceded by AATAAA or ATTAAA hexamers. Pairwise alignments between regulated CSs and corresponding RTE consensus sequences are shown at the bottom of each panel with invariant positions marked by vertical bars and degenerate matches and base transitions indicated by colons. Canonical PAS hexamers are highlighted in pink. A majority of the Srrt-regulated sequences (60.4%) were conserved poorly or not at all (average PhastCons score \< 0.1). Since RTEs provide an important source of interspecies diversity^[@CR53],[@CR54]^, we wondered if mouse/rodent-specific iCSs could appear as a result of relatively recent retrotransposition events. Strikingly, an RTE density plot revealed a prominent peak of these elements integrated in the sense orientation immediately upstream of the Srrt-repressed iCSs (Fig. [7b](#Fig7){ref-type="fig"}). Conversely, antisense RTE sequences were depleted in this region (Fig. [7b](#Fig7){ref-type="fig"}). The iCS-associated sense-strand peak was \~200 nt wide suggesting that it could be dominated by relatively short RTEs (Fig. [7b](#Fig7){ref-type="fig"}). Indeed, most of the sense-strand RTEs that terminated around an iCS (±50 nt) belonged to the group of short interspersed nuclear elements (SINEs), although a few long interspersed nuclear elements (LINEs) and long terminal repeats (LTRs) were also detected (Fig. [7c](#Fig7){ref-type="fig"})^[@CR53],[@CR54]^. Members of the B2 SINE family were especially common at this position (Supplementary Fig. [14a](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}), consistent with the presence of canonical PASs in their consensus sequence^[@CR55]^. Overall, 31.2% of all regulated iCSs were associated with 3′ ends of sense-strand RTEs. iCS-associated B2 SINEs were found for example in genes encoding activin receptor Acvr1b (see also Fig. [1g](#Fig1){ref-type="fig"}), WNT pathway modulator Ankrd6/Diversin, Down Syndrome critical region protein Dscr3, and heat-shock protein-associated factor Hspbap1 (Fig. [7d](#Fig7){ref-type="fig"}, Supplementary Data [4](#MOESM8){ref-type="media"}; <https://www.genecards.org>). Genes with iCSs occurring at the end of a LINE repeat included those encoding ankyrin repeat and SOCS box protein Asb3 and a component of a regulatory complex interacting with unmethylated DNA in ESCs, Zbtb25 (Fig. [7e](#Fig7){ref-type="fig"}, Supplementary Data [4](#MOESM8){ref-type="media"}; <https://www.genecards.org>). In many cases, PAS hexamers preceding iCSs matched corresponding elements in the parental RTEs (Fig. [7d, e](#Fig7){ref-type="fig"}). iCSs occurring at the 3′ end of sense-strand RTEs were significantly less conserved than the rest of the iCSs (Fig. [8a](#Fig8){ref-type="fig"}), suggesting that the corresponding RTE sequences might be a result of relatively recent jumps. Indeed, the iCS-associated repeats were less divergent from the master copies, as compared to control groups comprising all sense or antisense repeats from first introns or the entire collection of repeats found in the mouse genome (Fig. [8b](#Fig8){ref-type="fig"}).Fig. 8Recurrent retrotransposition may increase gene dependence on Srrt.**a** Regulated iCSs associated with 3′ ends of sense-strand RTEs show significantly lower evolutionary conservation (PhastCons) score than other regulated iCSs. **b** Sense-strand RTEs terminated in iCS vicinity are typically less divergent from the corresponding master copies than control groups. **c** The overall RTE density is significantly higher in Srrt-regulated first introns than in non-regulated first or non-first introns. Also note a strong bias towards antisense orientation of RTEs in all groups of introns. **d** Length of first introns positively correlates with the percent of sequence occupied by RTEs on both strands. Dashed line, linear regression. **e** Consistent with their higher RTE load, the length of first introns in Srrt-dependent genes tends to exceed that of non-regulated or non-first introns. **a**--**c**, **e** iCSs were considered regulated if they were upregulated in response to siSrrt ≥2-fold, FDR \< 0.05, and their host gene was downregulated ≥1.5-fold, FDR \< 0.05. In **a**--**c** and **e**, box bounds, the first and the third quartiles; thick black lines, the medians. Whiskers extend from the first and the third quartile to the lowest and highest data points or, if there are outliers, 1.5× of the interquartile range. Outliers are not shown. **f** Gene expression in ESCs shows a negative relationship with the length of the first intron even in the presence of normal amounts of Srrt. Shown are mean expression values ± SEM in siCtrl-treated ESCs for genes with short (shorter than the 1/3 quantile; i.e. \<1524 nt), midsize (i.e. longer than or equal to the 1/3 quantile but shorter than the 2/3 quantile; i.e. ≥1524 and \<7251 nt), and long first introns (longer than or equal to the 2/3 quantile; i.e. ≥7251 nt). Note that genes with AATAAA(s) in the first intron are expressed at levels statistically indistinguishable from their AATAAA-free counterparts. **g** Srrt knockdown leads to preferential downregulation of genes with long first introns containing at least one AATAAA hexamer. **h** Naturally high levels of Srrt help ESCs to maintain their gene expression program through a transcription antitermination mechanism. Regardless of the RTE association status of their iCSs, all Srrt-regulated first introns showed a significantly higher density of RTE-derived sequences compared to non-regulated first or non-first introns (Fig. [8c](#Fig8){ref-type="fig"}, Supplementary Fig. [14b](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). We also observed a strong bias towards antisense orientation of RTEs in all groups of introns (Fig. [8c](#Fig8){ref-type="fig"}), suggesting that sense-oriented RTEs might be more disruptive and therefore subject to stronger purifying selection than their antisense counterparts. We concluded that, in addition to controlling evolutionarily conserved events, Srrt might repress deleterious iCSs appearing as a result of retrotransposition. Srrt target genes tend to have long RTE-rich first introns {#Sec12} ---------------------------------------------------------- Telescripting is known to be critical for production of long transcripts^[@CR33]^. Interestingly, we detected a genome-wide correlation between the RTE density and the overall size of first introns (Fig. [8d](#Fig8){ref-type="fig"}). In line with their increased RTE load, first introns of Srrt-dependent genes tended to be significantly longer compared to control groups (Fig. [8e](#Fig8){ref-type="fig"}). Of note, Srrt-regulated and non-regulated first introns were indistinguishable based on their 5′ss strength (Supplementary Fig. [14c](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). To find out if the length of first introns might be a good predictor of the Srrt dependence, we plotted average rpkm values in control-treated ESCs for genes separated into three equally sized groups according to the length of their first intron (short, mid, and long; Fig. [8f](#Fig8){ref-type="fig"}). Genes with longer first introns tended to be expressed at lower levels in ESCs even in the presence of normal amounts of Srrt. The presence of one or more AATAAA hexamers in the first intron was associated with somewhat reduced average expression in each category, but this effect was not statistically significant (Fig. [8f](#Fig8){ref-type="fig"}). Notably, the length of the first intron showed a strong positive association with the ability of AATAAA to dampen gene expression in response to Srrt knockdown (Fig. [8g](#Fig8){ref-type="fig"}). Thus, recurrent RTE jumps may sharpen the dependence of gene expression on Srrt by increasing the length of first introns. Discussion {#Sec13} ========== Our study uncovers a global antitermination mechanism responsible for productive expression of multiple genes in pluripotent stem cells (Fig. [8h](#Fig8){ref-type="fig"}). This mechanism relies on the ability of Srrt to associate with the CBC and block premature cleavage/polyadenylation of pre-mRNAs in first introns by promoting recruitment of U1 snRNP to cap-proximal sequences. We show that, at least in the case of the disease-associated gene *Ammecr1*, Srrt-augmented U1 binding can promote transcriptional readthrough of a downstream iCS as a result of telescripting. Three lines of evidence argue that Srrt is an important regulator of ESC identity. (1) Srrt is substantially more abundant in ESCs than in other cell types including actively proliferating NSCs (Fig. [1b](#Fig1){ref-type="fig"}, Supplementary Fig. [1a, b](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). (2) Normal expression of hundreds of iCS-containing genes active in ESCs relies on the naturally high levels of Srrt (Fig. [2c](#Fig2){ref-type="fig"}, Supplementary Fig. [4d](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"} and Supplementary Data [4](#MOESM8){ref-type="media"}). (3) Srrt downregulation in ESCs to levels considered physiological in other cell types induces several differentiation-specific changes (Fig. [1b--g](#Fig1){ref-type="fig"} and Supplementary Figs. [1](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"} and [2a--c](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). It is possible that the latter effect depends, at least in part, on reduced expression of a subset of the iCS genes. Indeed, knockdown of *Ammecr1* leads to statistically significant upregulation of some differentiation markers induced in response to Srrt-specific siRNAs (Supplementary Fig. [7f](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). Further research will be required to understand molecular functions of the Ammecr1 protein and identify other Srrt targets that may contribute to the ESC differentiation phenotype. The role of Srrt in ESCs appears to be distinct from its function as a transcriptional activator of *Sox2* gene in NSCs^[@CR24]^. Sox2 mRNA levels did not change in our siSrrt-treated samples implying that other mechanisms must ensure robust expression of this important transcription factor in ESCs. This may be achieved through cross-activation of *Sox2* by Pou5f1, Nanog, or other transcriptional regulators present in ESCs but not NSCs^[@CR37]--[@CR39]^. Alternatively, it is possible that the residual amount of Srrt protein in siSrrt-treated ESCs (Fig. [1c](#Fig1){ref-type="fig"}) is sufficient for promoting *Sox2* transcription but not for blocking iCSs. Consistent with a possible difference in quantitative requirements of the two mechanisms, Srrt is \~3 times more abundant in ESCs than in NSCs cultured in vitro (Fig. [1b](#Fig1){ref-type="fig"}). Our data support the emerging view that, in addition to their reliance on transcription factors, pluripotent stem cells depend on adequate expression patterns of a number of RNA-associated proteins. These include for example pre-mRNA splicing regulators identified in recent studies^[@CR56]--[@CR59]^. It is likely that further quantitative analyses of expression changes triggered by ESC differentiation or transition of differentiated cells to induced pluripotency will uncover additional factors altering RNA processing and tuning the way it communicates with transcription. Mounting evidence suggests that U1 snRNP-dependent readthrough of premature CSs is a widespread mechanism facilitating efficient transcription of long mammalian genes^[@CR31],[@CR33]^. Furthermore, many Pol II promoters are inherently bidirectional and the preferred direction for productive elongation appears to be selected based on the ability of promoter-proximal RNA sequences to recruit U1 snRNPs and limit the effect of premature cleavage/polyadenylation^[@CR34]--[@CR36]^. Interestingly, the efficiency of telescripting can be modulated by dynamic interactions between the U1 snRNP and nascent pre-mRNA pools, linking rapid transcriptional activation in cells responding to external cues with corresponding changes in alternative cleavage/polyadenylation patterns^[@CR32]^. We extend this line of research by showing that the ability of U1 to inhibit cryptic CSs can be tuned depending on the cell type and the 5′ to 3′ position of regulated sequences. This regulation logic is conceptually similar to prokaryotic antitermination used for example by bacteriophage λ to switch between immediate and delayed early stages of its gene expression program^[@CR60]^. Despite fundamental mechanistic differences both systems rely on elevated expression of key RNA-associated factors, Srrt in ESCs and the N protein in λ, to repress transcription termination signals. We cannot currently rule out that, in a subset of genes, Srrt-recruited U1 may antagonize intronic cleavage/polyadenylation through kinetic competition with splicing, instead of or in addition to telescripting. Supporting possible involvement of Srrt in splicing, some of its targets not regulated at the level of mRNA abundance appear to retain first introns in siSrrt-treated ESCs (yellow line in Supplementary Fig. [3d](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). Moreover, Srrt is known to control splicing decisions in plants^[@CR61],[@CR62]^. What might determine the choice between telescripting- and splicing-dependent mechanisms on a transcriptome-wide scale is an interesting question for future studies. It will be also important to understand how different molecular activities of Srrt are balanced depending on the cell type and RNA target identity. Especially intriguing is the ability of Srrt to promote 3′-terminal processing/termination in some cases^[@CR11],[@CR12],[@CR14],[@CR63]^ while antagonizing it in a transcriptome-wide manner in mouse ESCs (Fig. [2c](#Fig2){ref-type="fig"}, Supplementary Fig. [4d](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"} and Supplementary Data [4](#MOESM8){ref-type="media"}). We envisage at least two non-mutually exclusive explanations. (1) Srrt may block cleavage/polyadenylation only in the presence of sufficiently strong U1-binding motifs between the 5′-terminal cap and the iCS. In addition to promoting telescripting, U1 recruited to these positions might potentially compete with cleavage/polyadenylation machinery for overlapping interaction sites in the Srrt protein. (2) Alternatively, ESCs may express yet-to-be identified Srrt-associated factors overriding the ability of this multipurpose adaptor to stimulate cleavage/polyadenylation or/and strengthening its contacts with U1. Several Srrt-regulated iCSs appear to be conserved in evolution (Fig. [7a](#Fig7){ref-type="fig"}, Supplementary Fig. [13](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}), pointing at their potential adaptive value. For example, such intronic elements may limit the abundance of ESC-enriched transcripts in other cell types. Supporting this possibility, the progressive decline in *Ammecr1* expression during neuronal differentiation correlates positively with the Srrt downregulation trend and negatively with an increase in the relative abundance of iCS-terminated Ammecr1 transcripts (Supplementary Fig. [7a--d](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). However, most iCSs lack detectable interspecies conservation and many of them are associated with relatively recent retrotransposition events (Figs. [7](#Fig7){ref-type="fig"} and [8a, b](#Fig8){ref-type="fig"}). What could be the role of Srrt in this context? Interestingly, Srrt-regulated first introns have a higher RTE load compared to non-regulated first and non-first introns (Fig. [8c](#Fig8){ref-type="fig"}, Supplementary Fig. [14b](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). This might reflect possible integration bias of RTEs to open chromatin, making first introns in genes transcriptionally active at the preimplantation stage especially vulnerable to recurrent and potentially heritable retrotransposition^[@CR64]--[@CR66]^. Accumulation of RTEs in this region would in turn dampen gene expression by introducing PASs/iCSs directly (Fig. [7](#Fig7){ref-type="fig"}) or making the acquisition of new PAS-like mutations more likely due to an increase in intron length (Fig. [8c--g](#Fig8){ref-type="fig"}, Supplementary Fig. [14b](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). We propose that the natural over-expression of Srrt helps ESCs to alleviate potentially damaging consequences of this genome-wide effect. The largely negative impact of RTEs on individual fitness is often discussed in conjunction with their role as an important source of evolutionary innovation^[@CR53],[@CR54],[@CR67]--[@CR70]^. Hence, an intriguing possibility that should be investigated in the future is that, besides protecting the transcriptome, Srrt may also function as a genetic capacitor allowing initially deleterious events to be repurposed for building new regulation modules. Methods {#Sec14} ======= Cell culture techniques {#Sec15} ----------------------- A2lox mouse ESCs^[@CR71]^ were cultured in a humidified incubator at 37 °C, 5% CO~2~, in plates or dishes coated with gelatin (Millipore, cat\# ES-006-B) in 2i medium^[@CR37]^ containing a 1:1 mixture of Neurobasal (Thermo Fisher Scientific, cat\# 21103049) and DMEM/F12 (Sigma, cat\# D6421) media supplemented with 100 units/ml PenStrep (Thermo Fisher Scientific, cat\# 15140122), 1 μM PD03259010 (Cambridge Bioscience, cat\# SM26-2), 3 μM CHIR99021 (Cambridge Bioscience, cat\# SM13-1), 0.5 mM [l]{.smallcaps}-glutamine (Thermo Fisher Scientific, cat\# 25030024), 0.1 mM β-mercaptoethanol (Sigma, cat\# M3148), 1000 units/ml ESGRO LIF (Millipore, cat\# ESG1107), 0.5× B-27 supplement without vitamin A (Thermo Fisher Scientific, cat\# 12587010) and 0.5× N2 supplement. N2 100× stock was prepared using DMEM/F12 medium as a base and contained 5 mg/ml BSA (Thermo Fisher Scientific, 15260037), 2 µg/ml progesterone (Sigma, P8783-1G), 1.6 mg/ml putrescine (Sigma, P5780-5G), 3 µM sodium selenite solution (Sigma, S5261-10G), 10 mg/ml apo-transferrin (Sigma, T1147-100MG), and 1 mg/ml insulin (Sigma, I0516-5ML) and stored in single-use aliquots at −80 °C. Cells were typically passaged every 2--3 days by treating the cultures with 0.05% Trypsin-EDTA (Thermo Fisher Scientific, cat\#15400054) for 8--10 min at 37 °C. After quenching trypsin with FBS (Thermo Fisher Scientific, cat\# SH30070.03E), cells were washed once with neurobasal medium and plated at a 1:6 dilution. For RNA interference (RNAi) experiments, 2 × 10^5^ cells were seeded in 1 ml of 2i medium per gelatinized well of a 12-well and immediately transfected with 50 pmol of an appropriate siRNA (Horizon Discovery; see Supplementary Data [5](#MOESM9){ref-type="media"} for details) premixed with 3 µl of Lipofectamine 2000 (Thermo Fisher Scientific, cat\# 11668019) and 100 µl of Opti-MEM I (Thermo Fisher Scientific, cat\# 31985070), as recommended. The cultures were then incubated for 48 h without changing the medium. In minigene experiments, cells pre-treated with siRNAs for 24 h were transfected with 500 ng of minigene plasmid mixed with 2 µl of Lipofectamine 2000 and 100 µl of Opti-MEM I and incubated for another 24 h prior to RNA extraction. Stable knock-in lines were generated as follows. A2lox cells were pre-treated overnight with 1 μg/ml doxycycline (Dox; Sigma, cat\# D9891-1G) to activate Cre expression, trypsinized, and then transfected in suspension with 1 μg of an appropriate p2Lox-based plasmid mixed with 3 µl of Lipofectamine 2000 and 100 µl of Opti-MEM I in 4 ml of 2i medium in 6 cm bacterial dishes at 0.75--1 × 10^5^ cells/ml. Cells were collected 2 h post-transfection and serially diluted in 2i medium prior to re-plating in six-well format. On the next day, 350 μg/ml of geneticin/G418 (Sigma, cat\# 10131019) was added and the incubation was continued for an additional 8--12 days with regular medium changes to allow geneticin-resistant cells to form colonies. These were picked, expanded, and analyzed for inducible expression of transgenic sequences using reverse transcriptase-quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) and/or immunoblotting. Genomic deletions were generated in A2Lox cells containing a Dox-inducible Cas9 transgene. Cells were pre-treated with 1 μg/ml Dox overnight, transfected with a mixture containing two synthetic EditR gRNAs flanking the deletion region (50 pmol each; Horizon Discovery; see Supplementary Data [5](#MOESM9){ref-type="media"}) or two EditR Non-targeting control gRNAs (50 pmol each; Horizon Discovery, cat\# U-007501-01-05 and U-007501-01-05) and 100 pmol of synthetic EditR tracrRNA (Horizon Discovery, cat\# U-002005-05) at 1--2 × 10^5^ cells per well of a 12-well plate using conditions described for RNAi experiments. Cells were trypsinized 24 h post-transfection, FBS-quenched, passed through Falcon 40 μm cell strainers (Corning, cat\# 352340) to obtain a single-cell suspension, and serially diluted in 2i medium prior to re-plating in six-well format. The cultures were then maintained for 8--12 days with regular medium changes and colonies originating from individual cells were picked, expanded, and their genomic DNA was analyzed for the presence of desired deletion using PCR genotyping (see below). For AMO delivery, 2 × 10^6^ ESCs were electroporated in the presence 7.5 μM of U1-specific, U2-specific, or a scrambled AMO (Gene Tools, LLC; see Supplementary Data [5](#MOESM9){ref-type="media"}) in Amaxa Nucleofector II (Lonza) using ESC-specific program A-23 and Mouse Embryonic Stem Cell Nucleofector Kit (Lonza, cat\# VPH-1001) as recommended. Nucleofected cells were maintained in 2i medium in a single well of a six-well plate for 8 h prior to RNA purification and RT-qPCR analysis. Pluripotency/differentiation assays {#Sec16} ----------------------------------- To assess gene knockdown effects on ESC pluripotency/differentiation status, siRNA-transfected cells were incubated in 2i medium supplemented with 2% FBS for 48 h and stained using an alkaline phosphatase detection kit (Millipore, cat\# SCR004) as recommended. In colony formation assays, siRNA-transfected cells were trypsinized 24 h post-transfection, quenched with FBS, passed through Falcon 40 μm cell strainers, and plated at 1000 cells per well of a six-well plate in 2i medium supplemented with 2% FBS. Seven days post plating cell colonies were stained for alkaline phosphatase, imaged, and analyzed using ImageJ (<https://imagej.nih.gov/ij/>; see Supplementary Data [5](#MOESM9){ref-type="media"} for further information on the computer software used in this study). For flow cytometry, ESCs transfected with siRNAs in a 12-well plate format were incubated in 2i medium for 48 h, dissociated using Accutase (Thermo Fisher Scientific, cat\# A1110501), washed with 1× PBS, pH 7.4 (Thermo Fischer Scientific, cat\# 10010023), and resuspended in 100 μl of FACS buffer containing 1× PBS, 2 mM EDTA, and 3% FBS. Cells were then stained for ESC surface markers using an APC-conjugated anti-Pecam1/CD31 antibody (Thermo Fisher Scientific, cat\# 17-0311-80, 0.5 μg per test) and an Alexa Fluor 488-conjugated anti-SSEA1 antibody (Thermo Fisher Scientific, cat\# 53-8813-41, 0.125 μg per test) for 1 h on ice, washed twice with 300 μl of the FACS buffer, and passed through Falcon 40 μm cell strainers to obtain single-cell suspensions. Samples were supplemented with 0.2 μg/ml DAPI \~10 min prior to flow cytometry to label membrane-compromised cells. Cells were then analyzed using a BD FACSCanto™ II cytometer equipped with 405, 488, and 633 nm lasers. The FCS files were analyzed using the flowCore and the flowViz packages (<https://www.bioconductor.org/packages/release/bioc/html/flowCore.html>; <https://www.bioconductor.org/packages/release/bioc/html/flowViz.html>). The following gating strategy was applied to select individual living (DAPI-negative) cells: rg\<-rectangleGate(filterId = "myFilter", "FSC.A" = c(60000, 140000), "SSC.A" = c(20000, 130000), "SSC.W" = c(80000, 160000), "DAPI.A" = c(−100, 5000)) The Pecam1 (APC) and SSEA1 (Alexa Fluor 488) signals were then measured in cells passing these gates (\>28,000 per sample). DNA constructs {#Sec17} -------------- Plasmids p2lox and pX330-U6-Chimeric_BB-CBh-hSpCas9 were kindly provided by Michael Kyba (Addgene plasmid \#34635; ref. ^[@CR71]^) and Feng Zhang (Addgene plasmid \#42230; ref. ^[@CR72]^). pEGFP-N3 was from Clontech and the pCR-bluntII-topo clone containing full-length open reading frame of human *SRRT* was from Horizon Discovery (MGC Human SRRT Sequence-Verified cDNA, Accession: BC109117, Clone ID: 40035609 cat\# MHS6278-211690300). New constructs were generated as described in Supplementary Data [6](#MOESM10){ref-type="media"} using routine molecular cloning techniques and enzymes from New England Biolabs. *Ammecr1* minigene plasmids were mutagenized as outlined in Supplementary Data [6](#MOESM10){ref-type="media"} using a modified Quikchange site-directed mutagenesis protocol, in which PfuTurbo was substituted with the KAPA HiFi DNA polymerase (Kapa Biosystems, cat\# KK2101). All constructs were verified by Sanger sequencing. Maps of all constructs are available on request. PCR genotyping {#Sec18} -------------- Genomic DNA was prepared and analyzed using PCRBIO Rapid Extract PCR Kit (PCR Biosystems; cat\# PB10.24-08) according to the manufacturer's protocol. Amplified DNA fragments were resolved by electrophoresis in 1--2% agarose gels alongside GeneRuler 1 kb Plus DNA Ladder (Thermo Fisher Scientific, cat\# SM1331). Deletion of a cleavage/polyadenylation site-containing fragment in the *Ammecr1* gene was confirmed using Ammecr1_genotype_F/Ammecr1_genotype_R primers (Supplementary Data [7](#MOESM11){ref-type="media"}) and Sanger sequencing of the PCR product. RNA purification and RT-qPCR analyses {#Sec19} ------------------------------------- Total RNAs for gene expression analyses were extracted using an EZ-10 DNAaway RNA Miniprep Kit (BioBasic, cat\# BS88136). Reverse transcription (RT) was performed at 50 °C for 30 min using SuperScript IV reagents (Thermo Fisher Scientific, cat\# 18090200) supplemented with 5 µM of random decamer (N10) primers and 2 units/μl of murine RNase inhibitor (New England Biolabs, M0314L). cDNA samples were analyzed by qPCR using a Light Cycler^®^96 Real-Time PCR System (Roche) and qPCR BIO SyGreen Master Mix (PCR Biosystems; cat\# PB20.16). In minigene experiments, total RNAs were isolated from cells using TRIzol (Thermo Fisher Scientific, cat\# 15596026), as recommended, with an additional acidic phenol--chloroform (1:1) extraction step. The aqueous phase was precipitated with an equal volume of isopropanol, washed with 70% ethanol, and rehydrated in 80 µl of nuclease-free water (Thermo Fisher Scientific, cat\# AM9939). RNA samples were then treated with 4--6 units of Turbo DNase (Thermo Fisher Scientific, cat\# AM2238) at 37 °C for 30 min to remove the bulk of DNA contaminants, extracted with equal volume of acidic phenol--chloroform (1:1), precipitated with three volumes of 100% ethanol and 0.1 volume of 3 M sodium acetate (pH 5.2), washed with 70% ethanol and rehydrated in nuclease-free water. Remaining traces of DNA were removed by pre-treating RNA samples with 2 units of RQ1-DNAse (Promega, cat\# M6101) per 1 µg of RNA at 37 °C for 30 min. RQ1-DNAse was inactivated by adding the stop solution as recommended and the RNAs were immediately reverse-transcribed using SuperScript IV and random decamer (N10) primers at 50 °C for 30 min. All RT-qPCR primers are listed in Supplementary Data [7](#MOESM11){ref-type="media"}. Unless mentioned otherwise, RT-qPCR signals were normalized to expression levels of the Cnot4 housekeeping mRNA. In RAP and RIP RT-qPCR assays, signals in pull-down fractions were normalized to input signals obtained using the same primer pair. In minigene experiments, the RT-qPCR signals detected using primers annealing downstream of the Ammecr1 iCS were normalized to those obtained using upstream primers (see Supplementary Data [7](#MOESM11){ref-type="media"} and Fig. [6b](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}). 3′RACE {#Sec20} ------ 3′RACE was performed in principle as described^[@CR73]^. Briefly, total RNAs were extracted from siSrrt-transfected ESCs using an EZ-10 DNAaway RNA miniprep kit. The RT step was done at 50 °C for 60 min using SuperScript IV reagents, 5 µM of the 3′RACE_RT primer (Supplementary Data [7](#MOESM11){ref-type="media"}), and 2 units/μl of murine RNase inhibitor. This was followed by two rounds of nested PCR using PCRBIO Ultra Mix Red (PCR Biosystems, PB10.33-05): (1) with the 3′RACE_Q0 primer and a gene-specific primer GS1 and (2) with 3′RACE_Q1 primer and a gene-specific primer GS2 (Supplementary Data [7](#MOESM11){ref-type="media"}). The PCR products were then agarose gel-purified using a NucleoSpin gel and PCR clean-up kit (Macherey Nagel cat\# 740609.250) and analyzed by Sanger sequencing. Northern blotting {#Sec21} ----------------- Northern blotting was performed using a DIG Northern starter kit (Merck, cat\# 12039672910), as recommended. To prepare a U1-specific antisense digoxigenin-labeled probe, pML475 plasmid (Supplementary Data [6](#MOESM10){ref-type="media"}) was linearized with PvuII (New England Biolabs), purified using a NucleoSpin gel and PCR clean-up kit, and used as a template for SP6 RNA polymerase. 2.0 × 10^6^ A2lox ESCs were plated in 10 cm gelatinized cell culture dishes in 10 ml of 2i medium and immediately transfected with pmol of either siCtrl or siSrrt premixed with 27 µl of Lipofectamine 2000 and 1.5 ml of Opti-MEM I. Total RNAs were extracted 48 h post-transfection using TRIzol as described above. Purified RNA samples were dissolved in nuclease-free water at \~1 μg/μl and 2-μg aliquots were mixed with 8 μl of the gel loading buffer containing 98% Formamide (Thermo Fisher Scientific, cat\# 15515026), 10 mM EDTA, 200 μg/ml bromophenol blue (Thermo Fisher Scientific, cat\# 10243420), and 200 μg/ml xylene cyanol (Severn Biotech Ltd, cat\# 30-60-01). The samples were then denatured at 70 °C for 3 min, chilled on ice, and resolved by electrophoresis in 8% polyacrylamide gels (acrylamide:bis 29:1; Severn Biotech Ltd, cat\# 20-3500-05) containing 8 M urea (Thermo Fischer Scientific, cat\# 15505-027) and 1× TBE (Sigma, cat\# T4415). RNAs were transferred from the gels to Hybond-N+ membranes (Merck, cat\# GERPN1210B) using a Trans-Blot SD semi-dry transfer cell (Bio-Rad) in 0.5× TBE at 3 mA/cm^2^. Membrane were stained with 0.02% methylene blue (Fisher Scientific, cat\# 11443697) in 0.3 M sodium acetate pH 5.2 (Sigma, cat\# S7899) and photographed. After destaining in 0.2× SSC (Sigma, cat\# S6639) and 1% SDS (Promega, cat\# H5114) membranes were blocked with DIG Easy Hyb solution at 68 °C for 30 min and hybridized with 100 ng/ml probe in DIG Easy Hyb solution at 68 °C overnight. Membranes were then washed twice in 2× SSC with 0.1% SDS at room temperature and twice in 0.1× SSC with 0.1% SDS at 68 °C, 5 min each wash. The subsequent steps were done at room temperature. Membranes were washed in the Washing buffer containing 0.1 M maleic acid-NaOH, pH 7.5 (Sigma, cat\# M0375), 0.15 M NaCl (Sigma, cat\# 71376-1KG) and 0.3% (v/v) Tween 20 (Sigma, cat\# P9416) for 5 min and blocked in 1× DIG Northern starter kit blocking solution for 30 min. This was followed by incubation with anti-digoxigenin-AP (1:10,000 in blocking solution) for 30 min and two washes with the Washing buffer, 15 min each. Membranes were finally rinsed in the Detection buffer \[0.1 M Tris-HCl, pH 9.5 (Thermo Fisher Scientific, cat\# BP152-1) and 0.1 M NaCl\] for 5 min and chemiluminescence was detected using the CDP-Star reagent and an Odyssey imaging system (LI-COR Biosciences). Immunoblotting {#Sec22} -------------- Cells grown in six-well plates were washed three times with ice-cold 1× PBS and proteins were extracted using 100--200 µl/well of RIPA lysis buffer (Santa Cruz Biotechnology; cat\# sc-364162) supplemented with 1 mM PMSF (New England Biolabs, cat\# 8553 S) and the recommended amount of cOmplete EDTA-free protease inhibitor cocktail (Roche, cat\# 4693132001). Protein concentrations were determined using a Pierce BCA Protein Assay Kit. Protein samples (10--25 µg) were then incubated at 95 °C for 5 min in 1× Laemmli sample buffer (Bio-Rad; cat\# 1610747), chilled on ice, and separated by 4--20% gradient SDS-PAGE (Bio-Rad; cat\# 4561096). The proteins were transferred from the gels to nitrocellulose membranes using a Trans-Blot Turbo Transfer System and analyzed using appropriate primary and secondary antibodies (see Supplementary Data [5](#MOESM9){ref-type="media"}). Protein bands were detected using an Odyssey imaging system and quantified using the LI-COR Image Studio software (LI-COR Biosciences). Co-immunoprecipitation and RNA immunoprecipitation {#Sec23} -------------------------------------------------- 2.0 × 10^6^ A2lox ESCs were plated in 10 cm gelatinized dishes in 10 ml of 2i medium and immediately transfected with 500 pmol of an appropriate siRNA premixed with 27 µl of Lipofectamine 2000 and 1.5 ml of Opti-MEM I. Forty-eight hours post-transfection cells were washed three times with ice-cold 1× PBS and lysed in 600--700 μl of co-IP/RIP lysis buffer containing 10 mM Tris-HCl, pH 7.5, 150 mM NaCl, 0.5% NP-40/IGEPAL CA-630 (Sigma, I8896) and the recommended amount of cOmplete EDTA-free protease inhibitor cocktail at 4 °C for 30 min. In RIP experiments, co-IP/RIP lysis buffer was additionally supplemented with 100 units/ml of murine RNase inhibitor. The lysates were centrifuged at 16,000 × *g* for 10 min at 4 °C and we used 200--250 μl aliquots of the clarified lysate per individual co-IP/RIP experiment and stored 50 μl aliquots as input controls. The co-IP/RIP aliquots were mixed with 50 μl of Dynabeads protein G beads (Thermo Fisher Scientific, cat\# 10003D) preloaded with 5 μg of protein-specific antibodies (Supplementary Data [5](#MOESM9){ref-type="media"}) or a non-immune rabbit IgG control (Thermo Fisher Scientific, cat\# 10500 C). Lysates were incubated with rotation at 4 °C overnight. In some experiments, lysates were supplemented with 25 units/ml of benzonase (Merck, cat\# 70664-3) before mixing them with the beads. Beads were washed three times with 200 μl PBS and 0.5% Tween 20 and bead-associated proteins and RNAs were eluted using 1× Laemmli sample buffer or TRIzol and analyzed by immunoblotting or RT-qPCR, respectively. RNA-Seq {#Sec24} ------- For RNA-Seq, A2lox cells were transfected with appropriate siRNAs as described above. Total RNAs were extracted 48 h post-transfection using TRIzol Plus RNA Purification Kit (Thermo Fisher Scientific cat\# 12183555). RNAs were eluted in nuclease-free water, quality-controlled using a Bioanalyzer (Agilent) and hybridized with oligo(dT) magnetic beads to isolate the poly(A) RNA fraction used for subsequent library preparation steps. Stranded mRNA sequencing libraries were prepared using the TruSeq Stranded mRNA Library Preparation Kit (Illumina cat\#\# RS-122-2101 and RS-122-2102). Purified libraries were qualified on an Agilent Technologies 2200 TapeStation using a D1000 ScreenTape assay (cat\#\# 5067-5582 and 5067-5583). The molarity of adapter-modified molecules was defined by quantitative PCR using the Kapa Library Quant Kit (Kapa Biosystems; cat\# KK4824). Individual libraries were normalized to 10 nM and equal volumes were pooled in preparation for Illumina sequence analysis. Sequencing libraries (25 pM) were chemically denatured and applied to an Illumina HiSeq v4 single-read flow cell using an Illumina cBot. Hybridized molecules were clonally amplified and annealed to sequencing primers with reagents from a HiSeq SR Cluster Kit v4-cBot (Illumina; cat\# GD-401-4001). Following transfer of the flow cell to a HiSeq2500 instrument (Illumina; cat\#\# HCSv2.2.38 and RTA v1.18.61), a 50-cycle single-read sequence run was performed using HiSeq SBS Kit v4 sequencing reagents (Illumina; cat\# FC-401-4002). All library preparation and sequencing steps were carried out by the Huntsman Cancer Institute High-Throughput Genomics facility, University of Utah, USA. 3′RNA-Seq {#Sec25} --------- To characterize global changes in cleavage/polyadenylation patterns, aliquots of total RNA samples prepared as described in the RNA-Seq section were additionally analyzed using 3′-proximal RNA-Seq (3′RNA-Seq). In this case, sequencing-ready libraries were produced using a QuantSeq 3′ mRNA-Seq Library Prep Kit REV (Lexogen, cat\# 016.24) following standard procedures, as outlined in the corresponding user guide (Lexogen; <https://www.lexogen.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/015UG009V0241_QuantSeq_Illumina.pdf>) using 200 ng of total RNA as input and using indexed primers for multiplexing. Finished libraries were quality-controlled using a Bioanalyzer (Agilent), using the High Sensitivity DNA assay. Library concentrations were determined using a Qubit dsDNA HS assay (Thermo Fisher scientific, cat\# Q32851) and pooled for sequencing based on these quantifications. Sequencing was performed using an Illumina HiSeq2500 (v4) with SR75 High Output at the Vienna Biocenter Core Facilities. A custom sequencing primer (CSP) was used to sequence QuantSeq REV libraries. All library preparation and sequencing steps were carried out by the Lexogen GmbH service team, Austria. RAP-Seq {#Sec26} ------- RNA antisense purification (RAP) of formaldehyde-crosslinked samples was performed in principle as described^[@CR50]^. 3.5 × 10^6^ A2lox ESCs were plated in 10 cm gelatinized dishes in 10 ml of 2i medium and immediately transfected with 500 pmol of siRNAs premixed with 27 µl of Lipofectamine 2000 and 1.5 ml of Opti-MEM I. Medium was replaced once 24 h post-transfection and the culture was incubated for another 24 h. The cells (\~8 × 10^6^) were then washed once with 10 ml PBS and crosslinked with 7 ml of prewarmed 2% formaldehyde freshly diluted in PBS from 16% stock (Thermo Fischer Scientific, cat\# 28908) for 10 min at 37 °C with gentle rocking. Formaldehyde was quenched by adding 2.5 M glycine (Sigma, cat\# G8898-500G) to a final concentration of 500 mM and incubating the plate at 37 °C for 5 min. Cells were then washed three times with cold PBS and scrapped off the plate in 2 ml of ice-cold Scraping Buffer \[1 × PBS and 0.5% DNase/RNase-free BSA (Thermo Fischer Scientific, cat\# BP8805)\], centrifuged at 1000 × *g* at 4 °C for 5 min, resuspended in hypotonic cell lysis buffer \[10 mM HEPES pH 7.5 (Thermo Fischer Scientific, cat\# 15630056), 20 mM KCl (Sigma, cat\# P9541-1KG), 1.5 mM MgCl~2~ (Sigma, cat\# M8266-1KG), 0.5 mM EDTA (Thermo Fischer Scientific, cat\# R1021), 1 mM tris(2-carboxyethyl)phosphine (TCEP) (Sigma, cat\# 75259-1 G), and 0.5 mM PMSF\] and homogenized by douncing \~20 times with microtube pestles (STARLAB, cat\# I1415-5390). The lysates were centrifuged at 3300 × *g* for 7 min at 4 °C and the pellets containing nuclei were resuspended in 1 ml of GuSCN Hybridization Buffer (20 mM Tris-HCl pH 7.5, 7 mM EDTA, 3 mM EGTA (Sigma, cat\# E3889-10G), 150 mM LiCl (Sigma, cat\# 62476-100G-F), 1% NP-40 (Sigma, cat\# I8896-100ML), 0.2% *N*-lauroylsarcosine (Sigma, cat\# L7414-10ML), 0.1% sodium deoxycholate (Sigma, cat\# D6750-25G), 3 M guanidine thiocyanate (Sigma, cat\# G9277-100G), and 2.5 mM TCEP). We solubilized chromatin and fragmented RNA by sonicating the samples for 8 min using a Sonics Vibra-Cell VC130 Ultrasonic Processor equipped with a microtip, with pulser set to 10 s and the amplitude to 20. Lysates were centrifuged at 16,000 × *g* for 10 min at 4 °C and the supernatants were pre-cleared by incubating them for 30 min with MyONE Streptavidin C1 magnetic beads (100 μl original volume, compacted to 25 μl in GuSCN Hybridization Buffer; Thermo Fischer Scientific, cat\# 65001) followed by magnetic separation in a DynaMag-2 rack (Thermo Fischer Scientific, cat\# 12321D). Small aliquots (\~10 μl) of pre-cleared lysates were saved and used later as RNA input controls. For RAP, pre-cleared lysates from 5 × 10^6^ cells were hybridized with 50 pmol of biotinylated DNA oligonucleotide probe against U1 snRNA (Supplementary Data [7](#MOESM11){ref-type="media"}) at 37 °C for 2.5 h with shaking at 1200 r.p.m. in a Thermomixer Compact (Eppendorf). The mixtures were then combined with MyONE Streptavidin C1 magnetic beads (500 μl original volume, compacted to 125 μl in GuSCN Hybridization Buffer) and incubated at 37 °C for 30 min with shaking. The beads were washed at 45 °C with six changes of 500 μl GuSCN Wash Buffer (20 mM Tris-HCl pH 7.5, 10 mM EDTA, 1% NP-40, 0.2% *N*-lauroylsarcosine, 0.1% sodium deoxycyolate, 3 M guanidine thiocyanate, and 2.5 mM TCEP). We then washed the beads once in 500 μl of RNase H Elution Buffer (50 mM Tris-HCl pH 7.5, 75 mM NaCl, 3 mM MgCl~2~, 0.125% *N*-lauroylsarcosine, 0.025% sodium deoxycholate, 2.5 mM TCEP) and once in 100 μl of RNase H Elution Buffer. The beads were subsequently resuspended in 55 μl RNase H Elution Buffer mixed with 7.5 μl RNase H (5 units/μl; New England Biolabs, cat\# M0297S) and incubated at 37 °C for 30 min with shaking to digest ssDNA-RNA hybrids and release U1-associated RNAs. The resultant eluates were stored on ice. Second elution step was performed by resuspending the beads in 62.5 μl GuSCN Hybridization Buffer and shaking for 5 min at 37 °C. The first and second eluates were then combined. To reverse crosslinks, the combined eluates and RNA inputs were mixed with 312.5 μl NLS Elution Buffer (20 mM Tris-HCl pH 7.5, 10 mM EDTA, 2% *N*-lauroylsarcosine, 2.5 mM TCEP), 50 μl 5 M NaCl, and 12.5 μl Proteinase K (Thermo Fischer Scientific, cat\# EO0491) and incubated at 60 °C for 2 h. RNAs were then purified by mixing them with 40 μl of Dynabeads MyOne Silane beads (Thermo Fischer Scientific, cat\# 37002D) pre-rinsed in RLT buffer (QIAGEN, cat\# 79216) and resuspended in 50 μl 5 M NaCl. The suspensions were supplemented with 550 μl of 100% isopropanol, incubated for 2 min at room temperature, and magnetically separated. The beads were washed twice with 600 μl 70% ethanol and dried for 10 min. RNAs were eluted from the beads in 25 μl of nuclease-free water and treated with 2 units of TURBO DNAse in 1× TURBO DNAse buffer for 10 min at 37 °C, without removing the beads from the tubes. The RNAs were then bound to the beads once again by adding 87.5 μl RLT and 112.5 μl isopropanol. The beads were washed twice in 70% ethanol, air-dried and RNAs were eluted from the beads in 25 μl of nuclease-free water. RNAs were then processed using a NEBNext® rRNA Depletion Kit (New England Biolabs, cat\# E6350S) as recommended. RNA-Seq libraries were generated using NEBNext® Ultra8482 II Directional RNA Library Preparation kit (New England Biolabs, cat\# E7765S; following the protocol for rRNA Depleted FFPE/Strongly fragmented RNA). Individual libraries were normalized using Qubit, and their size profile was analyzed using TapeStation 4200. Individual libraries were normalized and pooled together accordingly. The pooled library was diluted to \~10 nM for storage. The 10 nM library was denatured and further diluted prior to loading on the sequencer. Paired-end sequencing was performed using a HiSeq4000 75 bp platform (Illumina, HiSeq 3000/4000 PE Cluster Kit and 150 cycle SBS Kit). All library sequencing steps were carried out by the Oxford Genomics Centre, University of Oxford, UK. Bioinformatics {#Sec27} -------------- All analyses were carried out using mm10 UCSC mouse genome and transcriptome files from Illumina (<https://support.illumina.com/sequencing/sequencing_software/igenome.html>) and UCSC Genome Browser (<http://genome.ucsc.edu/>). Canonical UCSC transcripts were used for most of the analyses (knownCanonical UCSC transcripts). Genomic intervals were analyzed using Bedtools or custom R-scripts. Duplicated features with identical genome positions and gene names were removed from the analyses. For differential gene expression analyses, RNA-Seq reads were aligned with HISAT2 (ref. ^[@CR74]^) using an mm10 UCSC-based genome index and a list of known splice junctions derived from the UCSC-based mm10 genes.gtf file (<ftp://igenome:[email protected]/Mus_musculus/UCSC/mm10/Mus_musculus_UCSC_mm10.tar.gz>). The alignment was done as follows: hisat2 -p \<n_threads\> \--rna-strandness F \--known-splicesite-infile \<hisat2_known_splice_sites.txt\> -x \<hisat2_genome_index\> -U file1.fastq -S file1.sam HISAT2-mapped reads were converted to BAM format using SAMtools^[@CR75]^ and assigned to annotated exons from the genes.gtf file using the featureCounts function of the Rsubread R/Bioconductor package^[@CR76]^ in a strand-specific manner. Differentially expressed genes were then identified using the edgeR package with the estimateGLMRobustDisp function^[@CR77],[@CR78]^. GO-term enrichment was calculated using the goseq package^[@CR79]^ with gene lengths taken into account. Venn diagrams and gene expression heat maps were generated using VennDiagram (<https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/VennDiagram/>) and pheatmap packages (<https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/pheatmap/>), respectively. RNA-Seq coverage metaplots were prepared using ngs.plot^[@CR80]^. Relative intron coverage (RIC) statistic was calculated as$$\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathrm{RIC}} = I/E,$$\end{document}$$where *I* is the total number of intronic reads and reads spanning junctions between the intron and the adjacent exons by ≥10 nt and *E* is the number of reads matching the adjacent exons and their splice junction. Reads were assigned to the *I* and *E* intervals using Bedtools^[@CR81]^. Statistical significance of RIC changes was assessed by two-tailed Fisher's exact test comparison of *I* and *E* values between two experimental conditions. Entries with *I* \< 5 and *E* \< 10 in both conditions were excluded from the analysis. FDR was calculated by adjusting the resultant *p* values using the Benjamini--Hochberg method. To analyze changes in cleavage/polyadenylation patterns, 3′-proximal RNA-Seq data were aligned to mm10 genome using Bowtie2 (ref. ^[@CR82]^) with trimming the first 12 nt to remove poly(A) tail-derived sequences: bowtie2 \--fast \--trim5 12 -N 1 -p \<n_threads\> -x \<Bowtie2_genome_index\> -U file1.fastq -S file1.sam Reads with high probability of being primed internally rather than at bona fide poly(A) tails were identified by inspecting corresponding genomic sequences. If 10 consecutive adenosines (with one mismatch allowed) were found within a 20-nt genomic window preceding the read, the read was discarded. The first 5′-terminal nucleotide of the remaining reads mapping to the genome was considered to match a CSs. Individual CSs were then clustered by merging positions spaced by ≤10 nt across all experimental samples. Clusters containing ≥3 reads in at least one sample were kept for further analyses. Clusters were allocated to known intronic and exonic features from the mm10 UCSC annotation using Bedtools. Incidence of PAS hexamers in a 50 nt window bounded by 40 nt upstream and 10 nt downstream of the middle of CS clusters was calculated using a custom Python script. Cleavage/polyadenylation clusters were considered novel if their middle was \>50 nt away from annotated cleavage/polyadenylation sites from the polyA_DB3 database^[@CR48]^ converted from mm9 to mm10 coordinates using USCS Genome Browser liftOver tool (<https://genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/hgLiftOver>). Relative cleavage/polyadenylation site efficiency (RCE) was calculated as$$\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathrm{{RCE}}} = \frac{{N_k}}{{\mathop {\sum }\nolimits_{i = 0}^n N_i}},$$\end{document}$$where *N*~*k*~ is the number of reads matching the cleavage/polyadenylation cluster *k* and *n* is the total number of reads mapping to cleavage/polyadenylation clusters in the same gene. Statistical significance of changes in cleavage/polyadenylation cluster usage was assessed using two-tailed Fisher\'s exact test by comparing *N*~*k*~ and $\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$(\mathop {\sum }\limits_{i = 0}^n N_i) - N_k$$\end{document}$ values between experimental conditions. FDR was calculated using the Benjamini--Hochberg method. We used RCE fold change and FDR values to shortlist significantly regulated CSs. In many cases, we aggregated RCE values for specific genomic ranges (e.g. first introns or 3′UTRs; Figs. [2](#Fig2){ref-type="fig"}c and [4b, c](#Fig4){ref-type="fig"} and Supplementary Figs. [4d](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"} and [10c](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}) and plotted a normalized difference in this statistic between experimental (e) and control (c) samples:$$\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathrm{\Delta }}{\mathrm{RCE}_{\mathrm{norm}}} = \frac{{\mathrm{{RCE}}_{\mathrm{e}}} - {\mathrm{{RCE}}_{\mathrm{c}}}}{{{\mathrm{{RCE}}_{\mathrm{e}}} + {\mathrm{{RCE}}_{\mathrm{c}}}}}.$$\end{document}$$ To generate metaplots for 3′RNA-Seq data (Supplementary Fig. [8a, b](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}), genomic regions of interest were split into equally sized bins and a normalized change in 3′-proximal read coverage was calculated for each bin as follows:$$\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$3'{\mathrm{{RC}}_{\mathrm{norm}}} = \frac{{{\mathrm{{RPM}}_{\mathrm{e}} - \mathrm{RPM}_{\mathrm{c}}}}}{{{\mathrm{{RPM}}_{\mathrm{e}} + \mathrm{RPM}_{\mathrm{c}}}}},$$\end{document}$$where RPM~e~ and RPM~c~ are bin-specific coverage data for experimental and control conditions. The bin-specific $\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$3^{\prime}{\mathrm{{RC}}_{\mathrm{norm}}}$$\end{document}$ values were then averaged across different genes and plotted after smoothing with Loess function in *R* (span = 0.15). A similar approach was used to prepare Supplementary Fig. [8c](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"} where we compared untransformed $\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$3^{\prime}{\mathrm{{RC}}_{\mathrm{norm}}}$$\end{document}$ values for 3′UTRs of individual genes. In cases where metaplots for sense and antisense strands had to be shown on the same graph, the antisense strand data were multiplied by −1. For RAP-Seq data analysis reads were aligned with Bowtie2 using an mm10 UCSC-based bowtie2 genome index as follows: bowtie2 \--fast -N 1 -p \<n_threads\> -x \<Bowtie2_genome_index\> -1 file1_1.fastq -2 file1_2.fastq -S file1.sam Aligned fragments were sorted and converted to genomic intervals using pairedBamToBed12 tool (<https://github.com/Population-Transcriptomics/pairedBamToBed12>). Fragments with mapping quality \<30 were discarded. Piranha peak caller^[@CR51]^ was used to identify RAP-Seq clusters interacting with U1 snRNA using corresponding input samples as a background: Piranha -o \<output_file\> -p 0.01 -a 0.85 -s -l -b 100 -i 100 RAP_1.bed Input_1.bed Only RAP-Seq clusters present in both replicates were considered for further analysis. Cluster density in specific genomic intervals was calculated using Bedtools. Alternatively, RAP-Seq signal was normalized to input using bamCompare function of the Deeptools package^[@CR83]^ as follows: bamCompare -b1 RAP1_merged.bam -b2 Input1_merged.bam \--normalizeUsing RPKM \--scaleFactorsMethod None \--numberOfProcessors \<n_threads\> \--binSize 25 \--operation log2 \--smoothLength 75 -o log2ratio25_RAP1.bw and visualized using IGV^[@CR84]^. To prepare metaplots for RAP-Seq data, genomic regions of interest were divided into 100 bins and the bamCompare-processed values were averaged for each bin using Bedtools and plotted as mean ± SEM. PhastCons data for placental mammals^[@CR52]^ were downloaded from UCSC Genome Browser (<http://hgdownload.cse.ucsc.edu/goldenpath/mm10/phastCons60way/mm10.60way.phastCons60wayPlacental.bw>) and average PhastCons scores were calculated for 50 nt windows bounded by 40 nt upstream and 10 nt downstream of the middle of CS clusters. RepeatMasker data for RTEs were retrieved from UCSC Genome Browser. RTE consensus sequences were obtained from <https://www.girinst.org/repbase/>. To generate RTE density metaplots, 2 kb windows centered on the middle of CS clusters were divided into 100 bins and SINE, LINE and LTR coverage for each bin was calculated using Bedtools and plotted as mean ± SEM. Divergence of individual RTEs from consensus sequence was assessed using RepeatMasker milliDiv statistic (base mismatches in parts per thousand; <http://www.repeatmasker.org>). Clustal Omega (<https://www.ebi.ac.uk/Tools/msa/clustalo/>) and EMBOSS Matcher (<https://www.ebi.ac.uk/Tools/psa/emboss_matcher/nucleotide.html>) were used to generate multiple and pairwise DNA sequence alignments, respectively. Strength of putative U1-binding motifs was estimated using MaxEntScan::score5ss^[@CR85]^. Statistical analyses {#Sec28} -------------------- Unless stated otherwise, all statistical procedures were performed in R, and experimental data were averaged from at least three experiments and shown with error bars representing SD. Data obtained from RT-qPCR and immunoblot quantifications, were typically analyzed using a two-tailed Student's t-test assuming unequal variances. Correlation analyses were done using Pearson's product--moment and Spearman and Kendall's rank correlation methods, as specified in the text. Genome-wide data were typically compared using two-tailed Wilcoxon rank sum test (for non-paired count data), two-tailed Wilcoxon signed rank test (for paired count data), or two-tailed Fisher's exact test (for categorical data). Where necessary, *p* values were adjusted for multiple testing using Benjamini--Hochberg correction (FDR). Numbers of experimental replicates, *p* values, and the tests used are indicated in the figures and/or figure legends. Reporting summary {#Sec29} ----------------- Further information on research design is available in the [Nature Research Reporting Summary](#MOESM3){ref-type="media"} linked to this article. Supplementary information ========================= {#Sec30} Supplementary Information Peer Review Reporting Summary Description of Additional Supplementary Files Supplementary Data 1 Supplementary Data 2 Supplementary Data 3 Supplementary Data 4 Supplementary Data 5 Supplementary Data 6 Supplementary Data 7 Source data {#Sec31} =========== Source Data **Peer review information** *Nature Communications* thanks Yangming Wang, Xuebing Wu and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available. **Publisher's note** Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Supplementary information ========================= **Supplementary information** is available for this paper at 10.1038/s41467-019-14204-z. We thank Carolina Barcellos Machado, Georgii Bazykin, Fursham Hamid, Michael Kyba, Ivo Lieberam, Stefan Mockenhaupt, Karen Yap, Feng Zhang, and Anna Zhuravskaya for reagents and helpful discussions. We are also grateful to Snezhka Oliferenko for valuable comments on the manuscript. This work was supported by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/M001199/1, BB/M007103/1, and BB/R001049/1) and European Commission (H2020-MSCA-RISE-2016; Project ID 734791). Y.A.K. designed and conducted the experiments, analyzed the data, and wrote the paper. E.V.M. designed experiments, analyzed the data, and wrote the paper. A reporting summary for this article is available as a Supplementary Information file. The RNA-Seq, 3′RNA-Seq, and RAP-Seq data generated in this study are available from ArrayExpress (E-MTAB-7626, E-MTAB-7635). Publicly available sequencing data used in our study are summarized in Supplementary Data [5](#MOESM9){ref-type="media"}. The source data underlying Figs. [1](#MOESM12){ref-type="media"}b, c, e--g, [2](#MOESM12){ref-type="media"}d, [3](#MOESM12){ref-type="media"}b--e, [4](#MOESM12){ref-type="media"}d--f, [5e](#MOESM12){ref-type="media"} and [6a, c](#MOESM12){ref-type="media"} and Supplementary Figs. [1a](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}, b, [2c](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}, [5c](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}, [6a](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}--e, [7e](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}, f, [8](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}d, e, [10](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}d--f, [11](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"}a and [12a--d](#MOESM1){ref-type="media"} are provided as a Source Data file. All data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Computer code used in this study is described in the Methods and Supplementary Data [5](#MOESM9){ref-type="media"}. The authors declare no competing interests.

Konju Konju is a village in Toila Parish, Ida-Viru County in northeastern Estonia. Category:Villages in Ida-Viru County

--- abstract: 'We study the relationship between catastrophic forgetting and properties of task sequences. In particular, given a sequence of tasks, we would like to understand which properties of this sequence influence the error rates of continual learning algorithms trained on the sequence. To this end, we propose a new procedure that makes use of recent developments in task space modeling as well as correlation analysis to specify and analyze the properties we are interested in. As an application, we apply our procedure to study two properties of a task sequence: (1) total complexity and (2) sequential heterogeneity. We show that error rates are strongly and positively correlated to a task sequence’s total complexity for some state-of-the-art algorithms. We also show that, surprisingly, the error rates have no or even negative correlations in some cases to sequential heterogeneity. Our findings suggest directions for improving continual learning benchmarks and methods.' author: - | Cuong V. Nguyen$^\dagger$, Alessandro Achille$^\dagger$, Michael Lam$^\dagger$, Tal Hassner$^\ddagger$[^1],\ Vijay Mahadevan$^\dagger$, Stefano Soatto$^\dagger$\ $^\dagger$Amazon Web Services\ [{nguycuo,aachille,michlam,vmahad,soattos}@amazon.com]{}\ $^\ddagger$Facebook Inc.\ [{talhassner}@gmail.com]{} bibliography: - 'continual\_task.bib' title: Toward Understanding Catastrophic Forgetting in Continual Learning --- Introduction {#sec:intro} ============ Continual learning (or life-long learning) [@ring1997child; @schlimmer1986case; @sutton1993online] is the ability of a machine learning model to continuously learn from a stream of data, which could possibly be non-iid or come from different but related tasks. A continual learning system is required to adapt its current model to the new tasks or datasets without revisiting the previous data. Such a system should be able to positively transfer its current knowledge (summarized in its model) to the new tasks using as few data as possible, to avoid catastrophically forgetting the old tasks, and to transfer back its knowledge from new tasks to old tasks in order to improve overall performance. In recent years, interest in continual learning has risen [@achille2018life; @kirkpatrick2017overcoming; @li2018learning; @lopez2017gradient; @nguyen2018variational; @schwarz2018progress; @serra2018overcoming; @shin2017continual; @zenke2017continual], especially from the deep learning research community, due to its potential to reduce training time and training set sizes (e.g., by continuously adapting from previous models), both of which are critical to the training of modern deep neural networks. Solving continual learning is also an essential step toward artificial general intelligence as it allows machines to continuously adapt to changes in the environment with minimal human intervention, a process analogous to human learning. However, continual learning by deep models has proven to be very challenging due to [*catastrophic forgetting*]{}, a long known problem of training deep neural networks [@ans1997avoiding; @ans2000neural; @french1999catastrophic; @goodfellow2013empirical; @mccloskey1989catastrophic; @ratcliff1990connectionist; @robins1995catastrophic]. Catastrophic forgetting refers to the tendency of a model to forget all its previously learned tasks if not trained properly on a new task, e.g., when fine-tuning on the new task for a long time without proper regularization to the previous model parameters. Recent work attempted to tackle this problem either by better training algorithms [@kirkpatrick2017overcoming; @lee2017overcoming; @ritter2018online; @zenke2017continual], structure sharing [@rusu2016progressive; @sharif2014cnn; @yoon2018lifelong], episodic memory [@chaudhry2019efficient; @lopez2017gradient; @nguyen2018variational], machine-generated pseudo-data [@isele2018selective; @li2018learning; @shin2017continual], or a combination of these approaches [@nguyen2018variational; @schwarz2018progress]. Benchmarks to compare these methods typically constructed a sequence of tasks and then measured the algorithms’ performance when transferring from one task to another. Two popular examples of these benchmarks are the [*permuted MNIST*]{} [@goodfellow2013empirical] and [*split MNIST*]{} [@zenke2017continual]. In this paper, we seek to understand catastrophic forgetting at a more fundamental level. Specifically, we investigate the following question: *Given a sequence of tasks, which properties of the tasks influence the hardness of the entire sequence?* We measure [*task sequence hardness*]{} by the final error rate of a model trained sequentially on the tasks in the sequence. An answer to this question is useful for continual learning research in several ways. First, it helps us estimate the hardness of a benchmark based on its individual tasks, thereby potentially assisting the development of new and better benchmarks for continual learning. Additionally, knowing the hardness of a task sequence allows us to estimate a priori the cost and limits of running continual learning algorithms on it. Crucially, by gaining a better understanding of catastrophic forgetting at a more fundamental level, we gain more insights to develop better methods to mitigate it. This work is the first attempt to answer the above question. We propose a new and general procedure that can be applied to study the relationship between catastrophic forgetting and properties of task sequences. Our procedure makes use of recent developments in task space modeling methods, such as the *Task2Vec* framework [@achille2019task2vec], to specify the interested properties. Then, we apply correlation analysis to study the relationship between the specified properties and the actual measures of catastrophic forgetting. As an application, we use our procedure to analyze two properties of a task sequence—*total complexity* and *sequential heterogeneity*—and design experiments to study their correlations with the sequence’s actual hardness. We refer to total complexity as the total hardness of individual tasks in the sequence, while sequential heterogeneity measures the total dissimilarity between pairs of consecutive tasks. We show how these two properties are estimated using the Task2Vec framework [@achille2019task2vec], which maps datasets (or equivalently, tasks) to vectors on a vector space. We choose these two properties for our analysis because of their intuitive relationships to the hardness of task sequences: since continual learning algorithms attempt to transfer knowledge from one task to another, both the hardness of each individual task and the dissimilarity between them should play a role in determining the effectiveness of the transfer. The findings from our analysis are summarized below. - Total complexity has a *strong correlation* with the task sequence hardness measured by the actual error rate. - Sequential heterogeneity has *little or no correlation* with the task sequence hardness. When factoring out the task complexity, we even find negative correlations in some cases. The first finding, although expected, emphasizes that we should take into account the complexity of each task when designing new algorithms or benchmarks, which is currently lacking in continual learning research. Besides, the research community is currently somewhat divided on the issue whether task similarity helps or hurts continual learning performance. Some authors showed that task similarity helps improve performance in the context of transfer learning [@achille2019task2vec; @ammar2014automated; @ruder2017learning], while some others conjectured that task dissimilarity could help improve continual learning performance [@farquhar2018towards]. Our second finding gives evidence that supports the latter view. Deeper analysis into these phenomena suggests that (a) the task sequence hardness also depends on the ability to backward transfer (i.e., learning a new task helps a previous task) and (b) continual learning algorithms should be customized for specific task pairs to improve their effectiveness. We give detailed analysis and discussions in Sec. \[sec:discuss\]. Continual learning algorithms and existing benchmarks {#sec:cl} ===================================================== We overview modern continual learning algorithms and existing benchmarks used to evaluate them. For more comprehensive reviews of continual learning, we refer to Chen et al. [@chen2016lifelong] and Parisi et al. [@parisi2018continual] Continual learning algorithms ----------------------------- The simplest and most common approaches to continual learning use weight regularization to prevent catastrophic forgetting. Weight regularization adds a regularizer to the likelihood during training to pull the new weights toward the previous weights. It has been improved and applied to continual learning of deep networks in the elastic weight consolidation (EWC) algorithm [@kirkpatrick2017overcoming], where the regularizer is scaled by the diagonal of the Fisher information matrix computed from the previous task. Since the diagonal Fisher information approximates the average Hessian of the likelihoods, EWC is closely related to Laplace propagation [@huszar2018note; @eskin2004laplace], where Laplace’s approximation is applied after each task to compute the regularizers. Besides Fisher information, the path integral of the gradient vector field along the parameter optimization trajectory can also be used for the regularizer, as in the synaptic intelligence (SI) approach [@zenke2017continual]. Another form of regularization naturally arises by using Bayesian methods. For instance, variational continual learning (VCL) [@nguyen2018variational; @swaroop2018improving] applied a sequence of variational approximations to the true posterior and used the current approximate posterior as prior for the new task. The Kullback-Leibler term in the variational lower bound of VCL naturally regularizes the approximate posterior toward the prior. Improved training procedures have also been developed for this type of approximate Bayesian continual learning through the use of natural gradients [@chen2018facilitating; @tseran2018natural], fixed-point updates [@zeno2018task], and local approximation [@bui2018partitioned]. More expressive classes of variational distributions were also considered, including channel factorized Gaussian [@kochurov2018bayesian], multiplicative normalizing flow [@kochurov2018bayesian], or structured Laplace approximations [@ritter2018online]. The above methods can be complemented by an episodic memory, sometimes called a [*coreset*]{}, which stores a subset of previous data. Several algorithms have been developed for utilizing coresets, including gradient episodic memory (GEM) [@lopez2017gradient], averaged GEM [@chaudhry2019efficient], coreset VCL [@nguyen2018variational], and Stein gradients coreset [@chen2018facilitating]. Other algorithmic ideas to prevent catastrophic forgetting include moment matching [@lee2017overcoming], learning without forgetting [@li2018learning], and deep generative replay [@farquhar2018towards; @kamra2017deep; @shin2017continual]. Structure sharing [@rusu2016progressive; @schwarz2018progress] is also another promising direction that can be combined with the above algorithmic solutions to improve continual learning. Existing benchmarks {#sec:existingdb} ------------------- The most common benchmarks for continual learning use MNIST [@lecun2010mnist] as the base dataset and construct various task sequences for continual learning. For example, permuted MNIST [@goodfellow2013empirical] applies a fixed random permutation on the pixels of MNIST input images for each task, creating a sequence of tasks that keep the original labels but have different input structures. Split MNIST [@zenke2017continual], on the other hand, considers five consecutive binary classification tasks based on MNIST: 0/1, 2/3, …, 8/9. Another variant is rotated MNIST [@lopez2017gradient], where the digits are rotated by a fixed angle between 0 and 180 degrees in each task. Similar constructions can also be applied to the not-MNIST set [@notMNIST], the fashion MNIST set [@xiao2017fashion], or the CIFAR set [@krizhevsky2009learning] such as in the split not-MNIST [@nguyen2018variational] and split CIFAR benchmarks [@zenke2017continual]. Other continual learning benchmarks include ones typically used for reinforcement learning. For instance, Kirkpatrick et al. [@kirkpatrick2017overcoming] tested the performance of EWC when learning to play Atari games. Schwarz et al. [@schwarz2018towards] proposed a new benchmark for continual learning based on the StarCraft II video game, where an agent must master a sequence of skills without forgetting the previously acquired skills. Analysis of catastrophic forgetting {#sec:analysis} =================================== Recent developments in task space modeling, such as Task2Vec [@achille2019task2vec] and Taskonomy [@zamir2018taskonomy], provide excellent tools to specify and analyze relationships between different tasks from data. In this paper, we propose a novel and general procedure that utilizes these tools to study catastrophic forgetting. Our procedure is conceptually simple and can be summarized in the following steps: 1. *Specify the properties* of a task sequence that we are interested in and *estimate these properties* using a suitable task space modeling methods. 2. *Estimate actual measures of catastrophic forgetting* from real experiments. In our case, we measure catastrophic forgetting by the task sequence hardness, defined as the final error rate of a model trained sequentially on the sequence. 3. Use *correlation analysis* to study the correlations between the estimated properties in Step 1 and the actual measures in Step 2. This procedure can be used even in other cases, such as transfer or multi-task learning, to study properties of new algorithms. For the rest of this paper, we demonstrate its use for analyzing two properties of task sequences and their effects on continual learning algorithms. Total complexity and sequential heterogeneity of task sequences {#sec:task_eval} =============================================================== We define two properties that we would like to investigate: the *total complexity* and *sequential heterogeneity* of a task sequence, and detail the methodology used to estimate these quantities from data. We start by first introducing the Task2Vec framework [@achille2019task2vec], the main tool that we employ to quantify the above properties. Preliminaries: Task2Vec {#sec:task2vec} ----------------------- Task2Vec [@achille2019task2vec] is a recently developed framework for embedding visual classification tasks as vectors in a real vector space. The embeddings have many desirable properties that allow reasoning about the semantic and taxonomic relations between different visual tasks. This is one of several recent attempts to provide tools for understanding the structure of task space. Other related efforts that can be used as alternatives to Task2Vec include, e.g., [@edwards2016towards; @tran2019transferability; @zamir2018taskonomy]. Given a labeled classification dataset, $\mathcal{D} = \{ (x_i, y_i) \}_{i=1}^N$, Task2Vec works as follows. First, a network pre-trained on a large dataset (e.g., ImageNet), called the probe network, is applied to all the images $x_i$ in the dataset to extract the features from the last hidden layer (i.e., the value vectors returned by this layer). Using these features as new inputs and the labels $y_i$, we then train the classification layer for the task. After the training, we compute the Fisher information matrix for the feature extractor parameters. Since the Fisher information matrix is very large for deep networks, in practice we usually approximate it by (1) using only the diagonal entries and (2) averaging the Fisher information of all weights in the same filter. This results in a vector representation with size equal to the number of filters in the probe network. In this paper, we will use a ResNet [@he2016deep] probe network that only has convolutional layers. Task2Vec embeddings have many properties that can be used to study the relationships between tasks. We discuss two properties that are most relevant to our work. The first of these properties is that the norms of the embeddings encode the difficulty of the tasks. This property can be explained intuitively by noticing that easy examples (those that the model is very confident about) have less contributions to the Fisher information while uncertain examples (those that are near the decision boundary) have more contributions. Hence, if the task is difficult, the model would be uncertain on many examples leading to a large embedding. The second property that we are interested in is that Task2Vec embeddings can encode the similarity between tasks. Achille et al. [@achille2019task2vec] empirically showed this effect on the iNaturalist dataset [@zhang2017imaterialist], where the distances between Task2Vec embeddings strongly agree with the distances between natural taxonomical orders, hinting that the dissimilarity between tasks can be approximated from the distance between them in the embedding space. The embeddings were also shown to be useful for model selection between different domains and tasks. Total complexity {#sec:total} ---------------- We now discuss the notions of total complexity and sequential heterogeneity of task sequences, and how we can estimate them from Task2Vec embeddings. We note that these definitions only capture specific aspects of sequence complexity and heterogeneity; however, they are enough to serve the purpose of our paper. In future work, we will consider more sophisticated definitions of sequence complexity and heterogeneity. We define the total complexity of a task sequence as the sum of the complexities of its individual tasks. Formally, let ${ T = (t_1, t_2, \ldots, t_k) }$ be a sequence of $k$ *distinct* tasks and $C(t)$ be a function measuring the complexity of a task $t$. The total complexity of the task sequence $T$ is: $$C(T) = \sum_{i=1}^k C(t_i).\label{eq:totalcomplex}$$ We slightly abuse notation by using the same function $C(\cdot)$ for the complexity of both sequences and tasks. For simplicity, we only consider sequences of distinct tasks where data for each task are only observed once. The scenario where data for one task may be observed many times requires different definitions of total complexity and sequential heterogeneity. We will leave this extension to future work. A simple way to estimate the complexity $C(t)$ of a task $t$ is to measure the error rate of a model trained for this task. However, this method often gives unreliable estimates since it depends on various factors such as the choice of model and the training algorithm. In this work, we propose to estimate $C(t)$ from the Task2Vec embedding of task $t$. Specifically, we adopt the suggestion from Achille et al. [@achille2019task2vec] to measure the complexity of task $t$ by its distance to the trivial task (i.e., the task embedded at the origin for standard Fisher embedding) in the embedding space. That is, $$C(t) = d(e_t, e_0),$$ where $e_t$ and $e_0$ are the embeddings of task $t$ and the trivial task respectively, and $d(\cdot, \cdot)$ is a symmetric distance between two tasks in the embedding space. Following Achille et al. [@achille2019task2vec], we choose $d(\cdot, \cdot)$ to be the normalized cosine distance: $$d(e_1, e_2) = \cos\left(\frac{e_1}{e_1 + e_2}, \frac{e_2}{e_1 + e_2}\right),\label{eq:dist}$$ where $e_1$ and $e_2$ are two task embeddings and the division is element-wise. This distance was shown to be well correlated with natural distances between tasks [@achille2019task2vec]. The total complexity in Eq.  depends on the sequence length. We can also consider the total complexity per task, $C(T)/k$, which does not depend on sequence length. In our analysis, however, we will only consider sequences of the same length. Hence, our results are not affected whether total complexity or total complexity per task is used. We note that our total complexity measure is very crude and only captures some aspects of task sequence complexity. However, as we will show in Sec. \[sec:results\], our measure is positively correlated with catastrophic forgetting and thus can be used to explain catastrophic forgetting. A possible future research direction would be to design better measures of task sequence complexity that can better explain catastrophic forgetting (i.e., by giving better correlation scores). Sequential heterogeneity ------------------------ We define the sequential heterogeneity of a task sequence as the sum of the dissimilarities between all pairs of consecutive tasks in the sequence. Formally, for a task sequence ${ T = (t_1, t_2, \ldots, t_k) }$ of distinct tasks, its sequential heterogeneity is: $$F(T) = \sum_{i=1}^{k-1} F(t_i, t_{i+1}),\label{eq:seqhet}$$ where $F(t, t')$ is a function measuring the dissimilarity between tasks $t$ and $t'$. Note that we also use the same notation $F(\cdot)$ for sequential heterogeneity and task dissimilarity here, but its interpretation should be clear from the context. The dissimilarity $F(t, t')$ can be naively estimated by applying transfer learning algorithms and measuring how well we can transfer between the two tasks. However, this would give a tautological measure of dissimilarity that is affected by both the model choice and the choice of the transfer learning algorithm. To avoid this problem, we also propose to estimate $F(t, t')$ from the Task2Vec embedding. For our purpose, it is clear that we can use the distance $d(\cdot, \cdot)$ of Eq.  as an estimate for $F(\cdot, \cdot)$. That is, $$F(t, t') = d(e_t, e_{t'}) = \cos\left(\frac{e_t}{e_t + e_{t'}}, \frac{e_{t'}}{e_t + e_{t'}}\right).$$ The sequential heterogeneity in Eq.  only considers pairs of consecutive tasks, under the assumption that catastrophic forgetting is mostly influenced by the dissimilarity between these task pairs. In general, we can define other measures of heterogeneity, such as the total dissimilarity between all pairs of tasks. We will leave these extensions to future work. Our choice of using Task2Vec to estimate $C(T)$ and $F(T)$ is more compatible with the multi-head models for continual learning [@nguyen2018variational; @zenke2017continual], which we will use in our experiments. In multi-head models, a separate last layer (the SoftMax layer) is trained for each different task and the other weights are shared among tasks. This setting is consistent with the way Task2Vec is constructed in many cases. For instance, if we have two binary classification tasks whose labels are reversed, they would be considered similar by Task2Vec and are indeed very easy to transfer from one to another in the multi-head setting, by changing only the head. Correlation analysis {#sec:corr} ==================== Having defined total complexity and sequential heterogeneity, we now discuss how we can study their relationships to the hardness of a task sequence. Given a task sequence $T = (t_1, t_2, \ldots, t_k)$, we measure its actual hardness with respect to a continual learning algorithm $A$ by the final error rate obtained after running $A$ on the tasks $t_1, t_2, \ldots, t_k$ sequentially. That is, the hardness of $T$ with respect to $A$ is: $$H_A(T) = \mathrm{err}_A(T). \label{eq:hard}$$ In this paper, we choose final error rate as the measure of actual hardness as it is an important metric commonly used to evaluate continual learning algorithms. In future work, we will explore other metrics such as the forgetting rate [@chaudhry2018riemannian]. To analyze the relationships between the hardness and total complexity or sequential heterogeneity, we employ correlation analysis as the main statistical tool. In particular, we sample $M$ task sequences $T_1, T_2, \ldots, T_M$ and compute their hardness measures $( H_A(T_i) )_{i=1}^M$ as well as their total complexity $( C(T_i) )_{i=1}^M$ and sequential heterogeneity $( F(T_i) )_{i=1}^M$ measures. From these measures, we compute the Pearson correlation coefficients between hardness and total complexity measures or between hardness and sequential heterogeneity measures. These coefficients tell us how correlated these quantities are. Formally, the Pearson correlation coefficient between two corresponding sets of measures $X = ( X_i )_{i=1}^M$ and ${Y = ( Y_i )_{i=1}^M}$ is defined as: $$r_{XY} = \frac{\sum_{i=1}^M (X_i - \bar{X}) (Y_i - \bar{Y})}{\sqrt{\sum_{i=1}^M (X_i - \bar{X})^2} \sqrt{\sum_{i=1}^M (Y_i - \bar{Y})^2}},$$ where $\bar{X}$ and $\bar{Y}$ are the means of $X$ and $Y$ respectively. In addition to the correlation coefficients, we can also compute the p-values, which tell us how statistically significant these correlations are. When computing the correlations between the hardness measures $H_A(T_i)$ and the total complexities $C(T_i)$, it is often a good idea to constrain the task sequences $T_i$ to have the same length. The reason for this normalization is that longer sequences tend to have larger complexities, thus the correlation may be biased by the sequence lengths rather than reflecting the complexity of individual tasks. Similarly, when computing the correlations between $H_A(T_i)$ and the sequential heterogeneity $F(T_i)$, it is also a good idea to constrain the total complexity of the task sequences $T_i$ to be the same, so that the individual tasks’ complexities would not affect the correlations. This can be achieve by using the same set of individual tasks for all the sequences (i.e., the sequences are permutations of each other). We call the sequential heterogeneity obtained from this method the *normalized sequential heterogeneity*. Experiments {#sec:exp} =========== We next describe the settings of our experiments and discuss our results. More detailed discussions on the implications of these results to continual learning and catastrophic forgetting research are provided in Sec. \[sec:discuss\]. Settings {#sec:settings} -------- [[**Datasets and task construction.**]{}]{} We conduct our experiments on two datasets: MNIST and CIFAR-10, which are the most common datasets used to evaluate continual learning algorithms. For each of these sets, we construct a more general *split* version as follows. First, we consider all pairs of different labels as a unit binary classification task, resulting in a total of 45 unit tasks. From these unit tasks, we then create 120 task sequences of length five by randomly drawing, for each sequence, five unit tasks without replacement. We also construct 120 *split* task sequences which are permutations of a fixed task set containing five random unit tasks to compute the normalized sequential heterogeneity. For each unit task, we train its Task2Vec embedding using a ResNet18 [@he2016deep] probe network pre-trained on a combined dataset containing both MNIST and CIFAR-10. [[**Algorithms and network architectures.**]{}]{} We choose two recent continual learning algorithms to analyze in our experiments: synaptic intelligence (SI) [@zenke2017continual] and variational continual learning (VCL) [@nguyen2018variational]. For the experiments on MNIST, we also consider the coreset version of VCL (coreset VCL). These algorithms are among the state-of-the-art continual learning algorithms on the considered datasets, with SI representing the regularization-based methods, VCL representing the Bayesian methods, and coreset VCL combining Bayesian and rehearsal methods. On CIFAR-10, we run SI with the same network architecture as those considered in [@zenke2017continual]: a CNN with four convolutional layers, followed by two dense layers with dropout. Since VCL was not originally developed with convolutional layers, we flatten the input images and train with a fully connected network containing four hidden layers, each of which has 256 hidden units. On MNIST, we run both SI and VCL with a fully connected network containing two hidden layers, each of which has 256 hidden units. We denote this setting by MNIST-$256^2$. Since MNIST is a relatively easy dataset, we may not observe meaningful results if all the errors obtained from different sequences are low and not very different. Thus, to make the dataset harder for the learning algorithms, we also consider smaller network architectures. In particular, we consider fully connected networks with a [*single*]{} hidden layer, containing either 50 hidden units (for MNIST-$50$) or 20 hidden units (for MNIST-$20$). Following [@nguyen2018variational; @zenke2017continual], we also use the multi-head version of the models where a separate last layer (the SoftMax layer) is trained for each different task and the other weights are shared among tasks. For coreset VCL, we use random coresets with sizes 40, 40, 20 for MNIST-$256^2$, MNIST-$50$ and MNIST-$20$ respectively. [[**Optimizer settings.**]{}]{} For both SI and VCL, we set the regularization strength parameter to the default value $\lambda=1$. In all of our experiments, the models are trained using Adam optimizer [@kingma2014adam] with learning rate 0.001. Similar to [@zenke2017continual], we set the batch size to be 256 in CIFAR-10 and 64 in MNIST settings for SI. We run this algorithm for 60, 10, 10, 5 epochs per task on CIFAR-10, MNIST-$256^2$, MNIST-$50$ and MNIST-$20$ respectively. For VCL and coreset VCL, we set the batch size to be the training set size [@nguyen2018variational] and run the algorithms for 50, 120, 50, 20 epochs per task on CIFAR-10, MNIST-$256^2$, MNIST-$50$ and MNIST-$20$ respectively. For all algorithms, we run each setting ten times using different random seeds and average their errors to get the final error rates. Results {#sec:results} ------- -0.3in -- ----------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------ {width="25.00000%"} {width="25.00000%"} {width="25.00000%"} {width="25.00000%"} {width="25.00000%"} {width="25.00000%"} \(a) Total complexity \(b) Sequential heterogeneity \(c) Normalized sequential heterogeneity -- ----------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------ -0.1cm 0.2cm --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Variable Algorithm MNIST-$256^2$ MNIST-$50$ MNIST-$20$ CIFAR-10 ----------------- ---------- ----------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------ ------------ ---------- [(a)]{.nodecor} Total SI **[0.24]{} ($p<0.01$) & **[0.22]{} ($p<0.05$) & **[0.36]{} ($p<0.01$) & **[0.86]{} ($p<0.01$)\ & Complexity & VCL & 0.05 ($p=0.59$) & 0.17 ($p=0.07$) & **[0.21]{} ($p<0.05$) & **[0.69]{} ($p<0.01$)\ & & Coreset VCL & **[0.28]{} ($p<0.01$) & **[0.41]{} ($p<0.01$) & **[0.37]{} ($p<0.01$) & -\ [(b)]{.nodecor} & Sequential & SI & -0.01 ($p=0.86$) & 0.05 ($p=0.55$) & 0.07 ($p=0.48$) & **[0.30]{} ($p<0.01$)\ & Heterogeneity & VCL & 0.04 ($p=0.69$) & 0.01 ($p=0.88$) & 0.05 ($p=0.58$) & **[0.21]{} ($p<0.05$)\ & & Coreset VCL & 0.09 ($p=0.31$) & 0.12 ($p=0.18$) & 0.18 ($p=0.05$) & -\ [(c)]{.nodecor} & Normalized & SI & -0.07 ($p=0.43$) & -0.04 ($p=0.65$) & 0.05 ($p=0.58$) & **[-0.25]{} ($p<0.01$)\ & Sequential & VCL & 0.03 ($p=0.76$) & **[-0.20]{} ($p<0.05$) & **[-0.21]{} ($p<0.05$) & -0.17 ($p=0.06$)\ & Heterogeneity & Coreset VCL & -0.08 ($p=0.37$) & **[-0.26]{} ($p<0.01$) & -0.16 ($p=0.07$) & -\ ****************************** --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tables \[tab:result\](a–c) show the correlation coefficients and their p-values obtained from our experiments for the total complexity, sequential heterogeneity, and normalized sequential heterogeneity, respectively. We also show the scatter plots of the errors versus these quantities, together with the linear regression fits for the CIFAR-10 dataset in Fig. \[fig:cifar\]. All plots in the experiments, including those for the MNIST dataset, are provided in Fig. \[fig:complexity\], \[fig:hete\], and \[fig:norm-hete\]. Table \[tab:result\](a) and Fig. \[fig:cifar\](a) show strong positive correlations between error rate and total complexity for both SI and VCL in the CIFAR-10 setting, with a correlation coefficient of 0.86 for the former algorithm and 0.69 for the latter. These correlations are both statistically significant with p-values less than 0.01. On the MNIST-$256^2$ settings, SI and coreset VCL have weak positive correlations with total complexity, where the algorithms have correlation coefficients of 0.24 and 0.28, both with p-values less than 0.01, respectively. When we reduce the capacity of the network and make the problem relatively harder (i.e., in the MNIST-$50$ and MNIST-$20$ settings), we observe stronger correlations for all three algorithms. With the smallest network (in MNIST-$20$), all the algorithms have statistically significant positive correlation with total complexity. In terms of sequential heterogeneity, Table \[tab:result\](b) and Fig. \[fig:cifar\](b) show that it has a weak positive correlation with error rate in the CIFAR-10 setting. In particular, SI and VCL have correlation coefficients of 0.30 and 0.21 (both statistically significant), respectively. Interestingly, we find no significant correlation between error rate and sequential heterogeneity in all the MNIST settings, which suggests that heterogeneity may not be a significant factor determining the performance of continual learning algorithms on this dataset. Since the complexity of each individual task in a sequence may influence the heterogeneity between the tasks (e.g., an easy task may be more similar to another easy task than to a hard task), the complexity may indirectly affect the results in Table \[tab:result\](b). To avoid this problem, we also look at the normalized sequential heterogeneity in Table \[tab:result\](c) and Fig \[fig:cifar\](c), where the set of tasks is fixed and thus task complexity has been factored out. Surprisingly, Table \[tab:result\](c) reports some negative correlations between error rate and sequential heterogeneity. For example, the correlation coefficient for SI on CIFAR-10 is -0.25 with a p-value less than 0.01, while there is no significant correlation for this algorithm on the MNIST dataset. VCL, on the other hand, has negative correlations with coefficients -0.20 and -0.21, respectively on MNIST-$50$ and MNIST-$20$, with p-values less than 0.05. Coreset VCL also has negative correlation between its error rate and sequential heterogeneity on MNIST-$50$, with coefficient -0.26 and p-value less than 0.01. These unexpected results suggest that in some cases, dissimilarity between tasks may even help continual learning algorithms, a fact contrary to the common assumption that the performance of continual learning algorithms would degrade if the tasks they need to solve are very different [@ammar2014automated; @ruder2017learning]. Discussions {#sec:discuss} =========== -0.2in {width="\textwidth"} ![[**Average error rates of VCL, coreset VCL and SI**]{} on 3 task sequences from MNIST with different complexity levels. The high complexity sequence contains the binary tasks 0/1, 2/5, 3/5, 2/3, 2/6 with total complexity 0.48, while the low complexity sequence contains the tasks 0/1, 1/8, 1/3, 1/5, 7/8 with total complexity 0.35. The standard sequence contains the common split 0/1, 2/3, 4/5, 6/7, 8/9 with total complexity 0.41.[]{data-label="fig:mnist3"}](figs/mnist_3_tasks.pdf){width="\linewidth"} [[**On total complexity.**]{}]{} The strong positive correlations between error rate and total complexity found in our analysis show that task complexity is an important factor in determining the effectiveness of continual learning algorithms. However, this factor is usually not taken into consideration when designing new algorithms or benchmarks. We suggest that task complexity is explicitly considered to improve algorithm and benchmark design. For example, different transfer methods can be used depending on whether one transfers from an easy task to a hard one or vice versa, rather than using a single transfer technique across all task complexities, as currently done in the literature. Similarly, when designing new benchmarks for continual learning, it is also useful to provide different complexity structures to test the effectiveness of continual learning algorithms on a broader range of scenarios and difficulty levels. To illustrate the usefulness of comparing on various benchmarks, we construct two split MNIST sequences, one of which has high total complexity while the other has low total complexity. The sequences are constructed by starting with the binary classification task 0/1 and greedily adding tasks that have the highest (or lowest) complexity $C(t)$. Fig. \[fig:mnist3\] shows these sequences and the error rates of VCL, coreset VCL and SI when evaluated on them. We also show the error rates of the algorithms on the standard split MNIST sequence for comparison. From the figure, if we only compare on the standard sequence, we may conclude that coreset VCL and SI have the same performance. However, if we consider the other two sequences, we can see that SI is in fact slightly better than coreset VCL. This small experiment suggests that we should use various benchmarks, ideally with different levels of complexity, for better comparison of continual learning algorithms. It is also worth noting that although the correlation between error rate and task complexity seems trivial, we are still not very clear which definition of task sequence complexity would be best to explain catastrophic forgetting (i.e., to give the best correlations). In this paper, we propose the first measure for this purpose, the total complexity. [[**On sequential heterogeneity.**]{}]{} The weak or negative correlations between error rate and sequential heterogeneity found in our analysis show an interesting contradiction to our intuition on the relationship between catastrophic forgetting and task dissimilarity. We emphasize that in our context, the weak and negative correlations are not a negative result, but actually a *positive* result. In fact, some previous work showed that task similarity helps improve performance in the context of transfer learning [@achille2019task2vec; @ammar2014automated; @ruder2017learning], while some others claimed that task dissimilarity could help continual learning [@farquhar2018towards] although their discussion was more related to the permuted MNIST setting. Our finding gives evidence that supports the latter view in the split MNIST and split CIFAR-10 settings. To identify possible causes of this phenomenon, we carefully analyze the changes in error rates of VCL and SI on CIFAR-10 and observe some issues that may cause the negative correlations. For illustration, we show in Fig. \[fig:norm-hete-details\] the detailed error rates of these algorithms on two typical task sequences where the final average error rates do not conform with the sequential heterogeneity. Both of these sequences have the same total complexity, with the first sequence having higher sequential heterogeneity. From the changes in error rates of VCL in Fig. \[fig:norm-hete-details\], we observe that for the first sequence, learning a new task would cause forgetting of its immediate predecessor task but could also help a task learned before that. For instance, learning task 3 and task 5 increases the errors on task 2 and task 4 respectively, but helps reduce errors on task 1 (i.e., backward transferring to task 1). This observation suggests that the dissimilarities between only consecutive tasks may not be enough to explain catastrophic forgetting, and thus we should take into account the dissimilarities between a task and all the previously learned tasks. From the error rates of SI in Fig. \[fig:norm-hete-details\], we observe a different situation. In this case, catastrophic forgetting is not severe, but the algorithm tends not to transfer very well on the second sequence. This inability to transfer leads to higher error rates on tasks 3, 4, and 5 even when the algorithm learns them for the first time. One possible cause of this problem could be that a fixed regularization strength $\lambda=1$ is used for all tasks, making the algorithm unable to adapt to new tasks well. This explanation suggests that we should customize the algorithm (e.g., by tuning the $\lambda$ values or the optimizer) for effectively transferring between different pairs of tasks in the sequence. [[**Future directions.**]{}]{} The analysis offered by our paper provides a general and novel methodology to study the relationship between catastrophic forgetting and properties of task sequences. Although the two measures considered in our paper, total complexity and sequential heterogeneity, can explain some aspects of catastrophic forgetting, the correlations in Table \[tab:result\] are not very strong (i.e., their coefficients are not near 1 or -1). Thus, they can still be improved to provide better explanations for the phenomenon. Besides these two measures, we can also design other measures for properties such as intransigence [@chaudhry2018riemannian]. Conclusion ========== This paper developed a new analysis for studying relationships between catastrophic forgetting and properties of task sequences. An application of our analysis to two simple properties suggested that task complexity should be considered when designing new continual learning algorithms or benchmarks, and continual learning algorithms should be customized for specific transfers. Our analysis can be extended to study other relationships between algorithms and task structures such as the effectiveness of transfer or multi-task learning with respect to properties of tasks. 0.1in 0.1in 0.1in 0.1in\ 0.1in {width="22.00000%"} 0.1in {width="22.00000%"} 0.1in {width="22.00000%"} 0.1in {width="22.00000%"}\ -0.24 0.1in {width="22.00000%"} 0.1in {width="22.00000%"} 0.1in {width="22.00000%"} 0.1in 0.5in 0.1in 0.1in 0.1in 0.1in\ 0.1in {width="22.00000%"} 0.1in {width="22.00000%"} 0.1in {width="22.00000%"} 0.1in {width="22.00000%"}\ -0.24 0.1in {width="22.00000%"} 0.1in {width="22.00000%"} 0.1in {width="22.00000%"} 0.1in 0.1in 0.1in 0.1in 0.1in\ 0.1in {width="22.00000%"} 0.1in {width="22.00000%"} 0.1in {width="22.00000%"} 0.1in {width="22.00000%"}\ -0.24 0.1in {width="22.00000%"} 0.1in {width="22.00000%"} 0.1in {width="22.00000%"} 0.1in [^1]: Work done at Amazon.

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1. Background ============= Recently, many advances have been made in semiconductor metrology, as evidenced by the goal in the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) to achieve 45 nm dynamic random access memory (DRAM) ½ pitch by 2010 \[[@b1-v111.n01.a02]\]. An important growing sector of this industry has been the rapid thermal processing (RTP) for chemical vapor deposition, physical vapor deposition, oxidation, annealing, silicidation, and oxide-etch processes. Compared to the traditional batch processing of silicon wafers, single-wafer RTP offers advantages of higher ramp rates, shorter processing times, tighter ambient control, and shorter cycle times. Accurate temperature measurement and control during RTP by using noncontact techniques such as light-pipe radiation thermometers (LPRTs) is crucial for achieving high throughput and maintaining quality. However, achieving accurate traceable temperature measurements by using noncontact LPRTs has been challenging. First, stray light from the source bouncing off reflective surfaces can provide extraneous unwanted signal into the radiometer. Second, temperature variations with time and with wafer location can complicate the measurement process and can increase the uncertainty in the measurements. Third, LPRT temperature measurements can be affected by changes in the wafer's optical properties, which can vary with temperature, wavelength, wafer location, surface topography, and chemical composition. Fourth, the effective emissivity of the wafer and surroundings, which accounts for interreflections with other surfaces in the radiation chamber, is highly dependent on the geometry and radiative properties of these surfaces. Finally, establishing traceability for LPRT measurements is a nontrivial and significant investment in time and effort. Implicit in the mission of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) \[[@b2-v111.n01.a02]\] and of our RTP temperature project is the task of developing high-quality measurement standards and establishing a calibration system whereby users can derive their temperature traceability. To this end, we are committed to establishing a national protocol for calibration of LPRTs using stable blackbodies in the temperature range of 700 °C to 1000 °C traceable to the International Temperature Scale of 1990 (ITS-90) \[[@b3-v111.n01.a02]\]. In the early 1980s at the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST), a fiber-optic lightpipe (LP) coupled to a radiation detector was first used as a thermometer to measure the temperature of gases. The fiber tip exposed to the hot gases was coated with opaque, black films of platinum or rhodium \[[@b4-v111.n01.a02]--[@b6-v111.n01.a02]\] to form a cavity, which emitted near-blackbody radiation that was transferred to the radiation detector. In the early 1990s, the ripple technique \[[@b7-v111.n01.a02]\] for RTP applications used rod-type LPs as transfer optics to collect and transfer spectral radiance from wafer targets onto the radiation detector. Since that time, the LPRT has been used to monitor wafer temperature in high-temperature semiconductor processing, because of its minimal thermal disturbance to the heated wafer and the radiation field, and because of the convenience of its noncontact measurement capability \[[@b8-v111.n01.a02]\]. LPRTs are presently used for temperature measurement in rapid thermal annealing, rapid thermal oxidation \[[@b9-v111.n01.a02]\], and rapid thermal chemical vapor deposition \[[@b10-v111.n01.a02]\], as well as for emissivity determinations \[[@b11-v111.n01.a02]\]. During this past decade, NIST has led the effort in assisting industry to characterize the performance of industrial LPRTs, gain an increased understanding of the importance of traceability to a national standard, and develop a greater appreciation for the need for accuracy. Accordingly, the NIST RTP Temperature Project set a goal of achieving 2 °C measurement uncertainty at 1000 °C in temperature accuracy, as outlined in the Semiconductor Industry Association roadmap \[[@b1-v111.n01.a02]\]. This low uncertainty has been accomplished through the four-pronged approach of the NIST RTP temperature project: (1) develop procedures to fabricate and calibrate thin-film thermocouple (TFTC) wafers for *in situ* calibration of the LPRT against a thin-film thermocouple test wafer \[[@b12-v111.n01.a02]--[@b31-v111.n01.a02]\]; (2) characterize LPRTs \[[@b32-v111.n01.a02]--[@b37-v111.n01.a02],[@b79-v111.n01.a02]\]; (3) develop analytical models to predict the corrections to spectral radiance temperatures using an LPRT calibrated against a blackbody \[[@b38-v111.n01.a02]--[@b52-v111.n01.a02]\]; and (4) collaborate with equipment, device, and instrument manufacturers in implementing new methods for reliable and traceable temperature measurements \[[@b53-v111.n01.a02]--[@b57-v111.n01.a02]\]. As a result of this effort, in the last ten years at NIST, we have achieved several significant milestones in our noncontact temperature research with LPRTs: (1) calibration of LPRTs using the sodium heat-pipe blackbody (Na-HPBB) with an uncertainty of 0.2 °C (*k* = 1) \[[@b29-v111.n01.a02]\]; (2) temperature measurement using LPRTs and effective emissivity models, resulting in an uncertainty of 3.5 °C \[[@b29-v111.n01.a02]\]; (3) *in situ* calibration of a LPRT using a thin-film thermocouple wafer with an uncertainty of 2.1 °C \[[@b29-v111.n01.a02]\]; (4) qualitative and quantitative optical visualization techniques for evaluating and inspecting sapphire lightpipes \[[@b35-v111.n01.a02]\]; and (5) recommendations for making more accurate temperature measurements using LPRTs \[[@b34-v111.n01.a02]\]. While the work has specifically addressed a semiconductor application, the approaches have general applicability for achieving reliable, traceable temperature measurements using LPRTs in other material processing and manufacturing environments, such as those used in the production of steel, aluminum, and glass. The purposes of this paper are to document in one place all LPRT work done at NIST in the past decade, reference all NIST papers published about LPRT research, and report on the state of the art in LPRT research. This paper will summarize the types of LPRTs, their calibration and characterization techniques, in situ calibration of LPRTs using TFTCs, and model-based corrections of LPRT measurements. Finally, potential future work in LPRT research is discussed. 2. Radiation Thermometers and LPRTs =================================== Traditionally, lightpipe (LP) sensors are attractive in temperature monitoring applications for at least five reasons. First, the noncontact and nondestructive nature of LPs does not alter or destroy the original surface. Second, LPs provide immunity from shock, vibration, and other adverse environments, such as chemical, thermal, and electromagnetic interference. Third, LPs are very convenient especially in confined areas and can be placed very close to a target if desired. Fourth, LPs are safe even in high voltage areas and in ionizing plasma fields. Fifth, high numerical apertures in LPs can reduce significantly the effects of the variability in optical properties \[[@b55-v111.n01.a02]\]. LPRTs, such as the one in [Fig. 1a](#f1-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"}, typically consists of a high-quality sapphire crystal rod (LP) enclosed in a concentric sapphire sheath and linked by flexible quartz fibers to a silicon detector with a near-infrared filter. Besides the detector, the control box contains the front panel display and the optics and electronics necessary to digitize the measured signal and to convert it into the appropriate radiance temperature. The sapphire rod is enclosed in a concentric sapphire sheath for protection from shock and vibration. The LPs used in our studies are of varying lengths, but they are all approximately 2 mm in diameter. The sapphire sheath that surrounds the LP has a typical outer diameter of approximately 4 mm. In normal operation for measuring the radiance temperature, the LPs are connected to a 1 mm diameter quartz fiber-optic cable. From now on, LPs will refer only to the crystal rod and sheath, while LPRTs will refer to the complete system including the LP rod and sheath, fiber-optic cable, optics, electronics, and all other necessary accessories (excluding the computer and data acquisition system) for measurement of the radiance temperature. Spot-type radiation thermometers (STRTs) are also becoming common as temperature sensors in RTP applications, especially in areas where it is not possible or feasible to place the LP close to the wafer but there is adequate optical access to the wafer spot. To view the wafer spot, the STRT must have a sufficiently small field-of-view and spot size. A STRT, like the one in [Fig. 1b](#f1-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"}, usually consists of the lens, optics, electronics, eyepiece, and the front panel display. STRTs have been calibrated and researched at NIST. American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) standards have been developed for STRTs \[[@b56-v111.n01.a02]-[@b57-v111.n01.a02]\], and numerous studies of STRTs have been published \[[@b4-v111.n01.a02]--[@b8-v111.n01.a02],[@b12-v111.n01.a02],[@b55-v111.n01.a02],[@b58-v111.n01.a02]--[@b66-v111.n01.a02]\]. Cableless lightpipe radiation thermometers (CLRTs) are a new generation of LPRTs, which have all of the attractive features of LPRTs. In addition, the elimination of the flexible cable reduces the measurement uncertainty by at least 2 °C. The replacement of the controller box with the lightweight controller capsule saves space. Like the LPRTs, the CLRTs also include a sapphire lightpipe enclosed in a concentric sapphire sheath (see [Fig. 1c](#f1-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"}). In addition, CLRTs are accompanied by software for reading and acquiring the temperature and signal data and contain a small electronics controller cylinder which houses the optics and electronics. Disadvantages of CLRTs include the shorter lengths and the inflexibility of the cables. 3. Calibration of LPRTs ======================= 3.1 Standard Reference Blackbody Source --------------------------------------- At NIST, LPRTs, STRTs, CLRTs, and other types of RTs, are routinely calibrated against a sodium heat pipe blackbody (Na-HPBB). The main Inconel[1](#fn1-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fn"} cavity of the Na-HPBB shown in [Fig. 2](#f2-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"} is 25 mm in diameter and 48 cm in length, whereas its aperture opening is 22 mm in diameter. Surrounding the cylindrical cavity is a 90 mm diameter tube, which contains the sodium liquid and vapor. A condensing tube at the rear of the black-body allows the metal vapor to liquefy back into the tube and at the same time serves as the conduit by which the tube is pressurized with helium. A Monte Carlo model \[[@b32-v111.n01.a02]\] was used to estimate the cavity emissivity as 0.99992 ± 0.00003 for the wavelength range from 1 µm to 5 µm with an Inconel surface emissivity of 0.85. The Na-HPBB temperature, which is measured by a gold-platinum (Au/Pt) thermocouple (TC), is computer-controlled by regulating the pressure of the helium. Three type S thermocouples monitor the temperature in three zones along the cavity. Using the Au/Pt TC links the Na-HPBB temperature to the ITS-90. Further details of the Na-HPBB are given in \[[@b32-v111.n01.a02]\]. Uncertainties (*k* = 1 \[[@b67-v111.n01.a02]\] is implied throughout this paper unless otherwise specified) for the Na-HPBB are provided in [Table 1](#t1-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="table"}. The dominant component in the Na-HPBB temperature uncertainty is the blackbody radial uniformity as viewed and measured by a RT in front of the Na-HPBB. The blackbody stability and the uncertainty in the calibration of the Au-Pt TC are small in comparison with the dominant uncertainty. 3.2 Calibration Procedures for Spot-Type Radiation Thermometers --------------------------------------------------------------- The procedures for preparing and operating the Na-HPBB are the same, regardless of the RT type (LPRT, STRT, or CLRT). Safety checks are performed, prior to turning on the power for the Na-HPBB, to ensure adequate water cooling, sufficient helium, and the proper electrical connections. Next, the heater power is turned on, and the helium pressure adjusted to raise the black-body temperature to a desired set-point temperature. Before a STRT is calibrated, it is visually inspected for scratches or dents, breaks in cables, excessive dirt, or other obvious problems. If serious damage is discovered, it is immediately reported to the owner of the STRT. Otherwise, the lens, eyepiece, and the filters are cleaned with lens tissue paper and ethyl alcohol to remove fingerprints and sprayed with air to remove dust. Next, the front surface of the lens is positioned to a specified distance from the blackbody aperture, as shown in [Fig. 3a](#f3-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"}. A level situated on top of the STRT is used to ensure that the STRT is horizontal. The yaw and pitch of the STRT are tweaked to be assured that the optical axis of the STRT is coincident with the geometrical center of the Na-HPBB. The centering process is usually done first roughly by using eyes to sight on the center and then more precisely by using a computer program to search for the radiometric center. Then, the STRT focus knob, if existent, is adjusted to find the maximum signal or temperature. After the Na-HPBB is stabilized to within 30 mK, three STRT measurements are acquired in one-minute intervals and are averaged. With each STRT reading, a measurement of the Au/Pt TC is recorded. The three TC readings are also averaged, and the difference Δ*T*, the TC temperature minus the average STRT temperature, is recorded as the offset temperature. To calculate the corrected temperature, the offset temperature is added to future RT readings. 3.3 Calibration Procedures for Lightpipe Radiation Thermometers and Cableless Lightpipe Radiation Thermometers -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On a routine basis, the LPRTs and CLRTs are calibrated against the Na-HPBB before and after measurements. The LPs undergoing calibration are visually inspected for dirt, and their tips cleaned with a tissue wiper or a cotton swab saturated with ethyl alcohol. After the Na-HPBB comes to a stable temperature and does not vary more than 30 mK, the LP is rapidly inserted into the Na-HPBB in [Fig. 3b](#f3-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"}, measurements of the LPRT or CLRT indicated temperature are recorded, and the LP is removed before it heats up by more than 0.2 °C. The measurements usually take about 5 s to 10 s and are referred to as a cold calibration. Before and after their use in our test bed experimental studies, a set of LPs is calibrated in this way, and the temperature of the Au/Pt TC is recorded. For each LP, three measurements are averaged and the difference, the average temperature minus the TC temperature, is recorded as the offset temperature. The temperature of the Na-HPBB is then increased to the next temperature, and the whole procedure repeated. When the LPs are visually contaminated (with carbon deposits or other contaminants), or when the LP response in RTP measurements or calibration changes by more than 2 °C, the LPs are cleaned using a flame cleaning procedure. With the outer sheath removed, the LP is first wiped with acetone and ethanol and then heated with an oxygen-methane flame to remove any contamination. Care is exercised to heat the LP slowly and uniformly to avoid damage. After the LPs have been cleaned through the flaming process, or after the LPs are returned from the factory calibration, the sensor factor settings need to be adjusted. The adjustment is performed by changing the LP sensor factor setting until the LP indicated reading is within 0.02 °C of the Au/Pt TC reading for the Na-HPBB at the highest calibration temperature, 900 °C. A few LP temperature readings are obtained for establishing repeatability. The LP sensor factor setting is recorded and stored for the remainder of the calibration procedure and for future LP measurements. It should be noted that after the LP is cleaned and calibrated, it remain attached to the LPRT until the next flame cleaning is required. 3.4 Calibration and Measurement Uncertainties --------------------------------------------- [Table 2](#t2-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="table"} displays the uncertainties for calibrating LPRTs. The principal uncertainty is the uncertainty in the Na-HPBB temperature determination from [Table 1](#t1-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="table"}. In comparison with this uncertainty, the other uncertainties in the LPRT, stray radiation effects, and the Na-HPBB emissivity, are negligible. Since it is very difficult to replicate the exact position and cable looping of the LPRTs in the calibration mode, the uncertainty due to the handling and positioning of the LPRTs is estimated to be about 2.0 °C. Although the uncertainty in the NIST calibration of LPRTs is only 0.31 °C, the total estimated uncertainty taking into account the handling uncertainty, is about 2.02 °C. Uncertainties for calibration of STRTs are shown in [Table 3](#t3-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="table"}. The dominant uncertainty factors are the Na-HPBB temperature uncertainty and the STRT resolution. The other uncertainties in the STRT, stray radiation effects, and the Na-HPBB emissivity, are small. The total estimated uncertainty in a typical calibration of a STRT using the Na-HPBB is about 1.05 °C and is limited by the resolution of the STRT. Improving the STRT resolution will decrease the total uncertainty. [Table 4](#t4-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="table"} shows the uncertainties for calibrating a CLRT using the Na-HPBB. The uncertainties for the CLRT calibration are exactly the same as the ones for the LPRT calibration with one exception. That is, the large uncertainty component due to the handling of the cables is eliminated. The total estimated uncertainty in a typical calibration of a CLRT using the Na-HPBB is about 0.31 °C. In [Tables 2](#t2-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="table"}, [3](#t3-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="table"}, and [4](#t4-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="table"}, the uncertainties of 0.31 °C, 1.05 °C, and 0.31 °C, respectively, represent the uncertainty of the RT calibration. Other factors, which will increase the uncertainty, need to be considered when approximating the total uncertainty in using the RT for temperature measurement. 3.5 LPRT Stability ------------------ After use in the RTP test bed for about a month, the LPRTs are calibrated again to check for variability during use. In [Fig. 4](#f4-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"}, typical calibrations of four LPs are shown for a period of 1 year, including those before and after cleaning of the LPRT. Variations during this period of time were less than 1 °C for all four LPs. 3.6 LPRT Application Issues: Factory vs NIST Calibrations and Hot vs Cold Measurements -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Applying calibrated LPRTs in an industrial or process application is more complicated and requires more analysis for determination of temperature, as well as establishing uncertainty limits and traceability. In this section, we present two issues associated with using LPRTs in applications outside of a well-controlled laboratory environment. Differentiation is made between hot and cold calibration for LPRTs. Our recommendation is to calibrate in the same fashion as the application. Three LPs from different vendors, using the factory-set sensor factors, were calibrated using the Na-HPBB as soon as they were received at NIST. The differences between the LPRT indicated temperatures in the factory hot-mode calibrations and the actual temperatures measured with the Au/Pt TCs in the Na-HPBB are shown in [Fig. 5a](#f5-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"}. From the results for three LPRT systems (LPRT1, LPRT2, LPRT3), each system consisting of four LPs, the variations among the four LPs in LPRT2 can be as high as 7.6 °C, while those for LPRT1 are as low as 1.6 °C. Thus, without measuring this difference shown in [Fig. 5a](#f5-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"}, the user will not know the magnitude of the uncertainty in using a set of LPs. In the Na-HPBB, time histories of all of the LPs at 850 °C are shown in [Fig. 5b](#f5-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"}. After the LP is inserted into the Na-HPBB for a few seconds, the LPRT indicated temperature initially remained fairly constant, dipped, and then rose above the initial temperature to a steady temperature. *Cold* calibrations were performed in the initial period when the temperature was still constant, while *hot* calibrations were performed after the Na-HPBB was stable during the second temperature rise. Although most LPRTs behaved in this manner, other patterns have been observed. However, in general, there was a constant plateau during the first 30 s or 1 min (*cold*) and again after 5 min (*hot*) from insertion. Significant differences exist between *hot* and *cold* LP calibrations in [Fig. 5b](#f5-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"} of up to 2.5 K for LPRT2, while only modest differences of up to 0.7 K for LPRT1 were exhibited. These findings correlated very well with visual and transmission measurements to be discussed in Sec. 4.4. When performing *hot* calibrations, the following issues can influence the accuracy of calibration and measurement errors in RTP tools. First, the LP can become contaminated by ceramic particles or impurities in the blackbody, especially if the LP is left in the blackbody for more than several minutes. Second, the inserted LP disturbs the temperature distribution and thus changes the relationship between the spectral radiance sensed by the LPRT and the reference temperature of the blackbody. Quantifying this perturbation requires further experiments or heat-transfer modeling. Third, the uncertainty of the measured blackbody temperature needs to be determined. If TCs are used for the reference temperature, an uncertainty analysis needs to be performed so that the blackbody temperature uncertainty can be related to the TC uncertainty, as well as, to other features of the blackbody, such as temperature non-uniformities and non-unity emissivity. If other blackbody sources, such as fixed points, are used, the uniformity and accuracy of these blackbodies need to be characterized. Fourth, the frequency of recalibration of the NIST-traceable TC providing the reference blackbody temperature needs to be established to avoid significant changes with use. Fifth, leakage can occur through the lateral side of the LP as a consequence of surface roughness, which can be worsened by the presence of gradients in the refractive index along the LP. Leakage can be minimized by using *cold* calibrations, or by using a cold radiation shield such as the cold sleeve. The first two issues above are unique to *hot* calibrations, while the last issue can be minimized using *cold* calibrations. The other two issues are common to both *hot* and *cold* calibrations. To make accurate LP temperature measurements, it is necessary to understand the accuracy of factory calibrations, the difference between *hot* and *cold* calibrations, and the importance of visualization and measurement techniques in defect detection for LPs. An understanding of these practical principles will be helpful not only in making more accurate LP temperature measurements but also in choosing a quality LP and in developing an improved LP calibration system. 3.7 Calibration Services ------------------------ Calibration services are available at NIST for RTs from 15 °C to 2700 °C using various blackbodies. For the temperature range from 700 °C to 900 °C, the Na-HPBB is used as the standard blackbody source. Calibration reports are issued giving the thermodynamic temperature of the reference blackbody (BB) vs the radiation thermometer (RT) display reading, output current, or output voltage. Users can order one of two calibration tests from the NIST Calibration Services manual \[[@b68-v111.n01.a02]\] or from the NIST Calibration Services website \[[@b69-v111.n01.a02]\]. The first is service ID number 35084C for a Radiance Temperature Standard, Radiation Thermometer (700 °C to 900 °C, three points). This calibration is a set-fee measurement at any three temperatures between 700 °C and 900 °C. The second is service ID number 35080S for Special Tests of Radiation Thermometers (15 °C to 900 °C). Since this special allows the user to customize the measurement set, the price is uniquely determined for each situation. Any questions or requests for quotes may be addressed to the author at <[email protected]>. 4. Characterization =================== Throughout this section, data from LPRTs for three different vendors are discussed. The term LPRT refers to the measurement system including the controller unit, the quartz fiber-optic cable, and the sapphire LP. Hereafter, the three LPRTs will be referred to as simply LPRT1, LPRT2, and LPRT3. Each LPRT consists of four channels, which are connected to four sapphire LPs (LP1, LP2, LP3, and LP4). Since there are twelve LPs in total, each LP will be identified by LPRT and LP numbers (e.g., LPRT2-LP3). The term LP only refers to the sapphire rod, which is the part of the LPRT aimed directly at the target. The LPs are of varying lengths, but they are 2 mm in diameter and are typically surrounded by a 4 mm outer diameter sapphire sheath. In normal operation for measuring the spectral radiance temperature, the LPs are connected to a 1 mm diameter quartz fiber-optic cable. The exposed length of sapphire sheath is about 9 cm. For more details, see \[[@b32-v111.n01.a02]\]. 4.1 Point Spread Response ------------------------- The effective target area on a silicon wafer viewed by the LPRT was determined in the point spread response (PSR) facility. Attached to a precision x--y stage, the LP was translated under computer control in a vertical plane to measure the radiation emanating from a small stationary lamp bulb (about 2 mm). The normal distance from the source to the vertical LP plane was carefully set to coincide with the corresponding wafer-to-LP tip gap separation distances in the NIST test bed. From the resulting intensity distribution of the measured radiation, the wafer spot was chosen to be the area that enclosed intensities greater than 1 % of the maximum intensity. This technique was repeated for different lamp-to-LP tip gap separations. The contours of the PSR measurement in [Fig. 6](#f6-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"} indicate the fraction (with 1.00 being equal to 100 %) of the maximum intensity measured at the origin of the vertical plane in which the LP is translated. This origin is located at the same *X* and *Y* location as the lamp bulb. [Figure 6](#f6-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"} shows that the target size for a gap separation of 12 mm is about 12 mm in diameter for LPRT1-LP1. This spot-size information is useful in the modeling of the effective emissivity, determination of the corrected LPRT spectral radiance temperature, and setting up the LPRT for measurements. 4.2 Absolute Spectral Response ------------------------------ A spectral characterization of the LPRTs was performed using the Spectral Comparator Facility (SCF) \[[@b70-v111.n01.a02]\], in which the LP fixed on a linear translation stage was aligned with the center of a monochromator slit and was used to collect the output of a spectrally filtered beam from a quartz-halogen source through the monochromator. This measurement was compared with that using a standard trap detector, calibrated previously against the NIST Primary Optical Watt Radiometer (POWR) \[[@b71-v111.n01.a02]\], the successor of the NIST High Accuracy Cryogenic Radiometer (HACR) \[[@b71-v111.n01.a02]\]. The relative response curves, or the absolute spectral response curves normalized to unity, for three LPs (LPRT1-LP1, LPRT3-LP3, LPRT3-LP4) obtained using the SCF are depicted in [Fig. 7](#f7-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"} and are very similar. Based on the full width at half maximum, the peak for all three LPs is centered about an effective wavelength of about 955 nm with a bandwidth of 40 nm. The effective wavelength is critical in the determination of the surface temperature from the LPRT spectral radiance temperature by using the temperature measurement equation. In addition, the effective wavelength and the spectral bandwidth are useful in the estimation of the temperature uncertainty \[[@b39-v111.n01.a02]\]. Outside of the 40 nm bandwidth, the relative response quickly decreases four orders of magnitude outside of a bandwidth of about 140 nm. This information can also aid in the uncertainty analysis as well as in the quality control of LPs. The similarity of all three curves in [Fig. 7](#f7-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"} reveals the consistency and quality of these LPs and their filters, which come from two different vendors. 4.3 Temporal Response --------------------- In [Figure 8](#f8-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"}, the temporal stability for a period of 10 min is shown for two LPs, LPRT1 and LPRT2. The results were obtained by irradiation from a helium-neon (HeNe) laser into the LP while it was in an integrating sphere. The resulting variations at room temperature for LPRT1 and LPRT2 were about ±0.06 % and ±0.04 %, respectively. This corresponds to a temperature standard uncertainty at 1000 °C of 0.064 °C and 0.043 °C, respectively. 4.4 Optical Characterization of Lightpipes ------------------------------------------ A measure of the LP quality is the radiation scattering from the lateral surface along the length of the LP. For an ideal LP, the scattering effect will be zero. However, in reality, defects in the manufacturing process can lead to surface imperfections that can cause loss of radiation from the lateral surface. To determine whether such defects are contributing to differences in calibration, two specific studies were conducted for LPRT1-LP2 and LPRT2-LP2. Both studies were made by passing a HeNe laser beam along the LP and by observing the circumference for irregular patterns. The first study qualitatively showed a relatively large number of bright spots for LPRT2-LP2. This visual study emphasized the need for a more quantitative experiment to determine the radiation loss from the lateral surface due to scattering. An experiment using an integrating sphere and a silicon detector to measure the transmitted and scattered signals constituted the second study that was conducted on the same two LPs used in the first study. ### 4.4.1 Visual Inspection of Lateral Surfaces A HeNe laser beam (0.95 mW at 637 nm) was used for irradiating the end of the LP in both studies. A 1 mm diameter quartz fiber-optic cable transmitted the beam from the laser to the 2 mm diameter sapphire LP. To compare the whole length of sapphire rod from both LPs, the LPs in [Fig. 9](#f9-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"} were photographed while the HeNe laser illuminated the LP. The top part of the figure (LPRT2-LP2) reveals many defect locations where significant scattering can take place, while the bottom (LPRT1-LP2) reveals a more perfect sapphire crystal structure, resulting in less scattering. [Figure 9](#f9-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"} clearly shows the utility of a simple visualization technique, such as the one used in this study, to detect scattering defects in LPs before calibration. ### 4.4.2 Quantifying Lateral Scattering For the second study, an integrating sphere, about 18 cm in diameter, fitted with a silicon detector was used to measure the radiance of the laser beam with and without the LP inserted. The laser beam entering the sphere was distributed uniformly on the inner surface of the sphere by multiple reflections. The output of the silicon detector was proportional to the laser power incident on the sphere surface. The low-level current signal from the silicon detector was amplified by a current amplifier, and the output voltage measured by a digital voltmeter. Data recording by the voltmeter was performed by a computer. The two positions of the LP in the integrating sphere, A and B, in the second study are shown in [Fig. 10](#f10-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"}. In Position A, the tip of the LP was positioned in the plane of the integrating sphere aperture. In this position, only the portion of the radiation transmitted through the length of the LP was distributed onto the integrating sphere surface. In Position B, the LP was inserted inside the sphere cavity with the exposed portion of the sapphire sheath also inside the cavity. The radiation loss from the sheath was also captured, along with the transmitted beam, by the integrating sphere surface. The difference between the readings in Position A and Position B was a measure of the radiation loss through the lateral surface of the LP. Since this radiation loss was less than 1 % of total power and since intermittent surges in power, lasting several seconds, occurred periodically, the laser measurements were made over a long period of time, and an interval, during which the laser power was stable, was chosen for the analysis. [Table 5](#t5-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="table"} shows the final results of the measurements for LPRT1-LP2 and LPRT2-LP2 before and after cleaning with a flame. For all measurements, the dark signal, which was the measured signal taken without the laser and with the integrating sphere aperture covered, was less than 0.001 mV. LPRT2-LP2 showed nearly twice as much radiation loss through the lateral side as LPRT1-LP2. This correlated with LPRT2-LP2 having more defects. Hence, the present study suggests that the integrating sphere method can be used to identify and qualify LPs suitable for use in RTP chambers to achieve the desired accuracy. Such qualified LPs can then be calibrated for spectral radiance temperature using primary-standard blackbodies. The method can be improved by using a more stable laser. ### 4.4.3 Correlation of Optical Characterization Results With Hot/Cold Calibration Results In Sec. 3.7, LPRT2 exhibited differences between hot and cold LP calibrations of up to 2.5 K, while LPRT1 only showed differences of up to 0.7 K. The optical characterization study shows that visual effects could be correlated with quantitative measurements. Visual defects as well as the ratios of the scattered signal to the transmitted signal have direct relationships with the amount of thermal leakage as measured by the net temperature rise in 10 min. The visual defects and transmission measurements both have a strong correlation with the difference between *hot* and *cold* LP calibrations. LPRT2-LP2 exhibited a large difference of 2.5 K in [Fig. 5b](#f5-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"} and a large slope in [Fig. 5a](#f5-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"}. It also showed the most visual defects from the optical characterization. On the other hand, LPRT1-LP2 showed only a difference of 0.5 K in [Fig. 5b](#f5-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"} and a slight slope in [Fig. 5a](#f5-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"}. This LP was relatively clear of visual defects from the optical characterization. In order to make accurate LP temperature measurements, it is necessary to understand the accuracy of factory calibrations, the difference between *hot* and *cold* calibrations, and the importance of visualization and measurement techniques in defect detection for LPs. Both types of experiments are crucial in detecting LPs that may exhibit significant scattering. 4.5 Stray Light Effects on the LPRT Indicated Temperature --------------------------------------------------------- Two experiments were performed with the Na-HPBB to study the stray light effects on the LPRT indicated temperature. The first examined the influence of a hot environment on the indicated LPRT temperature by surrounding the LP lateral surface in the furnace of [Fig. 11](#f11-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"} and heating it while the LP was aimed at a constant radiance source, the Na-HPBB. The increases in the LP indicated temperature and the resulting radiance were plotted as a function of the furnace temperature for four different initial LP indicated temperatures *T*~o~: 300 °C, 680 °C, 730 °C, and 780 °C. [Figure 12a](#f12-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"} shows that for LPRT2-LP3 the temperature increase was largest at the highest furnace temperature (950 °C), but it was always less than 4 °C when the furnace temperature was at or below the Na-HPBB temperature. However, when the temperature differences are converted to radiance differences, the radiance increases in [Fig. 12b](#f12-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"} are independent of the Na-HPBB temperature. Thus, extraneous radiation can reach the LP through its lateral surface, but the radiance increase is only dependent on the temperature of the LP surroundings. The second experiment, illustrated in [Fig. 13](#f13-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"}, examined the influence of the Na-HPBB environment on the temperature indicated by an LPRT by taking measurements with and without a water-cooled, stainless-steel sleeve, which maintained the LP temperature below 100 °C and blocked radiation from entering its sides. The temperature history for LPRT2-LP3 in [Fig. 14](#f14-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"} shows that the indicated temperature without the cold sleeve drifted higher by 2 °C over 400 s before becoming steady, and the initial indicated temperature was higher by 2 °C before the LP was significantly heated. With the cold sleeve, the LPRT temperature did not drift. The results at *t* = 0 quantify the blackbody calibration error due to light scatter from irradiation of the unsleeved LP from the sides. The drift in indicated temperature of the unsleeved LP over the first 400 s in the Na-HPBB suggested that additional radiation was emitted from the LP after it reached a sufficiently high temperature. Perhaps this emission was due to impurities in the LP sapphire crystal. This result shows that some LPs are less susceptible to extraneous radiation than others and suggests that better manufacturing techniques or materials for LPs can minimize calibration errors due to these effects \[[@b33-v111.n01.a02],[@b79-v111.n01.a02]\]. 4.6 Discussions and Recommendations ----------------------------------- Based upon our LPRT calibration and characterization experiences at NIST, we offer the following recommendations for users of LPRTs in calibration or measurement applications: ### 1. Visually inspect the LP first Before any measurement is performed, the LP should be inspected for defects. A visual inspection can detect macroscopic chips and nicks. For more detail, the simple laser techniques and the more complex methods using integrating spheres or hot furnaces can assist in qualifying high-quality LPs. ### 2. Understand the factory calibration When factory calibration data is available, the user should always try to verify the data when possible. The user should find out whether the factory calibrations were performed using the *hot* or *cold* calibration mode. The LP calibrations should then be checked using blackbody or other radiance sources for determining the spectral radiance temperature. Alternatively, the user could implement an *in situ* LPRT calibration method, such as the NIST thin-film TC test wafer \[[@b21-v111.n01.a02]\], to determine the surface tem perature. If the results match the factory data, then the user can proceed with the LP measurements. Otherwise, the user should determine which set of calibrations to use by selecting the calibration conditions that best fit the measurement conditions. If the user is confident of the checking process and conditions, then the user calibration should be employed in LP measurements. It is good practice to check the factory calibrations against available blackbodies or other sources of low radiance temperature uncertainty. ### 3. Characterize the LPRT The LPRTs should be characterized spectrally, spatially, and temporally with available resources. The LPs should be measured in the appropriate wavelength region to check the peak effective wavelength and the narrowness of the bandwidth for single-wavelength temperature measurements. Some check of the point spread response should be performed to estimate the field of view of the LPs to assist in analysis and modeling. The drift of the LPs for an appropriate period of time should be determined for the LPs at several temperatures to help assess the measurement uncertainties. ### 4. Minimize lateral scattering Wherever possible, a method to minimize lateral scattering through the LP, such as a cold sleeve, should be used for *cold* calibrations. This will ensure that extraneous radiation is eliminated in LP calibrations and that the LP remains at a cold temperature. ### 5. Calibrate the LPRT as it will be used The cardinal rule of LPRT calibrations is to calibrate in the same manner or as close to the same way in which it will be used. If the LP tip will be used in a cooled environment, such as the NIST RTP test bed, then the LP tip should be calibrated in the *cold* mode. If the LP tip will operate in a hot surroundings, then the LP tip should calibrated in the *hot* mode. It should be noted that the LP tip may be the only hot part in the *cold* mode. An understanding of the LPRT surroundings will aid in making better LP calibrations. ### 6. Calibrate the LPRT using blackbodies with traceable calibrations The LPRT should be calibrated using blackbodies traceable to the SI unit of temperature. For highest accuracy, the spectral radiance of the blackbodies should be traceable to blackbodies at NIST or another national measurement institute (NMI). Alternatively, the temperature of the blackbodies could be traceable to the blackbody TC, which is traceable to the SI unit through an NMI. ### 7. Calibrate before and after use Immediately before and after LP use, the LPs should be calibrated to check for any systematic drift or change. If there is any significant change in calibration, the LPs should be inspected again for any damage or contamination during measurement, moving, or shipping of the LPs. These practical principles have been formed from our experience with calibrations and measurements of LPs from several vendors. Following these guidelines wherever possible can ensure highly accurate LP calibrations and temperature measurements on the ITS-90. 5. Comparison With Thin-Film Thermocouple Wafers ================================================ 5.1 Experimental Procedure and Equipment ---------------------------------------- The silicon calibration wafer in [Fig. 15](#f15-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"} was instrumented with the new wire Pt/Pd TCs \[[@b73-v111.n01.a02],[@b74-v111.n01.a02]\] and the new Rh/Pt TFTCs \[[@b19-v111.n01.a02]\]. The region at the center of the wafer in close proximity to the TC junctions is the primary target for sighting by the LPRT. The thin films were sputter deposited on oxidized silicon wafers using physical masks for the 0.5 mm thick metal films of 99.99 % Pt and 99.95 % Rh, and the films were bonded to the SiO~2~ with sputter-deposited Ti. This procedure is described in more detail by Kreider and DiMeo \[[@b18-v111.n01.a02]\]. The thin-film pattern included welding pads 10 mm from the edge of the wafer for the 0.25 mm diameter Pt/Pd TC wires. The uncertainty in temperature measurement of the thin-film thermocouple junction with this design is 0.3 °C with a temperature difference of up to 10 °C from the center to the edge of the wafer. The LPRTs were first calibrated using the Na-HPBB according to the procedures described in Sec. 3. Then the LPRTs were carefully transported without disconnecting cables and installed in the RTP test bed in [Fig. 16](#f16-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"}. A detailed description of the test bed can be found in Ref. \[[@b36-v111.n01.a02]\]. Comparisons between the temperatures measured by the TCs and the LPRTs in the RTP test bed were performed after reaching steady state while a constant heating power was applied. 5.2 *In-Situ* Calibration of LPRTs ---------------------------------- [Figure 17](#f17-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"} shows a comparison between the temperatures measured by the thin-film thermocouple wafer (*T*~tc~) and those measured by the LPRT (*T~λ~*) for a diffuse and a specular shield with a wafer/shield spacing of 12.5 mm. The values of *T*~tc~ − *T~λ~* for the specular shield shown in squares are 1.8 °C ± 0.7 °C, while the values for the diffuse shield are larger. This is expected, because the reflectance of the specular gold shield (*ρ* = 0.993) is higher than that of the diffuse gold shield (*ρ* = 0.799), implying a larger *ε*~eff~ for the specular shield. For both shields, the temperature accuracy of the LPRT will be improved by *in situ* calibration. By curve fitting, the *ε*~eff~ for the specular and diffuse shields were estimated to be 0.98 and 0.91, respectively. [Figure 18](#f18-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"} shows the effects on *T*~tc~ − *T~λ~* of changing the wafer/shield spacing. For this plot, the specular shield was used. While the results for spacings of 12.5 mm and 15.5 mm are identical to within the resolution of the measurements, the values for *T*~tc~ − *T~λ~* increase as the spacing is decreased from 12.5 mm to 6 mm. This effect can be explained by the optical perturbation on *ε*~eff~ of the LPRT target area caused by the presence of the LP, which has a much smaller reflectance (*ρ* = 0.075) than the shield. Because the LP occupies a large solid angle of the field-of-view as seen from a point on the wafer when the wafer is close to the shield, an *in situ* calibration should be performed with the same spacing as in the application. 5.3 Uncertainties ----------------- According to [Table 6](#t6-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="table"}, the dominant uncertainty of 2.0 °C for the *in situ* LPRT calibration arises from the physical separation of 1.4 cm between the TFTC junctions and the center of the LPRT target and is based on the assumption of a uniform temperature gradient of 10 °C in this separation \[[@b22-v111.n01.a02],[@b25-v111.n01.a02]\]. However, no correction for temperature gradients was ever applied to the calibration measurements. Other measurement uncertainties include thermocouple calibration uncertainties, from temperature fluctuations and long-term temperature drift of the wafer while in steady state, LPRT calibration uncertainties, and instrument uncertainties for temperature measurement with the thermocouples and LPRTs. The standard uncertainty for the *in situ* LPRT calibration is 2.3 °C. 6. Effective Emissivity Models ============================== To establish the uncertainty of LPRT measurements for wafer temperature, it was necessary to develop models for estimating the effective emissivity of the wafer that include effects due to wafer emissivity, shield reflectivity, lightpipe (LP) sensing tip area, and guard surface geometry and their radiative properties. Comparison of the TC and model-corrected LPRT temperature measurements are presented and the uncertainties of the LPRT calibration are described. Measurements of the room-temperature, directional-hemispherical reflectance for the RTP chamber reflective shields and the silicon wafer in [Fig. 19](#f19-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"} were obtained using the NIST Spectral Tri-function Automated Reference Reflectometer (STARR) \[[@b75-v111.n01.a02]\] and were used to determine shield emissivities. The room temperature spectral reflectance at *λ* = 0.955 µm for the silicon wafers used in our study was measured as 0.686, which is in close agreement with the database \[[@b76-v111.n01.a02]\] value at 30 °C of 0.680 from which the high temperature emissivity values were estimated. 6.1 Wafer-Chamber Arrangement: the Radiation Enclosure ------------------------------------------------------ The simplest model for predicting the wafer effective emissivity represents the wafer-shield as a two-surface (infinite-parallel planes) enclosure. If the separation gap between the wafer-shield is very small, and there are no appreciable temperature gradients across the wafer, this model is appropriate. However, this model cannot account for the effects caused by the presence of the cold (nearly black) sensing tip of the LP \[[@b16-v111.n01.a02]\]. [Figure 19](#f19-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"} illustrates a more realistic model representing the wafer-chamber configuration by five regions: 1) the 4.3 mm diameter LP with 2.5 mm diameter tip, located in the center of the cold reflective shield having a reflectance of 0.0754, 2) the 300 mm diameter *reflective shield*, which is cold and diffuse or specular, 3) the lateral surface *cold wall*, which surrounds the wafer and the reflective shield, and which has a gap separation of *L* and an emissivity of unity, 4) the *LP field-of-view* (target) at the wafer center of a diameter determined by the LP field-of-view and gap separation, and 5) the remaining surface of the 200 mm *silicon wafer*, but not including the LP target. Classical gray, diffuse or specular, enclosure analyses have been performed for this configuration using 24 zones. Since the wafer is assumed isothermal with an emissivity of 0.65 and all other surfaces are assumed cold, the effective emissivity is independent of the wafer temperature and depends only upon the chamber geometry and radiative properties of the enclosure surfaces. 6.2 Types of Models ------------------- Two models are described for estimating the wafer effective emissivity for the five-zone enclosure shown in [Fig. 19](#f19-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"}. The first model treats the reflective shield as diffuse; that is, for a diffuse-gray enclosure. The second model treats the reflective shield as specular, while the remaining surfaces in the enclosure are diffuse. ### 6.2.1 Model With the Diffuse Shield Using the temperature measurement equation with the estimated effective emissivity *ε*~eff~, an estimate of the wafer temperature *T* can be determined from the observed spectral radiance temperature *T~λ~*, $$\frac{1}{T} = \frac{1}{T_{\lambda}} + \frac{\lambda}{c_{2}}\ln\varepsilon_{\text{eff}},$$where *λ* is the operating wavelength of the radiation thermometer and *c*~2~ is the second radiation constant, 14,387.752 µm × K. For the diffuse shield, the enclosure model is developed using the classical, radiosity method \[[@b39-v111.n01.a02],[@b77-v111.n01.a02]\] in which a radiation energy balance is written for each surface (zone) *A~i~* of the *N*-zone enclosure of the form, $${\sum_{j = 1}^{N}\left\lbrack {\delta_{ij} - \left( {1 - \varepsilon_{i}} \right)F_{i - j}} \right\rbrack}J_{j} = \varepsilon_{i}E_{bi},$$where *δ~ij~* is the Kronecker delta function, *E*~b~*~i~* is the blackbody emissivity power, *ε~i~* is the emissivity, *J~i~* is the radiosity, and *F~i~*~−~*~j~* is the diffuse radiation view (or exchange) factor defined as the ratio of radiation leaving an emitting surface *A~i~* to the reflected irradiation that is intercepted by a receiving surface *A~j~*. Using appropriate temperatures, emissivities and the *N*^2^ view factors, the system of *N* equations is solved simultaneously to obtain the radiosities. The radiosity *J~i~* represents the diffuse radiation leaving the surface *A~i~* due to direct emission *and* reflected irradiation resulting from intereflections within the enclosure. The effective emissivity *ε*~eff~ of the target area (t), $$\varepsilon_{\text{eff}} = \frac{J_{t}}{E_{b,t}} = \frac{J_{t}}{\sigma T_{t}^{4}},$$is defined as the ratio of the target radiosity, *J*~t~, to the blackbody emissive power, *E*~b,t~, at the temperature, *T*~t~, of the target area, where the Stefan-Boltzmann constant *σ* is 5.67051 × 10^−8^ W/(m^2^ × K^4^). Since the surfaces are gray, the total and spectral effective emissivities are equal, and this value is used in the temperature measurement equation, [Eq. (1)](#fd1-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="disp-formula"}, to determine the wafer temperature from the measured spectral radiance temperature. ### 6.2.2 Model with the Specular Shield For the specular shield, we have implemented the classical radiation transfer enclosure analysis for specular and diffuse surfaces \[[@b77-v111.n01.a02]\]. In our model, all *N* surfaces of the enclosure emit diffusely, but the *d* diffuse surfaces (*i* = 1, 2, ..., *d*; wafer and guard surfaces or zones) reflect diffusely and the (*N* − *d*) specular surfaces (*i* = *d* + 1, *d* + 2, ..., *N*; the shield surfaces or zones) reflect specularly. For each diffuse surface, the radiation leaving the surface by direct emission and reflected irradiation is diffuse and is represented by the radiosity, *J~i~*. For each specular surface, the only diffuse radiation leaving the surface is by emission, *ε~i~E*~b~*~i~*; the incident irradiation is specularly reflected. The transport between the surfaces based upon the radiosities *J~i~* and emissive powers *E*~b~*~i~* is determined by the *specular* exchange factor $F_{i - j}^{s}$, defined as the fraction of diffuse radiation leaving *A~i~* that is intercepted by *A~j~* by the direct path *and* by all possible paths involving intermediate specular reflections. Since the shield is planar and is the only specular surface in the enclosure aside from the direct path, there is just one additional path (no multiple specular reflections), thereby simplifying the evaluation of $F_{i - j}^{s}$. The energy balances for each of the diffuse surfaces forms a system of d equations that must be solved to determine the radiosity of the target area, $$\begin{array}{l} {{\sum_{j = 1}^{N}\left\lbrack {\delta_{ij} - \left( {1 - \varepsilon_{i}} \right)F_{i - j}^{s}} \right\rbrack}J_{j} = \varepsilon_{i}E_{bi}} \\ {+ \left( {1 - \varepsilon_{i}} \right){\sum_{j = d + 1}^{N}{\varepsilon_{j}E_{bj}F_{i - j}^{s}}}.} \\ \end{array}$$The effective emissivity of the wafer target follows from [Eq. (3)](#fd3-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="disp-formula"} as with the diffuse case. Again, [Eq. (1)](#fd1-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="disp-formula"} is used to determine the model-corrected LPRT temperature. The radiation balances, [Eqs. (2)](#fd2-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="disp-formula"} and ([4](#fd4-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="disp-formula"}), for the enclosures with the diffuse and specular shield, respectively, were solved using 24 zones to represent the five regions earlier identified. Each zone is characterized by an area of uniform temperature and emissivity (or reflectivity). The wafer was represented by 10 concentric zones and the shield by 12 concentric zones. The guard ring and the guard tube were each represented by one zone. The resulting system of equations, with one equation for each radiation balance, was solved numerically for the radiosity *J~i~* of each surface by using a standard LU decomposition method \[[@b78-v111.n01.a02]\]. 6.3 Discussion of Results ------------------------- A parametric study with the two enclosure models showed how the wafer effective emissivity is affected by wafer and shield radiative properties, gap separation, and LP sensing tip area. In [Fig. 20](#f20-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"}, the diffuse-enclosure model shows the effective emissivity as a function of gap separation when the LP sensing tip has the shield reflectance (top set of curves) compared to conditions with a black tip. For the black LP tip condition, as *L* approaches 0 mm, *ε*~eff~ approaches the wafer emissivity. For large gap separations, the influence of the LP tip radiative properties has minimal effect. At *L* = 12.5 mm, the LP tip condition has little influence (less than 0.01 emissivity units or 0.7 K) on the diffuse-model prediction for the effective emissivity. In [Fig. 21](#f21-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"}, the effective emissivity results are based upon the diffuse model, assuming black LP tip areas of different diameters, for shields with reflectance of 99.3 % (specular) and 79.9 % (diffuse). At *L* = 12.5 mm, doubling the LP tip diameter from the 4-mm diameter, representative of the experiment conditions, to 8-mm diameter, reduces the effective emissivity by 0.016 and 0.012 for the 99.3 % shield and 79.9 % shield, respectively. These emissivity changes amount to temperature changes of 0.9 K and 1.2 K, respectively. The results from the modeling analyses are summarized in [Fig. 22](#f22-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="fig"} and compared against the experimental effective emissivity values based upon a best fit with the TFTC measurements. The effective emissivity is shown as a function of the gap separation for chamber configurations with diffuse (79.9 % reflectance) and specular (99.3 %) shields. In the limits for very small gap separations, the effective emissivity approaches 0.65, the emissivity of the wafer. At larger gap separations, the effect of shield diffuseness or specularity is less than for smaller gaps. The data points for gap separations of 6 mm, 9 mm, and 12.5 mm, represent the effective emissivity value that provides the best fit between the TFTC measurements and the corrected LPRT measurement of true temperature. Clearly the trends of the data points and the model estimates with gap separation are in poor agreement. We expect the agreement to be poorest at very small gap separations since the interaction between the LP sensing tip and wafer target become increasingly more complicated. Full confidence in the radiation modeling cannot be established until the gap-separation trends and the effects of shield diffuseness are understood. 6.4 Uncertainty Analysis ------------------------ Estimates of the uncertainties from the LPRT and TC measurements are shown in [Table 8](#t8-v111.n01.a02){ref-type="table"}. A major contributor to the LPRT measurement uncertainty is the effective emissivity uncertainty of about 3.0 °C. The uncertainty due to the difference between the LPRT target and the TFTC junctions is 2.0 °C. Most of the TC total uncertainty is due to the TFTC uncertainty based on the large (10 °C) difference across the 80 mm length of the TFTC. The total LPRT and TC measurement uncertainties are 3.5 °C and 0.3 °C, respectively. From this analysis we conclude that it would be possible to calibrate the LPRT for spectral radiance temperature within 0.5 °C and for actual thermodynamic temperature within 3.5 °C. 7. Conclusions and Future Work ============================== We have demonstrated that LPRTs can be calibrated at NIST against a stable blackbody with a standard uncertainty of 0.3 °C, that calibrated LPRTs can be compared against TFTC wafers with an uncertainty of 2.1 °C, and that calibrated LPRTs can be used with model-based algorithms to determine the wafer temperature with an uncertainty of 3.5 °C. A hallmark of the LPRT research at NIST has been the thorough effort of establishing proper calibration and characterization procedures for LPRTs and making critical recommendations for effective LPRT usage protocols. We have stressed the importance of traceability and uncertainty analysis to the RTP community. The utility of models was shown to assist in uncertainty analysis, prediction of properties for chamber design, and achievement of our temperature goals. For future work, emissivity compensated reflectometer measurements could be a viable alternative for temperature measurements in semiconductor systems. The emittance initiative at NIST has motivated the development of a facility to characterize the emittance of samples as a function of temperature and wavelength. This could prove critical for the semiconductor industry in making more accurate LPRT temperature measurements. The new-generation CLRTs should be investigated as a diagnostic and measurement tool for temperatures up to 900 °C. In particular, CLRTs in the infrared region will be useful for post-exposure bake and other applications in the temperature range from 25 °C to 200 °C. The author gratefully acknowledges David W. Allen and Dr. Kenneth G. Kreider for their careful review and valuable comments in the writing of this manuscript. Many staff members at NIST have contributed directly to the research aspects of the RTP Temperature Project (Dr. Thomas R. O'Brian, Dr. David P. DeWitt, Dr. Kenneth G. Kreider, David W. Allen, Dr. Christopher W. Meyer, Dr. Francis J. Lovas, Vincent P. Scheuerman, Dr. Murthy V. Annageri, William A. Kimes) and indirectly by support of management (Robert D. Saunders, Billy W. Mangum, Dean C. Ripple, Gerald T. Fraser, Dr. Edward A. Early, Albert C. Parr, James R. Whetstone, Gregory J. Rosasco, and others) and from the Office of Microelectronics Programs (Robert I. Scace, Dr. Stephen Knight, and Dr. Joaquin V. Martinez de Pinillos). Dr. Zhuomin Zhang and his colleagues (Mr. Ferdinand Rosa, Dr. Donghai Chen, Dr. Yihui Zhou, Dr. Yu-Jiun Shen, and Mr. Bong Jae Lee) performed much of the modeling work. Finally, this paper is a tribute to Dr. David P. DeWitt, my teacher, mentor, colleague, and friend, who recently passed away. Certain commercial equipment or materials are identified in this paper to foster understanding. Such identification does not imply recommendation or endorsement by the NIST, nor does it imply that the equipment or materials are necessarily the best available for the purpose. **About the author:** Benjamin K. Tsai is a physical scientist in the Optical Technology Division of the NIST Physics Laboratory. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is an agency of the Technology Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce. {#f1-v111.n01.a02} {#f2-v111.n01.a02} {#f3-v111.n01.a02} {#f4-v111.n01.a02} {#f5-v111.n01.a02} {#f6-v111.n01.a02} {#f7-v111.n01.a02} {#f8-v111.n01.a02} {#f9-v111.n01.a02} {#f10-v111.n01.a02} {#f11-v111.n01.a02} {#f12-v111.n01.a02} {#f13-v111.n01.a02} {#f14-v111.n01.a02} {#f15-v111.n01.a02} {#f16-v111.n01.a02} {#f17-v111.n01.a02} {#f18-v111.n01.a02} {#f19-v111.n01.a02} {#f20-v111.n01.a02} {#f21-v111.n01.a02} {#f22-v111.n01.a02} ###### Uncertainties in °C for Na-HPBB Factor Uncertainty --------------------------- ------------- Na-HPBB radial uniformity 0.29 Na-HPBB length uniformity 0.10 Na-HPBB stability for 1 h 0.03 Au-Pt TC temperature 0.005 Na-HPBB Temperature 0.31 ###### Typical uncertainties in °C for Na-HPBB calibration of LPRTs Factor Uncertainty ----------------------- ------------- LPRT noise 0.01 LPRT short-term drift 0.03 Stray radiation 0.00 Blackbody emissivity 0.03 Na-HPBB temperature 0.31 LPRT calibration 0.31 LP cable handling 2.00 LPRT total 2.02 ###### Typical uncertainties in °C for Na-HPBB calibration of STRTs Factor Uncertainty ------------------------ ------------- STRT resolution 1.00 STRT short-term drift 0.03 Stray radiation 0.00 Blackbody emissivity 0.03 Na-HPBB temperature 0.31 STRT calibration total 1.05 ###### Typical uncertainties in °C for heat pipe blackbody calibration of cableless lightpipe radiation thermometers Factor Uncertainty ------------------------ ------------- CLRT noise 0.01 CLRT short-term drift 0.03 Stray radiation 0.00 Blackbody emissivity 0.03 Na-HPBB temperature 0.31 CLRT calibration total 0.31 ###### Summary of LP measurements in the integrating sphere Before or after cleaning LP make Location Difference \[%\] -------------------------- ----------- ----------- ------------------ ------ Before LPRT1-LP2 1.04356 V 1.04803 V 0.43 Before LPRT2-LP2 1.08129 V 1.09079 V 0.88 After LPRT1-LP2 1.06788 V 1.06901 V 0.11 After LPRT2-LP2 1.06654 V 1.06947 V 0.27 ###### Measurement uncertainties for *in situ* LPRT calibration Component *U*/°C ---------------------------------------- -------- TFTC calibrations 0.4 Thermocouple emf measurements 1.0 LPRT calibrations 0.2 LPRT measurements 0.1 Wafer temperature fluctuations 0.4 Wafer Temperature drift 0.1 Junction/target temperature difference 2.0 Total 2.3 ###### Temperature uncertainties \[°C\] for comparison of LPRT and TC measurements LPRT measurements TC measurements ---------------------------------------- ----- ----------------- ----- Calibration 0.2 TFTC (10 °C) 0.3 Effective emissivity 3.0 Pd/Pt TC 0.1 Junction/target temperature difference 2.0 TC emf 0.1 Temperature fluctuations 0.4 Temperature drift 0.1 LPRT display 0.1 Subtotal 3.5 Subtotal 0.3

Granny I would like to eat something Of course, sweetheart What is it that you desire? I want fried eggs Alright sweetie. I hope I remember how to do them Here you go. I hope you will like them Grandmother These eggs are burned I'm so sorry. I really tried I'm a terrible grandmother You deserve better than me It's not your fault I still love you Thank you for the meal

package com.flask.colorpicker.slider; import android.content.Context; import android.graphics.Bitmap; import android.graphics.Canvas; import android.graphics.Paint; import android.graphics.PorterDuff; import android.util.AttributeSet; import com.flask.colorpicker.ColorPickerView; import com.flask.colorpicker.Utils; import com.flask.colorpicker.builder.PaintBuilder; public class AlphaSlider extends AbsCustomSlider { public int color; private Paint alphaPatternPaint = PaintBuilder.newPaint().build(); private Paint barPaint = PaintBuilder.newPaint().build(); private Paint solid = PaintBuilder.newPaint().build(); private Paint clearingStroke = PaintBuilder.newPaint().color(0xffffffff).xPerMode(PorterDuff.Mode.CLEAR).build(); private Paint clearStroke = PaintBuilder.newPaint().build(); private Bitmap clearBitmap; private Canvas clearBitmapCanvas; private ColorPickerView colorPicker; public AlphaSlider(Context context) { super(context); } public AlphaSlider(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) { super(context, attrs); } public AlphaSlider(Context context, AttributeSet attrs, int defStyleAttr) { super(context, attrs, defStyleAttr); } @Override protected void createBitmaps() { super.createBitmaps(); alphaPatternPaint.setShader(PaintBuilder.createAlphaPatternShader(barHeight * 2)); clearBitmap = Bitmap.createBitmap(getMeasuredWidth(), getMeasuredHeight(), Bitmap.Config.ARGB_8888); clearBitmapCanvas = new Canvas(clearBitmap); } @Override protected void drawBar(Canvas barCanvas) { int width = barCanvas.getWidth(); int height = barCanvas.getHeight(); barCanvas.drawRect(0, 0, width, height, alphaPatternPaint); int l = Math.max(2, width / 256); for (int x = 0; x <= width; x += l) { float alpha = (float) x / (width - 1); barPaint.setColor(color); barPaint.setAlpha(Math.round(alpha * 255)); barCanvas.drawRect(x, 0, x + l, height, barPaint); } } @Override protected void onValueChanged(float value) { if (colorPicker != null) colorPicker.setAlphaValue(value); } @Override protected void drawHandle(Canvas canvas, float x, float y) { solid.setColor(color); solid.setAlpha(Math.round(value * 255)); if (showBorder) canvas.drawCircle(x, y, handleRadius, clearingStroke); if (value < 1) { // this fixes the same artifact issue from ColorPickerView // happens when alpha pattern is drawn underneath a circle with the same size clearBitmapCanvas.drawColor(0, PorterDuff.Mode.CLEAR); clearBitmapCanvas.drawCircle(x, y, handleRadius * 0.75f + 4, alphaPatternPaint); clearBitmapCanvas.drawCircle(x, y, handleRadius * 0.75f + 4, solid); clearStroke = PaintBuilder.newPaint().color(0xffffffff).style(Paint.Style.STROKE).stroke(6).xPerMode(PorterDuff.Mode.CLEAR).build(); clearBitmapCanvas.drawCircle(x, y, handleRadius * 0.75f + (clearStroke.getStrokeWidth() / 2), clearStroke); canvas.drawBitmap(clearBitmap, 0, 0, null); } else { canvas.drawCircle(x, y, handleRadius * 0.75f, solid); } } public void setColorPicker(ColorPickerView colorPicker) { this.colorPicker = colorPicker; } public void setColor(int color) { this.color = color; this.value = Utils.getAlphaPercent(color); if (bar != null) { updateBar(); invalidate(); } } }

Management flaws and a lack of oversight were partly to blame for the Yangtze river cruise ship disaster that left 442 passengers and crew dead last June, according to an official report on the incident. The Eastern Star capsized after it was hit by a "very rare" weather phenomenon in the central Chinese province of Hubei, a report published by China's cabinet, the State Council, found. The ship was hit by a strong squall accompanied by a sudden torrential downpour of rain, the report said. But it also blamed the Chongqing Eastern Shipping Co., which operated the vessel, and local government for "flaws in their daily management and supervision work." The report recommended demotions or sackings for seven shipping company employees and for 36 local government and ruling Chinese Communist Party officials, the official news agency Xinhua reported. In particular, it recommended that the ship's captain, Zhang Shunwen, who survived, should have his skipper's license revoked and his contract terminated. The authorities are now probing whether Zhang, who was detained shortly after his rescue, should also face criminal charges. Warning ignored The Eastern Star overturned at around 9:28 p.m. on June 1 near Hubei's Jianli city. Only 12 of the 456 people on board, most of whom were retired tourists, survived. Officials had said at the time that the ship was hit by a weather phenomenon they described as "a tornado." Relatives of those who died had previously questioned whether the ship should have sailed at all, given that a weather warning was in place at the time. A relative surnamed Lin said many of the relatives of the victims welcomed the sanctions, but said that many doubts remain. "This incident had a devastating impact on our family, so we can't say that we are exactly satisfied with this result," she said. "We will accept it as the reality that we face, however." Lin said the report lacked detail about what happened aboard the Eastern Star in the crucial moments before it capsized. "We have had doubts and questions since this happened, especially about a refit to the cabin that we heard about, and about whether it was possible to get out of the exits," Lin said. "But the report didn't address this." Exits blocked Reports have indicated that the ship was streamlined from its original design in 1997, removing individual cabin doors that once opened onto an exterior gangway, and turning them into windows. Relatives have suggested that these changes made it harder to escape once the boat ran into trouble, as passengers would need to squeeze into crowded internal corridors to reach the exits. A relative surnamed Qu, who lost both parents in the disaster, called on the authorities to hold a meeting with the relatives of victims to answer their questions and concerns. "I don't think it's fair for them to blame it all on the weather," Qu said. "Why did they do so much investigating if they were only going to blame it on the storm, on the weather?" "If they are sanctioning so many people, then this must have been a man-made disaster, [not a natural one]," Qu said. Reported by Yang Fan for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

As news of the allegations against Toronto Mayor Rob Ford rolls and roils its way across the globe, a contingent of skeptics has cast doubt on the story of his alleged crack smoking by claiming the video purporting to show it could have been doctored or faked. Most prominently, Ford’s Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday cited the well-known faked “eagle picking up a baby” video as an example of how, these days, you just never know if something is real. Whether or not the allegations are true is something I can’t know. Whether a video of Ford behaving as has been described can be digitally faked, however, is something I do have an answer for: it absolutely, positively cannot be. The way it’s been related, the proof in question is not a grainy photograph, taken at a distance or at night. It is video, well-lit, and allegedly contains someone looking like Ford moving, speaking and gesticulating. What that means is that in order for it to be digitally faked, the sellers wouldn’t simply have had to “doctor” a video, like they were putting a dead celebrity in a commercial; they would have needed to create a believable digital replica of the man, a realistic video game version of the mayor who walks and talks just like him. Or hire a perfect double to act Ford’s part. Here’s the thing: if you had George Lucas’s special effects team, the world’s faster supercomputers, and an unlimited budget, you couldn’t make that happen. Can we make dinosaurs and aliens? Sure. Are we able to make elves and “the One” do very cool, acrobatic things from a distance? Of course. Can we create convincing digital representations of human beings that move and talk and stand up to scrutiny in a video shot from five to seven feet away? Nope. We’re kinda-sorta getting there, but to even approach believability, you need the person you’re trying to replicate in order to digitize them. A video of a digital Robert Bruce Ford doing whatever his creators want him to do is, at this point in history, unequivocally a technological impossibility. Whether or not this means the allegations are true, however, isn’t my concern here. Rather, interesting to me are the implications of the seemingly widespread belief that creating such believable alternate realities using technology is not only possible, but easy. After all, it wasn’t just Toronto’s deputy mayor who raised the idea of the video being a fake — everyone from Internet commenters to CBC news anchors have floated the notion. So what’s going on? For one, it seems our relationship to the image is undergoing yet another change. Beyond specific examples of their use, the mere existence of tools such as Photoshop and other digital video effects means the already shaky assumption that you could believe the truth of images is now even further undercut. Technologies that can make the unreal appear true highlight the fact that images and video are never simply “a window onto reality,” but are constructed and framed in certain ways. That was true previously as well, but it was often hidden. Newer technological advancements just mean that critically evaluating everything we see is now more necessary than ever. Score one for your high-school media studies teacher. But in an era when no one takes a magazine cover at face value, this is hardly a revelation. That said, there is something else going on here. Relying on a relationship between images or videos and reality has been a staple of law and society for some time now. That phenomenon, otherwise known as “referentiality,” has been part of the reason mass media became so vital for combating ignorance and breaking news: broadcasters could actually show you what had happened or what is happening right now. In that sense, documentary technologies like the camera were part of the tradition of the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution. Forget assumptions or belief, they said — instead, focus on fact and evidence. The trouble is, when fact and evidence are so easily dismissed — as many citations of the “eagle baby” video attest to — the basic structure of evidence leading to rational deduction also gets undercut. Instead of simply showcasing that images and video can be changed, the very existence of digital technologies capable of such manipulations brings to the fore another phenomenon: that how we relate to the world is as much about what we believe as what we see. The net effect, then: when commenters suggest the Ford video is faked, it’s because the idea of this evidence doesn’t fit their ideological agenda — a situation neatly mirrored in those who believe the claims unquestioningly. That old chestnut about being entitled to one’s own opinion but not one’s own facts is a little less clear-cut than it used to be. What happens when, instead of arguing over viewpoints, people start debating the legitimacy of what, just a few years ago, you could safely say was proof? Thus far, Ford and his team have mostly reacted to the accusations with stony silence. I’m not sure they’re smart enough or cynical enough to be relying on what Gawker editor John Cook has called the “epistemological rabbit hole” that comes from trying to ascertain truth in a situation like this. It doesn’t really matter, though — whether specific examples of media are proven to be authentic or false is, very strangely, irrelevant. The simple possibility that such referential evidence can be fake allows individuals to retreat into ideological bubbles of their own choosing. Because that which we’d once have called evidence is now yet another thing that may or may not be true, agreeing on facts — and forming social or political consensus around them — just gets that much harder. And as long as the mayor of Canada’s largest city stays silent or simply denies that the video exists, we are stuck in a no man’s land where what is true hardly matters at all. Navneet Alang is Toronto-based writer and a contributing editor to Hazlitt on technology and culture. This article was originally published on Hazlittmag.com.

oh, you drive three hours and call it a road trip? Please, tell me more about your many travels 210 shares

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Edge Security to the Rescue For decades, we've utilized the enterprise security model which centralizes valuable data with trusted custodians. Over and over, this model has been proven to be flawed, with countless hacks, breakins, and thefts of consumer information and data. Instead of relying on enterprise server security, Edge-Security encrypts data first the user's device before it ever touches a network or server. A server-side hack yields nothing but fully encrypted, private data. A hack on a user’s device yields only the data of that one user vs millions of users. The incentive to attack the system is reduced by orders of magnitude. Airbitz provides the world’s first edge security platform that allows developers to build apps that secure users’ data at "The Edge." Automatic Backup Client-Side Encryption Multi-device synchronization One-Touch 2 Factor Authentication Password Recovery Revision Control / Rollback Developer SDK Use Case Utilize the Airbitz SDK to secure your blockchain application in just a few lines of code. Users create an account and login to your app with an easy and familiar username and password. Current Airbitz Wallet users can simply scan a barcode.

Anger Management Charlie Sheen's new cable show is the odd man out among its peers on FX. Who would have thought that Charlie Sheen's new series, Anger Management, would be the only show on FX without a TV-MA rating? No doubt people thought Sheen's return to a television series after his well-publicized brouhaha with CBS and departure from Two and a Half Men would result in some kind of nude-hooker hootenanny with F-bombs aplenty and graphic content meant to offend. But no. Anger is really just a slightly more content-dangerous network sitcom. Having watched the two episodes that FX sent along, it's easy to wonder why the series isn't on a broadcast network rather than FX, the ad-supported cable channel where even the animated series are TV-MA. Sheen plays Charlie Goodson, a former pro baseball player whose anger-management issues sabotaged his career. He then goes to college to become a therapist specializing in, you guessed it, anger management. He has an ex-wife, Jennifer (Shawnee Smith), who is smart and sarcastic but has terrible taste in men. That frustrates the now well-adjusted Charlie because the two share custody of a 15-year-old daughter, Sam (Daniela Bobadilla), with OCD issues. Charlie adores his daughter, respects his ex-wife and constantly worries about them. Meanwhile, he's happy where he's at, having no-strings-attached sex with Kate (Selma Blair), who happens to be his best friend as well as a fellow therapist (and eventually his therapist). There are plenty of people for Charlie to bounce one-liners off of. As it turns out, it's best to look at Anger in two ways. First, as a business decision on FX's behalf. And secondly, as solid proof from Sheen that he can still be funny and even endearing in a network-styled sitcom with a laugh track. And yes, Anger is consistently funnier than the current version of Two and a Half Men. It's not even close. However, that doesn't make a series for FX (home of the best half-hour comedy on TV, Louie -- see below). And that context is likely to be the problem (at least among critics) greeting Anger. Is Anger funny? Sure, in a big-tent, broadcast-network kind of way. For his part, Sheen proves why he's bankable. Nevermind his personal life -- he nails his lines, uses his face and physical nature to make punch lines funnier than they might be and commands a multicamera sitcom better than pretty much anybody in the business. It also would be needlessly highbrow (and inaccurate) to ignore the fact that Anger has a string of funny jokes scattered throughout. But they are variations on what you've heard a million times and are, at the core, fairly predictable. That might be ratings gold on a broadcast network, but the guess here is that people come to cable because they want something different. Anger isn't different. It's just airing in an unexpected place. Airdate: 9 p.m. Thursday, June 28 (FX)

Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1836-1922 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities external link and the Library of Congress. Learn more Download & Play Questions Newspaper Page Text i 1 4 M i N 1 El il I t it M WDMffiHT VEIiY AFTERNOON flxoopt Hands p o dos an Balsroilat tUo io Offlaa nt Uonolala H T m Qooond oUna mall 0UBBOIIIPTIOU KA2D3 Per Month anywhere In tho Ha waiian Inlands CO lnr Year 0 CO Ber Year poitpald to Foreign Gonn tries 8 00 Fnynblo Invariably In Advanco V 3 3K3XAJroprlotor and Pub V lienor BasIdluE In Honolulu TUESDAY OOT 3 1903 TOPICS OF TSK DAY If George R Carter dont leave Washington pretty soon and get down to business it will take a good part of the monoy rcolized from the loan bonds to pay for hie fool cable grams With 1800 American soldiers and 300 French sailors in port tho laBt of next week the waterfront should ba kept humming for a few days Bothoontingents will leave consid erable money here grealy stimulat ing business Clnmnae H Mackay ought to in vest a few thousand dollars in Ha waiian loan bonds His cable is oer tainly making big money out of the Territory through George B Carter on aooount of the bonds Recip rocity is in onion Mr Maokay The author and the editor of the Sunday Advertiser seem still to bo enjoying Colonel Tom Fitchs ram bling sketches of Nevada life in the remoto and no Iongor -interesting days of the Cumstopk Tho public is to ba boored with another install ment tomorrow morning Ahuimaia a correspondent with a letter throws in this issue some interesting side lights ou tho history of several candidates for county office The writer is a kamaaina and knows them all Facts concerning other candidates will appear later Tho Legislature failed to pass the Sunday baseball law but Sunday baseball runs aldug merrily just tho same Tomorrow there will be two furious games at Kapiolaui park - 4tk 4 JMfhMTMUUJMr So for no harm has oome of the div oroionwbilo tho gamos have enabled men who labor on Saturday after noon to onjoy tho sport James W Pratt Republican can didate for tax assessor has a card out in Hawaiian giving bis name os Ktmo Palaka Polaka in Ha waiian meant jumper or ovorshirt Another moaning is forgotfulnoss he both Ho might ho put in the lint with Roosevelt lieu ton jib Forgetful Overahirt ohj E M 1371 m placod tho cnntrnul for printing tho advertising folders in Snn FrauoUan Suppose a person not in sympathy with tho politics of tho Advortiser hod dono this what would hvo happened For tho next 365 days that portion would be thu viutim of all tho mean epithets in tho vocabulary of tho morning preaa Tho cablegram froji Secretary Oartor tothoilTjct that tho United States government would accept the Hawniiau in oxclnnga for National bonds is the best of Rood nowa Atouo dash it gives the btula a national standing and placoa them in tho list of securities that will ba jumped at by investora from one side of the country to tho other Mr Carter should now have extremely smooth sailing Frank Harvey ought to cultivate the closer acquaintance of Henry E Cooper tho ahampion office holder of Hawaii between now and Nov ember 3 If tho Democrats elect him supervisor of the Fifth District and the Homo Rulers put him in as he will need all tho ingonuity of a Cooper to straighten out his status Of course such a thing is noxt to impossible but soriously the principle is ter ribly awry Tho work of tbo Moanalua high wayman doos not appear like that of a Chinaman The keener man ipulation of a whito man shows it self on the surface In view of the unrestrained use of the pistol and numerous other circumstances may it not be probable that the despera do is a white man painted and dres ed for the occasion and made tho more daring by the safety so easy at hand in throwing off bis disguise It looks a good deal that way Tho reports of tho inspecting of ficers of tho regular army on tho condition of the National Guard in tho various States aro not auob as to promote bolter feeling betwoon these twin branches of tho service In many States tho Notional Guard rojjynenls aro oliarnotortetal eh prac tioully armed mob Thot such v oommont will wound civilian pride and raise a storm in to be expected Tho report of the Cemp McKinlcy officers on tbo Hawaiian Natioral Guard will Lo awaited with interest Tbo fact that tho administration at Washington ia taking a live interest in tho visit of Edward Rosonburg to Hono lulu showA the great figure labor outs in national affairs It is well enough for our plutocratic citizens and press to onoor at labor and it was well enough for the morning paper to belittle Rosenburg and his work here but people of tho main land have come to look at such matters in a very different wry CitiZi labor wllljiot bo arushrd to earth burn any more than ii will in California or New York It has the Government and the Auiericau v plo behind it and the sooner tho omployer of tho Islands comes to realize tho fact tho better for all ooncorned Republican candidates lose no op portunity of assuming native Ha waiians of work in osse they ate olooted Why do thoy not show thoir good faith by smarting in bo foro election and at home For in itancn how- about tho Asiatics working in the bottling department of the Honolulu brewery Aro thore not lots of natives in tho city that would aocopt this work Or doos oaudidato Hooking moan that he will discharge the coolies aftor hio elec tion rrovidad ho gotB tbore and will then employ tho natives whose votes elected him The best evid ence of good faith in such a matter is to refrain from employing coolua before olcctionaftor election and be rwofn elmitiono Wi kW JNOTIQE TO CANDIDATES FOR ELECTION TO COUNTY OFFICES Territory of Hawaii Secretarys Office Notice is hereby given that where as it in required by low that oandi dates for election to county offices on the Island of Oahu Bball file their nominatiouswith tho Secretary of tho Territory not less thau Ten Days bafore tho Special Election for County Ouoers it will bo necessary thataaid nominations bo filed in this office not later thau FivoOCIock on tho afternoon of Friday October 23rd A D 1903 No person shall be eligible to a County or District office unless of the age of twenty one years a citizen of the Territory aud an eleotor of the County or District in which the duties of the office aro to bo cxnrois ed and a resident therein for three yoaro immediately preceding such oleotion and no person shall here after bo eligible to the office of Dis trict Attorney who shall not hnyo beon admitted to practice in tbo Su preme Court of tho Territory of Hawaii Each nomination must bo accom panied by a deposit of Twenty five Dollars and be signed by not less than Twontv llve dulv Qualified Electors of tho County for which such election is to bo bold G B CARTER Secretary of the Territory O R BUOKLAND Electoral Registrar Capitol Honolulu Ootobor 1st 1903 2623 Oot 1 5 8 12 15 18 21 SEALED XENDEUB FOB BONDS Sealed tondera will bo received by tho Troasutor of the Torritory until 12 oclock noon Mouday Ootobor 19 1903 for the salo of Territorial five per cent bonds issued under provis ions of Act 42 Session Laws of 1903 to the amount of 75000000 Pay ments to bo made as called for be tween the first day of Noyembor aud tho first day of January Tenders to be in sums not less than 1000 00 each payable in IJuitul States gold coin No tender will bo accepted at hosthan 98 per cent of pir value Thtiiii bondtj have boon approvod by tho President oTtho United States to tho amount of 122910803 A fl KEPOIKAI Treasuifer Treasury Department Sept 20 1903 2019 3t eod THOS LINDSAY Cell and inspect tho bsautiful and useful display of goods for pres ents or for personal usa and adorn lnout lon BnUcliucr ERA Fort RirMt H van a ale nnn leasehold on iUUU isma piwci uv yoaro turn Prciiont not iuoomo 100 p tncnta Apply to WILLIAiaSAV IDaW oo 236 Mojfohtnt 8tT 9 Girls Doctors have clven the Greek name Anrcmla meaning bloodless ness to a disease which Is much more prevalent among young women than Is generally believed In Its early stages the disease is not mariceu oy any decided symptoms and 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You know when the premise of a game doesn’t really make sense but you don’t care because the game looks fun enough? In Beacon [official site] you’ll find yourself stranded on an unfamiliar and hostile planet, with a weapon and a working clone bay. That’s the setup for a top-down shooter with roguelike elements (read: permadeath, mostly) in which you’ll be fighting, dying and cloning yourself back, each time using your enemies’ DNA to modify yourself in gameplay-altering ways. Why can’t you clone yourself multiple times and make a small army? How could such a delicate piece of equipment survive your ship’s destruction? Does it matter? These and more hard-hitting questions after the break. Beacon is the first effort from Monothetic, a studio created by same folks who worked on Half-Life 2 mod Black Snow. There is no announced release date, but it will be coming to Windows and Mac as well as XBone. The trailer tries to make the premise look cool – and admittedly, it succeeds – before showing quite a bit of gameplay. To experience this #content, you will need to enable targeting cookies. Yes, we know. Sorry. Manage cookie settings The visuals give a strong Transistor vibe, except with more wildlife and alien nature. The game itself will be quite action-oriented: you’ll shoot your way through robots, aliens, wildlife and some zombie-like things called “the occult” to get to the titular beacon and off the planet, but the devs also promise ” long-term strategy, where your actions can be felt and built upon hours down the line.” Now, back to our questions: If you’re dead, how can you carry the defeated enemies’ DNA back to the clone bay? And who is making the decisions about what DNA to splice into yours? When does the game come out? Will we ever know? Can we ever be sure we know anything at all? But if we can never be sure, can we at least be sure about our uncertainty, or is that inherently self-contradicting?

Cancer-related anemia: pathogenesis, prevalence and treatment. Cancer-related anemia is a cytokine-mediated disorder resulting from complex interactions between tumor cells and the immune system. Overexpression of certain inflammatory cytokines results in shortened survival of red blood cells, suppression of erythroid progenitor cells, impaired iron utilization, and inadequate erythropoietin production. Numerous other factors may also contribute to the development of anemia in cancer patients. The European Cancer Anaemia Survey (ECAS) has provided the most current, comprehensive, prospectively collected data on the incidence and prevalence of anemia among cancer patients, as well as important perspectives on anemia treatment and relationship of hemoglobin and performance status. ECAS enrolled over 15,000 treated and untreated patients with various malignancies from cancer centers in 24 European countries and followed them for up to 6 months. The initial analysis of the ECAS data revealed that 39% of the total cancer patient population was anemic (hemoglobin <12.0 g/dl) at enrollment, although the rate varied according to tumor type, disease status, and cancer treatment status. Of the patients who were not anemic at enrollment and started cancer treatment during the survey, those undergoing chemotherapy--either alone or in combination with radiotherapy--had the highest incidence of anemia (63 and 42%, respectively). Low hemoglobin levels correlated with poor performance status and only 40% of patients who were anemic at some time during the survey received treatment for their anemia. These findings are noteworthy, since a growing body of clinical evidence indicates that the treatment of anemia can significantly improve patients' quality of life and may also improve the clinical outcome.

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How Well Can One Know Another? Even Oneself? One reason why government planning and control so often fail is that much of the economy is hidden from view.

The official GiveWP development blog It’s been a week since we release 2.0.0 and I just finished releasing version 2.0.1 which includes a number of important fixes. For a large percentage of our users the release has been smooth and they upgraded just fine. However, some of our users experienced issues and we apologize for that. Moving our codebase into the future is important to us but we never want to have our users to have a bad experience. The good thing is though that those who reached out to us were able to roll back Give version to 1.8.19 and continue accepting donations without any issue. Give 2.0.1 Health Checks In this point release we have included additional checks to determine whether 2.0.0 completed successfully or not. As always, we recommend you take a snapshot (aka “backup”) of your website prior to upgrading. The Nature of WordPress Plugin Development At the time of this writing Give has 30,000+ active installs. That’s a lot of websites and environments to be compatible with when you want to perform complex data migrations. There are a number of excellent hosts out there for WordPress and many like to configure their environments in ways that are often difficult to predict. Some servers have firewalls or security measures in place that potential could break Give’s ability to connect with WP’s admin AJAX while others would have plugins that could conflict. We’ve Done Our Best to Correct Upgrade Issues Version 2.0.1 includes a number of checks for folks that: Upgraded to 2.0.0 Experienced an issue Downgraded back to 1.8.19 …And continued using Give …or: Upgrade 2.0.0 Experienced an issue Stayed on 2.0.0 We want you to update to 2.0+ and this point release includes additional checks so your migration will be a smooth experience. What We Learned from the 2.0.0 Release It’s important to reflect back on what we learned in the 2.0.0 release and how we can improve from it. Here’s what we did well post-2.0.0 release: Constant Communication: The entire team this past week has stayed in constant communication with customers experiencing update issues. Our development and support teams have done a great job duplicating sites experiencing issues and passing that off to support to determine the issues and add fixes for the issues found within the 2.0.1 upgrade routine. Rapid Development: We’ve been working around the clock to get these issues stomped out. Despite the challenges, we don’t want any percentage of our users to experience problems with data migrations and we’ve implemented the best approaches we feel possible to work in all the various WP hosting environments. Validate Fixes and Test Thoroughly: With such a large variety of environments running Give it’s important to test, test, and then test some more. This means all sorts of server and database configurations, PHP versions, MySQL versions, and more. It’s not a controlled environment and we’re ready to take on that challenge. 2.0.1 is our best effort towards that. Here’s what we can improve for our next major release: Beta Program: Before our next major release we will implement a Beta test program for users comfortable with helping test new major versions. Keep an eye out for that before the next major release. Improve Automated Testing: There were a number of issues we experienced with the 2.0.0 release that could have been caught had we more automated testing in place. Currently this means more PHPunit tests but I would also like to see if we could also benefit more from browser automation. Faster Releasing: It’s been almost a week since 2.0.0 release and I think we could have pushed this point release faster. If you’ve been waiting for it, I apologize for the delay. We wanted to ensure it was a solid release however I question whether we should’ve had multiple point releases to help remedy the situation faster. It’s a delicate balance of often burdening admins with more updates or waiting until you have a solid one in place. In the future we may take the approach of more rapid releases. Time to Update to 2.0+ Now that 2.0.1 is here I’m confident you can update to 2.0+ without an issue. If you ever experience an issue you can always contact our support for assistance. Missed a lot of donations in the middle of a fundraising campaign – when was the communication about the upgrade to 2.0? Somehow I missed that. Still not fixed as we just learned credit card processing not working due to error message last night I’m so sorry to hear that Sue. We have been communicating 2.0.0 release for a few months now through blog posts on this site and also our main GiveWP blog. If you reach out to our priority support team we will help you get past any errors you may be experiencing: https://givewp.com/priority-support/ Hi Devin, thanks to the whole team for rapidly responding to issues. Nice to see the note added to developer docs that the existing examples don’t use the 2.0 methods. Still waiting for updated docs or a blog post to tell us how we should be doing custom fields with 2.0+. One aspect of upgrading and rapid releases I’d ask you and the team to give consideration to is that some of us are supporting dozens of those 30,000 sites using Give and every update is a significant undertaking for us. Less is definitely more when it comes to workload and profitability. That doesn’t mean critical fixes should be held back. It does mean increased testing and solid releases that don’t need immediate fixes are far more valuable to us than frequent releases. It also means we’d be happy to help with the beta testing for your, our and the entire user base’s benefit. Hey Scott, I understand that updating dozens of websites can be an undertaking. However, we do want to progress Give into the future and doing that can sometimes mean some more significant changes need to be made to shed legacy code or database structures. 2.0 was our most significant release to date which included database upgrades which for some environments has been an issue. WordPress is unique compared to most platforms in the fact that “rapid” development is somewhat discouraged by users because of the upgrade responsibility you outlined in your comment. We’re going to do our best to balance this burden and our need to push the platform into the future. Of course, we’re going to learn from our past and improve the release process to it’s less of a burden and a smooth experience. Thanks for your comment!

NEW YORK — CNN’s Don Lemon did not back down despite criticism from President Trump, twice labeling presidential remarks as racist while he was moderating Wednesday’s Democratic debate. Lemon, with partners Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, presided over a session with questions designed to highlight differences between the 10 candidates onstage, most of whom eagerly took the bait. Tuesday night’s debate wasn’t a ratings triumph for CNN. The Nielsen company said just under 8.7 million people watched, a sharp drop from the 15.3 million who saw opening night of the first debate on NBC News last month. Trump used Twitter on Wednesday to attack Lemon. After insulting Lemon’s intelligence, the president said the CNN anchor had insinuated that he was a racist, “when in fact I am ‘the least racist person in the world.’ ” Trump was apparently quoting himself. Hours after the tweet was sent, Lemon asked Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet what he would do to bridge a racial divide that “has been stoked by the president’s racist rhetoric.” In another question to former Housing Secretary Julián Castro, Lemon referred to Trump’s “racist tweets” about Baltimore. In an attack on Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings last weekend, Trump had referred to Cummings’ Baltimore district as a “rodent infected mess.” It was even sharper terminology than Lemon had used the night before, when he said Trump “is pursuing an election strategy based in part on racial division.” In another question, Lemon referred to “the president’s bigotry.” LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD defended Lemon, who is gay, in a Wednesday tweet that said Trump’s “continued attacks on the intelligence of prominent black Americans are abhorrent and telling.” The ratings drop for the first debate wasn’t entirely unexpected, since the NBC News debate was the shown on both broadcast and cable networks and took place at a time fewer people were on vacation. Still, they led Trump to taunt CNN for “very low ratings.” Besides the television viewership, CNN said an average of 516,000 people watched the debate via digital stream. CNN faces a stiffer challenge in matching NBC for the second night. A month ago, the second of two nights on NBC reached 18.1 million people. Sign up for Daily Newsletters Manage Newsletters Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

Makkah Clock Royal Tower, Ein Fairmont Hotel Werden Sie unser Fan auf Room Reservations: 00966 12 571 7444 (from KSA only) A beacon for pilgrims in the heart of the Holy City Located adjacent to the Masjid Al Haram, Makkah Clock Royal Tower, A Fairmont Hotel boasts a prime location as the closest hotel to Kaaba and yet the best for Umrah and Hajj. Standing as one of the world’s tallest buildings with 76 floors, Makkah Clock Royal Tower, the focal point of theAbraj Al Bait Complex,part of the King Abdul Aziz Endowment Project, is the iconic symbol of hospitality in the Holy City. In addition to the ultimate comfort and casual elegance of the 1618 guest roomssuites and Residences, the five-star hotel provides 56 elevators that allow easy access to and from Al Masjid Al Haram. Combining luxurious design with the warm tradition of genuine Arab hospitality, the nine state-of-the-artdining venuesare perfect for accommodating a wide range of social events and intimate gatherings. Makkah Clock Royal Tower, A Fairmont Hotel offers unmatched hospitality throughout the ultimate exclusive hotel experience with Fairmont Goldwhere our discerning guests have the privilege of choosing their rooms showcasing unrivaled views of either the Kaaba, Haram or to The Holy City of Makkah. A captivating view of Masjid Al Haram and Kaaba and a passion for uncompromising service combine to create an experience that is exquisite and truly unforgettable in the Fairmont Royal Floor, where all the service and luxury synonymous to the Fairmont name go yet another step further. Experience a peaceful residential experience with luxury hotel services at our newly opened Fairmont Residences. Located within the Makkah Clock Royal Tower, A Fairmont Hotel, the residences offer the ultimate in convenience and luxury, coupled with magnificent views of the Kaaba and the Holy city. Designed with comfort in mind, the spacious residences are a perfect home for pilgrims and families who desire to enjoy the serenity of the Holy City from their rooms. The five-star hotel offers more than 3,200 square meter of adaptable function space across two floors, including a fully equippedbusiness centerwith secretarial service, meeting rooms with a pre-function area, and a spectacular ballroom, in addition to a videoconferencing facility, amedia room with live broadcast capabilities, a live translation room.

Army Close to Finalizing Pinks and Greens Uniforms for All Soldiers Military.comWeek of November 06, 2017 The U.S. Army's top enlisted man is close to unveiling the final version of the World War II-era Pinks and Greens uniform that could be approved for all soldiers next year. Sergeant Major of the Army Daniel Dailey and Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley began considering the possibility of bringing back the iconic two-tone uniform of the "greatest generation" for soldiers to wear as an everyday office uniform earlier this year. For more details, see this Military.com article.

21.58Sir Richard Branson has written about his admiration for Steve Jobs in Friday's Daily Telegraph. He says: Leadership doesn’t have a secret formula; all true leaders go about things in their own way. It’s this ability to think differently that sets them apart – and that enabled Steve Jobs to create perhaps the most respected brand in the world. 21.53 We've back after a technical fault here at The Telegraph. Steve Jobs wouldn't have stood for it, you can be sure of that. 20.43 After Steve Jobs returned to Apple, the firm ran a TV advertising campaign called "Think Different", featuring rebellious historical figures such as Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Einstein, and Picasso. The actor Richard Dreyfuss did the voiceover for the version that aired, but Steve Jobs also recorded a version that was never broadcast. It seems to sum up much about his approach to life and business. Here it is: 20.25 Stephen Wolfram, the British scientist and creator of Mathematica, a software package widely used in research, and the Wolfram Alpha knowledge search engine, was a friend of Jobs and worked with Apple on many projects. For example, Wolfram Alpha is an important part of Siri, the iPhone 4S' voice-controlled personal assistant. I first met Steve Jobs in 1987, when he was quietly building his first NeXT computer, and I was quietly building the first version of Mathematica. A mutual friend had made the introduction, and Steve Jobs wasted no time in saying that he was planning to make the definitive computer for higher education, and he wanted Mathematica to be part of it. Actually, it wasn’t yet called Mathematica then, and one of the big topics of discussion was what it should be called. At first it had been Omega (yes, like Alpha) and later PolyMath. Steve thought those were lousy names. I gave him lists of names I’d considered, and pressed him for his suggestions. For a while he wouldn’t suggest anything. But then one day he said to me: “You should call it Mathematica”. There is much that I am grateful to Steve Jobs for. But tragically, his greatest contribution to my latest life project - Wolfram Alpha - happened just yesterday: the announcement that Wolfram Alpha will be used in Siri on the iPhone 4S. Wolfram also found the business card he kept from that first meeting. Here it is: Where Zuckerberg most resembles Jobs is in the strength of conviction he places in his vision. In a world where consumers have ever more choice and an ever louder voice. Jobs always knew that customers who thought they wanted lots of buttons and a removable battery would be seduced by the simplicity and beauty of his devices. You saw that confidence as recently as this week, when Apple held its fire and rolled out the iPhone 4GS rather than rush out a 5G version, as everyone was expecting. Likewise, Zuckerberg has managed to court the masses without ever submitting to the so-called wisdom of the crowd. 19.57 In afternoon trading in New York, Apple stock is fairly stable, down between 0.5 and one per cent. The markets haven't taken Jobs' death as negatively as many analysts expected when he quit as CEO; the intervening months and widely-held sense that the end was near for him seem to have softened the blow. 19.23 This is the middle part of Business Week's three-part Steve Jobs saga. It covers the least-well known part of his career, between 1985, after he had been ousted from Apple by a boardroom coup and before he made his triumphant return in 1997. In many ways it's the most interesting, revealing how he ran NeXT and Pixar, and the failures and tribulations that helped him on his return to Apple. By all accounts, Jobs had entered a contented middle age, the Sturm und Drang of his Apple days now fading into history. During an appearance to promote Toy Story‘s DVD release on Oct. 30, 1996, Jobs was asked by Charlie Rose whether Apple could turn itself around. “It’s just a spectator sport for me now,” said Jobs “If you can’t come up with something more than this whining, you’re out.” Those closing words in an email were the first that I received from Steve Jobs when he returned to Apple as CEO. At the time, I was a PR firm’s managing director in charge of the Apple account, and had penned a “welcome back” email that outlined the status of where things stood. We had nothing to lose so, in response, I wrote an email from my personal account, subject titled “10 Things Apple Must Do.” I remember very well the first one - after years of floundering under his successors, I wrote: “Apple has no vision. Get one.” Boy, did he! Jobs will be remembered both for the life-changing products he created and for the fact that he was able to sit down, think clearly, and execute his ideas - attributes he shared with no other U.S. citizen. 18.24 Jobs' biographer, Walter Isaccson, has written for Time magazine(subscription required) about how he got the job. He was first invited back in 2004. Because I assumed that he was still in the middle of an oscillating career that had many more ups and downs left, I demurred. Not now, I said. Maybe in a decade or two, when you retire. But I later realized that he had called me just before he was going to be operated on for cancer for the first time. As I watched him battle that disease, with an awesome intensity combined with an astonishing emotional romanticism, I came to find him deeply compelling, and I realized how much his personality was ingrained in the products he created. His passions, demons, desires, artistry, devilry and obsession for control were integrally connected to his approach to business, so I decided to try to write his tale as a case study in creativity. 18.12 Google executive Vic Gundotra has re-posted a famous story about a call he received from Steve Jobs on a sunday in the run-up to the release of the iPhone. "So Vic, we have an urgent issue, one that I need addressed right away. I've already assigned someone from my team to help you, and I hope you can fix this tomorrow" said Steve. "I've been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone and I'm not happy with the icon. The second O in Google doesn't have the right yellow gradient. It's just wrong and I'm going to have Greg fix it tomorrow. Is that okay with you?" When I think about leadership, passion and attention to detail, I think back to the call I received from Steve Jobs on a Sunday morning in January. It was a lesson I'll never forget. CEOs should care about details. Even shades of yellow. On a Sunday. 17.56 Jobs was arguably at the height of his powers when Apple introduced the first, revolutionary iPhone in 2007. His masterful presentation created a frenzy of excitement around the device and catapulted his firm to a new level of public awareness and profit. Here's a reminder: 17.45 The US magazine Business Week has a good piece on Jobs' "third act" - his return to Apple in 1997 up to his death yesterday. It end with a nod to Jobs' famed "reality distortion field". Rumors about Jobs’s health had been buzzing around Silicon Valley all year, but anyone who knew him and read that resignation letter understood the end was near. He had been so good at distorting reality, so good at bending everyone - competitors, consumers, the press, and especially himself - to see the world his way. By relinquishing control, Jobs acknowledged that he had finally met the one force he could not charm or bully or out-think: his own mortality. The proposed invention describes a dynamic context-sensitive software icon or button that would be presented to users in different fashions. By doing this, an application could help prevent a user from accidentally initiating a task on their computer. The filing notes that users sometimes engage in activities on their computer that cannot be stopped once they are started, like formatting a disk. In another example, if a system starts burning data to a DVD-ROM or CD-ROM, the operation cannot be stopped without ruining the disc, as the data cannot be rewritten. 17.09 Apple stock is now trading up almost one percent in New York. 16:52 Jobs in his own words:"Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice." - Stanford university, 2005 16:26 Back in 2004, Jobs made an unexpected appearance at the launch of an iPod at Billingsgate fish market in London, according to Beehive City. It was always accepted wisdom that Jobs didn’t really like England very much, and one journalist piped up at the press conference to ask him if it was true. Before iTunes, music executives had failed to be convinced about the success of an online music market. But coupled with Apple's hugely-successful iPod - launched just two years earlier - Steve Jobs proved it was a market worth exploring. The product was an immediate success selling one million songs in its first week and by December it had sold 25 million songs. In 2010 iTune song downloads hit 10 billion. 15:40 Jobs in his own words:"Death is very likely the single best invention of life" 15:35Jobs’ death has prompted his book publishers Simon & Schuster to move up the publication date forward a month to October 24 for his much-anticipated biography. Unsurprisingly, pre-orders for the biography "Steve Jobs" are skyrocketing, and the title now tops bestseller lists at both Amazon and Apple’s iTunes. 15:11 The Telegraph's Ben Bryant tweets:@benbryant It's pretty amazing that Jobs managed to get everybody to pay for music when it's freely available. 15:07 Jobs in his own words:"There's nothing that makes my day more than getting an e-mail from some random person who just bought an iPad over in the UK and tells me the story about how it's the coolest product they've ever brought home in their lives. That's what keeps me going. It's what kept me five years ago [when he was diagnosed with cancer], it's what kept me going 10 years ago when the doors were almost closed. And it's what will keep me going five years from now whatever happens." - AllThingsD Conference, 2010 15:00 Some wonderful photos of reader memories of Jobs have been sent in to the New York Times. 14:53 The death of Apple's inspirational leader is likely to have a deep impact on the technology giant behind the iPod, iPhone and iPad, giving rivals a greater chance of catching up, says Reuters. Steve Jobs' creative spirit was so closely tied to the fortunes of Apple that his death raises questions about the company's ability to keep its pipeline of transformational products running at such a fast pace. "As a technology analyst, I am sorry for his death. It was Jobs' Apple, not Apple's Jobs," said Kim Young-chan, an analyst at Shinhan Investment in Seoul. 14:47 Apple shares jumped 1.5pc to $378.25 at the start of trading on Wall Street. 14:43 A wonderful little clip of Jobs playing a "software dating game" with Bill Gates. The abundance of iPhones, iPads and iPods today makes it easy to forget that Apple wasn't always popular. If you owned a Macintosh before 1998, you were either a creative-type with expensive specialist software, a school or a member of the devoted but small 'Cult of Mac'. Before Jobs returned in 1997, the company was in a desperate state. In 1996 Michael Dell, Apple's historical rival in the desktop computer space, famously said he would 'shut [Apple] down and give the money back to the shareholders' if he was in charge. Gil Amelio, Apple's CEO for 500 days between 1996 and 1997, was said to have told Jobs that 'Apple is like a ship with a hole in the bottom, leaking water'. And Steve Jobs himself said "the company had a decade in which it took a nap" between his ousting and his return. 14:19 In Egypt, Wael Ghonim - a former Google executive who used social media to jump-start social change in Egypt - also honored Jobs via Twitter, saying: "He was truly inspiring. His company helped change the world. Good bye Steve Jobs." 14:13 Not sure Westboro Baptist Church's Margie Phelps, who featured on Louis Theroux's America's Most Hated Family for her extreme views, has realised the irony of this Twitter post: 14:10 Apple shares, down as much as 5pc in Germany after news of Steve Jobs' death, are now trading up 0.2pc in Frankfurt ahead of the start of Wall Street open. 14:07 David Cameron saying the Apple co-founder has inspired future generations of inventors and entrepreneurs - something eh spoke about in his speech at the Tory Party Conference yesterday. 13:54 The ripples of Steve Jobs' death have spread a little wider than expected. Apparently the Foreign Office has cancelled a briefing for journalists today on the London Conference on Cyberspace, a big diplomatic conference they're having at the beginning of November hosted by Wiliam Hague, because of the news. 13:26 One Apple enthusiast Jonathan Moss has tweeted: @jwmoss Steve Jobs was born out of wedlock, put up for adoption at birth, dropped out of college, then changed the world. What's your excuse? The most influential promoter of Steve Jobs' indispensability, of course, is Steve Jobs. But another person who is very much with that program is the one executive who has actually filled in for Jobs as CEO. That would be Tim Cook, Apple's chief operating officer and its interim chief executive for two months in 2004, when Jobs was recovering from cancer surgery. 'Come on, replace Steve? No. He's irreplaceable,' Cook said recently, according to a person who knows him well. 'That's something people have to get over. I see Steve there with gray hair in his 70s, long after I'm retired.' 13:15 Lord Sugar: "Jobs was a techno-marketing genius" 13:13 Google's own subtle tribute: 13:08 From Lord Norman Foster, chairman and founder of Foster and Partners: We were greatly privileged to know Steve as a person, as a friend and in every way so much more than a client. Steve was an inspiration and a role model. He encouraged us to develop new ways of looking at design to reflect his unique ability to weave backwards and forwards between grand strategy and the minutiae of the tiniest of internal fittings. He was the ultimate perfectionist and demanded of himself as he demanded of others. We are better as individuals and certainly wiser as architects through the experience of the last two years and more of working for him. His participation was so intense and creative that our memory will be that of working with one of the truly great designers and mentors. 13:07 Social media guru Andy Carvin tweets: @andycarvinRIP Steve Jobs"' is trending worldwide on Twitter. In truth, he's been trending for over 30 years. #RIPstevejobs 13:00 The Telegraph's Alexis Dormancy asks how does Jobs do it?I met Steve Jobs a couple of times in 2005, to talk about mobile phones. This was two years before the iPhone was launched. At the time it was rumoured it would be within three months. He wouldn’t launch the iPhone until it met his standards. The experience changed the way I look at businesses and leadership. What was it about Steve Jobs that meant he managed to transform four industries? The personal computer (Mac), music (iPod), mobile phones (iPhone) and computing as lifestyle (iPad) will never be the same again – and that's before we mention his creation of another $7bn company in Pixar, which has won more than 20 Academy Awards. If he’d achieved just one of those feats, he would be one of the greatest business people of this era. To have achieved all of them is more than just talent and luck – it’s doing things differently. 12:55 TIME magazine will release its new issue today, which will feature Steve Jobs on the cover. This will be the 8th time Jobs has appeared. 12:35 We have just been sent this from NET Patient Foundation, a charity in the UK that supports patients with neuroendocrine tumours. I feel it is very important that it is made clear that Steve Jobs suffered from a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumour, not pancreatic cancer. We were very saddened to hear that Steve Jobs had lost his battle with pancreatic neuroendocrine tumour. Our thoughts go out to his family, friends and colleagues. 12:25 Data reporter Conrad Quilty-Harper has this graph, which represents Apple's days as an underdog. Until late 2004 the company's market value barely registered against giants like Dell and Microsoft. The release of the iMac and later, the iPod, reversed the company's fortunes. Apple is now the second most valuable company in the world by market cap. 12:20 Jobsin his own words:"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. "Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart." – Stanford commencement speech 2005 12:11 Outside Jobs' house in Palo Alto, neighbors and friends have left flowers and have drawn messages with markers on the sidewalk. "Thanks for changing the world," reads one. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple in Steve Jobs’s house in January 1976, brought together by friendship and mutual respect at meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club, birthplace of so many early silicon valley ventures. Their first product, the Apple 1, was demonstrated to the a meeting of the Homebrew Club in the spring of 1976. Accounts of where and when the demonstration took place vary - some say April fools’ day, but the club’s newsletters only note a meeting on March 31. The Sonoma County branch of the club notes an appearance by the Apple computer in April and thanks Steve Wozniak for the transportation. There's no doubt that Jobs deserves a front-row seat in the pantheon of great inventors and entrepreneurs in history. In the 35 years since he founded Apple, he created the Apple II, the iMac, iPod, iPhone and most recently, the iPad – five products that transformed the technological, music, film, TV, gaming and publishing industries. Few could claim to have even developed a single such product. But there's another person whom we could compare Steve Jobs to who's a little closer to home: Sir Christopher Wren. One of the greatest architects in history, Wren was responsible for building St. Paul's Cathedral as well as dozens of other churches, libraries, palaces, and hospitals across the country. Like Wren, who had interests in astronomy, biology, and physics, Steve Jobs was not 'only' a computer engineer or a programmer, but he had a deep love and appreciation of the importance of design and the humanities when it came to making objects that real people had to use. According to a participant inside a meeting about the panned MobileMe service, Jobs walked in, clad in his trademark black mock turtleneck and blue jeans, clasped his hands together, and asked a simple question: 'Can anyone tell me what MobileMe is supposed to do?' Having received a satisfactory answer, he continued, "So why the fuck doesn't it do that?" For the next half-hour Jobs berated the group. 'You've tarnished Apple's reputation,' he told them. 'You should hate each other for having let each other down.' The public humiliation particularly infuriated Jobs. Fortune said Jobs' handling of the MobileMe debacle offers a rare glimpse of how Apple (AAPL) really operates. To Apple's legion of admirers, the company is like a tech version of Wonka's factory, an enigmatic but enchanted place that produces wonderful items they can't get enough of. 11:02 Here's a chart showing the average Apple share price per year since Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1997 10:44 Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter: "Once in a rare while, somebody comes along who doesn't just raise the bar, they create an entirely new standard of measurement." 10:40 Former prime minister Tony Blair pays tribute to an "extraordinary and creative human being, an inspiration and an innovator who believed that by the power of ideas the world could be transformed." He said: "As much as anyone in any walk of life in the early 21st century he changed people's lives simply by imagination and determination. His memory will serve as a symbol of what the human mind can achieve." 10:27 Steven Levy, a technology writer at Wired, says it had taken a while for the world to realisewhat an amazing treasure Steve Jobs was. But Jobs knew it all along.As a child of the sixties who was nurtured in Silicon Valley, his career merged the two strains in a way that reimagined business itself. And he did it as if he didn’t give a damn who he pissed off. He could bully underlings and corporate giants with the same contempt. But when he chose to charm, he was almost irresistible. His friend, Heidi Roizen, once gave advice to a fellow Apple employee that the only way to avoid falling prey to the dual attacks of venom and charm at all hours was not to answer the phone. That didn’t work, the employee said, because Jobs lived only a few blocks away. Jobs would bang on the door and not go away. The Wired team also has a great montage video of Jobs talking about what he loved best: 10:19 Women have been a complicated issue with Jobs. Jobs’s first serious girlfriend, a painter named Chris-Ann Brennan, became pregnant in 1977 and Jobs didn’t believe he was the father. The mother initially raised their daughter on benefits. Jobs accepted his responsibilities after a court-ordered blood test proved he was the father. in 1991 Jobs married Laurene Powell in1991, with whom he had a son and two daughters. They met at Stanford University while he was speaking at a class. 10:07Abdulfattah "John" Jandali -- Steve Jobs' biological father -- had no comment on the death of his son, with whom he had no relationship. Jandali, 80, a Syrian-American Muslim and ex-political science professor, had earlier expressed his regret for giving his son up for adoption. "I really don't have anything to say," said Jandali, vice president at Boomtown Hotel Casino and a former professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. "I know" the news. In an interview withThe Sun in August, Jandali had expressed his desire to meet his son: "I live in hope that before it is too late he will reach out to me," he said. "Even to have just one coffee with him just once would make me a very happy man." 09:28 Fellow businessman Lord Alan Sugar has also tweeted his respects:@Lord_Sugar Gutted Steve Jobs died. We started our computer biz at same time and were competitors through the 80s.Great visionary. Sadly missed. RIP 09:22 It may have sold out before it even went on sale, but Barack Obama managed to get his hands on Apple's tablet device before it hit the shops - after being given one personally by Steve Jobs. It is no secret that the President is an avowed Blackberry user, but he could be tempted by an early look at Apple's latest handset, which has voice control and a faster chip. 09:18 Actor Stephen Fry, an Apple fanatic who is thought to personally own dozens of Macs and iPhones, has tweeted:@stephenfry Woke to the news of Steve Jobs's death. He changed the world. I knew him a little and admired him entirely. Love to Apple and his family. 09:15 Fans around the world react to the news of his death: 09:10 The 317 Apple patents that list Steven P. Jobs among the group of inventors offers a glimpse at his legendary say over the minute details of the company’s products — from the company’s iconic computer cases to the glass staircases that are featured in many Apple stores.The New York Times has this interactive graphic. Few if any business leaders could command such respect, awe and affection and be associated with a product in the same way as Steve Jobs and Apple. Like the death of a star of entertainment or a much loved political leader, Jobs' death will affect populations across the world. But his own personal life added to the story. Jobs founded Apple, fell out with the company in spectacular manner only to return from the cold in triumph to lead the business back to renewed success in the iAge. But all the time he was not just battling for commercial success but also for his health. A cancer sufferer, the illness eventually claimed him. 08:47 The changing face of technology and one of its finest inventors: A friend explained that computers would change all that forever; making it easier and quicker to produce, store and transmit copy. It all sounded rather technical to a Luddite like me. But I was impressed with the Apple Macintosh Classic. It was easy to use, with little or no need for technical training or back-up because the answer to every problem was always somewhere on the screen, and so I bought one in 1990. 08:37 The president of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, has just said:@MedvedevRussiaEPeople like Steve Jobs change our world. My sincere condolences to his loved ones and to everyone who admired his intellect and talent 08:34 CEO and founder of digital music service Spotify, Daniel Ek, tweets his respects:@eldsjalThank you Steve. You were a true inspiration in so many parts of my life, both personal and professional. My hat off to our time's Da Vinci. While Apolline Arnaud, 12, a neighbour of Steve Jobs, writes a message on the pavement in front of Jobs' home in Palo Alto, California: 08:30 Samsung has called rival Steve Jobs an "innovative spirit" who will be remembered forever. Yesterday Samsung said it would file court injunctions seeking to block the sale of Apple's latest iPhone. The smartphone giants are locked in an intensifying patent fight. But today hatchets were buried and Samsung credited Jobs with "introducing numerous revolutionary changes to the information technology industry." It said Jobs' "innovative spirit and remarkable accomplishments will forever be remembered by people around the world." 08:25 Head of TechnologyShane Richmondhas found this unaired version of Apple's 'genius' commercial, with Jobs narrating: 08:20 Digital editor Edward Roussel has more on how Apple shares are fairing:@edwardrousselApple shares drop 3% in European trading. Big question is whether Apple can retain top talent. Loyalty was to Jobs personally. #SteveJobs 08:16Martin Strydom from our business desk says Apple shares are trading down 3.3pc in Germany, after falling as much as 5.3pc earlier. 08:11 Twitter struggled tokeep up with the volume of commentsin the early hours of this morning, as users deluged the micro-blogging site to mourn the technology giant's death. 08:05 Jobs' death has caused a public outpour of grief. Here one fan sits outside the Apple Store on West 66th Street in New York after hearing of his death. 08:04 The man in his own words: "Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful … that's what matters to me." – Wall Street Journal 1993 07:54 Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has said: "Steve, thank you for being a mentor and a friend. Thanks for showing that what you build can change the world. I will miss you." 07:40 This lost video from 1984 shows the magic moment a young Steve Jobs introduced the "insanely great" original Macintosh computer. 07:35 One Telegraph commenter has left this moving tribute on our blog below: markfour says: "After suffering a stroke and finding myself slowly going brain dead my son in law introduced me to Apple. Now at the age of 74 I am on to my fifth computer, third Nikon camera and alive as I can be at 74. Thanks to Steve and all at Apple and Nikon." 07:31 Apple fans in Hong Kong are laying flowers in memory of Jobs at the company's recently opened store in the city. While Candles, flowers, and an iPhone with Steve Jobs photo displayed outside the Apple Store at West 66th Street in New York. @emmabarnettSteve Jobs contributed more to the way we listen to music, watch movies & communicate with our friends than most people ever realise. The iPod generation's engimatic creator has gone #apple 07:18 In addition to his work at Apple, Steve Jobs was also a member of Disney’s board and its largest shareholder, thanks to the sale of Pixar to the Mouse house in January 2006. Bob Iger, CEO and president of Disney, released a statement expressing his thoughts and sadness on the passing of Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was a great friend as well as a trusted advisor. His legacy will extend far beyond the products he created or the businesses he built. It will be the millions of people he inspired, the lives he changed, and the culture he defined. Steve was such an “original,” with a thoroughly creative, imaginative mind that defined an era. Despite all he accomplished, it feels like he was just getting started. With his passing the world has lost a rare original, Disney has lost a member of our family, and I have lost a great friend. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife Laurene and his children during this difficult time. Steven Spielberg, one of the founders of Pixar rival DreamWorks Animation,has released the following statement: “Steve Jobs was the greatest inventor since Thomas Edison. He put the world at our fingertips.” 07:10 Lance Ulanoff, the chief editor of technology website Mashable, says the news of Jobs' death felt like a slap in the face.There it was: On Twitter. In my email. On a phone call. Steve Jobs, the tech industry’s one true icon, was gone — taken from us far too soon, at the age of 56. Say what you will about the dynamic maverick who built and rebuilt Apple over the course of four decades, but Steve Jobs was a visionary. A maker of things. A doer who intimately understood the excitement of a new product. How the interchange of 1s and 0s could produce a sublime piece of software. Steve Jobs got all this. We admired him for it. Some loved him for it. None of us will forget him for it. 'Where will we find another one,' Steve Wozniak asked of the man he co-founded Apple with 35 years ago. Jobs is among a handful of people who have built companies that both reinvent industries and change the wider world. Here in the US Thomas Edison and Henry Ford are others. Wozniak added that no one could have predicted the success of Apple, which he and Jobs established in a garage in Los Altos, California, at a time of great political and economic uncertainty. 07:00 US President Barack Obama President Barack Obama also paid tribute to Jobs in a statement, saying "the world has lost a visionary". Steve was among the greatest of American innovators - brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it. He transformed our lives, redefined entire industries, and achieved one of the rarest feats in human history: he changed the way each of us sees the world. The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve's success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented. 06:34 Even competitors, who watched as Apple's sales took off over the past decade, have posted messages of admiration: Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, co-CEOs of Blackberry-maker Research in Motion: "Steve Jobs was a great visionary and a respected competitor." Dell Inc. founder and CEO Michael Dell: "Today the world lost a visionary leader, the technology industry lost an iconic legend and I lost a friend and fellow founder." Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates: "For those of us lucky enough to get to work with Steve, it's been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely." 06:32 Marks of respect have started to flow from around the world. "iSad" is now a trending topic on Twitter. While Mac Users Group Mexico released a statement that concluded, "Let's breathe deeply and say VIVA STEVE JOBS!" 06:27TechChrunch's John Biggs have given their reflections on the death of "one of the greatest thinkers" of this generation: It’s been a hard night and Erick and I thought it would be fitting to reflect a bit on Steve Jobs and his legacy. We’re both understandably crushed by the news but rather than look back we wanted to look forward, forward to what comes next in a world without one of its greatest thinkers. Steve Jobs is important to us because the gifts he gave mankind are innumerable. He gave us the gifts of elegance, of clarity, of drive. He gave us computers that spawned industries, phones that paid millions of salaries. He made it so I can Facetime from the road with my children before they go to bed and not have to worry about connection issues, downloads, fiddling. The stuff he made just works. 06:20 As the world wakes up to the news in England, Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow pays his own tribute:@jonsnowC4As an unapologetic Apple fan I'm saddened to awaken to the news of Steve Jobs' death. One of the most innovative, leaders of our time. 05:45Richard Blackden, our Wall Street correspondent, has been to visit the Apple Store on New York's Fifth Avenue. He writes: Apple's store at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 59th Street in Manhattan is the only one in America, and possibly in the world, that's open 24 hours. Arriving there at about 11:30pm, there was only a crowd of 20 or so people, which I was told had been closer to 50 or so an hour earlier. 'I was at work when I find out and felt I wasn't going to relax if I just went home,' said Nick Wynja, a product director at a technology start up in New York. Wynja said he put some thoughts down on a notepad and left it as one of the growing number of tributes to Jobs. Another New Yorker who had come out was Marc Georges, a student, who said he had been surprised at his reaction to the death of someone he's never met even though he was a fan of Apple's products. While the crowd was relatively small, it offered a poignant reminder that Jobs was much more than the chief executive of just another company. 05:22 There is reportedly a sombre mood at Apple's Cupertino headquarters in California, where flags are flying at half mast. A group of mourners has gathered on the lawn outside the building where a man is playing the bagpipes. 05:15 This image has been doing the rounds online. You might need to look carefully... 04:50 Admirers of Steve Jobs continue to converge on Apple Stores across the world. In New York, the words "I love Steve" were inked onto some hoardings outside the Fifth Avenue store, and outside other branches in the US and beyond flowers, candles and cards have been placed by fans of the Apple co-founder. At the downtown San Francisco Apple store, people held up pictures of Jobs on their iPads and taped greeting cards and post-it notes to the store window saying "thank you Steve" and "I hate cancer." There were also candles and red apples left outside. A young woman writes "thank you" in lipstick at the Santa Monica Apple Store Built around the inspiration of its co-founder, Apple will be a company in mourning. In a memo to Apple's staff announcing his death, Mr Cook said that 'those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.' 04:17The Washington Post is running a touching piece about the impact of Steve Jobs, saying he gave a whole generation a glimpse into the future. 03:55 Here are some interesting accounts of what it was like to know Steve Jobs personally. AtAllThingsD.com Walt Mossberg details The Steve I Knew and Fastcompany.com has compiled a series of stories titled The First Time I Met Steve Jobs. 03:45 More tributes for Steve Jobs: Larry Page, CEO of Google: "He was a great man with incredible achievements and amazing brilliance. He always seemed to be able to say in very few words what you actually should have been thinking before you thought it. His focus on the user experience above all else has always been an inspiration to me." Steve Wozniak, Apple co-founder: "People sometimes have goals in life. Steve Jobs exceeded every goal he set himself." Paul Allan, co-founder of Microsoft: "We've lost a unique tech pioneer and auteur who knew how to make amazingly great products. Steve fought a long battle against tough odds in a very brave way. He kept doing amazing things in the face of all that adversity. As someone who has had his own medical challenges, I couldn't help but be encouraged by how he persevered." Steve Case, Founder of AOL: "I feel honored to have known Steve Jobs. He was the most innovative entrepreneur of our generation. His legacy will live on for the ages." 03:40Googlehas added the line "Steve Jobs, 1955 - 2011" to its homepage. The Apple founder's name links through to the Apple website. 03:20 As well as making online tributes, admirers of Jobs have been converging on Apple Stores around the world to pay their respects. Fans have congregated outisde the store on New York's Fifth Avenue, writing notes on the scaffolding, and a bunch of flowers had been laid outside the Apple Store in Sydney. 03:15 Here is Barack Obama's statement in full: "Michelle and I are saddened to learn of the passing of Steve Jobs. Steve was among the greatest of American innovators - brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world and talented enough to do it. By building one of the planet's most successful companies from his garage, he exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity. By making computers personal and putting the Internet in our pockets, he made the information revolution not only accessible, but intuitive and fun. And by turning his talents to storytelling, he has brought joy to millions of children and grown-ups alike. Steve was fond of saying that he lived every day like it was his last. Because he did, he transformed our lives, redefined entire industries and achieved one of the rarest feats in human history: He changed the way each of us sees the world. The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve's success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented. Michelle and I send our thoughts and prayers to Steve's wife, Laurene, his family, and all those who loved him." 03:03Twitter has been flooded with reaction to Jobs' death. The site initially struggled with the deluge of tweets. At one point, five of the site's top 10 trending topics were related to Jobs: RIP Steve Jobs, ThankYouSteve, iHeaven, iClouds and Only 56. Mattchew03wrote: "It's crazy to think about how many people are sharing the news of Steve Jobs's death using devices he invented." 02:55 US President Barack Obama hasremembered Jobs as a visionary and great American innovator. "Steve was among the greatest of American innovators - brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it," he said in a statement. 02:50 Here's the view on Jobs' legacy from inside the electronics industry. Computerworldsays Jobs was a man of conviction who left an indelible mark on computing and that the sector will never be the same again. 02:40The Wall Street Journal has republished Jobs' well-known 2005 commencement address at Standford University, in which he reflected on life, career and mortality: "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." 02:07The New York Timeshas a fascinating piece detailing the Apple patents that list Steve jobs as their inventor. 02:02 Here is the text of the email that Apple CEO Tim Cook sent to staff to announce Jobs' death: Team, I have some very sad news to share with all of you. Steve passed away earlier today. Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple. We are planning a celebration of Steve’s extraordinary life for Apple employees that will take place soon. If you would like to share your thoughts, memories and condolences in the interim, you can simply email [email protected]. No words can adequately express our sadness at Steve’s death or our gratitude for the opportunity to work with him. We will honor his memory by dedicating ourselves to continuing the work he loved so much. Microsoft Corp co-founder and chairman Bill Gates used the Apple co-founder's own words in his tribute. For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it's been an insanely great honor,'' Gates said in an e-mailed statement. "I will miss Steve immensely.'' "Insanely great'' was of one of Jobs' favorite expressions. "The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come,'' Gates said. "Steve and I first met nearly 30 years ago, and have been colleagues, competitors and friends over the course of more than half our lives. 'I'm truly saddened to learn of (his) death," he said. 'Melinda and I extend our sincere condolences to his family and friends, and to everyone Steve has touched through his work.' 01:30 Jobs's family later released a statement saying he had died "peacefully surrounded by his family."In his public life, Steve was known as a visionary; in his private life, he cherished his family. We are thankful to the many people who have shared their wishes and prayers during the last year of Steve's illness. We are grateful for the support and kindness of those who share our feelings for Steve. We know many of you will mourn with us, and we ask that you respect our privacy during our time of grief. 01:25 A further statement from the company said: "Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve." "His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts." 01:15Steve Jobs' has died aged 56 after a long battle with cancer. His death was announced by Applein a statementsaying: "Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. "Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. "Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple."

WARSHIPS IFR covers current defence issues and publishes commentaries by leading analysts. The magazine regularly includes features on the Royal Navy, US Navy, Royal Australian Navy, Canadian Navy, in addition to incorporating news and features on most other navies across the globe, particularly in the key areas of Asia-Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East and Europe. Subscribe Facebook Share The Global Combat Ship (GCS) is the forthcoming major combatant for the Royal Navy, due in service in the early 2020s and perhaps with a hull life of 25 years. It was formerly known as the Future Surface Combatant (FSC). The struggle over the vocabulary and nomenclature indicates just how hard it is to design a ship for the conditions of warfare in the next half century. War there will be, that much is certain. A multi-mission warship, like the Type 26 (as the GCS is also known) might be used for high-intensity combat one day and lower intensity counter-piracy operations the next, or even to deliver humanitarian aid and offer disaster relief. Such tasks can take place all within the space of one deployment (much as they can for the Duke Class, Type 23 frigate that the new vessel is to replace). When the last new major surface warship for the British fleet was conceived (the Daring Class, Type 45 destroyer) it was meant to replace the Type 42 destroyer, which had served the RN so well since the mid-1970s. Soon the number of Type 45s to be built was reduced - placing the same costs for the entire programme on fewer hulls. The UK Ministry of Defence (UK MoD) argued that, as the Type 45s were each more capable (and would have greater availability than the Type 42s) the Navy would not need 12 destroyers. The plan became not to replace the Type 42s ship-for-ship but instead construct just eight - and that soon became six. The Navy failed to argue persuasively enough that 12 hulls were needed for the same degree of ubiquity that is necessary to safeguard Britain and its global interests, which remain considerable. This time, with promises of replacing the extant 13 Type 23s on a hull-by-hull basis, the Royal Navy will need to develop and maintain strong arguments, to win support for its cause in Parliament, in the Press and amongst the Public. Readers of Odin will recall that there were originally 16 Type 23s, but they were slashed back in 2004/05 by the previous government’s ill-judged decision making. Even a good case regarding numbers of ships will be defeated if the cost of each new Type 26 is allowed to get out of hand. A number of factors enabled the cost of the Type 23s to remain tightly under control (in a programme running from the 1980s to the end of the 1990s, the first completed in 1989 and last in 2001). The final batch of Type 23s cost £100 million each, which was less than the lead ships had cost some 15 inflationary years earlier. A look at ships similar to the Type 26 in service reveals widely differing costs. Denmark’s Absalon Class cost £180m each, a Zeven Provinciën Class frigate of the Royal Netherlands Navy costs £525m while Álvaro de Bazán Class frigates built in Spain are about £650m each. The cost price of the Type 26 must be at the lower end of this spectrum, or the Royal Navy can expect the Type 23s to be replaced by a far smaller number of Type 26s. The present estimate of the cost of the Type 26 falls within a band of £250m to £350m. Series ordering and production (like the last Type 23s) and an overseas market would help keep down the unit cost of the Type 26 and ensure that sufficient numbers of ships remain affordable. Canada and Turkey had definitely passed on any Global Combat Ship involvement, the former due to national pride being against foreign vessels and the latter on cost grounds. Brazil may still be worth piping onboard as a rising naval power with a tradition of investing in British warships. There are similar competitors out there for foreign markets, not least the Franco-Italian FREMM frigate (which looks an awful lot like the Type 26). The French variant of the FREMM costs £286m per ship. Denmark’s new Iver Huitfeldt Class (again similar in appearance and capabilities) each cost around £212m per ship. There was a time when Britain was a leading exporter of affordable, well-designed warships (witness the Leander Class frigate). But, amid all the discussion of overseas sales Britain must not forget that taxpayers need to see their money well spent, in order to give the Royal Navy enough Type 26s (and more than 13 would be better) in order to secure British people and interests in peace and also survive and win any fight.

ify ((0 + (sqrt(17) - sqrt(68)/sqrt(4)) - (sqrt(612) - (0 + sqrt(612) + sqrt(612)) - sqrt(17) - sqrt(17) - sqrt(17))) + (0 + sqrt(425))*-3)**2. 612 Simplify (5*(sqrt(1134) - (sqrt(1134) - sqrt(1134)*4)) + sqrt(1134))/(-3*1*sqrt(242)). -63*sqrt(7)/11 Simplify (0 + (5*-6*(-1 + sqrt(288))*1)**2)*-5. -1300500 + 108000*sqrt(2) Simplify 1 + (sqrt(39)/(sqrt(12)/sqrt(4)) - (sqrt(832) + 0) - -5*(0 + sqrt(208)))**2. 2198 Simplify ((-1 + (-1 + sqrt(245)*1 - (-4 + 1 + sqrt(245)))*-2)*4)**2. 400 Simplify -5 + ((5 + sqrt(17) - sqrt(17)) + sqrt(17))*4 + 2*4*sqrt(17). 15 + 12*sqrt(17) Simplify (4*sqrt(209)*-1)/(1*(sqrt(99) - sqrt(11))). -2*sqrt(19) Simplify (-3 + -1*sqrt(17) + sqrt(17) - (sqrt(136) + -1*sqrt(136) + sqrt(136) + sqrt(136) + sqrt(136))/sqrt(8)) + (-4*sqrt(153)*-5)/sqrt(9). -3 + 17*sqrt(17) Simplify ((-4*(-1 + sqrt(475) + -1) + 2 + -1)*-6)**2. -12960*sqrt(19) + 276516 Simplify (1 + sqrt(7) + sqrt(28) + sqrt(42)/(sqrt(24)/sqrt(4)) - (sqrt(42) + (sqrt(42) - (2*sqrt(1512) + sqrt(42) + sqrt(42))) + sqrt(42))/sqrt(6))**2. 30*sqrt(7) + 1576 Simplify (-4*-2*sqrt(88)/(sqrt(392)*5 + sqrt(392))*-5)**2. 4400/441 Simplify sqrt(13) + sqrt(13)*2 + 0 + 1 + 3*(sqrt(468)*3)**2 + sqrt(468). 9*sqrt(13) + 12637 Simplify ((sqrt(364)*6 + sqrt(364))/sqrt(7))/(sqrt(44)/sqrt(11)*5). 7*sqrt(13)/5 Simplify (sqrt(45)/(sqrt(3) + sqrt(147)))/((3*sqrt(24))/sqrt(8)). sqrt(5)/24 Simplify ((1 + sqrt(1539) + -1*sqrt(1539))**2 - -4*(sqrt(931) + sqrt(931)*-2))*4. -112*sqrt(19) + 4 Simplify 5 + (4*sqrt(42)/sqrt(3))/(5*sqrt(7)*4). sqrt(2)/5 + 5 Simplify (-3*2*sqrt(192)*4)**2 - ((sqrt(30)/sqrt(2)*2 - sqrt(15))/(-2*sqrt(45)))**2. 1327103/12 Simplify 1*((-2*2*sqrt(637) + sqrt(637))**2 - (0 + (sqrt(637)*-4)**2)). -4459 Simplify 4 + (-3*(-4 + sqrt(65)/sqrt(5)) - (((sqrt(429) + (sqrt(429) - -2*sqrt(429)) + sqrt(429))/sqrt(11))/sqrt(3))**2). -309 - 3*sqrt(13) Simplify ((1*1*sqrt(33)*4)/((-6*sqrt(66)*-2)/sqrt(6)))**2. 1/3 Simplify -1*(sqrt(208) - ((1 + sqrt(208))**2 + 1))*-3. -630 - 12*sqrt(13) Simplify (1*sqrt(108) + sqrt(36)/(sqrt(24)/sqrt(2) + sqrt(12)) + -5*(-2*sqrt(363) + sqrt(363))*6)**2. 1358787/4 Simplify sqrt(2) + (sqrt(50)*-6 - sqrt(2)) - (sqrt(12) + sqrt(192))/sqrt(6) - sqrt(24)/(sqrt(12) - (sqrt(48) + -3*sqrt(48))). -176*sqrt(2)/5 Simplify (((sqrt(2940) + sqrt(2940) + (sqrt(2940) - (sqrt(2940)*-1 - sqrt(2940))) + sqrt(2940) - sqrt(2940))/sqrt(6))/(sqrt(25)/(-4*sqrt(20))))**2. 156800 Simplify ((sqrt(500) + 1)*-6 - sqrt(500))**2 - (4*(sqrt(500) + (sqrt(500) - sqrt(500)*2 - sqrt(500))))**2 - (-3 + -4*-2*sqrt(500)). 760*sqrt(5) + 16539 Simplify sqrt(288) + 1*(sqrt(288) + 0 - sqrt(288))**2 - (sqrt(288) - (sqrt(288) + (sqrt(288) + -2)**2 + 2)). -36*sqrt(2) + 294 Simplify 0 + sqrt(17)*-4 + -4 + sqrt(2057)*2 + -1. -5 + 18*sqrt(17) Simplify 6*(1 + (-2 + (4 + sqrt(2) + 1 - (sqrt(8)*1 + sqrt(2))))**2). -72*sqrt(2) + 108 Simplify ((sqrt(204) + sqrt(204) + (-3*(sqrt(204) - (sqrt(204)*2 - sqrt(204))) - sqrt(204) - sqrt(204) - sqrt(204)))/(sqrt(12)*-2*2)*6)**2*4. 153 Simplify ((3 + (sqrt(17) + 1*sqrt(17))*-1 + (-1 + sqrt(17))*4 + -2)*1)**2. -12*sqrt(17) + 77 Simplify ((sqrt(2592)*-2 + sqrt(2592))/sqrt(8))/((sqrt(686)*-1)/sqrt(7)). 9*sqrt(2)/7 Simplify (-1*(3*sqrt(252)*-2 + sqrt(252)) + -6*sqrt(252)*1 + sqrt(252) + 2 + (sqrt(252) - sqrt(252)*1))**2. 4 Simplify 4 + (sqrt(84) + -1*sqrt(84)*-2 + sqrt(84) + sqrt(84))/((sqrt(120)/sqrt(2) + sqrt(60))/sqrt(5) - sqrt(12))*2. 4 + 10*sqrt(7) Simplify -4*-1*sqrt(7) + 0 - 1*(0 + sqrt(112)). 0 Simplify (sqrt(105)/sqrt(125))/((5*sqrt(36))/sqrt(12)). sqrt(7)/25 Simplify (-5*(sqrt(70)/sqrt(175))/(-1*1*sqrt(2)))**2. 5 Simplify (sqrt(7) - (sqrt(21)/(sqrt(3)*-3))**2 - (sqrt(112) + -2)) + (sqrt(7) - (-5 + 1*sqrt(7)) - (-3 + sqrt(28)))**2*1. -35*sqrt(7) + 839/9 Simplify -5*(4*sqrt(36))/(sqrt(3) + sqrt(21)/(sqrt(28)/sqrt(4))). -20*sqrt(3) Simplify ((sqrt(208) - sqrt(13))*6)**2*-5 + -3*sqrt(416)/sqrt(8). -21060 - 6*sqrt(13) Simplify 2*(-3*(0 + sqrt(20)) + -6*-3*sqrt(20))*-6. -360*sqrt(5) Simplify (2*sqrt(168)/sqrt(3))/(sqrt(56)/(-2*sqrt(7))). -4*sqrt(7) Simplify 4*(0 + (2*(sqrt(3328)*-2 + sqrt(3328)))**2*4). 212992 Simplify (-3*sqrt(2178) + (sqrt(16)/(sqrt(40)/sqrt(5)) - sqrt(4)/(-1*sqrt(2))))**2. 18818 Simplify ((sqrt(637)*-2*6*5 + -5)*5)**2. 105000*sqrt(13) + 57330625 Simplify -5 + (-2*(0 + sqrt(3)) - (sqrt(12) + 3)) + 6*(sqrt(300) - (-2*sqrt(300))**2). -7208 + 56*sqrt(3) Simplify (sqrt(99) + 6*sqrt(99)*1 - -1*(sqrt(99) + sqrt(99) + (sqrt(99) - sqrt(99)*-2 - sqrt(99))))/((sqrt(99)*-1*6 - sqrt(99))/sqrt(11)). -11*sqrt(11)/7 Simplify (sqrt(156) + (sqrt(156) - (sqrt(156) - -2*sqrt(156)))*3)/((sqrt(120) + sqrt(120)*1 + sqrt(120))/sqrt(10))*-5 + 0. 25*sqrt(13)/3 Simplify ((1*sqrt(120))/(sqrt(6) + (sqrt(6) - -2*(sqrt(24)/sqrt(4) - sqrt(6))) + sqrt(6)))**2*-3*-4. 80/3 Simplify ((4*3*sqrt(68))/(sqrt(4) - (sqrt(44)/(sqrt(11) - (sqrt(11) + sqrt(396))) - sqrt(4))))**2 + 5. 88973/169 Simplify (sqrt(190) + 6*sqrt(190)*2 + -5*sqrt(190)*-1)/(sqrt(70)/(sqrt(700) - (sqrt(700) - sqrt(700)*-1))). -180*sqrt(19) Simplify -5 + (-3*(sqrt(272) - (1 + sqrt(272) + sqrt(272))))**2 + 5 + -5. 72*sqrt(17) + 2452 Simplify ((sqrt(204) + 2*sqrt(204))/sqrt(12))**2 - sqrt(170)/(-2*sqrt(10)) - (2 + sqrt(17) + sqrt(68) + -1 + sqrt(833)). -19*sqrt(17)/2 + 152 Simplify (-1*(sqrt(448) + (sqrt(448) - (1 + -1*sqrt(448))) + (-1 + sqrt(448))*4)*-2*4)**2. -35840*sqrt(7) + 1406528 Simplify 1 + -2 + 5 + (sqrt(143)/(sqrt(11)*2) - sqrt(208)/sqrt(4)). -3*sqrt(13)/2 + 4 Simplify (5 + (sqrt(52) + 4 - (sqrt(13)*2 + 4) - (5 + sqrt(1872) + -1 + sqrt(1872) + sqrt(1872))))**2. -72*sqrt(13) + 16849 Simplify ((-1*sqrt(180)*-3)**2 - ((2 + -1*sqrt(5))**2 + (sqrt(5) - (sqrt(125)/sqrt(5))/sqrt(5))))*-6. -9666 - 24*sqrt(5) Simplify (-1 + sqrt(5) + 1)**2 + -2*sqrt(5)*-5 - (sqrt(45)/(sqrt(9) - 4*sqrt(900)))**2. 7600/1521 + 10*sqrt(5) Simplify (4*(-3 + (sqrt(272) - (sqrt(272) + sqrt(272) + sqrt(272)*-1 + 5)) + -6*1*sqrt(272)))**2. 6144*sqrt(17) + 157696 Simplify ((sqrt(95) - (-1*sqrt(95) - sqrt(95))*2 - sqrt(95))/sqrt(5))**2*-6 + ((sqrt(171) - (1*sqrt(171) - sqrt(171)))*5)/(1*sqrt(324) - sqrt(9)). -1824 + sqrt(19) Simplify (2*(-1 + sqrt(637))*3 + (3 + 1*sqrt(637) + sqrt(637) - (sqrt(637) - (-1 + sqrt(637) + -4))))**2. -896*sqrt(13) + 40832 Simplify (sqrt(12)/sqrt(4)*-3 + 1 + (-2 + sqrt(108))*-3)**2. -294*sqrt(3) + 1372 Simplify 3*(sqrt(78) - -3*(sqrt(78) + -4*sqrt(78)))/(sqrt(54)*4 + sqrt(54)). -8*sqrt(13)/5 Simplify ((sqrt(1694) + (sqrt(1694) - 4*(sqrt(1694)*2 + sqrt(1694))) + sqrt(1694))/(4*sqrt(252)*2))**2. 1089/128 Simplify ((sqrt(132) + (sqrt(132) - -1*sqrt(132)))*-3)/(sqrt(120)/sqrt(640)). -72*sqrt(11) Simplify (sqrt(153) + (sqrt(153) - ((4*sqrt(153) - sqrt(153)) + sqrt(153))))/sqrt(9) + 1 + sqrt(51)/sqrt(3) + 0. -sqrt(17) + 1 Simplify 4*sqrt(176) + 4 + (-4*(sqrt(1100) + 2))**2. 656*sqrt(11) + 17668 Simplify 6*(6*(sqrt(176) + (sqrt(176) - (3*sqrt(176) + 3)) + sqrt(176) + 5*(1 + sqrt(176))))**2. 17280*sqrt(11) + 951264 Simplify ((sqrt(187) + sqrt(187)*-2)*-3)/(sqrt(11) + 2*sqrt(11)*-6) + -3. -3 - 3*sqrt(17)/11 Simplify -2*(-2*sqrt(153)*-1 - (0 + sqrt(153) + sqrt(153))*3) + 4. 4 + 24*sqrt(17) Simplify 4*(1 + -5 + -2*sqrt(539) - -3*(sqrt(539) + 0 + 4)**2). 616*sqrt(11) + 6644 Simplify -1 + ((sqrt(468) + -1 + 1)*1 + 5)**2. 60*sqrt(13) + 492 Simplify (3*4*(sqrt(4)/sqrt(2) + -3))**2 - ((sqrt(128) - sqrt(128)*-2) + sqrt(4)/sqrt(2) + -2). -889*sqrt(2) + 1586 Simplify 3*(sqrt(77) + sqrt(77)*2*-4 + sqrt(77) + -2*sqrt(77)*-4 + sqrt(77) + sqrt(77))/(sqrt(77)/(sqrt(121)/(1*sqrt(11)))). 12*sqrt(11) Simplify 1*(sqrt(110) + (-4*(sqrt(110) + sqrt(110) + sqrt(110)*1) - sqrt(110)) + sqrt(110))/(sqrt(1440)*-1). 11*sqrt(11)/12 Simplify -6*(5 + 4*-1*sqrt(27) + sqrt(2700) + -2 + 1). -108*sqrt(3) - 24 Simplify (-1*sqrt(1008))/sqrt(4) + 3 + ((sqrt(56)/sqrt(2)*-1)/(sqrt(4) - -6*(sqrt(4) - sqrt(16)) - sqrt(4)))**2. -6*sqrt(7) + 115/36 Simplify ((-4*sqrt(13) + sqrt(13))**2 - sqrt(13)) + 2 + 5 + (-3*(sqrt(13)*-3 + -5))**2. 269*sqrt(13) + 1402 Simplify (-2*((sqrt(1216) - (sqrt(1216) + -3)) + 4 + -1))**2. 144 Simplify -4 + 1*sqrt(76)*-4 + sqrt(76) + -5. -6*sqrt(19) - 9 Simplify ((2*sqrt(66))/sqrt(6) + 3 - (-1 + sqrt(1100)))**2 + 4. -64*sqrt(11) + 724 Simplify ((((sqrt(168) - sqrt(168)*-1 - sqrt(168)) + sqrt(168))*-6)/sqrt(12))/(2*sqrt(200) - sqrt(18)/(

Q: Django UpdateView: cannot get form fields to show database values I found multiple answers to this same questions but unfortunately, I can't seem to figure it out :( The form has a drop-down list for the 'subcategory' field in my model 'PhysicalPart', the values of the 'subcategory' field are updated dynamically upon the form creation (using a 'category' parameter). Unfortunately, I can't get the drop-down to show all subcategories AND have the one from the database selected at the same time. I can't seem to retrieve the 'short_description' value either from the database. It used to work before I learned about UpdateView class and decided to use it instead... Any insight on how-to workaround my problem would be appreciated! forms.py class PartForm(forms.ModelForm): subcategory = forms.ChoiceField(choices=[]) class Meta: model = PhysicalPart fields = ['subcategory', 'short_description'] views.py class PartUpdate(UpdateView): model = PhysicalPart template_name = 'part_update.html' form_class = PartForm def post(self, request, *args, **kwargs): # Load model instance self.object = self.get_object() # Load form form = super(PartUpdate, self).get_form(self.form_class) # Populating subcategory choices form.fields['subcategory'].choices = SubcategoryFilter[self.object.category] # Check if form valid and save data if form.is_valid(): form.save() return redirect('part-list') # Update context before rendering context = self.get_context_data(**kwargs) context['part_id'] = self.object.pk context['part_category'] = self.object.category context['manufacturing_list'] = self.object.manufacturing.all() return render(request, self.template_name, context) html <form action="{% url 'part-update' pk=part_id category=part_category %}" method="post" style="display: inline"> {% csrf_token %} <div class="form"> <p class="font-weight-bold">Type</br> {{ form.subcategory }} </p> </div> <div class="form"> <p class="font-weight-bold">Short Description</br> {{ form.short_description }} </p> </div> <button type="submit" class="btn btn-primary">Save</button> </form> <form action="{% url 'part-list' %}" style="display: inline"> <button type="submit" class="btn btn-danger">Cancel</button> </form> A: My problem was that I did not differentiate the "GET" versus the "POST" calls in the UpdateView class, I was trying to do everything in the post() method. It took me a while to figure it out but now I think it's clear. I originally used the get() method but I realize that get_context_data() was better suited as it automatically loads most of the context (eg. the instance and the form), instead of having to do everything from scratch in the get() method. Scrubbing through the code of the UpdateView class here, it also seemed necessary to add ModelFormMixin into the declaration of the PartUpdate class so that the get_context_data() method automatically loads the form associated to the target model/instance (else it looks like it won't do it). Here is my updated views.py code: class PartUpdate(UpdateView, ModelFormMixin): model = PhysicalPart template_name = 'part_update.html' form_class = PartForm success_url = reverse_lazy('part-list') def get_context_data(self, **kwargs): # Load context from GET request context = super(PartUpdate, self).get_context_data(**kwargs) # Get id from PhysicalPart instance context['part_id'] = self.object.id # Get category from PhysicalPart instance context['part_category'] = self.object.category # Add choices to form 'subcategory' field context['form'].fields['subcategory'].choices = SubcategoryFilter[self.object.category] # Return context to be used in form view return context def post(self, request, *args, **kwargs): # Get instance of PhysicalPart self.object = self.get_object() # Load form form = self.get_form() # Add choices to form 'subcategory' field form.fields['subcategory'].choices = SubcategoryFilter[self.object.category] # Check if form is valid and save PhysicalPart instance if form.is_valid(): return self.form_valid(form) else: return self.form_invalid(form)

Search Results In Marvel Studios' Thor: Ragnarok, Thor is imprisoned on the other side of the universe without his mighty hammer and finds himself in a race against time to get back to Asgard to stop Ragnarokthe destruction of his homeworld and the end of Asgardian civilizationat the hands of an all-powerful new threat, the ruthless Hela. But first he must survive a deadly gladiatorial contest that pits him against his former ally and fellow Avengerthe Incredible Hulk! Thor: Ragnarok thunders into U.K. theaters on October 24th, 2017. Based upon the acclaimed comic book and directed by Matthew Vaughn (Kick Ass X-Men: First Class) KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE tells the story of a super-secret spy organization that recruits an unrefined but promising street kid into the agency&amp;rsquo;s ultra-competitive training program just as a global threat emerges from a twisted tech genius. Now graduated from college and out in the real world where it takes more than a cappella to get by, the Bellas return in Pitch Perfect 3, the next chapter in the beloved series. After the highs of winning the World Championships, the Bellas find themselves split apart and discovering there aren't job prospects for making music with your mouth. But when they get the chance to reunite for an overseas USO tour, this group of awesome nerds will come together to make some music, and some questionable decisions, one last time. Aca-amazing special features include two NEW musical performances, unseen footage and a gag reel. The DVD also includes a bonus disc packed with OVER 30 MINUTES of additional exclusive behind the scenes content, including: Bellas Through the Years The A Cappella Aquatica Aca-Boot Camp: Round 3 Bellas Find Love Also included with purchase: a download of this film to watch on your mobile devices. Watch on the go - instantly stream anytime, anywhere! Also included with purchase: a download of this film to watch on your mobile devices. Watch on the go - instantly stream anytime, anywhere! Bellas Through the Years The A Cappella Aquatica Aca-Boot Camp: Round 3 Bellas Find Love Also included with purchase: a download of this film to watch on your mobile devices. Watch on the go - instantly stream anytime, anywhere! From Marvel comes Doctor Strange, the story of world-famous neurosurgeon Dr. Stephen Strange whose life changes forever after a horrific car accident robs him of the use of his hands. When traditional medicine fails him, he is forced to look for healing, and hope, in an unlikely placea mysterious enclave known as Kamar-Taj. He quickly learns that this is not just a center for healing but also the front line of a battle against unseen dark forces bent on destroying our reality. Before long Strangearmed with newly acquired magical powersis forced to choose whether to return to his life of fortune and status or leave it all behind to defend the world as the most powerful sorcerer in existence. Bonus: Play Movie With Intro Featurettes / A Strange Transformation Featurettes / Strange Company Featurettes / The Fabric of Real Featurettes / Across Time and Space Featurettes / The Score-cerer Supreme Marvel Studios Phase 3 Exclusive Look Team Thor: Part 2 Deleted & Extended Scenes: Strange Meets Daniel Drumm Kaecilius Searches For Answers The Kamar-Taj Courtyard Making Contact Lost In Kathmandu Gag Reel Audio Commentary By Director Scott Derrickson From Marvel comes Doctor Strange, the story of world-famous neurosurgeon Dr. Stephen Strange whose life changes forever after a horrific car accident robs him of the use of his hands. When traditional medicine fails him, he is forced to look for healing, and hope, in an unlikely placea mysterious enclave known as Kamar-Taj. He quickly learns that this is not just a center for healing but also the front line of a battle against unseen dark forces bent on destroying our reality. Before long Strangearmed with newly acquired magical powersis forced to choose whether to return to his life of fortune and status or leave it all behind to defend the world as the most powerful sorcerer in existence. HACKSAW RIDGE is the epic and inspiring true story of Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield; The Amazing Spider-Man franchise) an army medic and conscientious objector who, during the bloodiest battle of World War II, saved 75 men without firing or carrying a gun. Also starring Sam Worthington (Avatar), Vince Vaughn (True Detective), Hugo Weaving (The Hobbit franchise) and Teresa Palmer (Triple 9). Special Features: Veterans Day Greeting with Mel Gibson Deleted Scenes Caesar (Andy Serkis) and his apes are forced into a deadly conflict with an army of humans led by a ruthless Colonel (Woody Harrelson). But after the apes suffer unimaginable losses, Caesar wrestles with his darker instincts and resolves to avenge his kind, pitting him against the Colonel in an epic battle that will determine the fate of both their species...and the future of the planet. Share the epic adventure! Relive the exhilarating action spectacular battles and ultimate triumph of good over evil that make Star Wars the greatest space fantasy adventure of all time...and the ultimate entertainment experience for every family. The Star Wars Original Trilogy Episodes - A New Hope The Empire Strikes Back and Return of The Jedi - continue the saga with Luke Skywalker Princess Leia and Han Solo leading the Rebel Alliance to claim victory over the Empire and win freedom for the galaxy! During the early days of World War II, with the fall of France imminent, Britain faces its darkest hour as the threat of invasion looms. As the seemingly unstoppable Nazi forces advance, and with the Allied army cornered on the beaches of Dunkirk, the fate of Western Europe hangs on the leadership of the newly-appointed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (Academy Award nominee Gary Oldman). While maneuvering his political rivals, he must confront the ultimate choice: negotiate with Hitler and save the British people at a terrible cost or rally the nation and fight on against incredible odds. Directed by Joe Wright, DARKEST HOUR is the dramatic and inspiring story of four weeks in 1940 during which Churchill's courage to lead changed the course of world history. The Maze Runner In this heart-pounding survival adventure based on the best-selling book, Thomas (Dylan O'Brien) wakes up trapped in a massive, ever-changing maze with a group of boys who have no memory of the outside world. Facing dangerous obstacles at every turn, Thomas and the others must race to piece together clues in order to discover their true purpose...and find a way out before it's too late! Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials In this next chapter of the epic Maze Runner saga, Thomas (Dylan O'Brien) and his fellow Gladers face their greatest challenge yet: searching for clues about the mysterious and powerful organization known as WCKD. Their journey takes them to the Scorch, a desolate landscape filled with unimaginable obstacles. Teaming up with resistance fighters, the Gladers take on WCKD's vastly superior forces and uncover its shocking plans for them all. Season 1 Summers span decades. Winters can last a lifetime. And the struggle for the Iron Throne has begun. It will stretch from the south, where heat breeds plots, lusts and intrigues; to the vast and savage eastern lands; all the way to the frozen north, where an 800-foot wall of ice protects the kingdom from the dark forces that lie beyond. Kings and queens, knights and renegades, liars, lords and honest men...all will play the 'Game of Thrones.' A new original series based on George R.R. Martin's best-selling 'A Song of Ice and Fire' series. Season 2 The Battle continues in Westeros with feuding families and power hungry rulers. Five Kings vie for a single, all-powerful throne in the all-new season of Game of Thrones an epic story of duplicity and treachery, nobility and honour, conquest and triumph. Season 2 plays out against the backdrop of a fast-approaching winter. In King's Landing, the coveted Iron Throne is occupied by cruel young Joffrey, counseled by his conniving mother Cersei and uncle Tyrion. But the Lannister hold on the Throne is under assault on many fronts. There's Robb Stark, son of the slain Lord of Winterfell, Ned Stark; Daenerys Targaryen, who looks to shore up her depleted power through three newborn dragons; Stannis Baratheon, eldest brother of the late King Robert; and Stannis' brother Renly, who has maintained his own claim since fleeing King's Landing. In the meantime, a new leader is rising among the wildlings North of the Wall, adding new perils for Jon Snow and the Night's Watch. With tensions and treaties, animosity and alliances, Season 2 of Game of Thrones promises to be a thrilling journey through a riveting, unforgettable landscape. Season 3 In Season 3, family and loyalty will be the overarching themes, and many critical plot points from the first two seasons will come to a violent head, with several major characters meeting cruel fates. While a primary focus continues to be on King's Landing, where the Lannisters barely held onto power after a savage naval onslaught from Stannis Baratheon (brother of the late king), stirrings in the North threaten to alter the overall balance of power in Westeros. Robb Stark, King of the North, will face a major calamity in his efforts to build on his victories over the Lannisters in Season 2, while further north, Mance Rayder (new character, played by Ciarán Hinds) and his huge army of wildlings continue their inexorable march south to scale the Wall. Across the Narrow Sea, Daenerys Targaryen reunited with her three deadly, fast-maturing dragons attempts to raise an army of slaves to sail with her from Essos, in hopes of eventually overthrowing the Iron Throne. Season 4 As Season 4 begins, the Lannisters' hold on the Iron Throne remains intact in the wake of the Red Wedding slaughter that wiped out many of their Stark nemeses. But can they survive their own egos as well as new and ongoing threats? Meanwhile, an unbowed Stannis Baratheon continues to rebuild his army; the Lannister-loathing ?Red Viper of Dorne,' Oberyn Martell, arrives at King's Landing for Joffrey's wedding to Margaery Tyrell; Daenerys Targaryen and her dragons and unsullied force aim to liberate the largest Slavery City in the east...with long-range plans to take back the Iron Throne; and a depleted Night's Watch faces the advance of Mance Rayder's wildling army, who are in turn running from the undead White Walkers. Season 5 After the shocking deaths of S4, the season begins with a power vacuum that protagonists across Westeros and Essos look to fill. At Castle Black, Jon Snow struggles to balance the demands of the Night's Watch with those of newly-arrived Stannis Baratheon, who styles himself as the rightful king of Westeros. Meanwhile, Cersei scrabbles to hold on to power in Kings Landing amidst the Tyrells and the rise of a religious group led by the enigmatic High Sparrow, while Jaimie embarks on a secret mission. Across the Narrow Sea, Arya seeks an old friend while a fugitive Tyrion finds a new cause. And as danger mounts in Meereen, Daenerys Targaryen finds that her tenuous hold on the city requires some hard sacrifices. Season 6 Following the shocking developments at the conclusion of season five, including Jon Snow's bloody fate at the hands of Castle Black mutineers, Daenerys' near-demise at the fighting pits of Meereen, and Cersei's public humiliation in the streets of King's Landing, survivors from all parts of Westeros and Essos regroup to press forward, inexorably, towards their uncertain individual fates. Familiar faces will forge new alliances to bolster their strategic chances at survival, while new characters will emerge to challenge the balance of power in the east, west, north and south. Season 7 As the season begins, Daenerys Targaryen, accompanied by her Unsullied army and emboldened by Dothraki/Ironborn allies and her lethal trio of dragons, has finally set sail for Westeros with Tyrion Lannister, her newly appointed Hand. Jon Snow, memorably reanimated in S6, has apparently consolidated power in the North after his spectacular conquest of Ramsay Bolton in the Battle of the Bastards and the return of Winterfell to Stark control. In King's Landing, Cersei Lannister, bereft of any surviving heirs, has successfully seized the Iron Throne by using wildfire to incinerate the High Sparrow and other foes in the Sept of Baelor. But as these and other factions drive inexorably towards new alliances or (more likely) violent conflicts, the cold specter of another, apocalyptic threat in the form of an army of undead White Walkers expected to breach The Wall and invade the South threatens to undermine the status quo and obliterate the outcome of these smaller, alltoo-human rivalries. From Marvel the studio that brought you the global blockbuster franchises of Iron Man Thor Captain America and The Avengers comes a new team &amp;ndash; the Guardians of the Galaxy. An action-packed epic space adventure Marvel&amp;rsquo;s &amp;ldquo;Guardians of the Galaxy&amp;rdquo; expands the Marvel Cinematic Universe into the cosmos where brash adventurer Peter Quill finds himself the object of an unrelenting bounty hunt after stealing a mysterious orb coveted by Ronan a powerful villain with ambitions that threaten the entire universe. To evade the ever-persistent Ronan Quill is forced into an uneasy truce with an uneasy truce with a quarter of disparate misfits &amp;ndash; Rocket a gun-toting racoon Groot a tree-like humanoid the deadly and enigmatic Gamora and the revenge-driven Drax the Destroyer. But when Peter discovers the true power of the orb and the menace it poses to the cosmos he must do his best to rally his ragtag rivals for a last desperate stand &amp;ndash; with the galaxy&amp;rsquo;s fate in the balance. Marvel&amp;rsquo;s &amp;ldquo;Guardians of the Galaxy&amp;rdquo; is presented by Marvel Studios. The film releases 1 August 2014 and is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. Visionary director J.J. Abrams brings to life the motion picture event of a generation. As Kylo Ren and the sinister First Order rise from the ashes of the Empire, Luke Skywalker is missing when the galaxy needs him most. It's up to Rey, a desert scavenger, and Finn, a defecting Stormtrooper, to join forces with Han Solo and Chewbacca in a desperate search for the one hope of restoring peace to the galaxy. Before she was Wonder Woman, she was Diana, princess of the Amazons, raised on a sheltered island paradise and trained to be an unconquerable warrior. When an American pilot crashes on their shores and tells of a massive conflict raging in the outside world, Diana leaves her home, convinced she can stop the threat. Fighting alongside man in a war to end all wars, Diana will discover her full powers and her true destiny. Click Images to Enlarge A talented, young getaway driver (Ansel Elgort) relies on the beat of his personal soundtrack to be the best in the game. When he meets the girl of his dreams (Lily James), Baby sees a chance to ditch his criminal life and make a clean getaway. But after being coerced into working for a crime boss (Kevin Spacey), he must face the music when a doomed heist threatens his life, love and freedom. Click Images to Enlarge Divergent: Divergent, A thrilling action-adventure set in a world where people are divided into factions based on human virtues. Tris (Shailene Woodley) is warned she is Divergent and will never fit into a category. When she discovers a conspiracy by Jeanine (Kate Winslet) to destroy all Divergents, Tris learns to trust the mysterious Four (Theo James). Together they must find out why being Divergent is so dangerous. Insurgent: Insurgent, raises the stakes for Tris. On the run and targeted by ruthless faction leader Jeanine, Tris fights to protect the people she loves, facing one impossible challenge after another as she and Four race to unlock the truth about the past and ultimately the future of their world. Allegiant: The third installment of the blockbuster Divergent series franchise, Allegiant takes Tris and Four into a new world, far more dangerous than ever before. After the earth-shattering revelations of Insurgent Tris must escape with Four and go beyond the wall enclosing Chicago. For the first time ever, they will leave the only city and family they have ever known. Once outside, old discoveries are quickly rendered meaningless with the revelation of shocking new truths. Tris and Four must quickly decide who they can trust as a ruthless battle ignites beyond the walls of Chicago which threatens all of humanity. In order to survive, Tris will be forced to make impossible choices about courage, allegiance, sacrifice and love. Kingsman: The Secret Service: Based upon the acclaimed comic book and directed by Matthew Vaughn (Kick Ass, X-Men First Class), KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE tells the story of a super-secret spy organization that recruits an unrefined but promising street kid into the agency's ultra-competitive training program just as a global threat emerges from a twisted tech genius. Kingsman: The Golden Circle: Kingsman: The Secret Service introduced the world to Kingsman - an independent, international intelligence agency operating at the highest level of discretion, whose ultimate goal is to keep the world safe. In Kingsman: The Golden Circle, our heroes face a new challenge. When their headquarters are destroyed and the world is held hostage, their journey leads them to the discovery of an allied spy organization in the US called Statesman, dating back to the day they were both founded. In a new adventure that tests their agents' strength and wits to the limit, these two elite secret organizations band together to defeat a ruthless common enemy, in order to save the world, something that's becoming a bit of a habit for Eggsy Marvel's Captain America: Civil War finds Steve Rogers leading the newly formed team of Avengers in their continued efforts to safeguard humanity. But after another incident involving the Avengers results in collateral damage, political pressure mounts to install a system of accountability, headed by a governing body to oversee and direct the team. The new status quo fractures the Avengers, resulting in two campsone led by Steve Rogers and his desire for the Avengers to remain free to defend humanity without government interference, and the other following Tony Stark's surprising decision to support government oversight and accountability. Share the epic adventure! Relive the nonstop excitement thrilling discoveries and ultimate triumph of good over evil that make Star Wars the greatest space fantasy adventure of all time...and the ultimate entertainment experience for every family. The Star Wars Prequel Trilogy Episodes -The Phantom Menace Attack of The Clones and Revenge of The Sith - begin the saga with young Anakin Skywalker&#39;s descent to the dark side as he transforms from child slave to Jedi apprentice to Darth Vader the most feared villain in the galaxy!

Parents' reports of patterns of use and exposure to practices associated with AAC acceptance by individuals with Angelman syndrome. Abstract The primary purpose of this investigation was to enhance our understanding of AAC use by individuals with Angelman syndrome (AS) in relation to two broad genotypes: Deletion Positive (DP) and Non Deletion (ND). Previous investigators have suggested individuals without deletions typically exhibit stronger cognitive and communicative abilities than their DP counterparts. This investigation focused on several aspects of AAC use: communication systems used; exposure to, success with, and acceptance of electronic AAC devices; and exposure to practices associated with AAC acceptance. Results indicated that both groups rely heavily on unaided, nonsymbolic methods of communication, with the ND group more likely to use conventional, symbolic systems. While the two groups were similar with respect to exposure to an array of electronic devices, the DP group appeared more likely to have gone no further than low-tech devices such as the BIGmack™. There was strong evidence of both groups' capabilities for success with high-tech devices and overall acceptance of devices in terms of duration of use. This proved especially noteworthy in light of both groups' limited exposure to practices associated with AAC acceptance. Clinical implications of these findings are discussed along with future avenues of research.

A pre-recorded lil boy for you guys to listen to with your ears! FRANKIE stopped by the studio to play a couple of songs and talk with me, PXTN stopped in with the most insane energy anyone’s ever had, Jimmy Smith from The Noise (which you could hear Saturdays ay 7PM ET on idobi) called in and so did the homie iLana Armida so LISTEN!

Choose a Category: Category Archives: Website Updates Post navigation One of the top requests we’ve had for a while now was for more templates. Well, thanks to our new fleet graphics partner, your requests have been answered! New Vehicle Wrap Templates We’ve added some of the most widely requested vehicle wrap models to the site. These include: 4 Door Sedan Wrap Transit Van Wrap Transit Connect Van Wrap Pickup Truck Wrap Traditional Cargo Van Wrap Box Truck Wrap More Vehicle Wrap Templates On The Way We have more wrap templates in the works, and want to know your feedback! Let us know what wrap templates your shop or business would like to see next on the site, and we’ll do our best to add them! Thanks to everyone that provided feedback on what templates they wanted to see leading up to this addition, and we hope that we were able to put up most of the main vehicle models that you needed. What would be next for you? Tractor Trailers? Exotic Sports Cars? Trains? Lets us know! Fleet Graphics Templates Many of the new templates are great for fleet graphics for commercial fleets, covering many of the most common types of fleet vehicles that are out there on the roads today. If there are more fleet vehicle models that are not covered by one of the categories of vehicle graphics templates we have, please let us know! We’re happy to announce that we just released a brand new feature for our wrap shop listings: click to call! Now when you are viewing a wrap shop directory listing you are able to click on the phone and place a call directly to the wrap shop. This is a lot more friendly for many of our users who are on mobile devices like tablets or cell phones. Search for shops in your area and contact them directly for quotes, click here to find vehicle wrap shops in your area. If you are a wrap shop then this means that it is easier for your customers in your area to reach you on the phone. In the past 24 hours since launch we’ve seen people looking for quotes using click to call to talk to wrap shops all over the world and across the US. Not registered yet? No problem, it is free! Click here to register your wrap shop. After popular demand and many requests, there is good news for vehicle wrap shops: Free leads are back! CCW Affiliates with Free Accounts Have Access to Leads Again After a recent update lead contact information was limited to PRO accounts only. This was an attempt to try to separate out our more casual users from actual professional wrap shops. This restriction, however, has not been well received by the community of affiliates and after many requests to allow free accounts to contact leads, we’ve taken your feedback to heart and decided to reopen leads to wrap shops that have FREE accounts as well. Now with a free account, you will be able to retrieve the customer’s email address directly, after being selected for a quote, so that you may email the user back with estimates, get more details, or just connect offline. PRO members will have access to the same email address in the same way, but will also get access to the customer’s phone number. We apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused for Free CCW affiliate memberships to retrieve leads and hope that this finds our users well. It will be better for everyone, including the customers who design their mockups hoping to hear back from shops in their area every single day. Now Bigger Than Ever It’s old news that Custom-Car-Wraps.com is the LARGEST wrap shop directory in the world, covering the United States, UK, Australia, and now seeing a lot of traffic in places like South Africa! The best part of all, is that more visitors than ever are using the CCW website with great growth in the past 2 months in the USA too. We’re seeing record traffic regularly meaning that wraps are still a growing market with tons of active users right here at home. If you have a PRO account for top-of-list placement, and you’re in an area with some wrap activity, you can expect more leads this year than last. Some of our PRO members have already received close ONE HUNDRED leads from the website complete with mockups. Customizer Pro Members Seeing 30% – 300% Inbound Lead Increase Website owners that have used our Customizer design tool right on their own websites (our Customizer-Pro membership) have seen between 30% and 300% increases in inbound leads from their own websites! This can be a really powerful addition to your website to generate more leads not just from Custom-Car-Wraps.com by being top-of-list in your area, but from your own website(s) too. If you’ve received some leads from the site and are still a FREE member, just imagine what it could be doing from your own site. Of course with a Customizer-Pro account, the app will pop open right on your website and send the mockup thru directly (and only) to you. Your visitors will LOVE the new feature and they will never leave your website to use it. Try Customizer Pro for Free Contact us and try out our Customizer Pro membership for free! We’ll give you a couple months to try it out on your own website to see the power of the app and what it can do for you. Update: Please Note: Our phone number has changed to: 858-461-4427 This is a limited time offer for new Customizer-Pro affiliate program members – a $200-$500+ value for free! To claim this offer write to: [email protected] or call us directly, and your account manager will take care of everything. You may still claim your business online for free thru the website if you like, but we’ll take care of all of that for you when we confirm your account by phone, too. We will provide a hassle-free setup, and even do the installation on your website (or work with your webmaster to do so) for free. About the Upgraded Customizer-Pro Affiliate Membership With this upgrade to your affiliate account you will connect with more new customers than ever. Your shop will be pre-selected and on the top of all search results in your zip code area (50 miles by default!) on our website. Additionally, when users click on the “Design a Wrap” button that is generated for you to use on your website, our industry-leading “Design a Wrap” app will pop open directly on your website. Claim this offer right away, as this offer is first-come first-serve and only valid while availability lasts! Contact us directly at [email protected], or call us at 858.461.4426, and let us help boost your business from our website AND yours! Custom Car Wraps has just launched a revolutionary new feature that is really going to stir things up here in the vehicle wrap industry! For the first time ever, CCW affiliates (wrap shops) can copy and paste a simple code snippet from their CCW Affiliate Dashboard to their own website that will pop open the “Design a Wrap” Customizer app directly on their own website. Their website visitors can then design mockups in minutes and send them through for quotes without ever leaving the wrap shop’s website! No commissions on any sales, no gimmicks, no hosting fees, no tricky technical requirements- just copy & paste. Any Free or Pro account can be upgraded to to the new Customizer-Pro level, which will enable this awesome new button. To demonstrate how easy it is, we’ve pasted it here in this blog post (below). Example Customizer-Pro Button Here is an example of a “Design a Wrap” button in action (right). We have a Customizer Pro affiliate account of our own for testing called “OGM Wraps”, and this button is popping open the Custom Car Wraps application for our shop specifically. We simply copy and pasted the code provided in our affiliate dashboard page on Custom-Car-Wraps.com, and pasted it here in this article (literally in less than 30 seconds). Click it and try it out! It will work this way from any website on the internet. Drive Engagement, Convert More Web Visitors Into Leads This marks a huge new opportunity for vehicle wrap shops around the globe to add an amazing feature to their own websites that has been proven to drive engagement, improve communication of design ideas, and overall convert more web traffic into potential customers. Bottom line for wrap shops is that this is a secret weapon to monetize their own web traffic better than ever before with a top-notch engaging UX. Generate more leads with better conversion ratios! Technology Pricing Goes from Five-Figures to Three Up until about a week ago this simple method was not possible, and it was priced around $10,000 to $20,000 up front to integrate this full enterprise level application in to a new website. Now, our latest platform release, it is being offered as a simple copy-paste code feature for only $199/mo! This is a huge value in comparison to the previous cost to build and maintain an app of this level! That’s less than a yellow pages ad, or a crappy banner ad placement with most Google and Facebook ad campaigns. In fact, it’s less than most people spend on lunch, and no traditional options drive engagement like this does. We’re very excited to be supporting the platform and adding more features including options for shops to brand the app directly thru their Custom Car Wraps affiliate dashboard, and more. The platform architecture has been improved significantly to scale out quickly to handle large amounts of traffic from affiliates. Disruptive Technology = New Opportunities for Wrap Shops This technology has already been very disruptive in the auto wraps industry with customers walking into wrap shops having already sent their design mockup through! Don’t be surprised when leads come walking through the front door having already designed their idea online, created the basic mockup, and are ready to get started. The technology works so well, in fact, that it’s generating leads and new customers for some shops that don’t even realize it’s out there working for them on the Custom Car Wraps site. Imagine the response adding it directly to YOUR shop website! We’re anxious to see just how well this will generate sales for shops across the industry. We’re happy to announce that after burning some midnight oil, we’ve launched a new feature for our Affiliate Members (for Wrap Shops) that can help you turn your traffic into potential customers with mockupsalready made and waiting in your inbox! ScreenShot: A Button for Each Shop Location Each button is unique for each CCW affiliate account, so that users that click the button from your site will be able to create a wrap design with your shop already selected! The Design-a-Wrap buttons are generated from within your affiliate dashboard (shown above) where you can find the code to copy & paste to your own website(s) Pro Tip – for accounts with multiple shops, the button code is different for each location, so be sure to press “Select Shop” on each wrap shop before copying & pasting! Button is Available for Both Premium & Free Accounts For Free members, the users will land on the “Find a Wrap Shop” page with your shop listing moved to the top of the list, highlighted, and already selected! All they have to do is press “Get Quote” to connect their design with your inbox instantly. For premium members, the user will skip this step entirely sending the design straight to your inbox as soon as it’s completed. High Conversion Ratios The button offers a new conversion path for any existing website that could generate more business online. The Custom Car Wraps “design your own wrap” UX has already shown to convert steadily over 5%! This means that at our current rate, you’re shop could get a new lead for every 1 out of 20 visitors! This is a great conversion ratio much higher than normal websites typically get, and it’s attributed entirely to the easy, fun, design experience. And it’s going up. Convenient Visual Communication is Great for Shops and Their Customers This is great for both wrap shops and their customers, as the customers now have a fun way to design their own wrap ideas easily online, and wrap shops can offer this unique interactive design experience from their own websites where users may have normally come and gone without anything to get hands-on with. A picture is worth a million words, making these quick mockups a streamlined way for a customer to communicate what they’re design ideas are. Get Your Free Button in Minutes, No Catch! If you’ve got a affiliate account already, just log in and head to your shop’s dashboard to get the free code! If you don’t have an affiliate account yet, just sign up and then go grab your button! Free Installation Help If you need webmaster assistance getting the button onto your web page, please contact us or One Giant Media who has agreed to install these buttons for our affiliate users for free for a limited time! Is this the 2015 Ford Mustang? Close to it, at least that’s what a Ford insider told us recently. Set to be released about two years from now on its 50th anniversary, the 2015 Mustang will be much closer to a “world car” than any Mustang before it. The new 2015 Ford Mustang; custom wraps will make this a first class looker For one, it will be smaller in many ways. Most other markets prefer sports cars with a little less metal and a few more curves. That means a sleeker, less bulky Mustang that should weigh less and cheat the wind better. The Evos concept was a hint of that look, but we were assured that the current Mustang’s long hood/short deck proportions will remain along with several signature Mustang design cues like rear-quarter windows and triple-lens taillamps. A little bit of Ferrari on the side panels, a little bit of Aston Martin in the front, yes, we like it! Rear end view on the Mustang, watch for the Mustang 3 part tail lights This, along with other great American sports cars, is a great target for personalization through vehicle wrap. Non permanent, you can have that carbon fiber roof or those racing stripes for a fraction of the cost of a paint job. Expect to see the official unveil of the 50th Anniversary Ford Mustang at the 2014 New York Auto Show. Invitations are being made to join a small group of Wrap Shops in the Southern California and San Francisco areas. Customers will be able to design their own car wraps, send the mockups to wrap shops (CCW affiliates) for quotes, access their profile to reload or share designs. CCW Affiliate wrap shops will receive notification emails for any designs being sent to their shop(s), and be able to log in to their affiliate account inboxes and retrieve any designs that customers have sent. We hope to get feedback from both sides, from customers and affiliates, over the next month or so before releasing our BETA site to the rest of the world. So, feel free to contact us with any comments, questions, suggestions, or requests during this exciting test period! We’re excited to start connecting people’s designs with wrap shops in a whole new way this summer!

## Agatha Christie ## They Came to Baghdad ## Dedication To all my friends in Baghdad ## Contents Dedication One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Fourteen Fifteen Sixteen Seventeen Eighteen Nineteen Twenty Twenty-one Twenty-two Twenty-three Twenty-four Twenty-five About the Author Also by Agatha Christie Copyright About the Publisher Footnote Section ## One I Captain Crosbie came out of the bank with the pleased air of one who has cashed a cheque and has discovered that there is just a little more in his account than he thought there was. Captain Crosbie often looked pleased with himself. He was that kind of man. In figure he was short and stocky, with rather a red face and a bristling military moustache. He strutted a little when he walked. His clothes were, perhaps, just a trifle loud, and he was fond of a good story. He was popular among other men. A cheerful man, commonplace but kindly, unmarried. Nothing remarkable about him. There are heaps of Crosbies in the East. The street into which Captain Crosbie emerged was called Bank Street for the excellent reason that most of the banks in the city were situated in it. Inside the bank it was cool and dark and rather musty. The predominant sound was of large quantities of typewriters clicking in the background. Outside in Bank Street it was sunny and full of swirling dust and the noises were terrific and varied. There was the persistent honking of motor horns, the cries of vendors of various wares. There were hot disputes between small groups of people who seemed ready to murder each other but were really fast friends; men, boys and children were selling every type of tree, sweetmeats, oranges and bananas, bath towels, combs, razor blades and other assorted merchandise carried rapidly through the streets on trays. There was also a perpetual and ever renewed sound of throat clearing and spitting, and above it the thin melancholy wail of men conducting donkeys and horses amongst the stream of motors and pedestrians shouting, "Balek—Balek!" It was eleven o'clock in the morning in the city of Baghdad. Captain Crosbie stopped a rapidly running boy with an armful of newspapers and bought one. He turned the corner of Bank Street and came into Rashid Street which is the main street of Baghdad, running through it for about four miles parallel with the river Tigris. Captain Crosbie glanced at the headlines in the paper, tucked it under his arm, walked for about two hundred yards and then turned down a small alleyway and into a large khan or court. At the farther side of this he pushed open a door with a brass plate and found himself in an office. A neat young Iraqi clerk left his typewriter and came forward smiling a welcome. "Good morning, Captain Crosbie. What can I do for you?" "Mr. Dakin in his room? Good, I'll go through." He passed through a door, up some very steep stairs and along a rather dirty passage. He knocked at the end door and a voice said, "Come in." It was a high, rather bare room. There was an oil stove with a saucer of water on top of it, a long, low cushioned seat with a little coffee table in front of it and a large rather shabby desk. The electric light was on and the daylight was carefully excluded. Behind the shabby desk was a rather shabby man, with a tired and indecisive face—the face of one who has not got on in the world and knows it and has ceased to care. The two men, the cheerful self-confident Crosbie, and the melancholy fatigued Dakin, looked at each other. Dakin said, "Hallo, Crosbie. Just in from Kirkuk?" The other nodded. He shut the door carefully behind him. It was a shabby looking door, badly painted, but it had one rather unexpected quality; it fitted well, with no crevices and no space at the bottom. It was, in fact, soundproof. With the closing of the door, the personalities of both men changed ever so slightly. Captain Crosbie became less aggressive and cocksure. Mr. Dakin's shoulders drooped less, his manner was less hesitating. If anyone had been in the room listening they would have been surprised to find that Dakin was the man in authority. "Any news, sir?" asked Crosbie. "Yes." Dakin sighed. He had before him a paper which he had just been busy decoding. He dotted down two more letters and said: "It's to be held in Baghdad." Then he struck a match, set light to the paper and watched it burn. When it had smouldered to ashes, he blew gently. The ashes flew up and scattered. "Yes," he said. "They've settled on Baghdad. Twentieth of next month. We're to 'preserve all secrecy.'" "They've been talking about it in the souk—for three days," said Crosbie drily. The tall man smiled his weary smile. "Top secret! No top secrets in the East, are there, Crosbie?" "No, sir. If you ask me, there aren't any top secrets anywhere. During the war I often noticed a barber in London knew more than the High Command." "It doesn't matter much in this case. If the meeting is arranged for Baghdad it will soon have to be made public. And then the fun—our particular fun—starts." "Do you think it will ever take place, sir?" asked Crosbie sceptically. "Does Uncle Joe"—thus disrespectfully did Captain Crosbie refer to the head of a Great European Power—"really mean to come?" "I think he does this time, Crosbie," said Dakin thoughtfully. "Yes, I think so. And if the meeting comes off—comes off without a hitch—well, it might be the saving of—everything. If some kind of understanding could only be reached—" he broke off. Crosbie still looked slightly sceptical. "Is—forgive me, sir—is understanding of any kind possible?" "In the sense you mean, Crosbie, probably not! If it were just a bringing together of two men representing totally different ideologies probably the whole thing would end as usual—in increased suspicion and misunderstanding. But there's the third element. If that fantastic story of Carmichael's is true—" He broke off. "But surely, sir, it can't be true. It's too fantastic!" The other was silent for a few moments. He was seeing, very vividly, an earnest troubled face, hearing a quiet nondescript voice saying fantastic and unbelievable things. He was saying to himself, as he had said then, "Either my best, my most reliable man has gone mad: or else—this thing is true...." He said in the same thin melancholy voice: "Carmichael believed it. Everything he could find out confirmed his hypothesis. He wanted to go there to find out more—to get proof. Whether I was wise to let him or not, I don't know. If he doesn't get back, it's only my story of what Carmichael told me, which again is a story of what someone told him. Is that enough? I don't think so. It is, as you say, such a fantastic story...But if the man himself is here, in Baghdad, on the twentieth, to tell his own story, the story of an eyewitness, and to produce proof—" "Proof?" said Crosbie sharply. The other nodded. "Yes, he's got proof." "How do you know?" "The agreed formula. The message came through Salah Hassan." He quoted carefully: "A white camel with a load of oats is coming over the Pass." He paused and then went on: "So Carmichael has got what he went to get, but he didn't get away unsuspected. They're on his trail. Whatever route he takes will be watched, and what is far more dangerous, they'll be waiting for him—here. First on the frontier. And if he succeeds in passing the frontier, there will be a cordon drawn round the Embassies and the Consulates. Look at this." He shuffled amongst the papers on his desk and read out: "An Englishman travelling in his car from Persia to Iraq shot dead—supposedly by bandits. A Kurdish merchant travelling down from the hills ambushed and killed. Another Kurd, Abdul Hassan, suspected of being a cigarette smuggler, shot by the police. Body of a man, afterwards identified as an Armenian lorry driver, found on the Rowanduz road. All of them mark you, of roughly the same description. Height, weight, hair, build, it corresponds with a description of Carmichael. They're taking no chances. They're out to get him. Once he's in Iraq the danger will be greater still. A gardener at the Embassy, a servant at the Consulate, an official at the Airport, in the Customs, at the railway stations...all hotels watched...A cordon, stretched tight. Crosbie raised his eyebrows. "You think it's as widespread as all that, sir?" "I've no doubt of it. Even in our show there have been leakages. That's the worst of all. How am I to be sure that the measures we're adopting to get Carmichael safely into Baghdad aren't known already to the other side? It's one of the elementary moves of the game, as you know, to have someone in the pay of the other camp." "Is there anyone you—suspect?" Slowly Dakin shook his head. Crosbie sighed. "In the meantime," he said, "we carry on?" "Yes." "What about Crofton Lee?" "He's agreed to come to Baghdad." "Everyone's coming to Baghdad," said Crosbie. "Even Uncle Joe, according to you, sir. But if anything should happen to the President—while he's here—the balloon will go up with a vengeance." "Nothing must happen," said Dakin. "That's our business. To see it doesn't." When Crosbie had gone Dakin sat bent over his desk. He murmured under his breath: "They came to Baghdad...." On the blotting pad he drew a circle and wrote under it Baghdad—then, dotted round it, he sketched a camel, an aeroplane, a steamer, a small puffing train—all converging on the circle. Then on the corner of the pad he drew a spider's web. In the middle of the spider's web he wrote a name: Anna Scheele. Underneath he put a big query mark. Then he took his hat, and left the office. As he walked along Rashid Street, some man asked another who that was. "That? Oh, that's Dakin. In one of the oil companies. Nice fellow, but never gets on. Too lethargic. They say he drinks. He'll never get anywhere. You've got to have drive to get on in this part of the world." II "Have you got the reports on the Krugenhorf property, Miss Scheele?" "Yes, Mr. Morganthal." Miss Scheele, cool and efficient, slipped the papers in front of her employer. He grunted as he read. "Satisfactory, I think." "I certainly think so, Mr. Morganthal." "Is Schwartz here?" "He's waiting in the outer office." "Have him sent in right now." Miss Scheele pressed a buzzer—one of six. "Will you require me, Mr. Morganthal?" "No, I don't think so, Miss Scheele." Anna Scheele glided noiselessly from the room. She was a platinum blonde—but not a glamorous blonde. Her pale flaxen hair was pulled straight back from her forehead into a neat roll at the neck. Her pale blue intelligent eyes looked out on the world from behind strong glasses. Her face had neat small features, but was quite expressionless. She had made her way in the world not by her charm but by sheer efficiency. She could memorize anything, however complicated, and produce names, dates and times without having to refer to notes. She could organize the staff of a big office in such a way that it ran as by well-oiled machinery. She was discretion itself and her energy, though controlled and disciplined, never flagged. Otto Morganthal, head of the firm of Morganthal, Brown and Shipperke, international bankers, was well aware that to Anna Scheele he owed more than mere money could repay. He trusted her completely. Her memory, her experience, her judgement, her cool level head were invaluable. He paid her a large salary and would have made it a larger one had she asked for it. She knew not only the details of his business but the details of his private life. When he had consulted her in the matter of the second Mrs. Morganthal, she had advised divorce and suggested the exact amount of alimony. She had not expressed sympathy or curiosity. She was not, he would have said, that kind of woman. He didn't think she had any feelings, and it had never occurred to him to wonder what she thought about. He would indeed have been astonished if he had been told that she had any thoughts—other, that is, than thoughts connected with Morganthal, Brown and Shipperke and with the problems of Otto Morganthal. So it was with complete surprise that he heard her say as she prepared to leave his office: "I should like three weeks' leave of absence if I might have it, Mr. Morganthal. Starting from Tuesday next." Staring at her, he said uneasily: "It will be awkward—very awkward." "I don't think it will be too difficult, Mr. Morganthal. Miss Wygate is fully competent to deal with things. I shall leave her my notes and full instructions. Mr. Cornwall can attend to the Ascher Merger." Still uneasily he asked: "You're not ill, or anything?" He couldn't imagine Miss Scheele being ill. Even germs respected Anna Scheele and kept out of her way. "Oh no, Mr. Morganthal. I want to go to London to see my sister there." "Your sister?" He didn't know she had a sister. He had never conceived of Miss Scheele as having any family or relations. She had never mentioned having any. And here she was, casually referring to a sister in London. She had been over in London with him last fall but she had never mentioned having a sister then. With a sense of injury he said: "I never knew you had a sister in England?" Miss Scheele smiled very faintly. "Oh yes, Mr. Morganthal. She is married to an Englishman connected with the British Museum. It is necessary for her to undergo a very serious operation. She wants me to be with her. I should like to go." In other words, Otto Morganthal saw, she had made up her mind to go. He said grumblingly, "All right, all right...Get back as soon as you can. I've never seen the market so jumpy. All this damned Communism. War may break out at any moment. It's the only solution, I sometimes think. The whole country's riddled with it—riddled with it. And now the President's determined to go to this fool conference at Baghdad. It's a put-up job in my opinion. They're out to get him. Baghdad! Of all the outlandish places!" "Oh I'm sure he'll be very well guarded," Miss Scheele said soothingly. "They got the Shah of Persia last year, didn't they? They got Bernadotte in Palestine. It's madness—that's what it is—madness. "But then," added Mr. Morganthal heavily, "all the world is mad." ## Two I Victoria Jones was sitting moodily on a seat in FitzJames Gardens. She was wholly given up to reflections—or one might almost say moralizations—on the disadvantages inherent in employing one's particular talents at the wrong moment. Victoria was like most of us, a girl with both qualities and defects. On the credit side she was generous, warmhearted and courageous. Her natural leaning towards adventure may be regarded as either meritorious or the reverse in this modern age which places the value of security high. Her principal defect was a tendency to tell lies at both opportune and inopportune moments. The superior fascination of fiction to fact was always irresistible to Victoria. She lied with fluency, ease, and artistic fervour. If Victoria was late for an appointment (which was often the case) it was not sufficient for her to murmur an excuse of her watch having stopped (which actually was quite often the case) or of an unaccountably delayed bus. It would appear preferable to Victoria to tender the mendacious explanation that she had been hindered by an escaped elephant lying across a main bus route, or by a thrilling smash-and-grab raid in which she herself had played a part to aid the police. To Victoria an agreeable world would be one where tigers lurked in the Strand and dangerous bandits infested Tooting. A slender girl, with an agreeable figure and first-class legs, Victoria's features might actually have been described as plain. They were small and neat. But there was a piquancy about her, for "little indiarubber face," as one of her admirers had named her, could twist those immobile features into a startling mimicry of almost anybody. It was this last-named talent that had led to her present predicament. Employed as a typist by Mr. Greenholtz of Greenholtz, Simmons and Lederbetter, of Graysholme Street, WC2, Victoria had been whiling away a dull morning by entertaining the three other typists and the office boy with a vivid performance of Mrs. Greenholtz paying a visit to her husband's office. Secure in the knowledge that Mr. Greenholtz had gone round to his solicitors, Victoria let herself go. "Why do you say we not have that Knole settee, Daddee?" she demanded in a high whining voice. "Mrs. Dievtakis she have one in electric blue satin. You say it is money that is tight? But then why you take that blonde girl out dining and dancing—Ah! you think I do not know—and if you take that girl—then I have a settee and all done plum-coloured and gold cushions. And when you say it is a business dinner you are a damn' fool—yes—and come back with lipstick on your shirt. So I have the Knole settee and I order a fur cape—very nice—all like mink but not really mink and I get him very cheap and it is good business—" The sudden failure of her audience—at first entranced, but now suddenly resuming work with spontaneous agreement, caused Victoria to break off and swing round to where Mr. Greenholtz was standing in the doorway observing her. Victoria, unable to think of anything relevant to say, merely said, "Oh!" Mr. Greenholtz grunted. Flinging off his overcoat, Mr. Greenholtz proceeded to his private office and banged the door. Almost immediately his buzzer sounded, two shorts and a long. That was a summons for Victoria. "It's for you, Jonesey," a colleague remarked unnecessarily, her eyes alight with the pleasure occasioned by the misfortunes of others. The other typists collaborated in this sentiment by ejaculating: "You're for it, Jones," and "On the mat, Jonesey." The office boy, an unpleasant child, contented himself with drawing a forefinger across his throat and uttering a sinister noise. Victoria picked up her notebook and pencil and sailed into Mr. Greenholtz's office with such assurance as she could muster. "You want me, Mr. Greenholtz?" she murmured, fixing a limpid gaze on him. Mr. Greenholtz was rustling three pound notes and searching his pockets for coin of the realm. "So there you are," he observed. "I've had about enough of you, young lady. Do you see any particular reason why I shouldn't pay you a week's salary in lieu of notice and pack you off here and now?" Victoria (an orphan) had just opened her mouth to explain how the plight of a mother at this moment suffering a major operation had so demoralized her that she had become completely light-headed, and how her small salary was all the aforesaid mother had to depend upon, when, taking an opening glance at Mr. Greenholtz's unwholesome face, she shut her mouth and changed her mind. "I couldn't agree with you more," she said heartily and pleasantly. "I think you're absolutely right, if you know what I mean." Mr. Greenholtz appeared slightly taken aback. He was not used to having his dismissals treated in this approving and congratulatory spirit. To conceal a slight discomfiture he sorted through a pile of coins on the desk in front of him. He then sought once more in his pockets. "Ninepence short," he murmured gloomily. "Never mind," said Victoria kindly. "Take yourself to the pictures or spend it on sweets." "Don't seem to have any stamps, either." "It doesn't matter. I never write letters." "I could send it after you," said Mr. Greenholtz but without much conviction. "Don't bother. What about a reference?" said Victoria. Mr. Greenholtz's choler returned. "Why the hell should I give you a reference?" he demanded wrathfully. "It's usual," said Victoria. Mr. Greenholtz drew a piece of paper towards him and scrawled a few lines. He shoved it towards her. "That do for you?" Miss Jones has been with me two months as a shorthand typist. Her shorthand is inaccurate and she cannot spell. She is leaving owing to wasting time in office hours. Victoria made a grimace. "Hardly a recommendation," she observed. "It wasn't meant to be," said Mr. Greenholtz. "I think," said Victoria, "that you ought at least to say I'm honest, sober and respectable. I am, you know. And perhaps you might add that I'm discreet." "Discreet?" barked Mr. Greenholtz. Victoria met his gaze with an innocent stare. "Discreet," she said gently. Remembering sundry letters taken down and typed by Victoria, Mr. Greenholtz decided that prudence was the better part of rancour. He snatched back the paper, tore it up and indited a fresh one. Miss Jones has been with me for two months as a shorthand typist. She is leaving owing to redundancy of office staff. "How about that?" "It could be better," said Victoria, "but it will do." II So it was that with a week's salary (less ninepence) in her bag Victoria was sitting in meditation upon a bench in FitzJames Gardens which are a triangular plantation of rather sad shrubs flanking a church and overlooked by a tall warehouse. It was Victoria's habit on any day when it was not actually raining to purchase one cheese, and one lettuce and tomato sandwich at a milk bar and eat this simple lunch in these pseudorural surroundings. Today, as she munched meditatively, she was telling herself, not for the first time, that there was a time and place for everything—and that the office was definitely not the place for imitations of the boss's wife. She must, in future, curb the natural exuberance that led her to brighten up the performance of a dull job. In the meantime, she was free of Greenholtz, Simmons and Lederbetter, and the prospect of obtaining a situation elsewhere filled her with pleasurable anticipation. Victoria was always delighted when she was about to take up a new job. One never knew, she always felt, what might happen. She had just distributed the last crumb of bread to three attentive sparrows who immediately fought each other with fury for it, when she became aware of a young man sitting at the other end of the seat. Victoria had noticed him vaguely already, but her mind full of good resolutions for the future, she had not observed him closely until now. What she now saw (out of the corner of her eye) she liked very much. He was a good-looking young man, cherubically fair, but with a firm chin and extremely blue eyes which had been, she rather imagined, examining her with covert admiration for some time. Victoria had no inhibitions about making friends with strange young men in public places. She considered herself an excellent judge of character and well able to check any manifestations of freshness on the part of unattached males. She proceeded to smile frankly at him and the young man responded like a marionette when you pull the string. "Hallo," said the young man. "Nice place this. Do you often come here?" "Nearly every day." "Just my luck that I never came here before. Was that your lunch you were eating?" "Yes." "I don't think you eat enough. I'd be starving if I only had two sandwiches. What about coming along and having a sausage at the SPO in Tottenham Court Road?" "No thanks. I'm quite all right. I couldn't eat anymore now." She rather expected that he would say: "Another day," but he did not. He merely sighed—then he said: "My name's Edward, what's yours?" "Victoria." "Why did your people want to call you after a railway station?" "Victoria isn't only a railway station," Miss Jones pointed out. "There's Queen Victoria as well." "Mm yes. What's your other name?" "Jones." "Victoria Jones," said Edward, trying it over on his tongue. He shook his head. "They don't go together." "You're quite right," said Victoria with feeling. "If I were Jenny it would be rather nice—Jenny Jones. But Victoria needs something with a bit more class to it. Victoria Sackville-West for instance. That's the kind of thing one needs. Something to roll round the mouth." "You could tack something on to the Jones," said Edward with sympathetic interest. "Bedford Jones." "Carisbrooke Jones." "St. Clair Jones." "Lonsdale Jones." This agreeable game was interrupted by Edward's glancing at his watch and uttering a horrified ejaculation. "I must tear back to my blinking boss—er—what about you?" "I'm out of a job. I was sacked this morning." "Oh I say, I am sorry," said Edward with real concern. "Well, don't waste sympathy, because I'm not sorry at all. For one thing, I'll easily get another job, and besides that, it was really rather fun." And delaying Edward's return to duty still further, she gave him a spirited rendering of this morning's scene, reenacting her impersonation of Mrs. Greenholtz to Edward's immense enjoyment. "You really are marvellous, Victoria," he said. "You ought to be on the stage." Victoria accepted this tribute with a gratified smile and remarked that Edward had better be running along if he didn't want to get the sack himself. "Yes—and I shouldn't get another job as easily as you will. It must be wonderful to be a good shorthand typist," said Edward with envy in his voice. "Well, actually I'm not a good shorthand typist," Victoria admitted frankly, "but fortunately even the lousiest of shorthand typists can get some sort of a job nowadays—at any rate an educational or charitable one—they can't afford to pay much and so they get people like me. I prefer the learned type of job best. These scientific names and terms are so frightful anyway that if you can't spell them properly it doesn't really shame you because nobody could. What's your job? I suppose you're out of one of the services. RAF?" "Good guess." "Fighter pilot?" "Right again. They're awfully decent about getting us jobs and all that, but you see, the trouble is, that we're not particularly brainy. I mean one didn't need to be brainy in the RAF. They put me in an office with a lot of files and figures and some thinking to do and I just folded up. The whole thing seemed utterly purposeless anyway. But there it is. It gets you down a bit to know that you're absolutely no good." Victoria nodded sympathetically—Edward went on bitterly: "Out of touch. Not in the picture anymore. It was all right during the war—one could keep one's end up all right—I got the DFC for instance—but now—well, I might as well write myself off the map." "But there ought to be—" Victoria broke off. She felt unable to put into words her conviction that those qualities that brought a DFC to their owner should somewhere have their appointed place in the world of 1950. "It's got me down, rather," said Edward. "Being no good at anything, I mean. Well—I'd better be pushing off—I say—would you mind—would it be most awful cheek—if I only could—" As Victoria opened surprised eyes, stammering and blushing, Edward produced a small camera. "I would like so awfully to have a snapshot of you. You see, I'm going to Baghdad tomorrow." "To Baghdad?" exclaimed Victoria with lively disappointment. "Yes. I mean I wish I wasn't—now. Earlier this morning I was quite bucked about it—it's why I took this job really—to get out of this country." "What sort of job is it?" "Pretty awful. Culture—poetry, all that sort of thing. A Dr. Rathbone's my boss. Strings of letters after his name, peers at you soulfully through pince-nez. He's terrifically keen on uplift and spreading it far and wide. He opens bookshops in remote places—he's starting one in Baghdad. He gets Shakespeare's and Milton's works translated into Arabic and Kurdish and Persian and Armenian and has them all on tap. Silly, I think, because you've got the British Council doing much the same thing all over the place. Still, there it is. It gives me a job so I oughtn't to complain." "What do you actually do?" asked Victoria. "Well, really it boils down to being the old boy's personal Yesman and Dogsbody. Buy the tickets, make the reservations, fill up the passport forms, check the packing of all the horrid little poetic manuals, run round here, there, and everywhere. Then, when we get out there I'm supposed to fraternize—kind of glorified youth movement—all nations together in a united drive for uplift." Edward's tone became more and more melancholy. "Frankly, it's pretty ghastly, isn't it?" Victoria was unable to administer much comfort. "So you see," said Edward, "if you wouldn't mind awfully—one sideways and one looking right at me—oh I say, that's wonderful—" The camera clicked twice and Victoria showed that purring complacence displayed by young women who know they have made an impression on an attractive member of the opposite sex. "But it's pretty foul really, having to go off just when I've met you," said Edward. "I've half a mind to chuck it—but I suppose I couldn't do that at the last moment—not after all those ghastly forms and visas and everything. Wouldn't be a very good show, what?" "It mayn't turn out as bad as you think," said Victoria consolingly. "N-no," said Edward doubtfully. "The funny thing is," he added, "that I've got a feeling there's something fishy somewhere." "Fishy?" "Yes. Bogus. Don't ask me why. I haven't any reason. Sort of feeling one gets sometimes. Had it once about my port oil. Began fussing about the damned thing and sure enough there was a washer wedged in the spare gear pump." The technical terms in which this was couched made it quite unintelligible to Victoria, but she got the main idea. "You think he's bogus—Rathbone?" "Don't see how he can be. I mean he's frightfully respectable and learned and belongs to all these societies—and sort of hobnobs with Archbishops and Principals of Colleges. No, it's just a feeling—well, time will show. So long. I wish you were coming, too." "So do I," said Victoria. "What are you going to do?" "Go round to St. Guildric's Agency in Gower Street and look for another job," said Victoria gloomily. "Good-bye, Victoria. Partir, say mourir un peu," added Edward with a very British accent. "These French johnnies know their stuff. Our English chaps just maunder on about parting being a sweet sorrow—silly asses." "Good-bye, Edward, good luck." "I don't suppose you'll ever think about me again." "Yes, I shall." "You're absolutely different from any girl I've ever seen before—I only wish—" The clock chimed a quarter, and Edward said, "Oh hell—I must fly—" Retreating rapidly, he was swallowed up by the great maw of London. Victoria remaining behind on her seat absorbed in meditation was conscious of two distinct streams of thought. One dealt with the theme of Romeo and Juliet. She and Edward, she felt, were somewhat in the position of that unhappy couple, although perhaps Romeo and Juliet had expressed their feelings in rather more high-class language. But the position, Victoria thought, was the same. Meeting, instant attraction—frustration—two fond hearts thrust asunder. A remembrance of a rhyme once frequently recited by her old nurse came to her mind: Jumbo said to Alice I love you, Alice said to Jumbo I don't believe you do, If you really loved me as you say you do You wouldn't go to America and leave me in the Zoo. Substitute Baghdad for America and there you were! Victoria rose at last, dusting crumbs from her lap, and walked briskly out of FitzJames Gardens in the direction of Gower Street. Victoria had come to two decisions: the first was that (like Juliet) she loved this young man, and meant to have him. The second decision that Victoria had come to was that as Edward would shortly be in Baghdad, the only thing to do was for her to go to Baghdad also. What was now occupying her mind was how this could be accomplished. That it could be accomplished somehow or other, Victoria did not doubt. She was a young woman of optimism and force of character. Parting is such sweet sorrow appealed to her as a sentiment no more than it did to Edward. "Somehow," said Victoria to herself, "I've got to get to Baghdad!" ## Three I The Savoy Hotel welcomed Miss Anna Scheele with the empressement due to an old and valued client—they inquired after the health of Mr. Morganthal—and assured her that if her suite was not to her liking she had only to say so—for Anna Scheele represented DOLLARS. Miss Scheele bathed, dressed, made a telephone call to a Kensington number and then went down in the lift. She passed through the revolving doors and asked for a taxi. It drew up and she got in and directed it to Cartier's in Bond Street. As the taxi turned out of the Savoy approach into the Strand a little dark man who had been standing looking into a shop window suddenly glanced at his watch and hailed a taxi that was conveniently cruising past and which had been singularly blind to the hails of an agitated woman with parcels a moment or two previously. The taxi followed along the Strand keeping the first taxi in sight. As they were both held up by the lights in going round Trafalgar Square, the man in the second taxi looked out of the left-hand window and made a slight gesture with his hand. A private car, which had been standing in the side street by the Admiralty Arch started its engine and swung into the stream of traffic behind the second taxi. The traffic had started on again. As Anna Scheele's taxi followed the stream of traffic going to the left into Pall Mall, the taxi containing the little dark man swung away to the right, continuing round Trafalgar Square. The private car, a grey Standard, was now close behind Anna Scheele. It contained two passengers, a fair rather vacant-looking young man at the wheel and a smartly dressed young woman beside him. The Standard followed Anna Scheele's taxi along Piccadilly and up Bond Street. Here for a moment it paused by the kerb, and the young woman got out. She called brightly and conventionally. "Thanks so much." The car went on. The young woman walked along glancing every now and again into a window. A block held up the traffic. The young woman passed both the Standard and Anna Scheele's taxi. She arrived at Cartier's and went inside. Anna Scheele paid off her taxi and went into the jeweller's. She spent some time looking at various pieces of jewellery. In the end she selected a sapphire and diamond ring. She wrote a cheque for it on a London bank. At the sight of the name on it, a little extra empressement came into the assistant's manner. "Glad to see you in London again, Miss Scheele. Is Mr. Morganthal over?" "No." "I wondered. We have a very fine star sapphire here—I know he is interested in star sapphires. If you would care to see it?" Miss Scheele expressed her willingness to see it, duly admired it and promised to mention it to Mr. Morganthal. She went out again into Bond Street, and the young woman who had been looking at clip earrings expressed herself as unable to make up her mind and emerged also. The grey Standard car having turned to the left in Grafton Street and gone down to Piccadilly was just coming up Bond Street again. The young woman showed no signs of recognition. Anna Scheele had turned into the Arcade. She entered a florist's. She ordered three dozen long stemmed roses, a bowl full of sweet big purple violets, a dozen sprays of white lilac, and a jar of mimosa. She gave an address for them to be sent. "That will be twelve pounds, eighteen shillings, madam." Anna Scheele paid and went out. The young woman who had just come in asked the price of a bunch of primroses but did not buy them. Anna Scheele crossed Bond Street and went along Burlington Street and turned into Savile Row. Here she entered the establishment of one of those tailors who, whilst catering essentially for men, occasionally condescend to cut a suit for certain favoured members of the feminine sex. Mr. Bolford received Miss Scheele with the greeting accorded to a valued client, and the materials for a suit were considered. "Fortunately, I can give you our own export quality. When will you be returning to New York, Miss Scheele?" "On the twenty-third." "We can manage that nicely. By the clipper, I presume?" "Yes." "And how are things in America? They are very sadly here—very sadly indeed." Mr. Bolford shook his head like a doctor describing a patient. "No heart in things, if you know what I mean. And no one coming along who takes any pride in a good job of work. D'you know who will cut your suit, Miss Scheele? Mr. Lantwick—seventy-two years of age he is and he's the only man I've got I can really trust to cut for our best people. All the others—" Mr. Bolford's plump hands waved them away. "Quality," he said. "That's what this country used to be renowned for. Quality! Nothing cheap, nothing flashy. When we try mass production we're no good at it, and that's a fact. That's your country's speciality, Miss Scheele. What we ought to stand for, and I say it again, is quality. Take time over things, and trouble, and turn out an article that no one in the world can beat. Now what day shall we say for the first fitting. This day week? At 11:30? Thank you very much." Making her way through the archaic gloom round bales of material, Anna Scheele emerged into daylight again. She hailed a taxi and returned to the Savoy. A taxi that was drawn up on the opposite side of the street and which contained a little dark man, took the same route but did not turn into the Savoy. It drove round to the Embankment and there picked up a short plump woman who had recently emerged from the service entrance of the Savoy. "What about it, Louisa? Been through her room?" "Yes. Nothing." Anna Scheele had lunch in the restaurant. A table had been kept for her by the window. The Maître d'Hôtel inquired affectionately after the health of Otto Morganthal. After lunch Anna Scheele took her key and went up to her suite. The bed had been made, fresh towels were in the bathroom and everything was spick and span. Anna crossed to the two light aircases that constituted her luggage, one was open, the other locked. She cast an eye over the contents of the unlocked one, then taking her keys from her purse she unlocked the other. All was neat, folded, as she had folded things, nothing had apparently been touched or disturbed. A briefcase of leather lay on top. A small Leica camera and two rolls of films were in one corner. The films were still sealed and unopened. Anna ran her nail across the flap and pulled it up. Then she smiled, very gently. The single almost invisible blonde hair that had been there was there no longer. Deftly she scattered a little powder over the shiny leather of the briefcase and blew it off. The briefcase remained clear and shiny. There were no fingerprints. But that morning after patting a little brilliantine on to the smooth flaxen cap of her hair, she had handled the briefcase. There should have been fingerprints on it, her own. She smiled again. "Good work," she said to herself. "But not quite good enough...." Deftly, she packed a small overnight case and went downstairs again. A taxi was called and she directed the driver to 17 Elmsleigh Gardens. Elmsleigh Gardens was a quiet, rather dingy Kensington Square. Anna paid off the taxi and ran up the steps to the peeling front door. She pressed the bell. After a few minutes an elderly woman opened the door with a suspicious face which immediately changed to a beam of welcome. "Won't Miss Elsie be pleased to see you! She's in the study at the back. It's only the thought of your coming that's been keeping her spirits up." Anna went quickly along the dark hallway and opened the door at the far end. It was a small shabby, comfortable room with large worn leather armchairs. The woman sitting in one of them jumped up. "Anna, darling." "Elsie." The two women kissed each other affectionately. "It's all arranged," said Elsie. "I go in tonight. I do hope—" "Cheer up," said Anna. "Everything is going to be quite all right." II The small dark man in the raincoat entered a public callbox at High Street Kensington Station, and dialled a number. "Valhalla Gramophone Company?" "Yes." "Sanders here." "Sanders of the River? What river?" "River Tigris. Reporting on A. S. Arrived this morning from New York. Went to Cartier's. Bought sapphire and diamond ring costing one hundred and twenty pounds. Went to florist's, Jane Kent—twelve pounds eighteen shillings' worth of flowers to be delivered at a nursing home in Portland Place. Ordered coat and skirt at Bolford and Avory's. None of these firms known to have any suspicious contacts, but particular attention will be paid to them in future. A. S.'s room at Savoy gone through. Nothing suspicious found. Briefcase in suitcase containing papers relating to Paper Merger with Wolfensteins. All aboveboard. Camera and two rolls of apparently unexposed films. Possibility of films being photostatic records, substituted other films for them, but original films reported upon as being straightforward unexposed films. A. S. took small overnight case and went to sister at 17 Elmsleigh Gardens. Sister entering nursing home in Portland Place this evening for internal operation. This confirmed from nursing home and also appointment book of surgeon. Visit of A. S. seems perfectly aboveboard. Showed no uneasiness or consciousness of being followed. Understand she is spending tonight at nursing home. Has kept on her room at the Savoy. Return passage to New York by clipper booked for twenty-third." The man who called himself Sanders of the River paused and added a postscript off the record as it were. "And if you ask what I think it's all a mare's nest! Throwing money about, that's all she's doing. Twelve pounds eighteen on flowers! I ask you!" ## Four I It says a good deal for the buoyancy of Victoria's temperament that the possibility of failing to attain her objective did not for a moment occur to her. Not for her the lines about ships that pass in the night. It was certainly unfortunate that when she had—well—frankly—fallen for an attractive young man, that that young man should prove to be just on the verge of departure to a place distant some three thousand miles. He might so easily have been going to Aberdeen or Brussels, or even Birmingham. That it should be Baghdad, thought Victoria, was just her luck! Nevertheless, difficult though it might be, she intended to get to Baghdad somehow or other. Victoria walked purposefully along Tottenham Court Road evolving ways and means. Baghdad. What went on in Baghdad? According to Edward: "Culture." Could she, in some way, play up culture? Unesco? Unesco was always sending people here, there and everywhere, sometimes to the most delectable places. But these were usually, Victoria reflected, superior young women with university degrees who had got into the racket early on. Victoria, deciding that first things came first, finally bent her steps to a travel agency, and there made her inquiries. There was no difficulty, it seemed, in travelling to Baghdad. You could go by air, by long sea to Basrah, by train to Marseilles and by boat to Beirut and across the desert by car. You could go via Egypt. You could go all the way by train if you were determined to do so, but visas were at present difficult and uncertain and were apt to have actually expired by the time you received them. Baghdad was in the sterling area and money therefore presented no difficulties. Not, that is to say, in the clerk's meaning of the word. What it all boiled down to was that there was no difficulty whatsoever in getting to Baghdad so long as you had between sixty and a hundred pounds in cash. As Victoria had at this moment three pounds ten (less ninepence), an extra twelve shillings, and five pounds in the PO Savings Bank, the simple and straightforward way was out of the question. She made tentative queries as to a job as air hostess or stewardess, but these, she gathered, were highly coveted posts for which there was a waiting list. Victoria next visited St. Guildric's Agency where Miss Spenser, sitting behind her efficient desk, welcomed her as one of those who were destined to pass through the office with reasonable frequency. "Dear me, Miss Jones, not out of a post again. I really hoped this last one—" "Quite impossible," said Victoria firmly. "I really couldn't begin to tell you what I had to put up with." A pleasurable flush rose in Miss Spenser's pallid cheek. "Not—" she began—"I do hope not—He didn't seem to me really that sort of man—but of course he is a trifle gross—I do hope—" "It's quite all right," said Victoria. She conjured up a pale brave smile. "I can take care of myself." "Oh, of course, but it's the unpleasantness." "Yes," said Victoria. "It is unpleasant. However—" She smiled bravely again. Miss Spenser consulted her books. "The St. Leonard's Assistance to Unmarried Mothers want a typist," said Miss Spenser. "Of course, they don't pay very much—" "Is there any chance," asked Victoria brusquely, "of a post in Baghdad?" "In Baghdad?" said Miss Spenser in lively astonishment. Victoria saw she might as well have said in Kamchatka or at the South Pole. "I should very much like to get to Baghdad," said Victoria. "I hardly think—in a secretary's post you mean?" "Anyhow," said Victoria. "As a nurse or a cook, or looking after a lunatic. Anyway at all." Miss Spenser shook her head. "I'm afraid I can't hold out much hope. There was a lady in yesterday with two little girls who was offering a passage to Australia." Victoria waved away Australia. She rose. "If you did hear of anything. Just the fare out—that's all I need." She met the curiosity in the other woman's eye by explaining—"I've got—er—relations out there. And I understand there are plenty of well-paid jobs. But of course, one has to get there first. "Yes," repeated Victoria to herself as she walked away from St. Guildric's Bureau. "One has to get there." It was an added annoyance to Victoria that, as is customary, when one has had one's attention suddenly focused on a particular name or subject, everything seemed to have suddenly conspired to force the thought of Baghdad onto her attention. A brief paragraph in the evening paper she bought stated that Dr. Pauncefoot Jones, the well-known archaeologist, had started excavation on the ancient city of Murik, situated a hundred and twenty miles from Baghdad. An advertisement mentioned shipping lines to Basrah (and thence by train to Baghdad, Mosul, etc.). In the newspaper that lined her stocking drawer, a few lines of print about students in Baghdad leapt to her eyes. The Thief of Baghdad was on at the local cinema, and in the high-class highbrow bookshop into whose window she always gazed, a New Biography of Haroun el Rashid, Caliph of Baghdad, was prominently displayed. The whole world, it seemed to her, had suddenly become Baghdad conscious. And until that afternoon at approximately 1:45 she had, for all intents and purposes never heard of Baghdad, and certainly never thought about it. The prospects of getting there were unsatisfactory, but Victoria had no idea of giving up. She had a fertile brain and the optimistic outlook that if you want to do a thing there is always some way of doing it. She employed the evening in drawing up a list of possible approaches. It ran: Try Foreign Office? Insert advertisement? Try Iraq Legation? What about date firms? Ditto shipping firms? British Council? Selfridge's Information Bureau? Citizen's Advice Bureau? None of them, she was forced to admit, seemed very promising. She added to the list: Somehow or other, get hold of a hundred pounds? II The intense mental efforts of concentration that Victoria had made overnight, and possibly the subconscious satisfaction at no longer having to be punctually in the office at nine a.m., made Victoria oversleep herself. She awoke at five minutes past ten, and immediately jumped out of bed and began to dress. She was just passing a final comb through her rebellious dark hair when the telephone rang. Victoria reached for the receiver. A positively agitated Miss Spenser was at the other end. "So glad to have caught you, my dear. Really the most amazing coincidence." "Yes?" cried Victoria. "As I say, really a startling coincidence. A Mrs. Hamilton Clipp—travelling to Baghdad in three days' time—has broken her arm—needs someone to assist her on journey—I rang you up at once. Of course I don't know if she has also applied to any other agencies—" "I'm on my way," said Victoria. "Where is she?" "The Savoy." "And what's her silly name? Tripp?" "Clipp, dear. Like a paper clip, but with two P's—I can't think why, but then she's an American," ended Miss Spencer as if that explained everything. "Mrs. Clipp at the Savoy." "Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton Clipp. It was actually the husband who rang up." "You're an angel," said Victoria. "Good-bye." She hurriedly brushed her suit and wished it were slightly less shabby, recombed her hair so as to make it seem less exuberant and more in keeping with the role of ministering angel and experienced traveller. Then she took out Mr. Greenholtz's recommendation and shook her head over it. We must do better than that, said Victoria. From a No. 19 bus, Victoria alighted at Green Park, and entered the Ritz Hotel. A quick glance over the shoulder of a woman reading in the bus had proved rewarding. Entering the writing room Victoria wrote herself some generous lines of praise from Lady Cynthia Bradbury who had been announced as having just left England for East Africa..."excellent in illness," wrote Victoria, "and most capable in every way...." Leaving the Ritz she crossed the road and walked a short way up Albemarle Street until she came to Balderton's Hotel, renowned as the haunt of the higher clergy and of old-fashioned dowagers up from the country. In less dashing handwriting, and making neat small Greek "E's, she wrote a recommendation from the Bishop of Llangow. Thus equipped, Victoria caught a No. 9 bus and proceeded to the Savoy. At the reception desk she asked for Mrs. Hamilton Clipp and gave her name as coming from St. Guildric's Agency. The clerk was just about to pull the telephone towards him when he paused, looked across, and said: "That is Mr. Hamilton Clipp now." Mr. Hamilton Clipp was an immensely tall and very thin grey-haired American of kindly aspect and slow deliberate speech. Victoria told him her name and mentioned the Agency. "Why now, Miss Jones, you'd better come right up and see Mrs. Clipp. She is still in our suite. I fancy she's interviewing some other young lady, but she may have gone by now." Cold panic clutched at Victoria's heart. Was it to be so near and yet so far? They went up in the lift to the third floor. As they walked along the deep carpeted corridor, a young woman came out of a door at the far end and came towards them. Victoria had a kind of hallucination that it was herself who was approaching. Possibly, she thought, because of the young woman's tailor-made suit that was so exactly what she would have liked to be wearing herself. "And it would fit me too. I'm just her size. How I'd like to tear it off her," thought Victoria with a reversion to primitive female savagery. The young woman passed them. A small velvet hat perched on the side of her fair hair partially hid her face, but Mr. Hamilton Clipp turned to look after her with an air of surprise. "Well now," he said to himself. "Who'd have thought of that? Anna Scheele." He added in an explanatory way: "Excuse me, Miss Jones. I was surprised to recognize a young lady whom I saw in New York only a week ago, secretary to one of our big international banks—" He stopped as he spoke at a door in the corridor. The key was hanging in the lock and, with a brief tap, Mr. Hamilton Clipp opened the door and stood aside for Victoria to precede him into the room. Mrs. Hamilton Clipp was sitting on a high-backed chair near the window and jumped up as they came in. She was a short birdlike sharp-eyed little woman. Her right arm was encased in plaster. Her husband introduced Victoria. "Why, it's all been most unfortunate," exclaimed Mrs. Clipp breathlessly. "Here we were, with a full itinerary, and enjoying London and all our plans made and my passage booked. I'm going out to pay a visit to my married daughter in Iraq, Miss Jones. I've not seen her for nearly two years. And then what do I do but take a crash—as a matter of fact, it was actually in Westminster Abbey—down some stone steps—and there I was. They rushed me to hospital and they've set it, and all things considered it's not too uncomfortable—but there it is, I'm kind of helpless, and however I'd manage travelling, I don't know. And George here, is just tied up with business, and simply can't get away for at least another three weeks. He suggested that I should take a nurse along with me—but after all, once I'm out there I don't need a nurse hanging around, Sadie can do all that's necessary—and it means paying her fare back as well, and so I thought I'd ring up the agencies and see if I couldn't find someone who'd be willing to come along just for the fare out." "I'm not exactly a nurse," said Victoria, managing to imply that that was practically what she was. "But I've had a good deal of experience of nursing." She produced the first testimonial. "I was with Lady Cynthia Bradbury for over a year. And if you should want any correspondence or secretarial work done, I acted as my uncle's secretary for some months. My uncle," said Victoria modestly, "is the Bishop of Llangow." "So your uncle's a Bishop. Dear me, how interesting." Both the Hamilton Clipps were, Victoria thought, decidedly impressed. (And so they should be after the trouble she had taken!) Mrs. Hamilton Clipp handed the two testimonials to her husband. "It really seems quite wonderful," she said reverently. "Quite providential. It's an answer to prayer." Which, indeed, was exactly what it was, thought Victoria. "You're taking up a position of some kind out there? Or joining a relative?" asked Mrs. Hamilton Clipp. In the flurry of manufacturing testimonials, Victoria had quite forgotten that she might have to account for her reasons for travelling to Baghdad. Caught unprepared, she had to improvise rapidly. The paragraph she had read yesterday came to her mind. "I'm joining my uncle out there. Dr. Pauncefoot Jones," she explained. "Indeed? The archaeologist?" "Yes." For one moment Victoria wondered whether she were perhaps endowing herself with too many distinguished uncles. "I'm terribly interested in his work, but of course I've no special qualifications so it was out of the question for the Expedition to pay my fare out. They're not too well off for funds. But if I can get out on my own, I can join them and make myself useful." "It must be very interesting work," said Mr. Hamilton Clipp, "and Mesopotamia is certainly a great field for archaeology." "I'm afraid," said Victoria, turning to Mrs. Clipp, "that my uncle the Bishop is up in Scotland at this moment. But I can give you his secretary's telephone number. She is staying in London at the moment. Pimlico 87693—one of the Fulham Palace extensions. She'll be there anytime from (Victoria's eyes slid to the clock on the mantelpiece) 11:30 onwards if you would like to ring her up and ask about me." "Why, I'm sure—" Mrs. Clipp began, but her husband interrupted. "Time's very short you know. This plane leaves day after tomorrow. Now have you got a passport, Miss Jones?" "Yes." Victoria felt thankful that owing to a short holiday trip to France last year, her passport was up to date. "I brought it with me in case," she added. "Now that's what I call businesslike," said Mr. Clipp approvingly. If any other candidate had been in the running, she had obviously dropped out now. Victoria with her good recommendations, and her uncles, and her passport on the spot had successfully made the grade. "You'll want the necessary visas," said Mr. Clipp, taking the passport. "I'll run round to our friend Mr. Burgeon in American Express, and he'll get everything fixed up. Perhaps you'd better call round this afternoon, so you can sign whatever's necessary." This Victoria agreed to do. As the door of the apartment closed behind her, she heard Mrs. Hamilton Clipp say to Mr. Hamilton Clipp: "Such a nice straightforward girl. We really are in luck." Victoria had the grace to blush. She hurried back to her flat and sat glued to the telephone prepared to assume the gracious refined accents of a Bishop's secretary in case Mrs. Clipp should seek confirmation of her capability. But Mrs. Clipp had obviously been so impressed by Victoria's straightforward personality that she was not going to bother with these technicalities. After all, the engagement was only for a few days as a travelling companion. In due course, papers were filled up and signed, the necessary visas were obtained and Victoria was bidden to spend the final night at the Savoy so as to be on hand to help Mrs. Clipp get off at 7 a.m. on the following morning for Airways House and Heathrow Airport. ## Five The boat that had left the marshes two days before paddled gently along the Shatt el Arab. The stream was swift and the old man who was propelling the boat needed to do very little. His movements were gentle and rhythmic. His eyes were half closed. Almost under his breath he sang very softly, a sad unending Arab chant: "Asri bi lel ya yamali "Hadhi alek ya ibn Ali." Thus, on innumerable other occasions, had Abdul Suleiman of the Marsh Arabs come down the river to Basrah. There was another man in the boat, a figure often seen nowadays with a pathetic mingling of West and East in his clothing. Over his long robe of striped cotton he wore a discarded khaki tunic, old and stained and torn. A faded red knitted scarf was tucked into the ragged coat. His head showed again the dignity of the Arab dress, the inevitable keffiyah of black and white held in place by the black silk agal. His eyes, unfocused in a wide stare, looked out blearily over the riverbend. Presently he too began to hum in the same key and tone. He was a figure like thousands of other figures in the Mesopotamian landscape. There was nothing to show that he was an Englishman, and that he carried with him a secret that influential men in almost every country in the world were striving to intercept and to destroy along with the man who carried it. His mind went hazily back over the last weeks. The ambush in the mountains. The ice-cold of the snow coming over the Pass. The caravan of camels. The four days spent trudging on foot over bare desert in company with two men carrying a portable "cinema." The days in the black tent and the journeying with the Aneizeh tribe, old friends of his. All difficult, all fraught with danger—slipping again and again through the cordon spread out to look for him and intercept him. "Henry Carmichael. British Agent. Age about thirty. Brown hair, dark eyes, five-foot-ten. Speaks Arabic, Kurdish, Persian, Armenian, Hindustani, Turkish and many mountain dialects. Befriended by the tribesmen. Dangerous." Carmichael had been born in Kashgar where his father was a Government official. His childish tongue had lisped various dialects and patois—his nurses, and later his bearers, had been natives of many different races. In nearly all the wild places of the Middle East he had friends. Only in the cities and the towns did his contacts fail him. Now, approaching Basrah, he knew that the critical moment of his mission had come. Sooner or later he had got to reenter the civilized zone. Though Baghdad was his ultimate destination, he had judged it wise not to approach it direct. In every town in Iraq facilities were awaiting him, carefully discussed and arranged many months beforehand. It had had to be left to his own judgement where he should, so to speak, make his landing ground. He had sent no word to his superiors, even through the indirect channels where he could have done so. It was safer thus. The easy plan—the aeroplane waiting at the appointed rendezvous—had failed, as he had suspected it would fail. That rendezvous had been known to his enemies. Leakage! Always that deadly, that incomprehensible, leakage. And so it was that his apprehensions of danger were heightened. Here in Basrah, in sight of safety, he felt instinctively sure that the danger would be greater than during the wild hazards of his journey. And to fail at the last lap—that would hardly bear thinking about. Rhythmically pulling at his oars, the old Arab murmured without turning his head. "The moment approaches, my son. May Allah prosper you." "Do not tarry long in the city, my father. Return to the marshes. I would not have harm befall you." "That is as Allah decrees. It is in his hands." "Inshallah," the other repeated. For a moment he longed intensely to be a man of Eastern and not of Western blood. Not to worry over the chances of success or of failure, not to calculate again and again the hazards, repeatedly asking himself if he had planned wisely and with forethought. To throw responsibility on the All Merciful, the All Wise. Inshallah, I shall succeed! Even saying the words over to himself he felt the calmness and the fatalism of the country overwhelming him and he welcomed it. Now, in a few moments, he must step from the haven of the boat, walk the streets of the city, run the gauntlet of keen eyes. Only by feeling as well as looking like an Arab could he succeed. The boat turned gently into the waterway that ran at right angles to the river. Here all kinds of river craft were tied up and other boats were coming in before and after them. It was a lovely, almost Venetian scene; the boats with their high scrolled prows and the soft faded colours of their paintwork. There were hundreds of them tied up close alongside each other. The old man asked softly: "The moment has come. There are preparations made for you?" "Yes, indeed my plans are set. The hour has come for me to leave." "May God make your path straight, and may He lengthen the years of your life." Carmichael gathered his striped skirts about him and went up the slippery stone steps to the wharf above. All about him were the usual waterside figures. Small boys, orange sellers squatting down by their trays of merchandise. Sticky squares of cakes and sweetmeats, trays of bootlaces and cheap combs and pieces of elastic. Contemplative strollers, spitting raucously from time to time, wandering along with their beads clicking in their hands. On the opposite side of the street where the shops were and the banks, busy young effendis walked briskly in European suits of a slightly purplish tinge. There were Europeans, too, English and foreigners. And nowhere was there interest shown, or curiosity, because one amongst fifty or so Arabs had just climbed onto the wharf from a boat. Carmichael strolled along very quietly, his eyes taking in the scene with just the right touch of childlike pleasure in his surroundings. Every now and then he hawked and spat, not too violently, just to be in the picture. Twice he blew his nose with his fingers. And so, the stranger come to town, he reached the bridge at the top of the canal, and turned over it and passed into the souk. Here all was noise and movement. Energetic tribesmen strode along pushing others out of their way—laden donkeys made their way along, their drivers calling out raucously. Balek—balek...Children quarrelled and squealed and ran after Europeans calling hopefully, Baksheesh, madame, Baksheesh. Meskin-meskin.... Here the produce of the West and the East were equally for sale side by side. Aluminium saucepans, cups and saucers and teapots, hammered copperware, silverwork from Amara, cheap watches, enamel mugs, embroideries and gay patterned rugs from Persia. Brassbound chests from Kuwait, secondhand coats and trousers and children's woolly cardigans. Local quilted bedcovers, painted glass lamps, stacks of clay water jars and pots. All the cheap merchandise of civilization together with the native products. All as normal and as usual. After his long sojourn in the wilder spaces, the bustle and confusion seemed strange to Carmichael, but it was all as it should be, he could detect no jarring note, no sign of interest in his presence. And yet, with the instinct of one who has for some years known what it is to be a hunted man, he felt a growing uneasiness—a vague sense of menace. He could detect nothing amiss. No one had looked at him. No one, he was almost sure, was following him or keeping him under observation. Yet he had that indefinable certainty of danger. He turned up a narrow dark turning, again to the right, then to the left. Here among the small booths, he came to the opening of a khan, he stepped through the doorway into the court. Various shops were all round it. Carmichael went to one where ferwahs were hanging—the sheepskin coats of the north. He stood there handling them tentatively. The owner of the store was offering coffee to a customer, a tall bearded man of fine presence who wore green round his tarbush showing him to be a Hajji who had been to Mecca. Carmichael stood there fingering the ferwah. "Besh hadha?" he asked. "Seven dinars." "Too much." The Hajji said, "You will deliver the carpets at my khan?" "Without fail," said the merchant. "You start tomorrow?" "At dawn for Kerbela." "It is my city, Kerbela," said Carmichael. "It is fifteen years now since I have seen the Tomb of the Hussein." "It is a holy city," said the Hajji. The shopkeeper said over his shoulder to Carmichael: "There are cheaper ferwahs in the inner room." "A white ferwah from the north is what I need." "I have such a one in the farther room." The merchant indicated the door set back in the inner wall. The ritual had gone according to pattern—a conversation such as might be heard any day in any souk—but the sequence was exact—the keywords all there—Kerbela—white ferwah. Only, as Carmichael passed to cross the room and enter the inner enclosure, he raised his eyes to the merchant's face—and knew instantly that the face was not the one he expected to see. Though he had seen this particular man only once before, his keen memory was not at fault. There was a resemblance, a very close resemblance, but it was not the same man. He stopped. He said, his tone one of mild surprise, "Where, then, is Salah Hassan?" "He was my brother. He died three days ago. His affairs are in my hands." Yes, this was probably a brother. The resemblance was very close. And it was possible that the brother was also employed by the department. Certainly the responses had been correct. Yet it was with an increased awareness that Carmichael passed through into the dim inner chamber. Here again was merchandise piled on shelves, coffeepots and sugar hammers of brass and copper, old Persian silver, heaps of embroideries, folded abas, enamelled Damascus trays and coffee sets. A white ferwah lay carefully folded by itself on a small coffee table. Carmichael went to it and picked it up. Underneath it was a set of European clothes, a worn, slightly flashy business suit. The pocketbook with money and credentials was already in the breast pocket. An unknown Arab had entered the store, Mr. Walter Williams of Messrs Cross and Co., Importers and Shipping Agents would emerge and would keep certain appointments made for him in advance. There was, of course, a real Mr. Walter Williams—it was as careful as that—a man with a respectable open business past. All according to plan. With a sigh of relief Carmichael started to unbutton his ragged army jacket. All was well. If a revolver had been chosen as the weapon, Carmichael's mission would have failed then and there. But there are advantages in a knife—noticeably noiselessness. On the shelf in front of Carmichael was a big copper coffee pot and that coffee pot had been recently polished to the order of an American tourist who was coming in to collect it. The gleam of the knife was reflected in that shining rounded surface—a whole picture, distorted but apparent was reflected there. The man slipping through the hangings behind Carmichael, the long curved knife he had just pulled from beneath his garments. In another moment that knife would have been buried in Carmichael's back. Like a flash Carmichael wheeled round. With a low flying tackle he brought the other to the ground. The knife flew across the room. Carmichael disentangled himself quickly, leaped over the other's body, rushed through the outer room where he caught a glimpse of the merchant's startled malevolent face and the placid surprise of the fat Hajji. Then he was out, across the khan, back into the crowded souk, turning first one way, then another, strolling again now, showing no signs of haste in a country where to hurry is to appear unusual. And walking thus, almost aimlessly, stopping to examine a piece of stuff, to feel a texture, his brain was working with furious activity. The machinery had broken down! Once more he was on his own, in hostile country. And he was disagreeably aware of the significance of what had just happened. It was not only the enemies on his trail he had to fear. Nor was it the enemies guarding the approaches to civilization. There were enemies to fear within the system. For the passwords had been known, the responses had come pat and correct. The attack had been timed for exactly the moment when he had been lulled into security. Not surprising, perhaps, that there was treachery from within. It must have always been the aim of the enemy to introduce one or more of their own number into the system. Or, perhaps, to buy the man that they needed. Buying a man was easier than one might think—one could buy with other things than money. Well, no matter how it had come about, there it was. He was on the run—back on his own resources. Without money, without the help of a new personality, and his appearance known. Perhaps at this very moment he was being quietly followed. He did not turn his head. Of what use would that be? Those who followed were not novices at the game. Quietly, aimlessly, he continued to stroll. Behind his listless manner he was reviewing various possibilities. He came out of the souk at last and crossed the little bridge over the canal. He walked on until he saw the big painted hatchment over the doorway and the legend: British Consulate. He looked up the street and down. No one seemed to be paying the least attention to him. Nothing, it appeared, was easier than just to step into the British Consulate. He thought for a moment, of a mousetrap, an open mousetrap with its enticing piece of cheese. That, too, was easy and simple for the mouse.... Well, the risk had to be taken. He didn't see what else he could do. He went through the doorway. ## Six Richard Baker sat in the outer office of the British Consulate waiting until the Consul was disengaged. He had come ashore from the Indian Queen that morning and seen his baggage through the Customs. It consisted almost entirely of books. Pyjamas and shirts were strewed amongst them rather as an afterthought. The Indian Queen had arrived on time and Richard, who had allowed a margin of two days since small cargo boats such as the Indian Queen were frequently delayed, had now two days in hand before he need proceed, via Baghdad, to his ultimate destination, Tell Aswad, the site of the ancient city of Murik. His plans were already made as to what to do with these two days. A mound reputed to contain ancient remains at a spot near the seashore in Kuwait had long excited his curiosity. This was a heaven-sent opportunity to investigate it. He drove to the Airport Hotel and inquired as to the methods of getting to Kuwait. A plane left at ten o'clock the following morning, he was told, and he could return the following day. Everything therefore was plain sailing. There were, of course, the inevitable formalities, exit visa and entry visa for Kuwait. For these he would have to repair to the British Consulate. The Consul-General at Basrah, Mr. Clayton, Richard had met some years previously in Persia. It would be pleasant, Richard thought, to meet him again. The Consulate had several entrances. A main gate for cars. Another small gate leading out from the garden to the road that lay alongside the Shatt el Arab. The business entrance to the Consulate was in the main street. Richard went in, gave his card to the man on duty, was told the Consul-General was engaged at the moment but would soon be free, and was shown into a small waiting room to the left of the passage which ran straight through from the entrance to the garden beyond. There were several people already in the waiting room. Richard hardly glanced at them. He was, in any case, seldom interested by members of the human race. A fragment of antique pottery was always more exciting to him than a mere human being born somewhere in the twentieth century AD. He allowed his thoughts to dwell pleasantly on some aspects of the Mari letters and the movements of the Benjaminite tribes in 1750 BC. It would be hard to say exactly what awoke him to a vivid sense of the present and of his fellow human beings. It was, first, an uneasiness, a sense of tension. It came to him, he thought, though he could not be sure, through his nose. Nothing he could diagnose in concrete terms—but it was there, unmistakable, taking him back to days in the late war. One occasion in particular when he, and two others, had been parachuted from a plane, and had waited in the small cold hours of dawn for the moment to do their stuff. A moment when morale was low, when the full hazards of the undertaking were clearly perceived, a moment of dread lest one might not be adequate, a shrinking of the flesh. The same acrid, almost imperceptible tang in the air. The smell of fear.... For some moments, this registered only subconsciously. Half of his mind still obstinately strove to focus itself BC. But the pull of the present was too strong. Someone in this small room was in deadly fear.... He looked around. An Arab in a ragged khaki tunic, his fingers idly slipping over the amber beads he held. A stoutish Englishman with a grey moustache—the commercial traveller type—who was jotting down figures in a small notebook and looking absorbed and important. A lean tired-looking man, very dark-skinned, who was leaning back in a reposeful attitude, his face placid and uninterested. A man who looked like an Iraqi clerk. An elderly Persian in flowing snowy robes. They all seemed quite unconcerned. The clicking of the amber beads fell into a definite rhythm. It seemed, in an odd way, familiar. Richard jerked himself to attention. He had been nearly asleep. Short—long—long—short—that was Morse—definite Morse signalling. He was familiar with Morse, part of his job during the war had dealt with signalling. He could read it easily enough. OWL. F-L-O-R-E-A-T-E-T-O-N-A. What the devil! Yes, that was it. It was being repeated Floreat Etona. Tapped out (or rather clicked out) by a ragged Arab. Hallo, what was this? "Owl. Eton. Owl." His own nickname at Eton—where he had been sent with an unusually large and solid pair of spectacles. He looked across the room at the Arab, noting every detail of his appearance—the striped robe—the old khaki tunic—the ragged hand-knitted red scarf full of dropped stitches. A figure such as you saw hundreds of on the waterfront. The eyes met his vacantly with no sign of recognition. But the beads continued to click. Fakir here. Stand by. Trouble. Fakir? Fakir? Of course! Fakir Carmichael! A boy who had been born or who had lived in some outlandish part of the world—Turkestan, Afghanistan? Richard took out his pipe. He took an exploratory pull at it—peered into the bowl and then tapped it on an adjacent ashtray: Message received. After that, things happened very fast. Later, Richard was at pains to sort them out. The Arab in the torn army jacket got up and crossed towards the door. He stumbled as he was passing Richard, his hand went out and clutched Richard to steady himself. Then he righted himself, apologized and moved towards the door. It was so surprising and happened so quickly that it seemed to Richard like a cinema scene rather than a scene in real life. The stout commercial traveller dropped his notebook and tugged at something in his coat pocket. Because of his plumpness and the tight fit of the coat, he was a second or two in getting it out and in that second or two Richard acted. As the man brought the revolver up, Richard struck it out of his hand. It went off and a bullet buried itself in the floor. The Arab had passed through the doorway and had turned towards the Consul's office, but he paused suddenly, and turning he ran swiftly the other way to the door by which he had entered and into the busy street. The kavass ran to Richard's side where he stood holding the stout man's arm. Of the other occupants of the room, the Iraqi clerk was dancing excitedly on his feet, the dark thin man was staring and the elderly Persian gazed into space unmoved. Richard said: "What the devil are you doing, brandishing a revolver like that?" There was just a moment's pause, and then the stout man said in a plaintive Cockney voice: "Sorry, old man. Absolute accident. Just clumsy." "Nonsense. You were going to shoot at that Arab fellow who's just run out." "No, no, old man, not shoot him. Just give him a fright. Recognized him suddenly as a fellow who swindled me over some antikas. Just a bit of fun." Richard Baker was a fastidious soul who disliked publicity of any kind. His instincts were to accept the explanation at its face value. After all, what could he prove? And would old Fakir Carmichael thank him for making a song and dance about the matter. Presumably if he were on some hush-hush, cloak-and-dagger business he would not. Richard relaxed his grasp on the man's arm. The fellow was sweating, he noticed. The kavass was talking excitedly. It was very wrong, he was saying, to bring firearms into the British Consulate. It was not allowed. The Consul would be very angry. "I apologize," said the fat man. "Little accident—that's all." He thrust some money into the kavass's hand who pushed it back again indignantly. "I'd better get out of this," said the stout man. "I won't wait to see the Consul." He thrust a card suddenly on Richard. "That's me and I'm at the Airport Hotel if there's any fuss, but actually it was a pure accident. Just a joke if you know what I mean." Reluctantly, Richard watched him walk with an uneasy swagger out of the room and turn towards the street. He hoped he had done right, but it was a difficult thing to know what to do when one was as much in the dark as he was. "Mr. Clayton, he is disengaged now," said the kavass. Richard followed the man along the corridor. The open circle of sunlight at the end grew larger. The Consul's room was on the right at the extreme end of the passage. Mr. Clayton was sitting behind his desk. He was a quiet grey-haired man with a thoughtful face. "I don't know whether you remember me?" said Richard. "I met you in Tehran two years ago." "Of course. You were with Dr. Pauncefoot Jones, weren't you? Are you joining him again this year?" "Yes. I'm on my way there now, but I've got a few days to spare, and I rather wanted to run down to Kuwait. There's no difficulty I suppose?" "Oh, no. There's a plane tomorrow morning. It's only about an hour and a half. I'll wire to Archie Gaunt—he's the Resident there. He'll put you up. And we can put you up here for the night." Richard protested slightly. "Really—I don't want to bother you and Mrs. Clayton. I can go to the hotel." "The Airport Hotel's very full. We'd be delighted to have you here. I know my wife would like to meet you again. At the moment—let me see—we've got Crosbie of the Oil Company and some young sprig of Dr. Rathbone's who's down here clearing some cases of books through the customs. Come upstairs and see Rosa." He got up and escorted Richard out through the door and into the sunlit garden. A flight of steps led up to the living quarters of the Consulate. Gerald Clayton pushed open the wire door at the top of the steps and ushered his guest into a long dim hallway with attractive rugs on the floor and choice examples of furniture on either side. It was pleasant coming into the cold dimness after the glare outside. Clayton called, "Rosa, Rosa," and Mrs. Clayton, whom Richard remembered as a buoyant personality with abounding vitality, came out of an end room. "You remember Richard Baker, dear? He came to see us with Dr. Pauncefoot Jones in Tehran." "Of course," said Mrs. Clayton shaking hands. "We went to the bazaars together and you bought some lovely rugs." It was Mrs. Clayton's delight when not buying things herself to urge on her friends and acquaintances to seek for bargains in the local souks. She had a wonderful knowledge of values and was an excellent bargainer. "One of the best purchases I've ever made," said Richard. "And entirely owing to your good offices." "Baker wants to fly to Kuwait tomorrow," said Gerald Clayton. "I've said that we can put him up here for tonight." "But if it's any trouble," began Richard. "Of course it's no trouble," said Mrs. Clayton. "You can't have the best spare room, because Captain Crosbie has got it, but we can make you quite comfortable. You don't want to buy a nice Kuwait chest, do you? Because they've got some lovely ones in the souk just now. Gerald wouldn't let me buy another one for here though it would be quite useful to keep extra blankets in." "You've got three already, dear," said Clayton mildly. "Now, if you'll excuse me, Baker. I must get back to the office. There seems to have been a spot of trouble in the outer office. Somebody let off a revolver, I understand." "One of the local sheikhs, I suppose," said Mrs. Clayton. "They are so excitable and they do so love firearms." "On the contrary," said Richard. "It was an Englishman. His intention seemed to be to take a potshot at an Arab." He added gently, "I knocked his arm up." "So you were in it all," said Clayton. "I didn't realize that." He fished a card out of his pocket. "Robert Hall, Achilles Works, Enfield, seems to be his name. I don't know what he wanted to see me about. He wasn't drunk, was he?" "He said it was a joke," said Richard drily, "and that the gun went off by accident." Clayton raised his eyebrows. "Commercial travellers don't usually carry loaded guns in their pockets," he said. Clayton, Richard thought, was no fool. "Perhaps I ought to have stopped him going away." "It's difficult to know what one should do when these things happen. The man he fired at wasn't hurt?" "No." "Probably was better to let the thing slide, then." "I wonder what was behind it?" "Yes, yes...I wonder too." Clayton looked a little distrait. "Well, I must be getting back," he said and hurried away. Mrs. Clayton took Richard into the drawing room, a large inside room, with green cushions and curtains and offered him a choice of coffee or beer. He chose beer and it came deliciously iced. She asked him why he was going to Kuwait and he told her. She asked him why he hadn't got married yet and Richard said he didn't think he was the marrying kind, to which Mrs. Clayton said briskly, "Nonsense." Archaeologists, she said, made splendid husbands—and were there any young women coming out to the Dig this season? One or two, Richard said, and Mrs. Pauncefoot Jones of course. Mrs. Clayton asked hopefully if they were nice girls who were coming out, and Richard said he didn't know because he hadn't met them yet. They were very inexperienced, he said. For some reason this made Mrs. Clayton laugh. Then a short stocky man with an abrupt manner came in and was introduced as Captain Crosbie. Mr. Baker, said Mrs. Clayton, was an archaeologist and dug up the most wildly interesting things thousands of years old. Captain Crosbie said he never could understand how archaeologists were able to say so definitely how old these things were. Always used to think they must be the most awful liars, ha ha, said Captain Crosbie. Richard looked at him in a rather tired kind of way. No, said Captain Crosbie, but how did an archaeologist know how old a thing was? Richard said that that would take a long time to explain, and Mrs. Clayton quickly took him away to see his room. "He's very nice," said Mrs. Clayton, "but not quite quite, you know. Hasn't got any idea of culture." Richard found his room exceedingly comfortable, and his appreciation of Mrs. Clayton as a hostess rose still higher. Feeling in the pocket of his coat, he drew out a folded-up piece of dirty paper. He looked at it with surprise, for he knew quite well that it had not been there earlier in the morning. He remembered how the Arab had clutched him when he stumbled. A man with deft fingers might have slipped this into his pocket without his being aware of it. He unfolded the paper. It was dirty and seemed to have been folded and refolded many times. In six lines of rather crabbed handwriting, Major John Wilber-force recommended one Ahmed Mohammed as an industrious and willing worker, able to drive a lorry and do minor repairs and strictly honest—it was, in fact, the usual type of "chit" or recommendation given in the East. It was dated eighteen months back, which again is not unusual as these chits are hoarded carefully by their possessors. Frowning to himself, Richard went over the events of the morning in his precise orderly fashion. Fakir Carmichael, he was now well assured, had been in fear of his life. He was a hunted man and he bolted into the Consulate. Why? To find security? But instead of that he had found a more instant menace. The enemy or a representative of the enemy had been waiting for him. This commercial traveller chap must have had very definite orders—to be willing to risk shooting Carmichael in the Consulate in the presence of witnesses. It must, therefore, have been very urgent. And Carmichael had appealed to his old school friend for help, and had managed to pass this seemingly innocent document into his possession. It must, therefore, be very important, and if Carmichael's enemies caught up with him, and found that he no longer possessed this document, they would doubtless put two and two together and look for any person or persons to whom Carmichael might conceivably have passed it on. What then was Richard Baker to do with it? He could pass it on to Clayton, as His Britannic Majesty's representative. Or he could keep it in his own possession until such time as Carmichael claimed it? After a few minutes' reflection he decided to do the latter. But first he took certain precautions. Tearing a blank half sheet of paper off an old letter, he sat down to compose a reference for a lorry driver in much the same terms, but using different wording—if this message was a code that took care of that—though it was possible, of course, that there was a message written in some kind of invisible ink. Then he smeared his own composition with dust from his shoes—rubbed it in his hands, folded and refolded it—until it gave a reasonable appearance of age and dirt. Then he crumpled it up and put it into his pocket. The original he stared at for some time whilst he considered and rejected various possibilities. Finally, with a slight smile, he folded and refolded it until he had a small oblong. Taking a stick of plasticine (without which he never travelled) out of his bag, he first wrapped his packet in oilskin cut from his sponge-bag, then encased it in plasticine. This done he rolled and patted out the plasticine till he had a smooth surface. On this he rolled out an impression from a cylinder seal that he had with him. He studied the result with grim appreciation. It showed a beautifully carved design of the Sun God Shamash armed with the Sword of Justice. "Let's hope that's a good omen," he said to himself. That evening, when he looked in the pocket of the coat he had worn in the morning, the screwed-up paper had gone. ## Seven Life, thought Victoria, life at last! Sitting in her seat at Airways Terminal there had come the magic moment when the words "Passengers for Cairo, Baghdad and Tehran, take your places in the bus, please," had been uttered. Magic names, magic words. Devoid of glamour to Mrs. Hamilton Clipp who, as far as Victoria could make out, had spent a large portion of her life jumping from boats into aeroplanes and from aeroplanes into trains with brief intervals at expensive hotels in between. But to Victoria they were a marvellous change from the oft-repeated phrases, "Take down, please, Miss Jones." "This letter's full of mistakes. You'll have to type it again, Miss Jones." "The kettle's boiling, ducks, just make the tea, will you." "I know where you can get the most marvellous perm." Trivial boring everyday happenings! And now: Cairo, Baghdad, Tehran—all the romance of the glorious East (and Edward at the end of it).... Victoria returned to earth to hear her employer, whom she had already diagnosed as a nonstop talker, concluding a series of remarks by saying: "—and nothing really clean if you know what I mean. I'm always very very careful what I eat. The filth of the streets and the bazaars you wouldn't believe. And the unhygienic rags the people wear. And some of the toilets—why, you just couldn't call them toilets at all!" Victoria listened dutifully to these depressing remarks, but her own sense of glamour remained undimmed. Dirt and germs meant nothing in her young life. They arrived at Heathrow and she assisted Mrs. Clipp to alight from the bus. She was already in charge of passports, tickets, money, etc. "My," said that lady, "it certainly is a comfort to have you with me, Miss Jones. I just don't know what I'd have done if I'd had to travel alone." Travelling by air, Victoria thought, was rather like being taken on a school treat. Brisk teachers, kind but firm, were at hand to shepherd you at every turn. Air hostesses, in trim uniform with the authority of nursery governesses dealing with feeble minded children explained kindly just what you were to do. Victoria almost expected them to preface their remarks with "Now, children." Tired-looking young gentlemen behind desks extended weary hands to check passports, to inquire intimately of money and jewellery. They managed to induce a sense of guilt in those questioned. Victoria, suggestible by nature, knew a sudden longing to describe her one meagre brooch as a diamond tiara value ten thousand pounds, just to see the expression on the bored young man's face. Thoughts of Edward restrained her. The various barriers passed, they sat down to wait once more in a large room giving directly on the aerodrome. Outside the roar of a plane being revved up gave the proper background. Mrs. Hamilton Clipp was now happily engaged in making a running commentary on their fellow travellers. "Aren't those two little children just too cute for words? But what an ordeal to travel alone with a couple of children. British, I guess they are. That's a well cut suit the mother has on. She looks kind of tired, though. That's a good-looking man—rather Latin looking, I'd say. What a loud check that man has on—I'd call it very bad taste. Business, I guess. That man over there's a Dutchman, he was just ahead of us at the controls. That family over there is either Turkish or Persian, I should say. There don't seem to be any Americans. I guess they go mostly Pan American. I'd say those three men talking together are Oil, wouldn't you? I just love looking at people and wondering about them. Mr. Clipp says to me I've got real yen for human nature. It seems to me just natural to take an interest in your fellow creatures. Wouldn't you say that mink coat over there cost every bit of three thousand dollars?" Mrs. Clipp sighed. Having duly appraised her fellow travellers she became restless. "I'd like to know what we are waiting for like this. That plane's revved up four times. We're all here. Why can't they get on with things? They're certainly not keeping to schedule." "Would you like a cup of coffee, Mrs. Clipp? I see there is a buffet at the end of the room." "Why, no, thank you, Miss Jones. I had coffee before I started, and my stomach feels too unsettled right now to take anything more. What are we waiting for, I'd like to know?" Her question seemed to be answered almost before the words were out of her mouth. The door leading from the corridor out of the Customs and Passport Department swung open with a rush and a tall man came through with the effect of a gust of wind. Air officials of the line hovered around him. Two large canvas sacks sealed were carried by an officer of BOAC. Mrs. Clipp sat up with alacrity. "He's certainly some big noise," she remarked. "And knows it," thought Victoria. There was something of calculated sensationalism about the late traveller. He wore a kind of dark-grey travelling cloak with a capacious hood at the back. On his head was what was in essence a wide sombrero, but in light grey. He had silver grey curling hair, worn rather long, and a beautiful silver grey moustache curling up at the ends. The effect was that of a handsome stage bandit. Victoria, who disliked theatrical men who posed, looked at him with disapproval. The Air officials were, she noted with displeasure, all over him. "Yes, Sir Rupert." "Of course, Sir Rupert." "The plane is leaving immediately, Sir Rupert." With a swirl of his voluminous cloak, Sir Rupert passed out through the door leading to the aerodrome. The door swung to behind him with vehemence. "Sir Rupert," murmured Mrs. Clipp. "Now who would he be, I wonder?" Victoria shook her head, though she had a vague feeling that the face and general appearance were not unknown to her. "Somebody important in your Government," suggested Mrs. Clipp. "I shouldn't think so," said Victoria. The few members of the Government she had ever seen had impressed her as men anxious to apologize for being alive. Only on platforms did they spring into pompous and didactic life. "Now then, please," said the smart nursery governess air hostess. "Take your seats in the plane. This way. As quickly as you can, please." Her attitude implied that a lot of dawdling children had been keeping the patient grown-ups waiting. Everybody filed out onto the aerodrome. The great plane was waiting, its engine ticking over like the satisfied purring of a gigantic lion. Victoria and a steward helped Mrs. Clipp on board and settled her in her seat. Victoria sat next to her on the aisle. Not until Mrs. Clipp was comfortably ensconced, and Victoria had fastened her safety-belt, did the girl have leisure to observe that in front of them was sitting the great man. The doors closed. A few seconds later the plane began to move slowly along the ground. "We're really going," thought Victoria in ecstasy. "Oh, isn't it frightening? Suppose it never gets up off the ground? Really, I don't see how it can!" During what seemed an age the plane taxied along the aerodrome, then it turned slowly round and stopped. The engines rose to a ferocious roar. Chewing gum, barley sugar and cotton wool were handed round. Louder and louder, fiercer and fiercer. Then, once more, the aeroplane moved forward. Mincingly at first, then faster—faster still—they were rushing along the ground. "It will never go up," thought Victoria, "we'll be killed." Faster—more smoothly—no jars—no bumps—they were off the ground skimming along up, round, back over the car park and the main road, up, higher—a silly little train puffing below—doll's houses—toy cars on roads...Higher still—and suddenly the earth below lost interest, was no longer human or alive—just a large flat map with lines and circles and dots. Inside the plane people undid their safety belts, lit cigarettes, opened magazines. Victoria was in a new world—a world so many feet long, and a very few feet wide, inhabited by twenty to thirty people. Nothing else existed. She peered out of the small window again. Below her were clouds, a fluffy pavement of clouds. The plane was in the sun. Below the clouds somewhere was the world she had known heretofore. Victoria pulled herself together. Mrs. Hamilton Clipp was talking. Victoria removed cotton wool from her ears and bent attentively towards her. In the seat in front of her, Sir Rupert rose, tossed his wide-brimmed grey felt hat to the rack, drew up his hood over his head and relaxed into his seat. "Pompous ass," thought Victoria, unreasonably prejudiced. Mrs. Clipp was established with a magazine open in front of her. At intervals she nudged Victoria, when on trying to turn the page with one hand, the magazine slipped. Victoria looked round her. She decided that air travel was really rather boring. She opened a magazine, found herself faced with an advertisement that said, "Do you want to increase your efficiency as a shorthand typist?" shuddered, shut the magazine, leant back, and began to think of Edward. They came down at Castel Benito Aerodrome in a storm of rain. Victoria was by now feeling slightly sick, and it took all her energies to accomplish her duties vis-à-vis her employer. They were driven through scurrying rain to the rest house. The magnificent Sir Rupert, Victoria noted, had been met by an officer in uniform with red tabs, and hurried off in a staff car to some dwelling of the mighty in Tripolitania. They were allotted rooms. Victoria helped Mrs. Clipp with her toilet and left her to rest on her bed in a dressing gown until it was time for the evening meal. Victoria retired to her own room, lay down and closed her eyes, grateful to be spared the sight of the heaving and sinking floor. She awakened an hour later in good health and spirits and went to help Mrs. Clipp. Presently a rather more peremptory air hostess instructed them that cars were ready to convey them to the evening meal. After dinner Mrs. Clipp got into conversation with some of her fellow travellers. The man in the loud check coat seemed to have taken a fancy to Victoria and told her at some length all about the manufacture of lead pencils. Later they were conveyed back to their sleeping quarters and told curtly that they must be ready to depart at 5:30 a.m. the following morning. "We haven't seen much of Tripolitania, have we?" said Victoria rather sadly. "Is air travel always like this?" "Why, yes, I'd say so. It's just positively sadistic the way they get you up in the mornings. After that, often they keep you hanging round the aerodrome for an hour or two. Why, in Rome, I remember they called us at 3:30. Breakfast in the restaurant at 4 o'clock. And then actually at the Airport we didn't leave until eight. Still the great thing is they get you to your destination right away with no fooling about on the way." Victoria sighed. She could have done with a good deal of fooling about. She wanted to see the world. "And what do you know, my dear," continued Mrs. Clipp excitedly, "you know that interesting looking man? The Britisher? The one that there's all the fuss about. I've found out who he is. That's Sir Rupert Crofton Lee, the great traveller. You've heard of him, of course." Yes, Victoria remembered now. She had seen several pictures in the press about six months ago. Sir Rupert was a great authority upon the interior of China. He was one of the few people who had been to Tibet and visited Lhasa. He had travelled through the unknown parts of Kurdistan and Asia Minor. His books had had a wide sale, for they had been racily and wittily written. If Sir Rupert was just noticeably a self-advertiser, it was with good reason. He made no claims that were not fully justified. The cloak with the hood and the wide-brimmed hat were, Victoria remembered now, a deliberate fashion of his own choosing. "Isn't that thrilling now?" demanded Mrs. Clipp with all a lion hunter's enthusiasm as Victoria adjusted the bedclothes over her recumbent form. Victoria agreed that it was very thrilling, but she said to herself that she preferred Sir Rupert's books to his personality. He was, she considered, what children call "a show-off!" A start was made in good order the next morning. The weather had cleared and the sun was shining. Victoria still felt disappointed to have seen so little of Tripolitania. Still, the plane was due to arrive at Cairo by lunchtime and the departure to Baghdad did not take place until the following morning, so she would at least be able to see a little of Egypt in the afternoon. They were flying over the sea, but clouds soon blocked out the blue water below them and Victoria settled back in her seat with a yawn. In front of her Sir Rupert was already asleep. The hood had fallen back from his head, which was hanging forwards, nodding at intervals. Victoria observed with a faint malicious pleasure that he had a small boil starting on the back of his neck. Why she should have been pleased at this fact was hard to say—perhaps it made the great man seem more human and vulnerable. He was as other men after all—prone to the small annoyances of the flesh. It may be said that Sir Rupert had kept up his Olympian manner and had taken no notice whatever of his fellow travellers. "Who does he think he is, I wonder?" thought Victoria to herself. The answer was obvious. He was Sir Rupert Crofton Lee, a celebrity, and she was Victoria Jones, an indifferent shorthand typist, and of no account whatever. On arrival at Cairo, Victoria and Mrs. Hamilton Clipp had lunch together. The latter then announced that she was going to nap until six o'clock, and suggested that Victoria might like to go and see the Pyramids. "I've arranged for a car for you, Miss Jones, because I know that owing to your Treasury regulations you won't be able to cash any money here." Victoria who had in any case no money to cash, was duly grateful, and said so with some effusion. "Why, that's nothing at all. You've been very very kind to me. And travelling with dollars everything is easy for us. Mrs. Kitchin—the lady with the two cute children—is very anxious to go also, so I suggested you'd join up with her—if that suits you?" So long as she saw the world, anything suited Victoria. "That's fine, then you'd better get off right now." The afternoon at the Pyramids was duly enjoyable. Victoria, though reasonably fond of children, might have enjoyed it more without Mrs. Kitchin's offspring. Children when sightseeing is in progress are apt to be somewhat of a handicap. The youngest child became so fretful that the two women returned earlier from the expedition than they had meant to do. Victoria threw herself on her bed with a yawn. She wished very much that she could stay a week in Cairo—perhaps go up the Nile. "And what would you use for money, my girl?" she asked herself witheringly. It was already a miracle that she was being transported to Baghdad free of charge. And what, inquired a cold inward voice, are you going to do once you are landed in Baghdad with only a few pounds in your pocket? Victoria waved that query aside. Edward must find her a job. Or failing that, she would find herself a job. Why worry? Her eyes, dazzled with strong sunlight, closed gently. A knock on the door, as she thought, roused her. She called "Come in," then as there was no response, she got off the bed, crossed to the door and opened it. But the knock had not been at her door, but at the next door down the passage. Another of the inevitable air hostesses, dark haired and trim in her uniform, was knocking at Sir Rupert Crofton Lee's door. He opened it just as Victoria looked out. "What's the matter now?" He sounded annoyed and sleepy. "I'm so sorry to disturb you, Sir Rupert," cooed the air hostess, "but would you mind coming to the BOAC office? It's just three doors down the passage here. Just a small detail about the flight to Baghdad tomorrow." "Oh, very well." Victoria withdrew into her room. She was less sleepy now. She glanced at her watch. Only half past four. An hour and a half until Mrs. Clipp would be requiring her. She decided to go out and walk about Heliopolis. Walking, at least, required no money. She powdered her nose and resumed her shoes. They felt rather full of feet. The visit to the Pyramids had been hard on her feet. She came out of her room and walked along the corridor towards the main hall of the hotel. Three doors down she passed the BOAC office. It had a card announcing the fact nailed to the door. Just as she passed it, the door opened and Sir Rupert came out. He was walking fast and he overtook her in a couple of strides. He went on ahead of her, his cloak swinging, and Victoria fancied that he was annoyed about something. Mrs. Clipp was in a somewhat petulant mood when Victoria reported for duty at six o'clock. "I'm worried about the excess on my baggage, Miss Jones. I took it that I'd paid for that right through, but it seems that it's only paid until Cairo. We go on tomorrow by Iraqi Airways. My ticket is a through ticket, but not the excess baggage. Perhaps you'd go and find out if that is really so? Because maybe I ought to change another traveller's cheque." Victoria agreed to make inquiries. She could not find the BOAC office at first, and finally located it in the far corridor—the other side of the hall—quite a big office. The other, she supposed, had been a small office only used during the afternoon siesta hours. Mrs. Clipp's fears about the excess baggage were found to be justified, which annoyed that lady very much. ## Eight On the fifth floor of a block of offices in the City of London are situated the offices of the Valhalla Gramophone Co. The man who sat behind the desk in that office was reading a book on economics. The telephone rang and he picked up the receiver. He said in a quiet unemotional voice: "Valhalla Gramophone Co." "Sanders here." "Sanders of the River? What river?" "River Tigris. Reporting as to A. S. We've lost her." There was a moment's silence. Then the quiet voice spoke again, with a steely note in it. "Did I hear what you said correctly?" "We've lost Anna Scheele." "No names. This is a very serious error on your part. How did it come about?" "She went into that nursing home. I told you before. Her sister was having an operation." "Well?" "The operation went off all right. We expected A. S. to return to the Savoy. She had kept on her suite. She didn't return. Watch had been kept on the nursing home and we were quite sure she hadn't left it. We assumed she was still there." "And she isn't?" "We've just found out. She left there, in an ambulance, the day after the operation." "She deliberately fooled you?" "Looks like it. I'd swear she didn't know she was being followed. We took every precaution. There were three of us and—" "Never mind the excuses. Where did the ambulance take her?" "To University College Hospital." "What have you learnt from the hospital?" "That a patient was brought in accompanied by a hospital nurse. The hospital nurse must have been Anna Scheele. They've no idea where she went after she brought the patient in." "And the patient?" "The patient knows nothing. She was under morphia." "So Anna Scheele walked out of University College Hospital dressed as a nurse and may now be anywhere?" "Yes. If she goes back to the Savoy—" The other interrupted. "She won't go back to the Savoy." "Shall we check up on other hotels?" "Yes, but I doubt if you'll get any result. That's what she'd expect you to do." "What instructions otherwise?" "Check on the ports—Dover, Folkestone, etc. Check with air lines. In particular check all bookings to Baghdad by plane for the next fortnight. The passage won't be booked in her own name. Check up on all passengers of suitable age." "Her baggage is still at the Savoy. Perhaps she'll claim it." "She won't do anything of the sort. You may be a fool—she isn't! Does the sister know anything?" "We're in contact with her special nurse at the home. Apparently the sister thinks A. S. is in Paris doing business for Morganthal and staying at the Ritz Hotel. She believed A. S. is flying home to States on 23rd." "In other words A. S. has told her nothing. She wouldn't. Check up on those air passages. It's the only hope. She's got to get to Baghdad—and air is the only way she can do it in time, and, Sanders—" "Yes?" "No more failures. This is your last chance." ## Nine Young Mr. Shrivenham of the British Embassy shifted from one foot to the other and gazed upwards as the plane zoomed over Baghdad aerodrome. There was a considerable dust storm in progress. Palm trees, houses, human beings were all shrouded in a thick brown haze. It had come on quite suddenly. Lionel Shrivenham observed in a tone of deep distress: "Ten to one they can't come down here." "What will they do?" asked his friend Harold. "Go on to Basrah, I imagine. It's clear there, I hear." "You're meeting some kind of a VIP, aren't you?" Young Mr. Shrivenham groaned again. "Just my luck. The new Ambassador has been delayed coming out. Lansdowne, the Counsellor, is in England. Rice, the Oriental Counsellor, is ill in bed with gastric flu, dangerously high temperature. Best is in Tehran, and here am I, left with the whole bag of tricks. No end of a flap about this fellow. I don't know why. Even the hush-hush boys are in a flap. He's one of these world travellers, always off somewhere inaccessible on a camel. Don't see why he's so important, but apparently he's absolutely the cat's whiskers, and I'm to conform to his slightest wish. If he gets carried on to Basrah he'll probably be wild. Don't know what arrangements I'd better lay on. Train up tonight? Or get the RAF to fly him up tomorrow?" Mr. Shrivenham sighed again, as his sense of injury and responsibility deepened. Since his arrival three months ago in Baghdad he had been consistently unlucky. One more raspberry, he felt, would finally blight what might have been a promising career. The plane swooped overhead once more. "Evidently thinks he can't make it," said Shrivenham, then added excitedly: "Hallo—I believe he's coming down." A few moments later and the plane had taxied sedately to its place and Shrivenham stood ready to greet the VIP. His unprofessional eye noted "rather a pretty girl" before he sprang forward to greet the buccaneer-like figure in the swirling cloak. "Practically fancy dress," he thought to himself disapprovingly as he said aloud: "Sir Rupert Crofton Lee? I'm Shrivenham of the Embassy." Sir Rupert, he thought, was slightly curt in manner—perhaps understandable after the strain of circling round the city uncertain whether a landing could be effected or not. "Nasty day," continued Shrivenham. "Had a lot of this sort of thing this year. Ah, you've got the bags. Then, if you'll follow me, sir, it's all laid on...." As they left the aerodrome in the car, Shrivenham said: "I thought for a bit that you were going to be carried on to some other Airport, sir. Didn't look as though the pilot could make a landing. Came up suddenly, this dust storm." Sir Rupert blew out his cheeks importantly as he remarked: "That would have been disastrous—quite disastrous. Had my schedule been jeopardized, young man, I can tell you the results would have been grave and far-reaching in the extreme." "Lot of cock," thought Shrivenham disrespectfully. "These VIP's think their potty affairs are what makes the world go round." Aloud he said respectfully: "I expect that's so, sir." "Have you any idea when the Ambassador will reach Baghdad?" "Nothing definite as yet, sir." "I shall be sorry to miss him. Haven't seen him since—let me see, yes, India in 1938." Shrivenham preserved a respectful silence. "Let me see, Rice is here, isn't he?" "Yes, sir, he's Oriental Counsellor." "Capable fellow. Knows a lot. I'll be glad to meet him again." Shrivenham coughed. "As a matter of fact, sir, Rice is on the sick list. They've taken him to hospital for observation. Violent type of gastroenteritis. Something a bit worse than the usual Baghdad tummy, apparently." "What's that?" Sir Rupert turned his head sharply. "Bad gastroenteritis—hm. Came on suddenly, did it?" "Day before yesterday, sir." Sir Rupert was frowning. The rather affected grandiloquence of manner had dropped from him. He was a simpler man—and somewhat of a worried one. "I wonder," he said. "Yes, I wonder." Shrivenham looked politely inquiring. "I'm wondering," said Sir Rupert, "if it might be a case of Scheele's Green...." Baffled, Shrivenham remained silent. They were just approaching the Feisal Bridge, and the car swung off to the left towards the British Embassy. Suddenly Sir Rupert leaned forward. "Just stop a minute, will you?" he said sharply. "Yes, right-hand side. Where all those pots are." The car glided into the right-hand kerb and stopped. It was a small native shop piled high with crude white clay pots and water jars. A short stocky European who had been standing talking to the proprietor moved away towards the bridge as the car drew up. Shrivenham thought it was Crosbie of the I and P whom he had met once or twice. Sir Rupert sprang from the car and strode up to the small booth. Picking up one of the pots, he started a rapid conversation in Arabic with the proprietor. The flow of speech was too fast for Shrivenham whose Arabic was as yet slow and painstaking and distinctly limited in vocabulary. The proprietor was beaming, his hands flew wide, he gesticulated, he explained at length. Sir Rupert handled different pots, apparently asking questions about them. Finally he selected a narrow-mouthed water jar, tossed the man some coins and went back to the car. "Interesting technique," said Sir Rupert. "Been making them like this for thousands of years, same shape as in one of the hill districts in Armenia." His finger slipped down through the narrow aperture, twisting round and round. "It's very crude stuff," said Shrivenham unimpressed. "Oh, no artistic merit! But interesting historically. See these indications of lugs here? You pick up many a historical tip from observation of the simple things in daily use. I've got a collection of them." The car turned in through the gates of the British Embassy. Sir Rupert demanded to be taken straight to his room. Shrivenham was amused to note that, his lecture on the clay pot ended, Sir Rupert had left it nonchalantly in the car. Shrivenham made a point of carrying it upstairs and placing it meticulously upon Sir Rupert's bedside table. "Your pot, sir." "Eh? Oh, thank you, my boy." Sir Rupert appeared distrait. Shrivenham left him after repeating that luncheon would be ready shortly and drinks awaited his choice. When the young man had left the room, Sir Rupert went to the window and unfolded the small slip of paper that had been tucked into the mouth of the pot. He smoothed it out. There were two lines of writing on it. He read them over carefully, then set light to the paper with a match. Then he summoned a servant. "Yes, sir? I unpack for you, sir?" "Not yet. I want to see Mr. Shrivenham—up here." Shrivenham arrived with a slightly apprehensive expression. "Anything I can do, sir? Anything wrong?" "Mr. Shrivenham, a drastic change has occurred in my plans. I can count upon your discretion, of course?" "Oh, absolutely, sir." "It is some time since I was in Baghdad, actually I have not been here since the war. The hotels lie mainly on the other bank, do they not?" "Yes, sir. In Rashid Street." "Backing on the Tigris?" "Yes. The Babylonian Palace is the biggest of them. That's the more or less official hotel." "What do you know about a hotel called the Tio?" "Oh, a lot of people go there. Food's rather good and it's run by a terrific character called Marcus Tio. He's quite an institution in Baghdad." "I want you to book me a room there, Mr. Shrivenham." "You mean—you're not going to stay at the Embassy?" Shrivenham looked nervously apprehensive. "But—but—it's all laid on, sir." "What is laid on can be laid off," barked Sir Rupert. "Oh, of course, sir. I didn't mean—" Shrivenham broke off. He had a feeling that in the future someone was going to blame him. "I have certain somewhat delicate negotiations to carry out. I learn that they cannot be carried out from the Embassy. I want you to book me a room tonight at the Tio Hotel and I wish to leave the Embassy in a reasonably unobtrusive manner. That is to say I do not want to drive up to the Tio in an Embassy car. I also require a seat booked on the plane leaving for Cairo the day after tomorrow." Shrivenham looked more dismayed still. "But I understood you were staying five days—" "That is no longer the case. It is imperative that I reach Cairo as soon as my business here is terminated. It would not be safe for me to remain longer." "Safe?" A sudden grim smile transformed Sir Rupert's face. The manner which Shrivenham had been likening to that of a Prussian drill sergeant was laid aside. The man's charm became suddenly apparent. "Safety hasn't usually been one of my preoccupations, I agree," he said. "But in this case it isn't only my own safety I have to consider—my safety includes the safety of a lot of other people as well. So make those arrangements for me. If the air passage is difficult, apply for priority. Until I leave here tonight, I shall remain in my room." He added, as Shrivenham's mouth opened in surprise, "Officially, I'm sick. Touch of malaria." The other nodded. "So I shan't need food." "But surely we can send you up—" "Twenty-four hours' fast is nothing to me. I've gone hungry longer than that on some of my journeys. You just do as I tell you." Downstairs Shrivenham was greeted by his colleagues and groaned in answer to their inquiries. "Cloak and dagger stuff in a big way," he said. "Can't quite make his grandiloquence Sir Rupert Crofton Lee out. Whether it's genuine or playacting. The swirling cloak and bandit's hat and all the rest of it. Fellow who'd read one of his books told me that although he's a bit of a self-advertiser, he really has done all these things and been to these places—but I don't know...Wish Thomas Rice was up and about to cope. That reminds me, what's Scheele's Green?" "Scheele's Green?" said his friend, frowning. "Something to do with wallpaper, isn't it? Poisonous. It's a form of arsenic, I think." "Cripes!" said Shrivenham, staring. "I thought it was a disease. Something like amoebic dysentery." "Oh, no, it's something in the chemical line. What wives do their husbands in with, or vice versa." Shrivenham had relapsed into startled silence. Certain disagreeable facts were becoming clear to him. Crofton Lee had suggested, in effect, that Thomas Rice, Oriental Counsellor to the Embassy, was suffering, not from gastroenteritis, but from arsenical poisoning. Added to that Sir Rupert had suggested that his own life was in danger, and his decision not to eat food and drink prepared in the kitchens of the British Embassy shook Shrivenham's decorous British soul to the core. He couldn't imagine what to make of it all. ## Ten I Victoria, breathing in hot choking yellow dust, was unfavourably impressed by Baghdad. From the Airport to the Tio Hotel, her ears had been assailed by continuous and incessant noise. Horns of cars blaring with maddening persistence, voices shouting, whistles blowing, then more deafening senseless blaring of motor horns. Added to the loud incessant noises of the street was a small thin trickle of continuous sound which was Mrs. Hamilton Clipp talking. Victoria arrived at the Tio Hotel in a dazed condition. A small alleyway led back from the fanfare of Rashid Street towards the Tigris. A short flight of steps to go up and there at the entrance of the hotel they were greeted by a very stout young man with a beaming smile who, metaphorically at least, gathered them to his heart. This, Victoria gathered, was Marcus—or more correctly Mr. Tio, the owner of the Tio Hotel. His words of welcome were interrupted by shouted orders to various underlings regarding the disposal of their baggage. "And here you are, once more, Mrs. Clipp—but your arm—why is it in that funny stuff?—(You fools, do not carry that with the strap! Imbeciles! Don't trail that coat!)—But, my dear—what a day to arrive—never, I thought, would the plane land. It went round and round and round. Marcus, I said to myself—it is not you that will travel by planes—all this hurry, what does it matter?—And you have brought a young lady with you—it is nice always to see a new young lady in Baghdad—why did not Mr. Harrison come down to meet you—I expected him yesterday—but, my dear, you must have a drink at once." Now, somewhat dazed, Victoria, her head reeling slightly under the effect of a double whisky authoritatively pressed upon her by Marcus, was standing in a high whitewashed room containing a large brass bedstead, a very sophisticated dressing table of newest French design, an aged Victorian wardrobe, and two vivid plush chairs. Her modest baggage reposed at her feet and a very old man with a yellow face and white whiskers had grinned and nodded at her as he placed towels in the bathroom and asked her if she would like the water made hot for a bath. "How long would it take?" "Twenty minutes, half an hour. I go and do it now." With a fatherly smile he withdrew. Victoria sat down on the bed and passed an experimental hand over her hair. It felt clogged with dust and her face was sore and gritty. She looked at herself in the glass. The dust had changed her hair from black to a strange reddish brown. She pulled aside a corner of the curtain and looked out on to a wide balcony which gave on the river. But there was nothing to be seen of the Tigris but a thick yellow haze. A prey to deep depression, Victoria said to herself: "What a hateful place." Then rousing herself, she stepped across the landing and tapped on Mrs. Clipp's door. Prolonged and active ministrations would be required of her here before she could attend to her own cleansing and rehabilitation. II After a bath, lunch and a prolonged nap, Victoria stepped out from her bedroom onto the balcony and gazed with approval across the Tigris. The dust storm had subsided. Instead of a yellow haze, a pale clear light was appearing. Across the river was a delicate silhouette of palm trees and irregularly placed houses. Voices came up to Victoria from the garden below. She stepped to the edge of the balcony and looked over. Mrs. Hamilton Clipp, that indefatigable talker and friendly soul, had struck up an acquaintanceship with an Englishwoman—one of those weather-beaten Englishwomen of indeterminate age who can always be found in any foreign city. "—and whatever I'd have done without her, I really don't know," Mrs. Clipp was saying. "She's just the sweetest girl you can imagine. And very well connected. A niece of the Bishop of Llangow." "Bishop of who?" "Why, Llangow, I think it was." "Nonsense, there's no such person," said the other. Victoria frowned. She recognized the type of County Englishwoman who is unlikely to be taken in by the mention of spurious Bishops. "Why, then, perhaps I got the name wrong," Mrs. Clipp said doubtfully. "But," she resumed, "she certainly is a very charming and competent girl." The other said "Ha!" in a noncommittal manner. Victoria resolved to give this lady as wide a berth as possible. Something told her that inventing stories to satisfy that kind of woman was no easy job. Victoria went back into her room, sat on the bed, and gave herself up to speculation on her present position. She was staying at the Tio Hotel, which was, she was fairly sure, not at all inexpensive. She had four pounds seventeen shillings in her possession. She had eaten a hearty lunch for which she had not yet paid and for which Mrs. Clipp was under no obligation to pay. Travelling expenses to Baghdad were what Mrs. Clipp had offered. The bargain was completed. Victoria had got to Baghdad. Mrs. Hamilton Clipp had received the skilled attention of a Bishop's niece, an ex-hospital nurse, and competent secretary. All that was over, to the mutual satisfaction of both parties. Mrs. Hamilton Clipp would depart on the evening train to Kirkuk—and that was that. Victoria toyed hopefully with the idea that Mrs. Clipp might press upon her a parting present in the form of hard cash, but abandoned it reluctantly as unlikely. Mrs. Clipp could have no idea that Victoria was in really dire financial straits. What then must Victoria do? The answer came immediately. Find Edward, of course. With a sense of annoyance she realized that she was quite unaware of Edward's last name. Edward—Baghdad. Very much, Victoria reflected, like the Saracen maid who arrived in England knowing only the name of her lover "Gilbert" and "England." A romantic story—but certainly inconvenient. True that in England at the time of the Crusades, nobody, Victoria thought, had had any surname at all. On the other hand England was larger than Baghdad. Still, England was sparsely populated then. Victoria wrenched her thoughts away from these interesting speculations and returned to hard facts. She must find Edward immediately and Edward must find her a job. Also immediately. She did not know Edward's last name, but he had come to Baghdad as the secretary of a Dr. Rathbone and presumably Dr. Rathbone was a man of importance. Victoria powdered her nose and patted her hair and started down the stairs in search of information. The beaming Marcus, passing through the hall of his establishment, hailed her with delight. "Ah, it is Miss Jones, you will come with me and have a drink, will you not, my dear? I like very much English ladies. All the English ladies in Baghdad, they are my friends. Everyone is very happy in my hotel. Come, we will go into the bar." Victoria, not at all averse to free hospitality, consented gladly. III Sitting on a stool and drinking gin, she began her search for information. "Do you know a Dr. Rathbone who has just come to Baghdad?" she asked. "I know everyone in Baghdad," said Marcus Tio joyfully. "And everybody knows Marcus. That is true, what I am telling you. Oh! I have many many friends." "I'm sure you have," said Victoria. "Do you know Dr. Rathbone?" "Last week I have the Air Marshal commanding all Middle East passing through. He says to me, 'Marcus, you villain, I haven't seen you since '46. You haven't grown any thinner.' Oh he is very nice man. I like him very much." "What about Dr. Rathbone? Is he a nice man?" "I like, you know, people who can enjoy themselves. I do not like sour faces. I like people to be gay and young and charming—like you. He says to me, that Air Marshal, 'Marcus, you like too much the women.' But I say to him: 'No, my trouble is I like too much Marcus...'" Marcus roared with laughter, breaking off to call out, "Jesus—Jesus!" Victoria looked startled, but it appeared that Jesus was the barman's Christian name. Victoria felt again that the East was an odd place. "Another gin and orange, and whisky," Marcus commanded. "I don't think I—" "Yes, yes, you will—they are very very weak." "About Dr. Rathbone," persisted Victoria. "That Mrs. Hamilton Clipp—what an odd name—with whom you arrive, she is American—is she not? I like also American people but I like English best. American peoples, they look always very worried. But sometimes, yes, they are good sports. Mr. Summers—you know him?—he drink so much when he come to Baghdad, he go to sleep for three days and not wake up. It is too much that. It is not nice." "Please, do help me," said Victoria. Marcus looked surprised. "But of course I help you. I always help my friends. You tell me what you want—and at once it shall be done. Special steak—or turkey cooked very nice with rice and raisins and herbs—or little baby chickens." "I don't want baby chickens," said Victoria. "At least not now," she added prudently. "I want to find this Dr. Rathbone. Dr. Rathbone. He's just arrived in Baghdad. With a—with a—secretary." "I do not know," said Marcus. "He does not stay at the Tio." The implication was clearly that anyone who did not stay at the Tio did not exist for Marcus. "But there are other hotels," persisted Victoria, "or perhaps he has a house?" "Oh yes, there are other hotels. Babylonian Palace, Sennacherib, Zobeide Hotel. They are good hotels, yes, but they are not like the Tio." "I'm sure they're not," Victoria assured him. "But you don't know if Dr. Rathbone is staying at one of them? There is some kind of society he runs—something to do with culture—and books." Marcus became quite serious at the mention of culture. "It is what we need," he said. "There must be much culture. Art and music, it is very nice, very nice indeed. I like violin sonatas myself if it is not very long." Whilst thoroughly agreeing with him, especially in regard to the end of the speech, Victoria realized that she was not getting any nearer to her objective. Conversation with Marcus was, she thought, most entertaining, and Marcus was a charming person in his childlike enthusiasm for life, but conversation with him reminded her of Alice in Wonderland's endeavours to find a path that led to the hill. Every topic found them returning to the point of departure—Marcus! She refused another drink and rose sadly to her feet. She felt slightly giddy. The cocktails had been anything but weak. She went out from the bar on to the terrace outside and stood by the railing looking across the river, when somebody spoke from behind her. "Excuse me, but you'd better go and put a coat on. Dare say it seems like summer to you coming out from England, but it gets very cold about sundown." It was the Englishwoman who had been talking to Mrs. Clipp earlier. She had the hoarse voice of one who is in the habit of training and calling to sporting dogs. She wore a fur coat, had a rug over her knees and was sipping a whisky and soda. "Oh thank you," said Victoria and was about to escape hurriedly when her intentions were defeated. "I must introduce myself. I'm Mrs. Cardew Trench." (The implication was clearly: one of the Cardew Trenches.) "I believe you arrived with Mrs.—what's her name—Hamilton Clipp." "Yes," said Victoria, "I did." "She told me you were the niece of the Bishop of Llangow." Victoria rallied. "Did she really?" she inquired with the correct trace of light amusement. "Got it wrong, I suppose?" Victoria smiled. "Americans are bound to get some of our names wrong. It does sound a little like Llangow. My uncle," said Victoria improvising rapidly, "is the Bishop of Languao?" "Languao?" "Yes—in the Pacific Archipelago. He's a Colonial Bishop, of course." "Oh, a Colonial Bishop," said Mrs. Cardew Trench, her voice falling at least three semitones. As Victoria had anticipated: Mrs. Cardew Trench was magnificently unaware of Colonial Bishops. "That explains it," she added. Victoria thought with pride that it explained it very well for a spur of the moment plunge! "And what are you doing out here?" asked Mrs. Cardew Trench with that inexorable geniality that conceals natural curiosity of disposition. "Looking for a young man I talked to for a few moments in a public square in London," was hardly an answer that Victoria could give. She said, remembering the newspaper paragraph she had read, and her statement to Mrs. Clipp: "I'm joining my uncle, Dr. Pauncefoot Jones." "Oh, so that's who you are." Mrs. Cardew Trench was clearly delighted at having "placed" Victoria. "He's a charming little man, though a bit absentminded—still I suppose that's only to be expected. Heard him lecture last year in London—excellent delivery—couldn't understand a word of what it was all about, though. Yes, he passed through Baghdad about a fortnight ago. I think he mentioned some girls were coming out later in the season." Hurriedly, having established her status, Victoria chipped in with a question. "Do you know if Dr. Rathbone is out here?" she asked. "Just come out," said Mrs. Cardew Trench. "I believe they've asked him to give a lecture at the Institute next Thursday. On 'World Relationships and Brotherhood'—or something like that. All nonsense if you ask me. The more you try to get people together, the more suspicious they get of each other. All this poetry and music and translating Shakespeare and Wordsworth into Arabic and Chinese and Hindustani. 'A primrose by the river's brim,' etc...what's the good of that to people who've never seen a primrose?" "Where is he staying, do you know?" "At the Babylonian Palace Hotel, I believe. But his headquarters are up near the Museum. The Olive Branch—ridiculous name. Full of young women in slacks with unwashed necks and spectacles." "I know his secretary slightly," said Victoria. "Oh yes, whatshisname Edward Thingummy—nice boy—too good for that long-haired racket—did well in the war, I hear. Still a job's a job, I suppose. Nice-looking boy—those earnest young women are quite fluttered by him, I fancy." A pang of devastating jealousy pierced Victoria. "The Olive Branch," she said. "Where did you say it was?" "Up past the turning to the second bridge. One of the turnings off Rashid Street—tucked away rather. Not far from the Copper Bazaar." "And how's Mrs. Pauncefoot Jones?" continued Mrs. Cardew Trench. "Coming out soon? I hear she's been in poor health?" But having got the information she wanted, Victoria was taking no more risks in invention. She glanced at her wristwatch and uttered an exclamation. "Oh dear—I promised to wake Mrs. Clipp at half past six and help her to prepare for the journey. I must fly." The excuse was true enough, though Victoria had substituted half past six for seven o'clock. She hurried upstairs quite exhilarated. Tomorrow she would get in touch with Edward at the Olive Branch. Earnest young women with unwashed necks, indeed! They sounded most unattractive...Still, Victoria reflected uneasily that men are less critical of dingy necks than middle-aged hygienic Englishwomen are—especially if the owners of the said necks were gazing with large eyes of admiration and adoration at the male subject in question. The evening passed rapidly. Victoria had an early meal in the dining room with Mrs. Hamilton Clipp, the latter talking nineteen to the dozen on every subject under the sun. She urged Victoria to come and pay a visit later—and Victoria noted down the address carefully, because, after all, one never knew...She accompanied Mrs. Clipp to Baghdad North Station, saw her safely ensconced in her compartment and was introduced to an acquaintance also travelling to Kirkuk who would assist Mrs. Clipp with her toilet on the following morning. The engine uttered loud melancholy screams like a soul in distress, Mrs. Clipp thrust a thick envelope into Victoria's hand, said: "Just a little remembrance, Miss Jones, of our very pleasant companionship which I hope you will accept with my most grateful thanks." Victoria said: "But it's really too kind of you, Mrs. Clipp," in a delighted voice, the engine gave a fourth and final supreme banshee wail of anguish and the train pulled slowly out of the station. Victoria took a taxi from the station back to the hotel since she had not the faintest idea how to get back to it any other way and there did not seem anyone about whom she could ask. On her return to the Tio, she ran up to her room and eagerly opened the envelope. Inside were a couple of pairs of nylon stockings. Victoria at any other moment would have been enchanted—nylon stockings having been usually beyond the reach of her purse. At the moment, however, hard cash was what she had been hoping for. Mrs. Clipp, however had been far too delicate to think of giving her a five-dinar note. Victoria wished heartily that she had not been quite so delicate. However, tomorrow there would be Edward. Victoria undressed, got into bed and in five minutes was fast asleep, dreaming that she was waiting at an aerodrome for Edward, but that he was held back from joining her by a spectacled girl who clasped him firmly round the neck while the aeroplane began slowly to move away.... ## Eleven Victoria awoke to a morning of vivid sunshine. Having dressed, she went out onto the wide balcony outside her window. Sitting in a chair a little way along with his back to her was a man with curling grey hair growing down onto a muscular red brown neck. When the man turned his head sideways Victoria recognized, with a distinct feeling of surprise, Sir Rupert Crofton Lee. Why she should be so surprised she could hardly have said. Perhaps because she had assumed as a matter of course that a VIP such as Sir Rupert would have been staying at the Embassy and not at a hotel. Nevertheless there he was, staring at the Tigris with a kind of concentrated intensity. She noticed, even, that he had a pair of field glasses slung over the side of his chair. Possibly, she thought, he studied birds. A young man whom Victoria had at one time thought attractive had been a bird enthusiast, and she had accompanied him on several weekend tramps, to be made to stand as though paralysed in wet woods and icy winds, for what seemed like hours, to be at last told in tones of ecstasy to look through the glasses at some drab-looking bird on a remote twig which in appearance as far as Victoria could see, compared unfavourably in bird appeal with a common robin or chaffinch. Victoria made her way downstairs, encountering Marcus Tio on the terrace between the two buildings of the hotel. "I see you've got Sir Rupert Crofton Lee staying here," she said. "Oh yes," said Marcus, beaming, "he is a nice man—a very nice man." "Do you know him well?" "No, this is the first time I see him. Mr. Shrivenham of the British Embassy bring him here last night. Mr. Shrivenham, he is very nice man, too. I know him very well." Proceeding in to breakfast Victoria wondered if there was anyone whom Marcus would not consider a very nice man. He appeared to exercise a wide charity. After breakfast, Victoria started forth in search of the Olive Branch. A London-bred Cockney, she had no idea of the difficulties involved in finding any particular place in a city such as Baghdad until she had started on her quest. Coming across Marcus again on her way out, she asked him to direct her to the Museum. "It is a very nice museum," said Marcus, beaming. "Yes. Full of interesting, very very old things. Not that I have been there myself. But I have friends, archaeological friends, who stay here always when they come through Baghdad. Mr. Baker—Mr. Richard Baker, you know him? And Professor Kalzman? And Dr. Pauncefoot Jones—and Mr. and Mrs. McIntyre—they all come to the Tio. They are my friends. And they tell me about what is in the Museum. Very very interesting." "Where is it, and how do I get there?" "You go straight along Rashid Street—a long way—past the turn to the Feisal Bridge and past Bank Street—you know Bank Street?" "I don't know anything," said Victoria. "And then there is another street—also going down to a bridge and it is along there on the right. You ask for Mr. Betoun Evans, he is English Adviser there—very nice man. And his wife, she is very nice, too, she came here as Transport Sergeant during the war. Oh, she is very very nice." "I don't really want to go actually to the Museum," said Victoria. "I want to find a place—a society—a kind of club called the Olive Branch." "If you want olives," said Marcus, "I give you beautiful olives—very fine quality. They keep them especially for me—for the Tio Hotel. You see, I send you some to your table tonight." "That's very kind of you," said Victoria and escaped towards Rashid Street. "To the left," Marcus shouted after her, "not to the right. But it is a long way to the Museum. You had better take a taxi." "Would a taxi know where the Olive Branch was?" "No, they do not know where anything is! You say to the driver left, right, stop, straight on—just where you want to go." "In that case, I might as well walk," said Victoria. She reached Rashid Street and turned to the left. Baghdad was entirely unlike her idea of it. A crowded main thoroughfare thronged with people, cars hooting violently, people shouting, European goods for sale in the shop windows, hearty spitting all round her with prodigious throat clearing as a preliminary. No mysterious Eastern figures, most of the people wore tattered or shabby Western clothes, old army and air force tunics, the occasional shuffling black-robed and veiled figures were almost inconspicuous amongst the hybrid European styles of dress. Whining beggars came up to her—women with dirty babies in their arms. The pavement under her feet was uneven with occasional gaping holes. She pursued her way feeling suddenly strange and lost and far from home. Here was no glamour of travel, only confusion. She came at last to the Feisal Bridge, passed it and went on. In spite of herself she was intrigued by the curious mixture of things in the shop windows. Here were babies' shoes and woollies, toothpaste and cosmetics, electric torches and china cups and saucers—all shown together. Slowly a kind of fascination came over her, the fascination of assorted merchandise coming from all over the world to meet the strange and varied wants of a mixed population. She found the Museum, but not the Olive Branch. To one accustomed to finding her way about London it seemed incredible that here was no one she could ask. She knew no Arabic. Those shopkeepers who spoke to her in English as she passed, pressing their wares, presented blank faces when she asked for direction to the Olive Branch. If one could only "ask a policeman," but gazing at the policemen actively waving their arms, and blowing their whistles, she realized that here that would be no solution. She went into a bookshop with English books in the window, but a mention of the Olive Branch drew only a courteous shrug and shake of the head. Regrettably they had no idea at all. And then, as she walked along the street, a prodigious hammering and clanging came to her ears and peering down a long dim alley, she remembered that Mrs. Cardew Trench had said that the Olive Branch was near the Copper Bazaar. Here, at least, was the Copper Bazaar. Victoria plunged in, and for the next three-quarters of an hour she forgot the Olive Branch completely. The Copper Bazaar fascinated her. The blow-lamps, the melting metal, the whole business of craftsmanship came like a revelation to the little Cockney used only to finished products stacked up for sale. She wandered at random through the souk, passed out of the Copper Bazaar, came to the gay striped horse blankets, and the cotton quilted bedcovers. Here European merchandise took on a totally different guise, in the arched cool darkness it had the exotic quality of something come from overseas, something strange and rare. Bales of cheap printed cottons in gay colours made a feast for the eyes. Occasionally with a shout of Balek, Balek, a donkey or laden mule pushed past her, or men bearing great loads balanced on their backs. Little boys rushed up to her with trays slung round their necks. "See, lady, elastic, good elastic, English elastic. Comb, English comb?" The wares were thrust at her, close to her nose, with vehement urgings to buy. Victoria walked in a happy dream. This was really seeing the world. At every turn of the vast arched cool world of alleyways you came to something totally unexpected—an alley of tailors, sitting stitching, with smart pictures of European men's tailoring; a line of watches and cheap jewellery. Bales of velvets and rich metal embroidered brocades, then a chance turn and you were walking down an alley of cheap and shoddy secondhand European clothes, quaint pathetic little faded jumpers and long straggly vests. Then every now and then there were glimpses into vast quiet courtyards open to the sky. She came to a vast vista of men's trouserings, with cross-legged dignified merchants in turbans sitting in the middle of their little square recesses. "Balek!" A heavily-laden donkey coming up behind her made Victoria turn aside into a narrow alleyway open to the sky that turned and twisted through tall houses. Walking along it she came, quite by chance, to the object of her search. Through an opening she looked into a small square courtyard and at the farther side of it an open doorway with THE OLIVE BRANCH on a huge sign and a rather impossible looking plaster bird holding an unrecognizable twig in its beak. Joyously Victoria sped across the courtyard and in at the open door. She found herself in a dimly lit room with tables covered with books and periodicals and more books ranged round on shelves. It looked a little like a bookshop except that there were little groups of chairs arranged together here and there. Out of the dimness a young woman came up to Victoria and said in careful English: "What can I do for you, yes, please?" Victoria looked at her. She wore corduroy trousers and an orange flannel shirt and had black dank hair cut in a kind of depressed bob. So far she would have looked more suited to Bloomsbury, but her face was not Bloomsbury. It was a melancholy Levantine face with great sad dark eyes and a heavy nose. "This is—is this—is—is Dr. Rathbone here?" Maddening still not to know Edward's surname! Even Mrs. Cardew Trench had called him Edward Thingummy. "Yes. Dr. Rathbone. The Olive Branch. You wish to join us? Yes? That will be very nice." "Well, perhaps. I'd—can I see Dr. Rathbone, please?" The young woman smiled in a tired way. "We do not disturb. I have a form. I tell you all about everything. Then you sign your name. It is two dinars, please." "I'm not sure yet that I want to join," said Victoria, alarmed at the mention of two dinars. "I'd like to see Dr. Rathbone—or his secretary. His secretary would do." "I explain. I explain to you everything. We all are friends here, friends together, friends for the future—reading very fine educational books—reciting poems each to other." "Dr. Rathbone's secretary," said Victoria loudly and clearly. "He particularly told me to ask for him." A kind of mulish sullenness came into the young woman's face. "Not today," she said. "I explain—" "Why not today? Isn't he here? Isn't Dr. Rathbone here?" "Yais, Dr. Rathbone is here. He is upstairs. We do not disturb." A kind of Anglo-Saxon intolerance of foreigners swept over Victoria. Regrettably, instead of the Olive Branch creating friendly international feelings, it seemed to be having the opposite effect as far as she was concerned. "I have just arrived from England," she said—and her accents were almost those of Mrs. Cardew Trench herself—"and I have a very important message for Dr. Rathbone which I must deliver to him personally. Please take me to him at once! I am sorry to disturb him, but I have got to see him. "At once!" she added, to clinch matters. Before an imperious Briton who means to get his or her own way, barriers nearly always fall. The young woman turned at once and led the way to the back of the room and up a staircase and along a gallery overlooking the courtyard. Here she stopped before a door and knocked. A man's voice said, "Come in." Victoria's guide opened the door and motioned to Victoria to pass in. "It is a lady from England for you." Victoria walked in. From behind a large desk covered with papers, a man got up to greet her. He was an imposing-looking elderly man of about sixty with a high domed forehead and white hair. Benevolence, kindliness and charm were the most apparent qualities of his personality. A producer of plays would have cast him without hesitation for the role of the great philanthropist. He greeted Victoria with a warm smile and an outstretched hand. "So you've just come out from England," he said. "First visit East, eh?" "Yes." "I wonder what you think of it all...You must tell me sometime. Now let me see, have I met you before or not? I'm so shortsighted and you didn't give your name." "You don't know me," said Victoria, "but I'm a friend of Edward's." "A friend of Edward's," said Dr. Rathbone. "Why, that's splendid. Does Edward know you're in Baghdad?" "Not yet," said Victoria. "Well, that will be a pleasant surprise for him when he gets back." "Back?" said Victoria, her voice falling. "Yes, Edward's at Basrah at the moment. I had to send him down there to see about some crates of books that have come out for us. There have been most vexatious delays in the Customs—we simply have not been able to get them cleared. The personal touch is the only thing, and Edward's good at that sort of thing. He knows just when to charm and when to bully, and he won't rest till he's got the thing through. He's a sticker. A fine quality in a young man. I think a lot of Edward." His eyes twinkled. "But I don't suppose I need to sing Edward's praises to you, young lady?" "When—when will Edward be back from Basrah?" asked Victoria faintly. "Well—now that I couldn't say, he won't come back till he's finished the job—and you can't hurry things too much in this country. Tell me where you are staying and I'll make sure he gets in touch with you as soon as he gets back." "I was wondering—" Victoria spoke desperately, aware of her financial plight. "I was wondering if—if I could do some work here?" "Now that I do appreciate," said Dr. Rathbone warmly. "Yes, of course you can. We need all the workers, all the help we can get. And especially English girls. Our work is going splendidly—quite splendidly—but there's lots more to be done. Still, people are keen. I've got thirty voluntary helpers already—thirty—all of 'em as keen as mustard! If you're really in earnest, you can be most valuable." The word voluntary struck unpleasantly on Victoria's ear. "I really wanted a paid position," she said. "Oh dear!" Dr. Rathbone's face fell. "That's rather more difficult. Our paid staff is very small—and for the moment, with the voluntary help, it's quite adequate." "I can't afford not to take a job," explained Victoria. "I'm a competent shorthand typist," she added without a blush. "I'm sure you're competent, my dear young lady, you radiate competence, if I may say so. But with us it's a question of £.s.d. But even if you take a job elsewhere, I hope you'll help us in your spare time. Most of our workers have their own regular jobs. I'm sure you'll find helping us really inspiring. There must be an end of all the savagery in the world, the wars, the misunderstandings, the suspicions. A common meeting ground, that's what we all need. Drama, art, poetry—the great things of the spirit—no room there for petty jealousies or hatreds." "N-no," said Victoria doubtfully, recalling friends of hers who were actresses and artists and whose lives seemed to be obsessed by jealousy of the most trivial kind, and by hatreds of a peculiarly virulent intensity. "I've had A Midsummer Night's Dream translated into forty different languages," said Dr. Rathbone. "Forty different sets of young people all reacting to the same wonderful piece of literature. Young people—that's the secret. I've no use for anybody but the young. Once the mind and spirit are muscle-bound, it's too late. No, it's the young who must get together. Take that girl downstairs, Catherine, the one who showed you up here. She's a Syrian from Damascus. You and she are probably about the same age. Normally you'd never come together, you'd have nothing in common. But at the Olive Branch you and she and many many others, Russians, Jewesses, Iraqis, Turkish girls, Armenians, Egyptians, Persians, all meet and like each other and read the same books and discuss pictures and music (we have excellent lecturers who come out) all of you finding out and being excited by encountering a different point of view—why, that's what the world is meant to be." Victoria could not help thinking that Dr. Rathbone was slightly overoptimistic in assuming that all those divergent elements who were coming together would necessarily like each other. She and Catherine, for instance, had not liked each other at all. And Victoria strongly suspected that the more they saw of each other the greater their dislike would grow. "Edward's splendid," said Dr. Rathbone. "Gets on with everybody. Better perhaps, with the girls than with the young men. The men students out here are apt to be difficult at first—suspicious—almost hostile. But the girls adore Edward, they'll do anything for him. He and Catherine get on particularly well." "Indeed," said Victoria coldly. Her dislike of Catherine grew even more intense. "Well," said Dr. Rathbone, smiling, "come and help us if you can." It was a dismissal. He pressed her hand warmly. Victoria went out of the room and down the stairs. Catherine was standing near the door talking to a girl who had just come in with a small suitcase in her hand. She was a good-looking dark girl, and just for a moment Victoria fancied that she had seen her before somewhere. But the girl looked at her without any sign of recognition. The two young women had been talking eagerly together in some language Victoria did not know. They stopped when she appeared and remained silent, staring at her. She walked past them to the door, forcing herself to say "Good-bye" politely to Catherine as she went out. She found her way out from the winding alley into Rashid Street and made her way slowly back to the hotel, her eyes unseeing of the throngs around her. She tried to keep her mind from dwelling on her own predicament (penniless in Baghdad) by fixing her mind on Dr. Rathbone and the general setup of the Olive Branch. Edward had had an idea in London that there was something "fishy" about his job. What was fishy? Dr. Rathbone? Or the Olive Branch itself? Victoria could hardly believe that there was anything fishy about Dr. Rathbone. He appeared to her to be one of those misguided enthusiasts who insist on seeing the world in their own idealistic manner, regardless of realities. What had Edward meant by fishy? He'd been very vague. Perhaps he didn't really know himself. Could Dr. Rathbone be some kind of colossal fraud? Victoria, fresh from the soothing charm of his manner, shook her head. His manner had certainly changed, ever so slightly, at the idea of paying her a salary. He clearly preferred people to work for nothing. But that, thought Victoria, was a sign of common sense. Mr. Greenholtz, for instance, would have felt just the same. ## Twelve I Victoria arrived back at the Tio, rather footsore, to be hailed enthusiastically by Marcus who was sitting out on the grass terrace overlooking the river and talking to a thin rather shabby middle-aged man. "Come and have a drink with us, Miss Jones. Martini—sidecar? This is Mr. Dakin. Miss Jones from England. Now then, my dear, what will you have?" Victoria said she would have a sidecar "and some of those lovely nuts?" she suggested hopefully, remembering that nuts were nutritious. "You like nuts. Jesus!" He gave the order in rapid Arabic. Mr. Dakin said in a sad voice that he would have a lemonade. "Ah," cried Marcus, "but that is ridiculous. Ah, here is Mrs. Cardew Trench. You know Mr. Dakin? What will you have?" "Gin and lime," said Mrs. Cardew Trench, nodding to Dakin in an offhand manner. "You look hot," she added to Victoria. "I've been walking round seeing the sights." When the drinks came, Victoria ate a large plateful of pistachio nuts and also some potato chips. Presently, a short thickset man came up the steps and the hospitable Marcus hailed him in his turn. He was introduced to Victoria as Captain Crosbie, and by the way his slightly protuberant eyes goggled at her, Victoria gathered that he was susceptible to feminine charm. "Just come out?" he asked her. "Yesterday." "Thought I hadn't seen you around." "She is very nice and beautiful, is she not?" said Marcus joyfully. "Oh yes, it is very nice to have Miss Victoria. I will give a party for her—a very nice party." "With baby chickens?" said Victoria hopefully. "Yes, yes—and foie gras—Strasburg foie gras—and perhaps caviare—and then we have a dish with fish—very nice—a fish from the Tigris, but all with sauce and mushrooms. And then there is a turkey stuffed in the way we have it at my home—with rice and raisins and spice—and all cooked so! Oh it is very good—but you must eat very much of it—not just a tiny spoonful. Or if you like it better you shall have a steak—a really big steak and tender—I see to it. We will have a long dinner that goes on for hours. It will be very nice. I do not eat myself—I only drink." "That will be lovely," said Victoria in a faint voice. The description of these viands made her feel quite giddy with hunger. She wondered if Marcus really meant to give this party and if so, how soon it could possibly happen. "Thought you'd gone to Basrah," said Mrs. Cardew Trench to Crosbie. "Got back yesterday," said Crosbie. He looked up at the balcony. "Who's the bandit?" he asked. "Feller in fancy dress in the big hat." "That, my dear, is Sir Rupert Crofton Lee," said Marcus. "Mr. Shrivenham brought him here from the Embassy last night. He is a very nice man, very distinguished traveller. He rides on camels over the Sahara, and climbs up mountains. It is very uncomfortable and dangerous, that kind of life. I should not like it myself." "Oh he's that chap, is he?" said Crosbie. "I've read his book." "I came over on the plane with him," said Victoria. Both men, or so it seemed to her, looked at her with interest. "He's frightfully stuck up and pleased with himself," said Victoria with disparagement. "Knew his aunt in Simla," said Mrs. Cardew Trench. "The whole family is like that. Clever as they make them, but can't help boasting of it." "He's been sitting out there doing nothing all the morning," said Victoria with slight disapproval. "It is his stomach," explained Marcus. "Today he cannot eat anything. It is sad." "I can't think," said Mrs. Cardew Trench, "why you're the size you are, Marcus, when you never eat anything." "It is the drink," said Marcus. He sighed deeply. "I drink far too much. Tonight my sister and her husband come. I will drink and drink almost until morning." He sighed again, then uttered his usual sudden roar. "Jesus! Jesus! Bring the same again." "Not for me," said Victoria hastily, and Mr. Dakin refused also, finishing up his lemonade, and ambling gently away while Crosbie went up to his room. Mrs. Cardew Trench flicked Dakin's glass with her fingernail. "Lemonade as usual?" she said. "Bad sign, that." Victoria asked why it was a bad sign. "When a man only drinks when he's alone." "Yes, my dear," said Marcus. "That is so." "Does he really drink, then?" asked Victoria. "That's why he's never got on," said Mrs. Cardew Trench. "Just manages to keep his job and that's all." "But he is a very nice man," said the charitable Marcus. "Pah," said Mrs. Cardew Trench. "He's a wet fish. Potters and dillydallies about—no stamina—no grip on life. Just one more Englishman who's come out East and gone to seed." Thanking Marcus for the drink and again refusing a second, Victoria went up to her room, removed her shoes, and lay down on her bed to do some serious thinking. The three pounds odd to which her capital had dwindled was, she fancied, already due to Marcus for board and lodging. Owing to his generous disposition, and if she could sustain life mainly on alcoholic liquor assisted by nuts, olives and chip potatoes, she might solve the purely alimentary problem of the next few days. How long would it be before Marcus presented her with her bill, and how long would he allow it to run unpaid? She had no idea. He was not really, she thought, careless in business matters. She ought, of course, to find somewhere cheaper to live. But how would she find out where to go? She ought to find herself a job—quickly. But where did one apply for jobs? What kind of a job? Whom could she ask about looking for one? How terribly handicapping to one's style it was to be dumped down practically penniless in a foreign city where one didn't know the ropes. With just a little knowledge of the terrain, Victoria felt confident (as always) that she could hold her own. When would Edward get back from Basrah? Perhaps (horror) Edward would have forgotten all about her. Why on earth had she come rushing out to Baghdad in this asinine way? Who and what was Edward after all? Just another young man with an engaging grin and an attractive way of saying things. And what—what—what was his surname? If she knew that, she might wire him—no good, she didn't even know where he was staying. She didn't know anything—that was the trouble—that was what was cramping her style. And there was no one to whom she could go for advice. Not Marcus who was kind but never listened. Not Mrs. Cardew Trench (who had had suspicions from the first). Not Mrs. Hamilton Clipp who had vanished to Kirkuk. Not Dr. Rathbone. She must get some money—or get a job—any job. Look after children, stick stamps on in an office, serve in a restaurant...Otherwise they would send her to a Consul and she would be repatriated to England and never see Edward again.... At this point, worn out with emotion, Victoria fell asleep. II She awoke some hours later and deciding that she might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, went down to the restaurant and worked her way solidly through the entire menu—a generous one. When she had finished, she felt slightly like a boa constrictor, but definitely heartened. "It's no good worrying anymore," thought Victoria. "I'll leave it all till tomorrow. Something may turn up, or I may think of something, or Edward may come back." Before going to bed she strolled out onto the terrace by the river. Since in the feelings of those living in Baghdad it was arctic winter nobody else was out there except one of the waiters, who was leaning over a railing staring down into the water, and he sprang away guiltily when Victoria appeared and hurried back into the hotel by the service door. Victoria, to whom, coming from England, it appeared to be an ordinary summer night with a slight nip in the air, was enchanted by the Tigris seen in the moonlight with the farther bank looking mysterious and Eastern with its fringes of palms. "Well, anyway, I've got here," said Victoria, cheering up a good deal, "and I'll manage somehow. Something is bound to turn up." With this Micawber-like pronouncement, she went up to bed, and the waiter slipped quietly out again and resumed his task of attaching a knotted rope so that it hung down to the river's edge. Presently another figure came out of the shadows and joined him. Mr. Dakin said in a low voice: "All in order?" "Yes, sir, nothing suspicious to report." Having completed the task to his satisfaction, Mr. Dakin retreated into the shadows, exchanged his waiters' white coat for his own nondescript blue pinstripe and ambled gently along the terrace until he stood outlined against the water's edge just where the steps led up from the street below. "Getting pretty chilly in the evenings now," said Crosbie, strolling out from the bar and down to join him. "Suppose you don't feel it so much, coming from Tehran." They stood there for a moment or two smoking. Unless they raised their voices, nobody could overhear them. Crosbie said quietly: "Who's the girl?" "Niece apparently of the archaeologist, Pauncefoot Jones." "Oh well—that should be all right. But coming on the same plane as Crofton Lee—" "It's certainly as well," said Dakin, "to take nothing for granted." The men smoked in silence for a few moments. Crosbie said: "You really think it's advisable to shift the thing from the Embassy to here?" "I think so, yes." "In spite of the whole thing being taped down to the smallest detail." "It was taped down to the smallest detail in Basrah—and that went wrong." "Oh, I know. Salah Hassan was poisoned, by the way." "Yes—he would be. Were there any signs of an approach to the Consulate?" "I suspect there may have been. Bit of a shindy there, Chap drew a revolver." He paused and added, "Richard Baker grabbed him and disarmed him." "Richard Baker," said Dakin thoughtfully. "Know him? He's—" "Yes, I know him." There was a pause and then Dakin said: "Improvisation. That's what I'm banking on. If we have, as you say, got everything taped—and our plans are known, then it's easy for the other side to have got us taped, too. I very much doubt if Carmichael would even so much as get near the Embassy—and even if he reached it—" He shook his head. "Here, only you and I and Crofton Lee are wise to what's going on." "They'll know Crofton Lee moved here from the Embassy." "Oh of course. That was inevitable. But don't you see, Crosbie, that whatever show they put up against our improvisation has got to be improvised, too. It's got to be hastily thought of and hastily arranged. It's got to come, so to speak, from the outside. There's no question here of someone established in the Tio six months ago waiting. The Tio's never been in the picture until now. There's never been any idea or suggestion of using the Tio as the rendezvous." He looked at his watch. "I'll go up now and see Crofton Lee." Dakin's raised hand had no need to tap on Sir Rupert's door. It opened silently to let him in. The traveller had only one small reading lamp alight and had placed his chair beside it. As he sat down again, he gently slipped a small automatic pistol onto the table within reach of his hand. He said: "What about it, Dakin? Do you think he'll come?" "I think so, yes, Sir Rupert." Then he said, "You've never met him have you?" The other shook his head. "No. I'm looking forward to meeting him tonight. That young man, Dakin, must have got guts." "Oh yes," said Mr. Dakin in his flat voice. "He's got guts." He sounded a little surprised at the fact needing to be stated. "I don't mean only courage," said the other. "Lots of courage in the war—magnificent. I mean—" "Imagination?" suggested Dakin. "Yes. To have the guts to believe something that isn't in the least degree probable. To risk your life finding out that a ridiculous story isn't ridiculous at all. That takes something that the modern young man usually hasn't got. I hope he'll come." "I think he'll come," said Mr. Dakin. Sir Rupert glanced at him sharply. "You've got it all sewn up?" "Crosbie's on the balcony, and I shall be watching the stairs. When Carmichael reaches you, tap on the wall and I'll come in." Crofton Lee nodded. Dakin went softly out of the room. He went to the left and onto the balcony and walked to the extreme corner. Here, too, a knotted rope dropped over the edge and came to earth in the shade of a eucalyptus tree and some judas bushes. Mr. Dakin went back past Crofton Lee's door and into his own room beyond. His room had a second door in it leading onto the passage behind the rooms and it opened within a few feet of the head of the stairs. With this door unobtrusively ajar, Mr. Dakin settled down to his vigil. It was about four hours later that a gufa, that primitive craft of the Tigris, dropped gently downstream and came to shore on the mudflat beneath the Tio Hotel. A few moments later a slim figure swarmed up the rope and crouched amongst the judas trees. ## Thirteen It had been Victoria's intention to go to bed and to sleep and to leave all problems until the morning, but having already slept most of the afternoon, she found herself devastatingly wide awake. In the end she switched on the light, finished a magazine story she had been reading in the plane, darned her stockings, tried on her new nylons, wrote out several different advertisements requiring employment (she could ask tomorrow where these should be inserted), wrote three or four tentative letters to Mrs. Hamilton Clipp, each setting out a different and more ingenious set of unforeseen circumstances which had resulted in her being "stranded" in Baghdad, sketched out one or two telegrams appealing for help to her sole surviving relative, a very old, crusty, and unpleasant gentleman in the North of England who had never helped anybody in his life; tried out a new style of hairdo, and finally with a sudden yawn decided that at last she really was desperately sleepy and ready for bed and repose. It was at this moment that without any warning her bedroom door swung open, a man slipped in, turned the key in the lock behind him and said to her urgently: "For God's sake hide me somewhere—quickly...." Victoria's reactions were never slow. In a twinkling of an eye she had noted the laboured breathing, the fading voice, the way the man held an old red knitted scarf bunched on his breast with a desperate clutching hand. And she rose immediately in response to the adventure. The room did not lend itself to many hiding places. There was the wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a table and the rather pretentious dressing table. The bed was a large one—almost a double bed and memories of childish hide-and-seek made Victoria's reaction prompt. "Quick," she said. She swept off pillows, and raised sheet and blanket. The man lay across the top of the bed. Victoria pulled sheet and blanket over him, dumped the pillows on top and sat down herself on the side of the bed. Almost immediately there came a low insistent knocking on the door. Victoria called out, "Who is it?" in a faint, alarmed voice. "Please," said a man's voice outside. "Open, please. It is the police." Victoria crossed the room, pulling her dressing gown round her. As she did so, she noticed the man's red knitted scarf was lying on the floor and she caught it up and swept it into a drawer, then she turned the key and opened the door of her room a small way, peering out with an expression of alarm. A dark-haired young man in a mauve pinstripe suit was standing outside and behind him was a man in police officer's uniform. "What's the matter?" Victoria asked, letting a quaver creep into her voice. The young man smiled brilliantly and spoke in very passable English. "I am so sorry, miss, to disturb you at this hour," he said, "but we have a criminal escaped. He has run into this hotel. We must look in every room. He is a very dangerous man." "Oh dear!" Victoria fell back, opening the door wide. "Do come in, please, and look. How very frightening. Look in the bathroom, please. Oh! and the wardrobe—and, I wonder, would you mind looking under the bed? He might have been there all evening." The search was very rapid. "No, he is not here." "You're sure he's not under the bed? No, how silly of me. He couldn't be in here at all. I locked the door when I went to bed." "Thank you, miss, and good evening." The young man bowed and withdrew with his uniformed assistant. Victoria, following him to the door, said: "I'd better lock it again, hadn't I? To be safe." "Yes, that will be best, certainly. Thank you." Victoria relocked the door and stood by it for some few minutes. She heard the police officers knock in the same way on the door the other side of the passage, heard the door open, an exchange of remarks and the indignant hoarse voice of Mrs. Cardew Trench, and then the door closing. It reopened a few minutes later, the sound of their footsteps moved down the passage. The next knock came from much farther away. Victoria turned and walked across the room to the bed. It was borne in upon her that she had probably been excessively foolish. Led away by the romantic spirit, and by the sound of her own language, she had impulsively lent aid to what was probably an extremely dangerous criminal. A disposition to be on the side of the hunted against the hunter sometimes brings unpleasant consequences. Oh well, thought Victoria, I'm in for it now, anyway! Standing beside the bed she said curtly: "Get up." There was no movement, and Victoria said sharply, though without raising her voice: "They've gone. You can get up now." But still there was no sign of movement from under the slightly raised hump of pillows. Impatiently, Victoria threw them all off. The young man lay just as she had left him. But now his face was a queer greyish colour and his eyes were closed. Then, with a sharp catch in her breath, Victoria noticed something else—a bright red stain seeping through onto the blanket. "Oh, no," said Victoria, almost as though pleading with someone. "Oh, no—no!" And as though in recognition of that plea the wounded man opened his eyes. He stared at her, stared as though from very far away at some object he was not quite certain of seeing. His lips parted—the sound was so faint that Victoria scarcely heard. She bent down. "What?" She heard this time. With difficulty, great difficulty, the young man said two words. Whether she heard them correctly or not Victoria did not know. They seemed to her quite nonsensical and without meaning. What he said was, "Lucifer—Basrah...." The eyelids drooped and flickered over the wide anxious eyes. He said one word more—a name. Then his head jerked back a little and he lay still. Victoria stood quite still, her heart beating violently. She was filled now with an intense pity and anger. What to do next she had no idea. She must call someone—get someone to come. She was alone here with a dead man and sooner or later the police would want an explanation. Whilst her brain worked rapidly on the situation, a small sound made her turn her head. The key had fallen out of her bedroom door, and whilst she stared at it, she heard the sound of the lock turning. The door opened and Mr. Dakin came in, carefully closing the door behind him. He walked across to her saying quietly: "Nice work, my dear. You think quickly. How is he?" With a catch in her voice Victoria said: "I think he's—he's dead." She saw the other's face alter, caught just a flash of intense anger, then his face was just as she had seen it the day before—only now it seemed to her that the indecision and flabbiness of the man had vanished, giving place to something quite different. He bent down—and gently loosened the ragged tunic. "Very neatly stabbed through the heart," said Dakin as he straightened up. "He was a brave lad—and a clever one." Victoria found her voice. "The police came. They said he was a criminal. Was he a criminal?" "No. He wasn't a criminal." "Were they—were they the police?" "I don't know," said Dakin. "They may have been. It's all the same." Then he asked her: "Did he say anything—before he died?" "Yes." "What was it?" "He said Lucifer—and then Basrah. And then after a pause he said a name—a French name it sounded like—but I mayn't have got it right." "What did it sound like to you?" "I think it was Lefarge." "Lefarge," said Dakin thoughtfully. "What does it all mean?" said Victoria, and added with some dismay: "And what am I to do?" "We must get you out of it as far as we can," said Dakin. "As for what it's all about, I'll come back and talk to you later. The first thing to do is to get hold of Marcus. It's his hotel and Marcus has a great deal of sense, though one doesn't always realize it in talking to him. I'll get hold of him. He won't have gone to bed. It's only half past one. He seldom goes to bed before two o'clock. Just attend to your appearance before I bring him in. Marcus is very susceptible to beauty in distress." He left the room. As though in a dream she moved over to the dressing table, combed back her hair, made up her face to a becoming pallor and collapsed on to a chair as she heard footsteps approaching. Dakin came in without knocking. Behind him came the bulk of Marcus Tio. This time Marcus was serious. There was not the usual smile on his face. "Now, Marcus," said Mr. Dakin, "you must do what you can about this. It's been a terrible shock to this poor girl. The fellow burst in, collapsed—she's got a very kind heart and she hid him from the police. And now he's dead. She oughtn't to have done it, perhaps, but girls are softhearted." "Of course she did not like the police," said Marcus. "Nobody likes the police. I do not like the police. But I have to stand well with them because of my hotel. You want me to square them with money?" "We just want to get the body away quietly." "That is very nice, my dear. And I, too, I do not want a body in my hotel. But it is, as you say, not so easy to do?" "I think it could be managed," said Dakin. "You've got a doctor in your family, haven't you?" "Yes, Paul, my sister's husband, is a doctor. He is a very nice boy. But I do not want him to get into trouble." "He won't," said Dakin. "Listen, Marcus. We move the body from Miss Jones' room across into my room. That lets her out of it. Then I use your telephone. In ten minutes' time a young man reels into the hotel from the street. He is very drunk, he clutches at his side. He demands me at the top of his voice. He staggers into my room and collapses. I come out and call you and ask for a doctor. You produce your brother-in-law. He sends for an ambulance and he goes in it with this drunken friend of mine. Before they get to the hospital my friend is dead. He has been stabbed. That is all right for you. He has been stabbed in the street before coming into your hotel." "My brother-in-law takes away the body—and the young man who plays the part of the drunkard, he goes away quietly in the morning perhaps?" "That's the idea." "And there is no body found in my hotel? And Miss Jones she does not get any worry or annoyance? I think, my dear, that that is all a very good idea." "Good, then if you'll make sure the coast is clear, I'll get the body across to my room. Those servants of yours potter round the corridors half the night. Go along to your room and raise a shindy. Get them all running to fetch you things." Marcus nodded and left the room. "You're a strong girl," said Dakin. "Can you manage to help me to carry him across the corridor to my room?" Victoria nodded. Between them they lifted the limp body, carried it across the deserted corridor (in the distance Marcus' voice could be heard upraised in furious anger) and laid it on Dakin's bed. Dakin said: "Got a pair of scissors? Then cut off the top of your under-blanket where it's stained. I don't think the stain's gone through to the mattress. The tunic soaked up most of it. I'll come along to you in about an hour. Here, wait a minute, take a pull from this flask of mine." Victoria obeyed. "Good girl," said Dakin. "Now go back to your room. Turn out the light. As I said, I'll be along in about an hour." "And you'll tell me what it all means?" He gave her a long rather peculiar stare but did not answer her question. ## Fourteen Victoria lay in bed with her light out, listening through the darkness. She heard sounds of loud drunken altercation. Heard a voice declaring: "Felt I got to look you up, ole man. Had a row with a fellow outside." She heard bells ring. Heard other voices. Heard a good deal of commotion. Then came a stretch of comparative silence—except for the far-off playing of Arab music on a gramophone in somebody's room. When it seemed to her as though hours had passed, she heard the gentle opening of her door and sat up in bed and switched on the bedside lamp. "That's right," said Dakin approvingly. He brought a chair up to the bedside and sat down in it. He sat there staring at her in the considering manner of a physician making a diagnosis. "Tell me what it's all about?" demanded Victoria. "Suppose," said Dakin, "that you tell me all about yourself first. What are you doing here? Why did you come to Baghdad?" Whether it was the events of the night, or whether it was something in Dakin's personality (Victoria thought afterwards that it was the latter), Victoria for once did not launch out on an inspired and meretricious account of her presence in Baghdad. Quite simply and straightforwardly she told him everything. Her meeting with Edward, her determination to get to Baghdad, the miracle of Mrs. Hamilton Clipp, and her own financial destitution. "I see," said Dakin when she had finished. He was silent for a moment before he spoke. "Perhaps I'd like to keep you out of this. I'm not sure. But the point is, you can't be kept out of it! You're in it, whether I like it or not. And as you're in it, you might as well work for me." "You've got a job for me?" Victoria sat up in bed, her cheeks bright with anticipation. "Perhaps. But not the kind of job you're thinking of. This is a serious job, Victoria. And it's dangerous." "Oh, that's all right," said Victoria cheerfully. She added doubtfully, "It's not dishonest, is it? Because though I know I tell an awful lot of lies, I wouldn't really like to do anything that was dishonest." Dakin smiled a little. "Strangely enough, your capacity to think up a convincing lie quickly is one of your qualifications for the job. No, it's not dishonest. On the contrary, you are enlisted in the cause of law and order. I'm going to put you in the picture—only in a general kind of way, but so that you can understand fully what it is you are doing and exactly what the dangers are. You seem to be a sensible young woman and I don't suppose you've thought much about world politics which is just as well, because as Hamlet very wisely remarked, 'There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.'" "I know everybody says there's going to be another war sooner or later," said Victoria. "Exactly," said Mr. Dakin. "Why does everybody say so, Victoria?" She frowned. "Why, because Russia—the Communists—America—" she stopped. "You see," said Dakin. "Those aren't your own opinions or words. They're picked up from newspapers and casual talk, and the wireless. There are two divergent points of view dominating different parts of the world, that is true enough. And they are represented loosely in the public mind as 'Russia and the Communists' and 'America.' Now the only hope for the future, Victoria, lies in peace, in production, in constructive activities and not destructive ones. Therefore everything depends on those who hold those two divergent viewpoints, either agreeing to differ and each contenting themselves with their respective spheres of activity, or else finding a mutual basis for agreement, or at least toleration. Instead of that, the opposite is happening, a wedge is being driven in the whole time to force two mutually suspicious groups farther and farther apart. Certain things led one or two people to believe that this activity comes from a third party or group working under cover and so far absolutely unsuspected by the world at large. Whenever there is a chance of agreement being reached or any sign of dispersal of suspicion, some incident occurs to plunge one side back in distrust, or the other side into definite hysterical fear. These things are not accidents, Victoria, they are deliberately produced for a calculated effect." "But why do you think so and who's doing it?" "One of the reasons we think so is because of money. The money, you see, is coming from the wrong sources. Money, Victoria, is always the great clue to what is happening in the world. As a physician feels your pulse, to get a clue to your state of health, so money is the lifeblood that feeds any great movement or cause. Without it, the movement can't make headway. Now here, there are very large sums of money involved and although very cleverly and artfully camouflaged, there is definitely something wrong about where the money comes from and where it is going. A great many unofficial strikes, various threats to Governments in Europe who show signs of recovery, are staged and brought into being by Communists, earnest workers for their cause—but the funds for these measures do not come from Communist sources, and traced back, they come from very strange and unlikely quarters. In the same way an increasing wave of fear of Communism, of almost hysterical panic, is arising in America and in other countries, and here, too, the funds are not coming from the appropriate quarter—it is not Capitalist money, though it naturally passes through Capitalist hands. A third point, enormous sums of money seem to be going completely out of circulation. As much as though—to put it simply—you spent your salary every week on things—bracelets or tables or chairs—and those things then disappeared or passed out of ordinary circulation and sight. All over the world a great demand for diamonds and other precious stones has arisen. They change hands a dozen or more times until finally they disappear and cannot be traced. "This, of course, is only a vague sketch. The upshot is that somewhere a third group of people whose aim is as yet obscure, as fomenting strife and misunderstanding and are engaging in cleverly camouflaged money and jewel transactions for their own ends. We have reason to believe that in every country there are agents of this group, some established there many years ago. Some are in very high and respectable positions, others are playing humble parts, but all are working with one unknown end in view. In substance, it is exactly like the Fifth Column activities at the beginning of the last war, only this time it is on a worldwide scale." "But who are these people?" Victoria demanded. "They are not, we think, of any special nationality. What they want is, I fear, the betterment of the world! The delusion that by force you can impose the Millennium on the human race is one of the most dangerous delusions in existence. Those who are out only to line their own pockets can do little harm—mere greed defeats its own ends. But the belief in a superstratum of human beings—in Supermen to rule the rest of the decadent world—that, Victoria, is the most evil of all beliefs. For when you say, 'I am not as other men'—you have lost the two most valuable qualities we have ever tried to attain: humility and brotherhood." He coughed. "Well, I mustn't preach a sermon. Let me just explain to you what we do know. There are various centres of activity. One in the Argentine, one in Canada—certainly one or more in the United States of America, and I should imagine, though we can't tell, one in Russia. And now we come to a very interesting phenomenon. "In the past two years, twenty-eight promising young scientists of various nationalities have quietly faded out of their background. The same thing has happened with constructional engineers, with aviators, with electricians and many other skilled trades. These disappearances have this in common: those concerned are all young, ambitious, and all without close ties. Besides those we know of, there must be many many more, and we are beginning to guess at something of what they are accomplishing." Victoria listened, her brows drawn together. "You might say it was impossible in these days for anything to go on in any country unbeknownst to the rest of the world. I do not, of course, mean undercover activities; those may go on anywhere. But anything on a large scale of up-to-date production. And yet there are still obscure parts of the world, remote from trade routes, cut off by mountains and deserts, in the midst of peoples who still have the power to bar out strangers and which are never known or visited except by a solitary and exceptional traveller. Things could go on there the news of which would never penetrate to the outside world, or only as a dim and ridiculous rumour. "I won't particularize the spot. It can be reached from China—and nobody knows what goes on in the interior of China. It can be reached from the Himalayas, but the journey there, save to the initiated, is hard and long to travel. Machinery and personnel dispatched from all over the globe reaches it after being diverted from its ostensible destination. The mechanics of it all need not be gone into. "But one man got interested in following up a certain trail. He was an unusual man, a man who has friends and contacts throughout the East. He was born in Kashgar and he knows a score of local dialects and languages. He suspected and he followed up the trail. What he heard was so incredible that when he got back to civilization and reported it he was not believed. He admitted that he had had fever and he was treated as a man who had had delirium. "Only two people believed his story. One was myself. I never object to believing impossible things—they're so often true. The other—" he hesitated. "Yes?" said Victoria. "The other was Sir Rupert Crofton Lee, a great traveller, and a man who had himself travelled through these remote regions and who knew something about their possibilities. "The upshot of it all was that Carmichael, that's my man, decided to go and find out for himself. It was a desperate and hazardous journey, but he was as well equipped as any man to carry it through. That was nine months back. We heard nothing until a few weeks ago and then news came through. He was alive and he'd got what he went to get. Definite proof. "But the other side were on to him. It was vital to them that he should never get back with his proofs. And we've had ample evidence of how the whole system is penetrated and infiltrated with their agents. Even in my own department there are leaks. And some of those leaks, Heaven help us, are at a very high level. "Every frontier has been watched for him. Innocent lives have been sacrificed in mistake for his—they don't set much store by human life. But somehow or other he got through unscathed—until tonight." "Then that was who—he was?" "Yes, my dear. A very brave and indomitable young man." "But what about the proofs? Did they get those?" A very slow smile showed on Dakin's tired face. "I don't think they did. No, knowing Carmichael, I'm pretty sure they didn't. But he died without being able to tell us where those proofs are and how to get hold of them. I think he probably tried to say something when he was dying that should give us the clue." He repeated slowly, "Lucifer—Basrah—Lefarge. He'd been in Basrah—tried to report at the Consulate and narrowly missed being shot. It's possible that he left the proofs somewhere in Basrah. What I want you to do, Victoria, is to go there and try to find out." "Me?" "Yes. You've no experience. You don't know what you're looking for. But you heard Carmichael's last words and they may suggest something to you when you get there. Who knows—you may have beginner's luck?" "I'd love to go to Basrah," said Victoria eagerly. Dakin smiled. "Suits you because your young man is there, eh? That's all right. Good camouflage, too. Nothing like a genuine love affair for camouflage. You go to Basrah, keep your eyes and ears open and look about you. I can't give you any instructions for how to set about things—in fact I'd much rather not. You seem a young woman with plenty of ingenuity of your own. What the words Lucifer and Lefarge mean, assuming that you heard correctly, I don't know. I'm inclined to agree with you that Lefarge must be a name. Look out for that name." "How do I get to Basrah?" said Victoria in a businesslike way. "And what do I use for money?" Dakin took out his pocketbook and handed her a wad of paper money. "That's what you use for money. As for how you get to Basrah, fall into conversation with that old trout Mrs. Cardew Trench tomorrow morning, say you're anxious to visit Basrah before you go off to this Dig you're pretending to work at. Ask her about a hotel. She'll tell you at once you must stay at the Consulate and will send a telegram to Mrs. Clayton. You'll probably find your Edward there. The Claytons keep open house—everyone who passes through stays with them. Beyond that, I can't give you any tips except one. If—er—anything unpleasant happens, if you're asked what you know and who put you up to what you're doing—don't try and be heroic. Spill the beans at once." "Thank you very much," said Victoria gratefully. "I'm an awful coward about pain, and if anyone were to torture me I'm afraid I shouldn't hold out." "They won't bother to torture you," said Mr. Dakin. "Unless some sadistic element enters in. Torture's very old-fashioned. A little prick with a needle and you answer every question truthfully without realizing you're doing it. We live in a scientific age. That's why I didn't want you to get grand ideas of secrecy. You won't be telling them anything they don't know already. They'll be wise to me after this evening—bound to be. And to Rupert Crofton Lee." "What about Edward? Do I tell him?" "That I must leave to you. Theoretically, you're to hold your tongue about what you're doing to everybody. Practically!" His eyebrows went up quizzically. "You can put him in danger, too. There's that aspect of it. Still, I gather he had a good record in the Air Force. I don't suppose danger will worry him. Two heads are often better than one. So he thinks there's something fishy about this 'Olive Branch' he's working for? That's interesting—very interesting." "Why?" "Because we think so, too," said Dakin. Then he added: "Just two parting tips. First, if you don't mind my saying so, don't tell too many different kinds of lies. It's harder to remember and live up to. I know you're a bit of a virtuoso, but keep it simple, is my advice." "I'll remember," said Victoria with becoming humility. "And what's the other tip?" "Just keep your ears strained for any mention of a young woman called Anna Scheele." "Who is she?" "We don't know much about her. We could do with knowing a little more." ## Fifteen I "Of course you must stay at the Consulate," said Mrs. Cardew Trench. "Nonsense, my dear—you can't stay at the Airport Hotel. The Claytons will be delighted. I've known them for years. We'll send a wire and you can go down on tonight's train. They know Dr. Pauncefoot Jones quite well." Victoria had the grace to blush. The Bishop of Llangow, alias the Bishop of Languao was one thing, a real flesh and blood Dr. Pauncefoot Jones was quite another. "I suppose," thought Victoria guiltily, "I could be sent to prison for that—false pretences or something." Then she cheered herself up by reflecting that it was only if you attempted to obtain money by false statements that the rigours of the law were set in motion. Whether this was really so or not, Victoria did not know, being as ignorant of the law as most average people, but it had a cheering sound. The train journey had all the fascination of novelty—to Victoria's idea the train was hardly an express—but she had begun to feel conscious of her Western impatience. A Consular car met her at the station and she was driven to the Consulate. The car drove in through big gates into a delightful garden and drew up before a flight of steps leading up to a balcony surrounding the house. Mrs. Clayton, a smiling energetic woman, came through the swinging wire mesh door to meet her. "We're so pleased to see you," she said. "Basrah's really delightful this time of year and you oughtn't to leave Iraq without seeing it. Luckily there's no one much here just at the moment—sometimes we just don't know where to turn so as to fit people in, but there's no one here now except Dr. Rathbone's young man who's quite charming. You've just missed Richard Baker, by the way. He left before I got Mrs. Cardew Trench's telegram." Victoria had no idea who Richard Baker was—but it seemed fortunate he had left when he did. "He had been down to Kuwait for a couple of days," continued Mrs. Clayton. "Now, that's a place you ought to see—before it's spoilt. I dare say it soon will be. Every place gets ruined sooner or later. What would you like first—a bath or some coffee?" "A bath, please," said Victoria gratefully. "How's Mrs. Cardew Trench? This is your room and the bathroom's along here. Is she an old friend of yours?" "Oh no," said Victoria truthfully. "I've only just met her." "And I suppose she turned you inside out in the first quarter of an hour? She's a terrific gossip as I expect you've gathered. Got quite a mania for knowing all about everybody. But she's quite good company and a really first-class bridge player. Now are you sure you wouldn't like some coffee or something first?" "No, really." "Good—then I'll see you later. Have you got everything you want?" Mrs. Clayton buzzed away like a cheerful bee, and Victoria took a bath, and attended to her face and her hair with the meticulous care of a young woman who is shortly going to be reunited to a young man who has taken her fancy. If possible, Victoria hoped to meet Edward alone. She did not think that he would make any tactless remarks—fortunately he knew her as Jones and the additional Pauncefoot would probably cause him no surprise. The surprise would be that she was in Iraq at all, and for that Victoria hoped that she could catch him alone even for a bare second or two. With this end in view, when she had put on a summer frock (for to her the climate of Basrah recalled a June day in London) she slipped out quietly through the wire door and took up her position on the balcony where she could intercept Edward when he arrived back from whatever he was doing—wrestling with the Customs officials, she presumed. The first arrival was a tall thin man with a thoughtful face, and as he came up the steps Victoria slipped round the corner of the balcony. As she did so, she actually saw Edward entering through a garden door that gave on to the riverbend. Faithful to the tradition of Juliet, Victoria leaned over the balcony and gave a prolonged hiss. Edward (who was looking, Victoria thought, more attractive than ever) turned his head sharply, looking about him. "Hist! Up here," called Victoria in a low voice. Edward raised his head, and an expression of utter astonishment appeared on his face. "Good Lord," he exclaimed. "It's Charing Cross!" "Hush. Wait for me. I'm coming down." Victoria sped round the balcony, down the steps and along round the corner of the house to where Edward had remained obediently standing, the expression of bewilderment still on his face. "I can't be drunk so early in the day," said Edward. "It is you?" "Yes, it's me," said Victoria happily and ungrammatically. "But what are you doing here? How did you get here? I thought I was never going to see you again." "I thought so too." "It's really just like a miracle. How did you get here?" "I flew." "Naturally you flew. You couldn't have got here in time, otherwise. But I mean what blessed and wonderful chance brought you to Basrah?" "The train," said Victoria. "You're doing it on purpose, you little brute. God, I'm pleased to see you. But how did you get here—really?" "I came out with a woman who'd broken her arm—a Mrs. Clipp, an American. I was offered the job the day after I met you, and you'd talked about Baghdad, and I was a bit fed up with London, so I thought, well why not see the world?" "You really are awfully sporting, Victoria. Where's this Clipp woman, here?" "No, she's gone to a daughter near Kirkuk. It was only a journey-out job." "Then what are you doing now?" "I'm still seeing the world," said Victoria. "But it has required a few subterfuges. That's why I wanted to get at you before we met in public, I mean, I don't want any tactless references to my being a shorthand typist out of a job when you last saw me." "As far as I'm concerned you're anything you say you are. I'm ready for briefing." "The idea is," said Victoria, "that I am Miss Pauncefoot Jones. My uncle is an eminent archaeologist who is excavating in some more or less inaccessible place out here, and I am joining him shortly." "And none of that is true?" "Naturally not. But it makes quite a good story." "Oh yes, excellent. But suppose you and old Pussyfoot Jones come face to face?" "Pauncefoot. I don't think that is likely. As far as I can make out once archaeologists start to dig, they go on digging like mad, and don't stop." "Rather like terriers. I say, there's a lot in what you say. Has he got a real niece?" "How should I know?" said Victoria. "Oh, then you're not impersonating anybody in particular. That makes it easier." "Yes, after all, a man can have lots of nieces. Or, at a pinch, I could say I'm only a cousin but that I always call him uncle." "You think of everything," said Edward admiringly. "You really are an amazing girl, Victoria. I've never met anyone like you. I thought I wouldn't see you again for years, and when I did see you, you'd have forgotten all about me. And now here you are." The admiring and humble glance which Edward cast on her caused Victoria intense satisfaction. If she had been a cat she would have purred. "But you'll want a job, won't you?" said Edward. "I mean, you haven't come into a fortune or anything?" "Far from it! Yes," said Victoria slowly, "I shall want a job. I went into your Olive Branch place, as a matter of fact, and saw Dr. Rathbone and asked him for a job, but he wasn't very responsive—not to a salaried job, that is." "The old beggar's fairly tight with his money," said Edward. "His idea is that everybody comes and works for the love of the thing." "Do you think he's a phoney, Edward?" "N-o. I don't know exactly what I do think. I don't see how he can be anything but on the square—he doesn't make any money out of the show. So far as I can see all that terrific enthusiasm must be genuine. And yet, you know, I don't really feel he's a fool." "We'd better go in," said Victoria. "We can talk later." II "I'd no idea you and Edward knew each other," exclaimed Mrs. Clayton. "Oh we're old friends," laughed Victoria. "Only, as a matter of fact, we'd lost sight of each other. I'd no idea Edward was in this country." Mr. Clayton, who was the quiet thoughtful-looking man Victoria had seen coming up the steps, asked: "How did you get on this morning, Edward? Any progress?" "It seems very uphill work, sir. The cases of books are there, all present and correct, but the formalities needed to clear them seem unending." Clayton smiled. "You're new to the delaying tactics of the East." "The particular official who's wanted, always seems to be away that day," complained Edward. "Everyone is very pleasant and willing—only nothing seems to happen." Everyone laughed and Mrs. Clayton said consolingly: "You'll get them through in the end. Very wise of Dr. Rathbone to send someone down personally. Otherwise they'd probably stay here for months." "Since Palestine, they are very suspicious about bombs. Also subversive literature. They suspect everything." "Dr. Rathbone isn't shipping bombs out here disguised as books, I hope," said Mrs. Clayton, laughing. Victoria thought she caught a sudden flicker in Edward's eye, as though Mrs. Clayton's remark had opened up a new line of thought. Clayton said, with a hint of reproof: "Dr. Rathbone's a very learned and well-known man, my dear. He's a Fellow of various important Societies and is known and respected all over Europe." "That would make it all the easier for him to smuggle in bombs," Mrs. Clayton pointed with irrepressible spirits. Victoria could see that Gerald Clayton did not quite like this lighthearted suggestion. He frowned at his wife. Business being at a standstill during the midday hours, Edward and Victoria went out together after lunch to stroll about and see the sights. Victoria was delighted with the river, the Shatt el Arab, with its bordering of date palm groves. She adored the Venetian look of the high-prowed Arab boats tied up in the canal in the town. Then they wandered into the souk and looked at Kuwait bride-chests studded with patterned brass and other attractive merchandise. It was not until they turned towards the Consulate and Edward was preparing himself to assail the Customs department once more that Victoria said suddenly: "Edward, what's your name?" Edward stared at her. "What on earth do you mean, Victoria?" "Your last name. Don't you realize that I don't know it." "Don't you? No, I suppose you don't. It's Goring." "Edward Goring. You've no idea what a fool I felt going into that Olive Branch place and wanting to ask for you and not knowing anything but Edward." "Was there a dark girl there? Rather long bobbed hair?" "Yes." "That's Catherine. She's awfully nice. If you'd said Edward she'd have known at once." "I dare say she would," said Victoria with reserve. "She's a frightfully nice girl. Didn't you think so?" "Oh quite...." "Not actually good-looking—in fact nothing much to look at, but she's frightfully sympathetic." "Is she?" Victoria's voice was now quite glacial—but Edward apparently noticed nothing. "I don't really know what I should have done without her. She put me in the picture and helped me out when I might have made a fool of myself. I'm sure you and she will be great friends." "I don't suppose we shall have the opportunity." "Oh yes, you will. I'm going to get you a job in the show." "How are you going to manage that?" "I don't know but I shall manage it somehow. Tell old Rattle-bones what a wonderful typist et cetera you are." "He'll soon find out that I'm not," said Victoria. "Anyway, I shall get you into the Olive Branch somehow. I'm not going to have you beetling round on your own. Next thing I know, you'd be heading for Burma or darkest Africa. No, young Victoria, I'm going to have you right under my eyes. I'm not going to take any chances on your running out on me. I don't trust you an inch. You're too fond of seeing the world." "You sweet idiot," thought Victoria, "don't you know wild horses wouldn't drive me away from Baghdad!" Aloud she said: "Well, it would be quite fun to have a job at the Olive Branch." "I wouldn't describe it as fun. It's all terribly earnest. As well as being absolutely goofy." "And you still think there's something wrong about it?" "Oh, that was only a wild idea of mine." "No," said Victoria thoughtfully, "I don't think it was only a wild idea. I think it's true." Edward turned on her sharply. "What makes you say that?" "Something I heard—from a friend of mine." "Who was it?" "Just a friend." "Girls like you have too many friends," grumbled Edward. "You are a devil, Victoria. I love you madly and you don't care a bit." "Oh yes, I do," said Victoria. "Just a little bit." Then, concealing her delighted satisfaction, she asked: "Edward, is there anyone called Lefarge connected with the Olive Branch or with anything else?" "Lefarge?" Edward looked puzzled. "No, I don't think so, Who is he?" Victoria pursued her inquiries. "Or anyone called Anna Scheele?" This time Edward's reaction was very different. He turned on her abruptly, caught her by the arm and said: "What do you know about Anna Scheele?" "Ow! Edward, let go! I don't know anything about her. I just wanted to know if you did." "Where did you hear about her? Mrs. Clipp?" "No—not Mrs. Clipp—at least I don't think so, but actually she talked so fast and so unendingly about everyone and everything that I probably wouldn't remember if she mentioned her." "But what made you think this Anna Scheele had anything to do with the Olive Branch?" "Has she?" Edward said slowly, "I don't know...It's all so—so vague." They were standing outside the garden door to the Consulate. Edward glanced at his watch. "I must go and do my stuff," he said. "Wish I knew some Arabic. But we've got to get together, Victoria. There's a lot I want to know." "There's a lot I want to tell you," said Victoria. Some tender heroine of a more sentimental age might have sought to keep her man out of danger. Not so, Victoria. Men, in Victoria's opinion, were born to danger as the sparks fly upwards. Edward wouldn't thank her for keeping him out of things. And, on reflection, she was quite certain that Mr. Dakin hadn't intended her to keep him out of things. III At sunset that evening Edward and Victoria walked together in the Consulate garden. In deference to Mrs. Clayton's insistence that the weather was wintry Victoria wore a woollen coat over her summer frock. The sunset was magnificent but neither of the young people noticed it. They were discussing more important things. "It began quite simply," said Victoria, "with a man coming into my room at the Tio Hotel and getting stabbed." It was not, perhaps, most people's idea of a simple beginning. Edward stared at her and said: "Getting what?" "Stabbed," said Victoria. "At least I think it was stabbed, but it might have been shot only I don't think so because then I would have heard the noise of the shot. Anyway," she added, "he was dead." "How could he come into your room if he was dead?" "Oh Edward, don't be stupid." Alternately baldly and vaguely, Victoria told her story. For some mysterious reason Victoria could never tell of truthful occurrences in a dramatic fashion. Her narrative was halting and incomplete and she told it with the air of one offering a palpable fabrication. When she had come to the end, Edward looked at her doubtfully and said, "You do feel all right, Victoria, don't you? I mean you haven't had a touch of the sun or—a dream, or anything?" "Of course not." "Because, I mean, it seems such an absolutely impossible thing to have happened." "Well, it did happen," said Victoria touchily. "And all that melodramatic stuff about world forces and mysterious secret installations in the heart of Tibet or Baluchistan. I mean, all that simply couldn't be true. Things like that don't happen." "That's what people always say before they've happened." "Honest to God, Charing Cross—are you making all this up?" "No!" cried Victoria, exasperated. "And you've come down here looking for someone called Lefarge and someone called Anna Scheele—" "Whom you've heard of yourself," Victoria put in. "You had heard of her hadn't you?" "I'd heard the name—yes." "How? Where? At the Olive Branch?" Edward was silent for some moments, then said: "I don't know if it means anything. It was just—odd—" "Go on. Tell me." "You see, Victoria. I'm so different from you. I'm not as sharp as you are. I just feel, in a queer kind of way, that things are wrong somehow—I don't know why I think so. You spot things as you go along and deduce things from them. I'm not clever enough for that. I just feel vaguely that things are—well—wrong—but I don't know why." "I feel like that sometimes, too," said Victoria. "Like Sir Rupert on the balcony of the Tio." "Who's Sir Rupert?" "Sir Rupert Crofton Lee. He was on the plane coming out. Very haughty and showing off. A VIP. You know. And when I saw him sitting out on the balcony at the Tio in the sun, I had that queer feeling you've just said of something being wrong, but not knowing what it was." "Rathbone asked him to lecture to the Olive Branch, I believe, but he couldn't make it. Flew back to Cairo or Damascus or somewhere yesterday morning, I believe." "Well, go on about Anna Scheele." "Oh, Anna Scheele. It was nothing really. It was just one of the girls." "Catherine?" said Victoria instantly. "I believe it was Catherine now I think of it." "Of course it was Catherine. That's why you don't want to tell me about it." "Nonsense, that's quite absurd." "Well, what was it?" "Catherine said to one of the other girls, 'When Anna Scheele comes, we can go forward. Then we take our orders from her—and her alone.'" "That's frightfully important, Edward." "Remember, I'm not even sure that was the name," Edward warned her. "Didn't you think it queer at the time?" "No, of course I didn't. I thought it was just some female who was coming out to boss things. A kind of Queen Bee. Are you sure you're not imagining all this, Victoria?" Immediately he quailed before the glance his young friend gave him. "All right, all right," he said hastily. "Only you'll admit the whole story does sound queer. So like a thriller—a young man coming in and gasping out one word that doesn't mean anything—and then dying. It just doesn't seem real." "You didn't see the blood," said Victoria and shivered slightly. "It must have given you a terrible shock," said Edward sympathetically. "It did," said Victoria. "And then on top of it, you come along and ask me if I'm making it all up." "I'm sorry. But you are rather good at making things up. The Bishop of Llangow and all that!" "Oh, that was just girlish joie de vivre," said Victoria. "This is serious, Edward, really serious." "This man, Dakin—is that his name?—impressed you as knowing what he was talking about?" "Yes, he was very convincing. But, look here, Edward, how do you know—" A hail from the balcony interrupted her. "Come in—you two—drinks waiting." "Coming," called Victoria. Mrs. Clayton, watching them coming towards the steps, said to her husband: "There's something in the wind there! Nice couple of children—probably haven't got a bean between them. Shall I tell you what I think, Gerald?" "Certainly, dear. I'm always interested to hear your ideas." "I think that girl has come out here to join her uncle on his Dig simply and solely because of that young man." "I hardly think so, Rosa. They were quite astonished to see each other." "Pooh!" said Mrs. Clayton. "That's nothing. He was astonished, I dare say." Gerald Clayton shook his head at her and smiled. "She's not an archaeological type," said Mrs. Clayton. "They're usually earnest girls with spectacles—and very often damp hands." "My dear, you can't generalize in that way." "And intellectual and all that. This girl is an amiable nitwit with a lot of common sense. Quite different. He's a nice boy. A pity he's tied up with all this silly Olive Branch stuff—but I suppose jobs are hard to get. They should find jobs for these boys." "It's not so easy, dear, they do try. But you see, they've no training, no experience and usually not much habit of concentration." Victoria went to bed that night in a turmoil of mixed feelings. The object of her quest was attained. Edward was found! She shuddered from the inevitable reaction. Do what she might a feeling of anticlimax persisted. It was partly Edward's disbelief that made everything that had happened seem stagy and unreal. She, Victoria Jones, a little London typist, had arrived in Baghdad, had seen a man murdered almost before her eyes, had become a secret agent or something equally melodramatic, and had finally met the man she loved in a tropical garden with palms waving overhead, and in all probability not far from the spot where the original Garden of Eden was said to be situated. A fragment of a nursery rhyme floated through her head. How many miles to Babylon? Threescore and ten, Can I get there by candlelight? Yes, and back again. But she wasn't back again—she was still in Babylon. Perhaps she would never get back—she and Edward in Babylon. Something she had meant to ask Edward—there in the garden. Garden of Eden—she and Edward—Ask Edward—but Mrs. Clayton had called—and it had gone out of her head—But she must remember—because it was important—It didn't make sense—Palms—garden—Edward—Saracen Maiden—Anna Scheele—Rupert Crofton Lee—All wrong somehow—And if only she could remember— A woman coming towards her along a hotel corridor—a woman in a tailored suit—it was herself—but when the woman got near she saw the face was Catherine's. Edward and Catherine—absurd! "Come with me," she said to Edward, "we will find M. Lefarge—" And suddenly there he was, wearing lemon yellow kid gloves and a little pointed black beard. Edward had gone now and she was alone. She must get back from Babylon before the candles went out. And we are for the dark. Who said that? Violence, terror—evil—blood on a ragged khaki tunic. She was running—running—down a hotel corridor. And they were coming after her. Victoria woke with a gasp. IV "Coffee?" said Mrs. Clayton. "How do you like your eggs? Scrambled?" "Lovely." "You look rather washed out. Not feeling ill?" "No, I didn't sleep very well last night. I don't know why. It's a very comfortable bed." "Turn the wireless on, will you, Gerald? It's time for the news." Edward came in just as the pips were sounding. "In the House of Commons last night, the Prime Minister gave fresh details of the cuts in dollar imports. "A report from Cairo announces that the body of Sir Rupert Crofton Lee has been taken from the Nile. (Victoria put down her coffee-cup sharply, and Mrs. Clayton uttered an ejaculation.) Sir Rupert left his hotel after arriving by plane from Baghdad, and did not return to it that night. He had been missing for twenty-four hours when his body was recovered. Death was due to a stab wound in the heart and not to drowning. Sir Rupert was a renowned traveller, was famous for his travels through China and Baluchistan and was the author of several books." "Murdered!" exclaimed Mrs. Clayton. "I think Cairo is worse than anyplace now. Did you know anything about all this, Gerry?" "I knew he was missing," said Mr. Clayton. "It appears he got a note, brought by hand, and left the hotel in a great hurry on foot without saying where he was going." "You see," said Victoria to Edward after breakfast when they were alone together. "It is all true. First this man Carmichael and now Sir Rupert Crofton Lee. I feel sorry now I called him a show-off. It seems unkind. All the people who know or guess about this queer business are being got out of the way. Edward, do you think it will be me next?" "For Heaven's sake don't look so pleased by the idea, Victoria! Your sense of drama is much too strong. I don't see why anyone should eliminate you because you don't really know anything—but do, please, do, be awfully careful." "We'll both be careful. I've dragged you into it." "Oh, that's all right. Relieves the monotony." "Yes, but take care of yourself." She gave a sudden shiver. "It's rather awful—he was so very much alive—Crofton Lee, I mean—and now he's dead too. It's frightening, really frightening." ## Sixteen I "Find your young man?" asked Mr. Dakin. Victoria nodded. "Find anything else?" Rather mournfully, Victoria shook her head. "Well, cheer up," said Mr. Dakin. "Remember, in this game, results are few and far between. You might have picked up something there—one never knows, but I wasn't in any way counting on it." "Can I still go on trying?" asked Victoria. "Do you want to?" "Yes, I do. Edward thinks he can get me a job at the Olive Branch. If I keep my ears and eyes open, I might find out something, mightn't I? They know something about Anna Scheele there." "Now that's very interesting, Victoria. How did you learn that?" Victoria repeated what Edward had told her—about Catherine's remark that when "Anna Scheele came" they would take their orders from her. "Very interesting," said Mr. Dakin. "Who is Anna Scheele?" asked Victoria. "I mean, you must know something about her—or is she just a name?" "She's more than a name. She's confidential secretary to an American banker—head of an international banking firm. She left New York and came to London about ten days ago. Since then she's disappeared." "Disappeared? She's not dead?" "If so, her dead body hasn't been found." "But she may be dead?" "Oh yes, she may be dead." "Was she—coming to Baghdad?" "I've no idea. It would seem from the remarks of this young woman Catherine, that she was. Or shall we say—is—since as yet there's no reason to believe she isn't still alive." "Perhaps I can find out more at the Olive Branch." "Perhaps you can—but I must warn you once more to be very careful, Victoria. The organization you are up against is quite ruthless. I would much rather not have your dead body found floating down the Tigris." Victoria gave a little shiver and murmured: "Like Sir Rupert Crofton Lee. You know that morning he was at the hotel here there was something odd about him—something that surprised me. I wish I could remember what it was...." "In what way—odd?" "Well—different." Then in response to the inquiring look, she shook her head vexedly. "It will come back to me, perhaps. Anyway I don't suppose it really matters." "Anything might matter." "If Edward gets me a job, he thinks I ought to get a room like the other girls in a sort of boardinghouse or paying guest place, not stay on here." "It would create less surmise. Baghdad hotels are very expensive. Your young man seems to have his head screwed on the right way." "Do you want to see him?" Dakin shook his head emphatically. "No, tell him to keep right away from me. You, unfortunately, owing to the circumstances on the night of Carmichael's death, are bound to be suspect. But Edward is not linked with that occurrence or with me in any way—and that's valuable." "I've been meaning to ask you," said Victoria. "Who actually did stab Carmichael? Was it someone who followed him here?" "No," said Dakin slowly. "That couldn't have been so." "Couldn't?" "He came in a gufa—one of those native boats—and he wasn't followed. We know that because I had someone watching the river." "Then it was someone—in the hotel?" "Yes, Victoria. And what is more someone in one particular wing of the hotel—for I myself was watching the stairs and no one came up them." He watched her rather puzzled face and said quietly: "That doesn't really give us very many names. You and I and Mrs. Cardew Trench, and Marcus and his sisters. A couple of elderly servants who have been here for years. A man called Harrison from Kirkuk against whom nothing is known. A nurse who works at the Jewish Hospital...It might be any of them—yet all of them are unlikely for one very good reason." "What is that?" "Carmichael was on his guard. He knew that the peak moment of his mission was approaching. He was a man with a very keen instinct for danger. How did that instinct let him down?" "Those police that came—" began Victoria. "Ah, they came after—up from the street. They'd had a signal, I suppose. But they didn't do the stabbing. That must have been done by someone Carmichael knew well, whom he trusted...or alternatively whom he judged negligible. If I only knew...." II Achievement brings with it its own anticlimax. To get to Baghdad, to find Edward, to penetrate the secrets of the Olive Branch: all this had appeared as an entrancing programme. Now, her objective attained, Victoria, in a rare moment of self-questioning, sometimes wondered what on earth she was doing! The rapture of reunion with Edward had come and gone. She loved Edward, Edward loved her. They were, on most days, working under the same roof—but thinking about it dispassionately, what on earth were they doing? By some means or other, sheer force of determination, or ingenious persuasion, Edward had been instrumental in Victoria's being offered a meagrely-paid job at the Olive Branch. She spent most of her time in a small dark room with the electric light on, typing on a very faulty machine various notices and letters and manifestos of the milk and water programme of the Olive Branch activities. Edward had had a hunch there was something wrong about the Olive Branch. Mr. Dakin had seemed to agree with that view. She, Victoria, was here to find out what she could, but as far as she could see, there was nothing to find out! The Olive Branch activities dripped with the honey of international peace. Various gatherings were held with orangeade to drink and depressing edibles to go with it, and at these Victoria was supposed to act as quasi-hostess; to mix, to introduce, to promote general good feeling amongst various foreign nationals, who were inclined to stare with animosity at one another and wolf refreshments hungrily. As far as Victoria could see, there were no undercurrents, no conspiracies, no inner rings. All was aboveboard, mild as milk and water, and desperately dull. Various dark-skinned young men made tentative love to her, others lent her books to read which she skimmed through and found tedious. She had, by now, left the Tio Hotel and had taken up her quarters with some other young women workers of various nationalities in a house on the west bank of the river. Amongst these young women was Catherine, and it seemed to Victoria that Catherine watched her with a suspicious eye, but whether this was because Catherine suspected her of being a spy on the activities of the Olive Branch or whether it was the more delicate matter of Edward's affections, Victoria was unable to make up her mind. She rather fancied the latter. It was known that Edward had secured Victoria her job and several pairs of jealous dark eyes looked at her without undue affection. The fact was, Victoria thought moodily, that Edward was far too attractive. All these girls had fallen for him, and Edward's engaging friendly manner to one and all did nothing to help. By agreement between them, Victoria and Edward were to show no signs of special intimacy. If they were to find out anything worth finding out, they must not be suspected of working together. Edward's manner to her was the same as to any of the other young women, with an added shade of coldness. Though the Olive Branch itself seemed so innocuous Victoria had a distinct feeling that its head and founder was in a different category. Once or twice she was aware of Dr. Rathbone's dark thoughtful gaze resting upon her and though she countered it with her most innocent and kitten-like expression, she felt a sudden throb of something like fear. Once, when she had been summoned to his presence (for explanation of a typing error), the matter went farther than a glance. "You are happy working with us, I hope?" he asked. "Oh yes, indeed, sir," said Victoria, and added: "I'm sorry I make so many mistakes." "We don't mind mistakes. A soulless machine would be no use to us. We need youth, generosity of spirit, broadness of outlook." Victoria endeavoured to look eager and generous. "You must love the work...love the object for which you are working...look forward to the glorious future. Are you truly feeling all that, dear child?" "It's all so new to me," said Victoria. "I don't feel I have taken it all in yet." "Get together—get together—young people everywhere must get together. That is the main thing. You enjoy your evenings of free discussion and comradeship?" "Oh! yes," said Victoria, who loathed them. "Agreement, not dissension—brotherhood, not hatred. Slowly and surely it is growing—you do feel that, don't you?" Victoria thought of the endless petty jealousies, the violent dislikes, the endless quarrels, hurt feelings, apologies demanded; and hardly knew what she was expected to say. "Sometimes," she said cautiously, "people are difficult." "I know...I know..." Dr. Rathbone sighed. His noble domed forehead furrowed itself in perplexity. "What is this I hear of Michael Rakounian striking Isaac Nahoum and cutting his lip open?" "They were just having a little argument," said Victoria. Dr. Rathbone brooded mournfully. "Patience and faith," he murmured. "Patience and faith." Victoria murmured a dutiful assent and turned to leave. Then, remembering she had left her typescript, she came back again. The glance she caught in Dr. Rathbone's eye startled her a little. It was a keen suspicious glance, and she wondered uneasily just how closely she was being watched, and what Dr. Rathbone really thought about her. Her instructions from Mr. Dakin were very precise. She was to obey certain rules for communicating with him if she had anything to report. He had given her an old faded pink handkerchief. If she had anything to report she was to walk, as she often did when the sun was setting along the riverbank, near her hostel. There was a narrow path in front of the houses there for perhaps a quarter of a mile. In one place a big flight of steps led down to the water's edge and boats were constantly being tied up there. There was a rusty nail in one of the wooden posts at the top. Here she was to affix a small piece of the pink handkerchief if she wanted to get into communication with Dakin. So far, Victoria reflected bitterly, there had been no need for anything of the sort. She was merely doing an ill-paid job in a slovenly fashion. Edward she saw at rare intervals, since he was always being sent to far-off places by Dr. Rathbone. At the moment, he had just come back from Persia. During his absence, she had had one short and somewhat unsatisfactory interview with Dakin. Her instructions had been to go to the Tio Hotel and ask if she had left a cardigan behind. The answer having been in the negative, Marcus appeared and immediately swept her out on to the riverbank for a drink. During the process Dakin had shambled in from the street and had been hailed by Marcus to join them, and presently, as Dakin supped lemonade, Marcus had been called away and the two of them sat there on opposite sides of the small painted table. Rather apprehensively Victoria confessed her utter lack of success, but Dakin was indulgently reassuring. "My dear child, you don't even know what you are looking for or even if there is anything to find. Taken by and large what is your considered opinion of the Olive Branch?" "It's a thoroughly dim show," said Victoria slowly. "Dim, yes. But not bogus?" "I don't know," said Victoria slowly. "People are so sold on the idea of culture if you know what I mean?" "You mean that where anything cultured is concerned, nobody examines bona fides in the way they would if it were a charitable or a financial proposition? That's true. And you'll find genuine enthusiasts there, I've no doubt. But is the organization being used?" "I think there's a lot of Communist activity going on," said Victoria doubtfully. "Edward thinks so too—he's making me read Karl Marx and leave it about just to see what reactions there will be." Dakin nodded. "Interesting. Any response so far?" "No, not yet." "What about Rathbone? Is he genuine?" "I think really that he is—" Victoria sounded doubtful. "He's the one I worry about, you see," said Dakin. "Because he's a big noise. Suppose there is a Communist plotting going on—students and young revolutionaries have very little chance of coming into contact with the President. Police measures will look after bombs thrown from the street. But Rathbone's different. He's one of the high-ups, a distinguished man with a fine record of public beneficence. He could come in close contact with the distinguished visitors. He probably will. I'd like to know about Rathbone." Yes, Victoria thought to herself, it all centred round Rathbone. On the first meeting in London, weeks ago, Edward's vague remarks about the "fishiness" of the show had had their origin in his employer. And there must, Victoria decided suddenly, have been some incident, some word, that had awakened Edward's uneasiness. For that, in Victoria's belief, was how minds worked. Your vague doubt or distrust was never just a hunch—it was really always due to a cause. If Edward, now, could be made to think back, to remember; between them they might hit upon the fact or incident that had aroused his suspicions. In the same way, Victoria thought, she herself must try to think back to what it was that had so surprised her when she came out upon the balcony at the Tio and found Sir Rupert Crofton Lee sitting there in the sun. It was true that she had expected him to be at the Embassy and not at the Tio Hotel but that was not enough to account for the strong feeling she had had that his sitting there was quite impossible! She would go over and over the events of that morning, and Edward must be urged to go over and over his early association with Dr. Rathbone. She would tell him so when next she got him alone. But to get Edward alone was not easy. To begin with he had been away in Persia and now that he was back, private communications at the Olive Branch were out of the question where the slogan of the last war ("Les oreilles enemies vous écoutent") might have been written up all over the walls. In the Armenian household where she was a paying guest, privacy was equally impossible. Really, thought Victoria to herself, for all I see of Edward, I might as well have stayed in England! That this was not quite true was proved very shortly afterwards. Edward came to her with some sheets of manuscripts and said: "Dr. Rathbone would like this typed out at once, please, Victoria. Be especially careful of the second page, there are some rather tricky Arab names on it." Victoria, with a sigh, inserted a sheet of paper in her typewriter and started off in her usual dashing style. Dr. Rathbone's handwriting was not particularly difficult to read and Victoria was just congratulating herself that she had made less mistakes than usual. She laid the top sheet aside and proceeded to the next—and at once realized the meaning of Edward's injunction to be careful of the second page. A tiny note in Edward's handwriting was pinned to the top of it. Go for a walk along the Tigris bank past the Beit Melek Ali tomorrow morning about eleven. The following day was Friday, the weekly holiday. Victoria's spirits rose mercurially. She would wear her jade-green pullover. She ought really to get her hair shampooed. The amenities of the house where she lived made it difficult to wash it herself. "And it really needs it," she murmured aloud. "What did you say?" Catherine, at work on a pile of circulars and envelopes, raised her head suspiciously from the next table. Victoria quickly crumpled up Edward's note in her hand as she said lightly: "My hair wants washing. Most of these hairdressing places look so frightfully dirty, I don't know where to go." "Yes, they are dirty and expensive too. But I know a girl who washes hair very well and the towels are clean. I will take you there." "That's very kind of you, Catherine," said Victoria. "We will go tomorrow. It is holiday." "Not tomorrow," said Victoria. "Why not tomorrow?" A suspicious stare was bent upon her. Victoria felt her usual annoyance and dislike of Catherine rising. "I'd rather go for a walk—get some air. One is so cooped up here." "Where can you walk? There is nowhere to walk in Baghdad." "I shall find somewhere," said Victoria. "It would be better to go to the cinema. Or is there an interesting lecture?" "No, I want to get out. In England we like going for walks." "Because you are English, you are so proud and stuck up. What does it mean to be English? Next to nothing. Here we spit upon the English." "If you start spitting on me you may get a surprise," said Victoria, wondering as usual at the ease with which angry passions seemed to rise at the Olive Branch. "What would you do?" "Try and see." "Why do you read Karl Marx? You cannot understand it. You are much too stupid. Do you think they would ever accept you as a member of the Communist Party? You are not well enough educated politically." "Why shouldn't I read it? It was meant for people like me—workers." "You are not a worker. You are bourgeoise. You cannot even type properly. Look at the mistakes you make." "Some of the cleverest people can't spell," said Victoria with dignity. "And how can I work when you keep talking to me?" She rattled off a line at break-neck speed—and was then somewhat chagrined to find that as a result of unwittingly depressing the shift key, she had written a line of exclamation marks, figures and brackets. Removing the sheet from the machine she replaced it with another and applied herself diligently until, her task finished, she took the result in to Dr. Rathbone. Glancing over it and murmuring, "Shiraz is in Iran not Iraq—and anyway you don't spell Iraq with a k...Wasit—not Wuzle—er—thank you, Victoria." Then as she was leaving the room he called her back. "Victoria, are you happy here?" "Oh yes, Dr. Rathbone." The dark eyes under the massive brows were very searching. She felt uneasiness rising. "I'm afraid we do not pay you very much." "That doesn't matter," said Victoria. "I like to work." "Do you really? "Oh yes," said Victoria. "One feels," she added, "that this sort of thing is really worthwhile." Her limpid gaze met the dark searching eyes and did not falter. "And you manage—to live?" "Oh yes—I've found quite a good cheap place—with some Armenians. I'm quite all right." "There is a shortage at present of shorthand typists in Baghdad," said Dr. Rathbone. "I think, you know, that I could get you a better position than the one you have here." "But I don't want any other position." "You might be wise to take one." "Wise?" Victoria faltered a little. "That is what I said. Just a word of warning—of advice." There was something faintly menacing now in his tone. Victoria opened her eyes still wider. "I really don't understand, Dr. Rathbone," she said. "Sometimes it is wiser not to mix oneself up in things one does not understand." She felt quite sure of the menace this time, but she continued to stare in kitten-eyed innocence. "Why did you come and work here, Victoria? Because of Edward?" Victoria flushed angrily. "Of course not," she said indignantly. She was much annoyed. Dr. Rathbone nodded his head. "Edward has his way to make. It will be many many years before he is in a position to be of any use to you. I should give up thinking of Edward if I were you. And, as I say, there are good positions to be obtained at present, with a good salary and prospects—and which will bring you amongst your own kind." He was still watching her, Victoria thought, very closely. Was this a test? She said with an affectation of eagerness: "But I really am very keen on the Olive Branch, Dr. Rathbone." He shrugged his shoulders then and she left him, but she could feel his eyes in the centre of her spine as she left the room. She was somewhat disturbed by the interview. Had something occurred to arouse his suspicions? Did he guess that she might be a spy placed in the Olive Branch to find out its secrets? His voice and manner had made her feel unpleasantly afraid. His suggestion that she had come there to be near Edward had made her angry at the time and she had vigorously denied it, but she realized now that it was infinitely safer that Dr. Rathbone should suppose her to have come to the Olive Branch for Edward's sake than to have even an inkling that Mr. Dakin had been instrumental in the matter. Anyway, owing to her idiotic blush, Rathbone probably did think that it was Edward—so that all had really turned out for the best. Nevertheless she went to sleep that night with an unpleasant little clutch of fear at her heart. ## Seventeen I It proved fairly simple on the following morning for Victoria to go out by herself with few explanations. She had inquired about the Beit Melek Ali and had learnt it was a big house built right out on the river some way down the West Bank. So far Victoria had had very little time to explore her surroundings and she was agreeably surprised when she came to the end of the narrow street and found herself actually on the riverbank. She turned to her right and made her way slowly along the edge of the high bank. Sometimes the going was precarious—the bank had been eaten away and had not always been repaired or built-up again. One house had steps in front of it which, if you took one more, would land you in the river on a dark night. Victoria looked down at the water below and edged her way round. Then, for a while, the way was wide and paved. The houses on her right hand had an agreeable air of secrecy. They offered no hint as to their occupancy. Occasionally the central door stood open and peering inside Victoria was fascinated by the contrasts. On one such occasion she looked into a courtyard with a fountain playing and cushioned seats and deck chairs round it, with tall palms growing up and a garden beyond, that looked like the backcloth of a stage set. The next house, looking much the same outside, opened on a litter of confusion and dark passages, with five or six dirty children playing in rags. Then she came to palm gardens in thick groves. On her left she had passed uneven steps leading down to the river and an Arab boatman seated in a primitive rowing boat gesticulated and called, asking evidently if she wanted to be taken across to the other side. She must by now, Victoria judged, be just about opposite the Tio Hotel, though it was hard to distinguish differences in the architecture viewed from this side and the hotel buildings looked more or less alike. She came now to a road leading down through the palms and then to two tall houses with balconies. Beyond was a big house built right out on to the river with a garden and balustrade. The path on the bank passed on the inside of what must be the Beit Melek Ali or the House of King Ali. In a few minutes more Victoria had passed its entrance and had come to a more squalid part. The river was hidden from her by palm plantations fenced off with rusty barbed wire. On the right were tumbledown houses inside rough mudbrick walls, and small shanties with children playing in the dirt and clouds of flies hanging over garbage heaps. A road led away from the river and a car was standing there—a somewhat battered and archaic car. By the car, Edward was standing. "Good," said Edward, "you've got here. Get in." "Where are we going?" asked Victoria, entering the battered automobile with delight. The driver, who appeared to be an animate bundle of rags, turned round and grinned happily at her. "We're going to Babylon," said Edward. "It's about time we had a day out." The car started with a terrific jerk and bumped madly over the rude paving stones. "To Babylon?" cried Victoria. "How lovely it sounds. Really to Babylon?" The car swerved to the left and they were bowling along upon a well-paved road of imposing width. "Yes, but don't expect too much. Babylon—if you know what I mean—isn't quite what it was." Victoria hummed. "How many miles to Babylon? Threescore and ten, Can I get there by candlelight? Yes, and back again." "I used to sing that when I was a small child. It always fascinated me. And now we're really going there!" "And we'll get back by candlelight. Or we should do. Actually you never know in this country." "This car looks very much as though it might break down." "It probably will. There's sure to be simply everything wrong with it. But these Iraqis are frightfully good at tying it up with string and saying Inshallah and then it goes again." "It's always Inshallah, isn't it?" "Yes, nothing like laying the responsibility upon the Almighty." "The road isn't very good, is it?" gasped Victoria, bouncing in her seat. The deceptively well-paved and wide road had not lived up to its promise. The road was still wide but was now corrugated with ruts. "It gets worse later on," shouted Edward. They bounced and bumped happily. The dust rose in clouds round them. Large lorries covered with Arabs tore along in the middle of the track and were deaf to all intimations of the horn. They passed walled-in gardens, and parties of women and children and donkeys and to Victoria it was all new and part of the enchantment of going to Babylon with Edward beside her. They reached Babylon bruised and shaken in a couple of hours. The meaningless pile of ruined mud and burnt brick was somewhat of a disappointment to Victoria, who expected something in the way of columns and arches, looking like pictures she had seen of Baalbek. But little by little her disappointment ebbed as they scrambled over mounds and lumps of burnt brick led by the guide. She listened with only half an ear to his profuse explanations, but as they went along the Processional Way to the Ishtar Gate, with the faint reliefs of unbelievable animals high on the walls, a sudden sense of the grandeur of the past came to her and a wish to know something about this vast proud city that now lay dead and abandoned. Presently, their duty to Antiquity accomplished, they sat down by the Babylonian Lion to eat the picnic lunch that Edward had brought with him. The guide moved away, smiling indulgently and telling them firmly that they must see the Museum later. "Must we?" said Victoria dreamily. "Things all labelled and put into cases don't seem a bit real somehow. I went to the British Museum once. It was awful, and dreadfully tiring on the feet." "The past is always boring," said Edward. "The future's much more important." "This isn't boring," said Victoria, waving a sandwich towards the panorama of tumbling brick. "There's a feeling of—of greatness here. What's the poem 'When you were a King in Babylon and I was a Christian Slave?' Perhaps we were. You and I, I mean." "I don't think there were any Kings of Babylon by the time there were Christians," said Edward. "I think Babylon stopped functioning somewhere about five or six hundred BC. Some archaeologist or other is always turning up to give lectures about these things—but I really never grasp any of the dates—I mean not until proper Greek and Roman ones." "Would you have liked being a King of Babylon, Edward?" Edward drew a deep breath. "Yes, I should." "Then we'll say you were. You're in a new incarnation now." "They understood how to be Kings in those days!" said Edward. "That's why they could rule the world and bring it into shape." "I don't know that I should have liked being a slave much," said Victoria meditatively, "Christian or otherwise." "Milton was quite right," said Edward. "'Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.' I always admired Milton's Satan." "I never quite got around to Milton," said Victoria apologetically. "But I did go and see Comus at Sadler's Wells and it was lovely and Margot Fonteyn danced like a kind of frozen angel." "If you were a slave, Victoria," said Edward, "I should free you and take you into my harem—over there," he added gesticulating vaguely at a pile of debris. A glint came into Victoria's eye. "Talking of harems—" she began. "How are you getting on with Catherine?" asked Edward hastily. "How did you know I was thinking about Catherine?" "Well, you were, weren't you? Honestly, Viccy, I do want you to become friends with Catherine." "Don't call me Viccy." "All right, Charing Cross. I want you to become friends with Catherine." "How fatuous men are! Always wanting their girlfriends to like each other." Edward sat up energetically. He had been reclining with his hands behind his head. "You've got it all wrong, Charing Cross. Anyway, your references to harems are simply silly—" "No, they're not. The way all those girls glower intensely at you and yearn at you! It makes me mad." "Splendid," said Edward. "I love you to be mad. But to return to Catherine. The reason I want you to be friends with Catherine is that I'm fairly sure she's the best way of approach to all the things we want to find out. She knows something." "You really think so?" "Remember what I heard her say about Anna Scheele?" "I'd forgotten that." "How have you been getting on with Karl Marx? Any results?" "Nobody's made a beeline at me and invited me into the fold. In fact, Catherine told me yesterday the party wouldn't accept me, because I'm not sufficiently politically educated. And to have to read all that dreary stuff—honestly, Edward, I haven't the brains for it." "You are not politically aware, are you?" Edward laughed. "Poor Charing Cross. Well, well, Catherine may be frantic with brains and intensity and political awareness, my fancy is still a little Cockney typist who can't spell any words of three syllables." Victoria frowned suddenly. Edward's words brought back to her mind the curious interview she had had with Dr. Rathbone. She told Edward about it. He seemed much more upset than she would have expected him to be. "This is serious, Victoria, really serious. Try and tell me exactly what he said." Victoria tried her best to recall the exact words Rathbone had used. "But I don't see," she said, "why it upsets you so." "Eh?" Edward seemed abstracted. "You don't see—But my dear girl, don't you realize that this shows that they've got wise to you. They're warning you off. I don't like it Victoria—I don't like it at all." He paused and then said gravely: "Communists, you know, are very ruthless. It's part of their creed to stick at nothing. I don't want you knocked on the head and thrown into the Tigris, darling." How odd, thought Victoria, to be sitting amidst the ruins of Babylon debating whether or not she was likely in the near future to be knocked on the head and thrown into the Tigris. Half closing her eyes she thought dreamily, "I shall wake up soon and find I'm in London dreaming a wonderful melodramatic dream about dangerous Babylon. Perhaps," she thought, closing her eyes altogether, "I am in London...and the alarm clock will go off very soon, and I shall get up and go to Mr. Greenholtz's office—and there won't be any Edward...." And at that last thought she opened her eyes again hastily to make sure that Edward was indeed really there (and what was it I was going to ask him at Basrah and they interrupted us and I forgot?) and it was not a dream. The sun was glaring down in a dazzling and most un-London-like way, and the ruins of Babylon were pale and shimmering with a background of dark palms and sitting up with his back a little towards her was Edward. How extraordinarily nicely his hair grew down with a little twirl into his neck—and what a nice neck—bronzed red brown from the sun—with no blemishes on it—so many men had necks with cysts or pimples where their collars had rubbed—a neck like Sir Rupert's for instance, with a boil just starting. Suddenly with a stifled exclamation Victoria sat bolt upright and her daydreams were a thing of the past. She was wildly excited. Edward turned an inquiring head. "What's the matter, Charing Cross?" "I've just remembered," said Victoria, "about Sir Rupert Crofton Lee." As Edward still turned a blank inquiring look upon her Victoria proceeded to elucidate her meaning which truth to tell, she did not do very clearly. "It was a boil," she said, "on his neck." "A boil on his neck?" Edward was puzzled. "Yes, in the aeroplane. He sat in front of me, you know, and that hood thing he wore fell back and I saw it—the boil." "Why shouldn't he have a boil? Painful, but lots of people get them." "Yes, yes, of course they do. But the point is that that morning on the balcony he hadn't." "Hadn't what?" "Hadn't got a boil. Oh, Edward, do try and take it in. In the aeroplane he had a boil and on the balcony at the Tio he hadn't got a boil. His neck was quite smooth and unscarred—like yours now." "Well, I suppose it had gone away." "Oh no, Edward, it couldn't have. It was only a day later, and it was just coming up. It couldn't have gone away—not completely without a trace. So you see what it means—yes, it must mean—the man at the Tio wasn't Sir Rupert at all." She nodded her head with vehemence. Edward stared at her. "You're crazy, Victoria. It must have been Sir Rupert. You didn't see any other difference in him." "But don't you see, Edward, I'd never really looked at him properly—only at his—well, you might call it general effect. The hat—and the cape—and the swashbuckling attitude. He'd be a very easy man to impersonate." "But they'd have known at the Embassy—" "He didn't stay at the Embassy, did he? He came to the Tio. It was one of the minor secretaries or people who met him. The Ambassador's in England. Besides, he's travelled and been away from England so much." "But why—" "Because of Carmichael, of course. Carmichael was coming to Baghdad to meet him—to tell him what he'd found out. Only they'd never met before. So Carmichael wouldn't know he wasn't the right man—and he wouldn't be on his guard. Of course—it was Rupert Crofton Lee (the false one) who stabbed Carmichael! Oh, Edward, it all fits in." "I don't believe a word of it. It's crazy. Don't forget Sir Rupert was killed afterwards in Cairo." "That's where it all happened. I know now. Oh Edward, how awful. I saw it happen." "You saw it happen—Victoria, are you quite mad?" "No, I'm not in the least mad. Just listen, Edward. There was a knock on my door—in the hotel in Heliopolis—at least I thought it was on my door and I looked out, but it wasn't—it was one door down, Sir Rupert Crofton Lee's. It was one of the stewardesses or air hostesses or whatever they call them. She asked him if he would mind coming to BOAC office—just along the corridor. I came out of my room just afterwards. I passed a door which had a notice with BOAC on it, and the door opened and he came out. I thought then that he had had some news that made him walk quite differently. Do you see, Edward? It was a trap, the substitute was waiting, all ready, and as soon as he came in, they just conked him on the head and the other one came out and took up the part. I think they probably kept him somewhere in Cairo, perhaps in the hotel as an invalid, kept him drugged and then killed him just at the right moment when the wrong one had come back to Cairo." "It's a magnificent story," said Edward. "But you know, Victoria, quite frankly you are making the whole thing up. There's no corroboration of it." "There's the boil—" "Oh, damn the boil!" "And there are one or two other things." "What?" "The BOAC notice on the door. It wasn't there later. I remembered being puzzled when I found the BOAC office was on the other side of the entrance hall. That's one thing. And there's another. That air stewardess, the one who knocked at his door. I've seen her since—here in Baghdad—and what's more, at the Olive Branch. The first day I went there. She came in and spoke to Catherine. I thought then I'd seen her before." After a moment's silence, Victoria said: "So you must admit, Edward, that it isn't all my fancy." Edward said slowly: "It all comes back to the Olive Branch—and to Catherine. Victoria, all ragging apart, you've got to get closer to Catherine. Flatter her, butter her up, talk Bolshie ideas to her. Somehow or other get sufficiently intimate with her to know who her friends are and where she goes and whom she's in touch with outside the Olive Branch." "It won't be easy," said Victoria, "but I'll try. What about Mr. Dakin. Ought I to tell him about this?" "Yes, of course. But wait a day or two. We may have more to go on," Edward sighed. "I shall take Catherine to Le Select to hear the cabaret one night." And this time Victoria felt no pang of jealousy. Edward had spoken with a grim determination that ruled out any anticipation of pleasure in the commission he had undertaken. II Exhilarated by her discoveries, Victoria found it no effort to greet Catherine the following day with an effusion of friendliness. It was so kind of Catherine she said, to have told her of a place to have her hair washed. It needed washing terribly badly. (This was undeniable, Victoria had returned from Babylon with her dark hair the colour of red rust from the clogging sand.) "It is looking terrible, yes," said Catherine, eyeing it with a certain malicious satisfaction. "You went out then in that dust storm yesterday afternoon?" "I hired a car and went to see Babylon," said Victoria. "It was very interesting, but on the way back, the dust storm got up and I was nearly choked and blinded." "It is interesting, Babylon," said Catherine, "but you should go with someone who understands it and can tell you about it properly. As for your hair, I will take you to this Armenian girl tonight. She will give you a cream shampoo. It is the best." "I don't know how you keep your hair looking so wonderful," said Victoria, looking with what appeared to be admiring eyes at Catherine's heavy erections of greasy sausage-like curls. A smile appeared on Catherine's usually sour face, and Victoria thought how right Edward had been about flattery. When they left the Olive Branch that evening, the two girls were on the friendliest of terms. Catherine wove in and out of narrow passages and alleys and finally tapped on an unpromising door which gave no sign of hairdressing operations being conducted on the other side of it. They were, however, received by a plain but competent looking young woman who spoke careful slow English and who led Victoria to a spotlessly clean basin with shining taps and various bottles and lotions ranged round it. Catherine departed and Victoria surrendered her mop of hair into Miss Ankoumian's deft hands. Soon her hair was a mass of creamy lather. "And now if you please...." Victoria bent forward over the basin. Water streamed over her hair and gurgled down the waste pipe. Suddenly her nose was assailed by a sweet rather sickly smell that she associated vaguely with hospitals. A wet saturated pad was clasped firmly over her nose and mouth. She struggled wildly, twisting and turning, but an iron grip kept the pad in place. She began to suffocate, her head reeled dizzily, a roaring sound came in her ears.... And after that blackness, deep and profound. ## Eighteen When Victoria regained consciousness, it was with a sense of an immense passage of time. Confused memories stirred in her—jolting in a car—high jabbering and quarrelling in Arabic—lights that flashed into her eyes—a horrible attack of nausea—then vaguely she remembered lying on a bed and someone lifting her arm—the sharp agonizing prick of a needle—then more confused dreams and darkness and behind it a mounting sense of urgency.... Now at last, dimly, she was herself—Victoria Jones...And something had happened to Victoria Jones—a long time ago—months—perhaps years...after all, perhaps only days. Babylon—sunshine—dust—hair—Catherine. Catherine, of course, smiling, her eyes sly under the sausage curls—Catherine had taken her to have her hair shampooed and then—what had happened? That horrible smell—she could still smell it—nauseating—chloroform, of course. They had chloroformed her and taken her—where? Cautiously Victoria tried to sit up. She seemed to be lying on a bed—a very hard bed—her head ached and felt dizzy—she was still drowsy, horribly drowsy...that prick, the prick of a hypodermic, they had been drugging her...she was still half-drugged. Well, anyway they hadn't killed her. (Why not?) So that was all right. The best thing, thought the still half-drugged Victoria, is to go to sleep. And promptly did so. When next she awakened she felt much more clearheaded. It was daylight now and she could see more clearly where she was. She was in a small but very high room, distempered a depressing pale bluish grey. The floor was of beaten earth. The only furniture in the room seemed to be the bed on which she was lying with a dirty rug thrown over her and a rickety table with a cracked enamel basin on it and a zinc bucket underneath it. There was a window with a kind of wooden latticework outside it. Victoria got gingerly off the bed, feeling distinctly headachy and queer, and approached the window. She could see through the latticework quite plainly and what she saw was a garden with palm trees beyond it. The garden was quite a pleasant one by Eastern standards though it would have been looked down on by an English suburban householder. It had a lot of bright orange marigolds in it, and some dusty eucalyptus trees and some rather wispy tamarisks. A small child with a face tattooed in blue, and a lot of bangles on, was tumbling about with a ball and singing in a high nasal whine rather like distant bagpipes. Victoria next turned her attention to the door, which was large and massive. Without much hope she went to it and tried it. The door was locked. Victoria went back and sat on the side of the bed. Where was she? Not in Baghdad, that was certain. And what was she going to do next? It struck her after a minute or two that the last question did not really apply. What was more to the point was what was someone else going to do to her? With an uneasy feeling in the pit of the stomach she remembered Mr. Dakin's admonition to tell all she knew. But perhaps they had already got all that out of her whilst she was under the drug. Still—Victoria returned to this one point with determined cheerfulness—she was alive. If she could manage to keep alive until Edward found her—what would Edward do when he found she had vanished? Would he go to Mr. Dakin? Would he play a lone hand? Would he put the fear of the Lord into Catherine and force her to tell? Would he suspect Catherine at all? The more Victoria tried to conjure up a reassuring picture of Edward in action, the more the image of Edward faded and became a kind of faceless abstraction. How clever was Edward? That was really what it amounted to. Edward was adorable. Edward had glamour. But had Edward got brains? Because clearly, in her present predicament, brains were going to be needed. Mr. Dakin, now, would have the necessary brains. But would he have the impetus? Or would he merely cross off her name from a mental ledger, scoring it through, and writing after it a neat RIP. After all, to Mr. Dakin she was merely one of a crowd. They took their chance, and if luck failed, it was just too bad. No, she didn't see Mr. Dakin staging a rescue. After all, he had warned her. And Dr. Rathbone had warned her. (Warned her or threatened her?) And on her refusing to be threatened there had not been much delay in carrying out the threat.... But I'm still alive, repeated Victoria, determined to look upon the bright side of things. Footsteps approached outside and there was the grinding of an outsize key in a rusty luck. The door staggered on its hinges and flew open. In the aperture appeared an Arab. He carried an old tin tray on which were dishes. He appeared to be in good spirits, grinned broadly, uttered some incomprehensible remarks in Arabic, finally deposited the tray, opened his mouth and pointed down his throat and departed relocking the door behind him. Victoria approached the tray with interest. There was a large bowl of rice, something that looked like rolled up cabbage leaves and a large flap of Arab bread. Also a jug of water and a glass. Victoria started by drinking a large glass of water and then fell to on the rice, the bread, and the cabbage leaves which were full of rather peculiar tasting chopped meat. When she had finished everything on the tray she felt a good deal better. She tried her best to think things out clearly. She had been chloroformed and kidnapped. How long ago? As to that, she had only the foggiest idea. From drowsy memories of sleeping and waking she judged that it was some days ago. She had been taken out of Baghdad—where? There again, she had no means of knowing. Owing to her ignorance of Arabic, it was not even possible to ask questions. She could not find out a place, or a name, or a date. Several hours of acute boredom followed. That evening her gaoler reappeared with another tray of food. With him this time came a couple of women. They were in rusty black with their faces hidden. They did not come into the room but stood just outside the door. One had a baby in her arms. They stood there and giggled. Through the thinness of the veil their eyes, she felt, were appraising her. It was exciting to them and highly humorous to have a European woman imprisoned here. Victoria spoke to them in English and in French, but got only giggles in reply. It was queer, she thought, to be unable to communicate with her own sex. She said slowly and with difficulty one of the few phrases she had picked up: "El hamdu lillah." Its utterance was rewarded by a delighted spate of Arabic. They nodded their heads vigorously. Victoria moved towards them, but quickly the Arab servant or whatever he was, stepped back and barred her way. He motioned the two women back and went out himself, closing and locking the door again. Before he did so, he uttered one word several times over. "Bukra—Bukra..." It was a word Victoria had heard before. It meant tomorrow. Victoria sat down on her bed to think things over. Tomorrow? Tomorrow, someone was coming or something was going to happen. Tomorrow her imprisonment would end (or wouldn't it?)—or if it did end, she herself might end too! Taking all things together, Victoria didn't much care for the idea of tomorrow. She felt instinctively that it would be much better if by tomorrow she was somewhere else. But was that possible? For the first time, she gave this problem full attention. She went first to the door and examined it. Certainly nothing doing there. This wasn't the kind of lock you picked with a hairpin—if indeed she would have been capable of picking any lock with a hairpin, which she very much doubted. There remained the window. The window, she soon found, was a much more hopeful proposition. The wooden latticework that screened it was in the final stages of decrepitude. Granted she could break away sufficient of the rotten woodwork to force herself through, she could hardly do so without a good deal of noise which could not fail to attract attention. Moreover, since the room in which she was confined was on an upper floor, it meant either fashioning a rope of some kind or else jumping with every likelihood of a sprained ankle or other injury. In books, thought Victoria, you make a rope of strips of bedclothes. She looked doubtfully at the thick cotton quilt and ragged blanket. Neither of them seemed at all suitable to her purpose. She had nothing with which to cut the quilt in strips, and though she could probably tear the blanket, its condition of rottenness would preclude any possibility of trusting her weight to it. "Damn," said Victoria aloud. She was more and more enamoured of the idea of escape. As far as she could judge, her gaolers were people of very simple mentality to whom the mere fact that she was locked in a room spelt finality. They would not be expecting her to escape for the simple reason that she was a prisoner and could not. Whoever had used the hypodermic on her and presumably brought her here was not now on the premises—of that she was sure. He or she or they were expected "bukra." They had left her in some remote spot in the guardianship of simple folk who would obey instructions but who would not appreciate subtleties, and who were not, presumably, alive to the inventive faculties of a European young woman in imminent fear of extinction. "I'm getting out of here somehow," said Victoria to herself. She approached the table and helped herself to the new supply of food. She might as well keep her strength up. There was rice again and some oranges, and some bits of meat in a bright orange sauce. Victoria ate everything and then had a drink of water. As she replaced the jug on the table, the table tilted slightly and some of the water went on the floor. The floor in that particular spot at once became a small puddle of liquid mud. Looking at it, an idea stirred in Miss Victoria Jones' always fertile brain. The question was, had the key been left in the lock on the outside of the door? The sun was setting now. Very soon it would be dark. Victoria went over to the door, knelt down and peered into the immense keyhole. She could see no light. Now what she needed was something to prod with—a pencil or the end of a fountain pen. How tiresome that her handbag had been taken away. She looked round the room frowning. The only article of cutlery on the table was a large spoon. That was no good for her immediate need, though it might come in handy later. Victoria sat down to puzzle and contrive. Presently she uttered an exclamation, took off her shoe and managed to pull out the inner leather sole. She rolled this up tightly. It was reasonably stiff. She went back to the door, squatted down and poked vigorously through the keyhole. Fortunately the immense key fitted loosely into the lock. After three or four minutes it responded to the efforts and fell out of the door on the outside. It made little noise falling on the earthen floor. Now, Victoria thought, I must hurry, before the light goes altogether. She fetched the jug of water and poured a little carefully on a spot at the bottom of the door frame as near as possible to where she judged the key had fallen. Then, with the spoon and her fingers she scooped and scrabbled in the muddy patch that resulted. Little by little, with fresh applications of water from the jug, she scooped out a low trough under the door. Lying down she tried to peer through it but it wasn't easy to see anything. Rolling up her sleeves, she found she could get her hand and part of her arm under the door. She felt about with exploratory fingers and finally the tip of one finger touched something metallic. She had located the key, but she was unable to get her arm far enough to claw it nearer. Her next procedure was to detach the safety-pin which was holding up a torn shoulder strap. Bending it into a hook, she embedded it in a wedge of Arab bread and lay down again to fish. Just as she was ready to cry with vexation the hooked safety pin caught in the key and she was able to draw it within reach of her fingers and then to pull it through the muddy trough to her side of the door. Victoria sat back on her heels full of admiration for her own ingenuity. Grasping the key in her muddy hand, she got up and fitted it into the lock. She waited for a moment when there was a good chorus of pi-dogs barking in the near neighbourhood, and turned it. The door yielded to her push and swung open a little way. Victoria peered cautiously through the aperture. The door gave onto another small room with an open door at the end of it. Victoria waited a moment, then tiptoed out and across. This outside room had large gaping holes in the roof and one or two in the floor. The door at the end gave on the top of a flight of rough mudbrick stairs affixed to the side of the house, and which led down to the garden. That was all Victoria wanted to see. She tiptoed back to her own place of imprisonment. There was little likelihood that anyone would come near her again tonight. She would wait until it was dark and the village or town more or less settled down to sleep and then she would go. One other thing she noted. A torn shapeless bit of black material lay in a heap near the outside door. It was, she thought, an old aba and would come in useful to cover her Western clothes. How long she waited Victoria did not know. It seemed to her interminable hours. Yet at last the various noises of local humankind died down. The far-off blaring of a gramophone or phonograph stopped its Arab songs, the raucous voices and the spitting ceased, and there was no more far-off women's high-pitched squealing laughter; no children's crying. At last she heard only a far-off howling noise which she took to be jackals, and the intermittent bursts of dog barking which she knew would continue through the night. "Well, here goes!" said Victoria and stood up. After a moments cogitation she locked the door of her prison on the outside and left the key in the lock. Then she felt her way across the outer room, picked up the black heap of material and came out at the top of the mud stairs. There was a moon, but it was still low in the sky. It gave sufficient light for Victoria to see her way. She crept down the stairs, then paused about four steps from the bottom. She was level here with the mudwall that enclosed the garden. If she continued down the stairs she would have to pass along the side of the house. She could hear snoring from the downstairs rooms. If she went along the top of the wall it might be better. The wall was sufficiently thick to walk along. She chose the latter course and went swiftly and somewhat precariously to where the wall turned at right angles. Here, outside, was what seemed to be a palm garden, and at one point the wall was crumbling away. Victoria found her way there, partly jumped and partly slithered down and a few moments later was threading her way through palm trees towards a gap in the far wall. She came out upon a narrow street of a primitive nature, too small for the passage of a car, but suitable for donkeys. It ran between mudbrick walls. Victoria sped along it as fast as she could. Now dogs began to bark furiously. Two fawn-coloured pi-dogs came snarlingly out of a doorway at her. Victoria picked up a handful of rubble and brick and shied a piece at them. They yelped and ran away. Victoria sped on. She rounded a corner and came into what was evidently the main street. Narrow and heavily rutted, it ran through a village of mudbrick houses, uniformly pale in the moonlight. Palms peeped over walls, dogs snarled and barked. Victoria took a deep breath and ran. Dogs continued to bark, but no human being took any interest in this possible night marauder. Soon she came out on a wide space with a muddy stream and a decrepit humpbacked bridge over it. Beyond, the road, or track, lay heading towards what seemed infinite space. Victoria continued to run until she was out of breath. The village was well behind her now. The moon was high in the sky. To the left and the right and in front of her, was bare stony ground, uncultivated and without a sign of human habitation. It looked flat but was really faintly contoured. It had, as far as Victoria could see, no landmarks and, she had no idea in what direction the track led. She was not learned enough in the stars to know even towards what point of the compass she was heading. There was something subtly terrifying in this large empty waste, but it was impossible to turn back. She could only go on. Pausing a few moments to get her breath back, and assuring herself by looking back over her shoulder, that her flight had not been discovered, she set forth, walking a steady three and a half miles an hour towards the unknown. Dawn came at last to find Victoria weary, footsore, and almost on the verge of hysteria. By noting the light in the sky she ascertained that she was heading roughly southwest, but since she did not know where she was, that knowledge was of little use to her. A little to the side of the road ahead of her was a kind of small compact hill or knob. Victoria left the track and made her way to the knob, the sides of which were quite steep, and climbed up to the top of it. Here she was able to take a survey of the country all around and her feeling of meaningless panic returned. For everywhere there was nothing...The scene was beautiful in the early morning light. The ground and horizon shimmered with faint pastel shades of apricot and cream and pink on which were patterns of shadows. It was beautiful but frightening. "I know what it means now," thought Victoria, "when anyone says they are alone in the world...." There was a little faint scrubby grass in dark patches here and there and some dry thorn. But otherwise there was no cultivation, and no signs of life. There was only Victoria Jones. Of the village from which she had fled there were no signs either. The road along which she had come stretched back apparently into an infinity of waste. It seemed incredible to Victoria that she could have walked so far as to have lost the village altogether from view. For a moment she had a panic-stricken yearning to go back. Somehow or other to regain touch with humankind.... Then she took herself in hand. She had meant to escape, and had escaped but her troubles were not likely to be at an end simply because she had placed several miles between her and her gaolers. A car, however old and rickety, would make short work of those miles. As soon as her escape was discovered, someone would come in search of her. And how on earth was she going to take cover or hide. There simply wasn't anywhere to hide. She still carried the ragged black aba she had snatched up. Now tentatively she wrapped herself in its folds, pulling it down over her face. She had no idea what she looked like because she had no mirror with her. If she took off her European shoes and stockings and shuffled along with bare feet, she might possibly evade detection. A virtuously veiled Arab woman, however ragged and poor, had, she knew, all possible immunity. It would be the height of bad manners for any man to address her. But would that disguise fool Western eyes who might be out in a car looking for her. At any rate, it was the only chance. She was much too tired to go on at present. She was terribly thirsty too, but it was impossible to do anything about that. The best thing, she decided, was to lie down on the side of this hillock. She could hear a car coming and if she kept herself flattened into a little ravine which had eroded down the side of the hillock, she could get some idea of who was in the car. She could take cover by moving round the back of the hillock so as to keep out of sight of the road. On the other hand, what she badly needed was to get back to civilization, and the only means, as far as she could see, was to stop a car with Europeans in it and ask for a lift. But she must be sure that the Europeans were the right Europeans. And how on earth was she to make sure of that? Worrying over this point, Victoria quite unexpectedly fell asleep, worn out by her long trudge and her general exhaustion. When she awoke the sun was directly overhead. She felt hot and stiff and dizzy and her thirst was now a raging torment. Victoria gave a groan, but as the groan issued from her dry sore lips, she suddenly stiffened and listened. She heard faintly but distinctly the sound of a car. Very cautiously she raised her head. The car was not coming from the direction of the village but towards it. That meant that it was not in pursuit. It was as yet a small black dot far-off on the track. Still lying as much concealed as she could, Victoria watched it come nearer. How she wished she had field glasses with her. It disappeared for a few minutes in a depression of landscape, then reappeared surmounting a rise not very far away. There was an Arab driver and beside him was a man in European dress. "Now," thought Victoria, "I've got to decide." Was this her chance? Should she run down to the road and hail the car to stop? Just as she was getting ready to do so, a sudden qualm stopped her. Suppose, just suppose, that this was the Enemy? After all, how could she tell? The track was certainly a very deserted one. No other car had passed. No lorry. Not even a train of donkeys. This car was making, perhaps for the village she had left last night.... What should she do? It was a horrible decision to have to make at a moment's notice. If it was the Enemy, it was the end. But if it wasn't the Enemy, it might be her only hope of survival. Because if she went on wandering about, she would probably die of thirst and exposure. What should she do? And as she crouched paralysed with indecision, the note of the approaching car changed. It slackened speed, then, swerving, it came off the road and across the stony ground towards the mound on which she squatted. It had seen her! It was looking for her! Victoria slithered down the gully and crawled round the back of the mound away from the approaching car. She heard it come to a stop and the bang of the door as someone got out. Then somebody said something in Arabic. After that, nothing happened. Suddenly, without any warning, a man came into view. He was walking round the mound, about halfway up it. His eyes were bent on the ground and from time to time he stooped and picked something up. Whatever he was looking for, it did not seem to be a girl called Victoria Jones. Moreover, he was unmistakably an Englishman. With an exclamation of relief Victoria struggled to her feet and came towards him. He lifted his head and stared in surprise. "Oh please," said Victoria. "I'm so glad you've come." He still stared. "Who on earth," he began. "Are you English? But—" With a spurt of laughter, Victoria cast away the enveloping aba. "Of course I'm English," she said. "And please, can you take me back to Baghdad?" "I'm not going to Baghdad. I've just come from it. But what on earth are you doing all alone out here in the middle of the desert?" "I was kidnapped," said Victoria breathlessly. "I went to have my hair shampooed and they gave me chloroform. And when I woke up I was in an Arab house in a village over there." She gesticulated towards the horizon: "In Mandali?" "I don't know its name. I escaped last night. I walked all through the night and then I hid behind this hill in case you were an Enemy." Her rescuer was staring at her with a very odd expression on his face. He was a man of about thirty-five, fair-haired, with a somewhat supercilious expression. His speech was academic and precise. He now put on a pair of pince-nez and stared at her through them with an expression of distaste. Victoria realized that this man did not believe a word of what she was saying. She was immediately moved to furious indignation. "It's perfectly true," she said. "Every word of it!" The stranger looked more disbelieving than ever. "Very remarkable," he said in a cold tone. Despair seized Victoria. How unfair it was that whilst she could always make a lie sound plausible, in recitals of stark truth she lacked the power to make herself believed. Actual facts she told badly and without conviction. "And if you haven't got anything to drink with you, I shall die of thirst," she said. "I'm going to die of thirst anyway, if you leave me here and go on without me." "Naturally I shouldn't dream of doing that," said the stranger stiffly. "It is most unsuitable for an Englishwoman to be wandering about alone in the wilds. Dear me, your lips are quite cracked...Abdul." "Sahib?" The driver appeared round the side of the mound. On receiving instructions in Arabic he ran off towards the car to return shortly with a large Thermos flask and a bakelite cup. Victoria drank water avidly. "Oo!" she said. "That's better." "My name's Richard Baker," said the Englishman. Victoria responded. "I'm Victoria Jones," she said. And then, in an effort to recover lost ground and to replace the disbelief she saw by a respectful attention, she added: "Pauncefoot Jones. I'm joining my uncle, Dr. Pauncefoot Jones on his excavation. "What an extraordinary coincidence," said Baker, staring at her surprisedly. "I'm on my way to the Dig myself. It's only about fifteen miles from here. I'm just the right person to have rescued you, aren't I?" To say that Victoria was taken aback is to put it mildly. She was completely flabbergasted. So much so that she was quite incapable of saying a word of any kind. Meekly and in silence she followed Richard to the car and got in. "I suppose you're the anthropologist," said Richard, as he settled her in the back seat and removed various impedimenta. "I heard you were coming out, but I didn't expect you so early in the season." He stood for a moment sorting through various potsherds which he removed from his pockets and which, Victoria now realized, were what he had been picking up from the surface of the mound. "Likely looking little Tell," he said, gesturing towards the mound. "But nothing out of the way on it so far as I can see. Late Assyrian ware mostly—a little Parthian, some quite good ring bases of the Kassite period." He smiled as he added, "I'm glad to see that in spite of your troubles your archaeological instincts led you to examine a Tell." Victoria opened her mouth and then shut it again. The driver let in the clutch and they started off. What, after all, could she say? True, she would be unmasked as soon as they reached the Expedition House—but it would be infinitely better to be unmasked there and confess penitence for her inventions, than it would be to confess to Mr. Richard Baker in the middle of nowhere. The worst they could do to her would be to send her into Baghdad. And, anyway, thought Victoria, incorrigible as ever, perhaps before I get there I shall have thought of something. Her busy imagination got to work forthwith. A lapse of memory? She had travelled out with a girl who had asked her to—no, really, as far as she could see, she would have to make a complete breast of it. But she infinitely preferred making a clean breast of it to Dr. Pauncefoot Jones whatever kind of man he was, than to Mr. Richard Baker, with his supercilious way of lifting his eyebrows and his obvious disbelief of the exact and true story she had told him. "We don't go right into Mandali," said Mr. Baker, turning in the front seat. "We branch off from the road into the desert about a mile farther on. A bit difficult to hit the exact spot sometimes with no particular landmarks." Presently he said something to Abdul and the car turned sharply off the track and made straight for the desert. With no particular landmarks to guide him, as far as Victoria could see, Richard Baker directed Abdul with gestures—the car now to the right—now to the left. Presently Richard gave an exclamation of satisfaction. "On the right track now," he said. Victoria could not see any track at all. But presently she did catch sight every now and again of faintly marked tyre tracks. Once they crossed a slightly more clearly marked track and when they did so, Richard made an exclamation and ordered Abdul to stop. "Here's an interesting sight for you," he said to Victoria. "Since you're new to this country you won't have seen it before." Two men were advancing towards the car along the cross track. One man carried a short wooden bench on his back, the other a big wooden object about the size of an upright piano. Richard hailed them, they greeted him with every sign of pleasure. Richard produced cigarettes and a cheerful party spirit seemed to be developing. Then Richard turned to her. "Fond of the cinema? Then you shall see a performance." He spoke to the two men and they smiled with pleasure. They set up the bench and motioned to Victoria and Richard to sit on it. Then they set up the round contrivance on a stand of some kind. It had two eye-holes in it and as she looked at it, Victoria cried: "It's like things on piers. What the butler saw." "That's it," said Richard. "It's a primitive form of same." Victoria applied her eyes to the glass-fronted peephole, one man began slowly to turn a crank or handle, and the other began a monotonous kind of chant. "What is he saying?" Victoria asked. Richard translated as the singsong chant continued: "Draw near and prepare yourself for much wonder and delight. Prepare to behold the wonders of antiquity." A crudely coloured picture of Negroes reaping wheat swam into Victoria's gaze. "Fellahin in America," announced Richard, translating. Then came: "The wife of the great Shah of the Western world," and the Empress Eugénie simpered and fingered a long ringlet. A picture of the King's Palace in Montenegro, another of the Great Exhibition. An odd and varied collection of pictures followed each other, all completely unrelated and sometimes announced in the strangest terms. The Prince Consort, Disraeli, Norwegian Fjords and Skaters in Switzerland completed this strange glimpse of olden far-off days. The showman ended his exposition with the following words: "And so we bring to you the wonders and marvels of antiquity in other lands and far-off places. Let your donation be generous to match the marvels you have seen, for all these things are true." It was over. Victoria beamed with delight. "That really was marvellous!" she said. "I wouldn't have believed it." The proprietors of the travelling cinema were smiling proudly. Victoria got up from the bench and Richard who was sitting on the other end of it was thrown to the ground in a somewhat undignified posture. Victoria apologized but was not ill pleased. Richard rewarded the cinema men and with courteous farewells and expressions of concern for each other's welfare, and invoking the blessing of God on each other, they parted company. Richard and Victoria got into the car again and the men trudged away into the desert. "Where are they going?" asked Victoria. "They travel all over the country. I met them first in Transjordan coming up the road from the Dead Sea to Amman. Actually they're bound now for Kerbela, going of course by unfrequented routes so as to give shows in remote villages." "Perhaps someone will give them a lift?" Richard laughed. "They probably wouldn't take it. I offered an old man a lift once who was walking from Basrah to Baghdad. I asked him how long he expected to be and he said a couple of months. I told him to get in and he would be there late that evening, but he thanked me and said no. Two months ahead would suit him just as well. Time doesn't mean anything out here. Once one gets that into one's head, one finds a curious satisfaction in it." "Yes. I can imagine that." "Arabs find our Western impatience for doing things quickly extraordinarily hard to understand, and our habit of coming straight to the point in conversation strikes them as extremely ill-mannered. You should always sit round and offer general observations for about an hour—or if you prefer it, you need not speak at all." "Rather odd if we did that in offices in London. One would waste a lot of time." "Yes, but we're back again at the question: What is time? And what is waste?" Victoria meditated on these points. The car still appeared to be proceeding to nowhere with the utmost confidence. "Where is this place?" she said at last. "Tell Aswad? Well out in the middle of the desert. You'll see the Ziggurat very shortly now. In the meantime, look over to your left. There—where I'm pointing." "Are they clouds?" asked Victoria. "They can't be mountains." "Yes, they are. The snowcapped mountains of Kurdistan. You can only see them when it's very clear." A dreamlike feeling of contentment came over Victoria. If only she could drive on like this forever. If only she wasn't such a miserable liar. She shrank like a child at the thought of the unpleasant denouement ahead of her. What would Dr. Pauncefoot Jones be like? Tall, with a long grey beard, and a fierce frown. Never mind, however annoyed Dr. Pauncefoot Jones might be, she had circumvented Catherine and the Olive Branch and Dr. Rathbone. "There you are," said Richard. He pointed ahead. Victoria made out a kind of pimple on the far horizon. "It looks miles away." "Oh no, it's only a few miles now. You'll see." And indeed the pimple developed with astonishing rapidity into first a blob and then a hill and finally into a large and impressive Tell. On one side of it was a long sprawling building of mudbrick. "The Expedition House," said Richard. They drew up with a flourish amidst the barking of dogs. White robed servants rushed out to greet them, beaming with smiles. After an interchange of greetings, Richard said: "Apparently they weren't expecting you so soon. But they'll get your bed made. And they'll take you in hot water at once. I expect you'd like to have a wash and a rest? Dr. Pauncefoot Jones is up on the Tell. I'm going up to him. Ibrahim will look after you." He strode away and Victoria followed the smiling Ibrahim into the house. It seemed dark inside at first after coming in out of the sun. They passed through a living room with some big tables and a few battered armchairs and she was then led round a courtyard and into a small room with one tiny window. It held a bed, a rough chest of drawers and a table with a jug and basin on it and a chair. Ibrahim smiled and nodded and brought her a large jug of rather muddy-looking hot water and a rough towel. Then, with an apologetic smile, he returned with a small looking glass which he carefully affixed upon a nail on the wall. Victoria was thankful to have the chance of a wash. She was just beginning to realize how utterly weary and worn out she was and how very much encrusted with grime. "I suppose I look simply frightful," she said to herself and approached the looking glass. For some moments she stared at her reflection uncomprehendingly. This wasn't her—this wasn't Victoria Jones. And then she realized that, though her features were the small neat features of Victoria Jones, her hair was now platinum blonde! ## Nineteen I Richard found Dr. Pauncefoot Jones in the excavations squatting by the side of his foreman and tapping gently with a small pick at a section of wall. Dr. Pauncefoot Jones greeted his colleague in a matter-of-fact manner. "Hallo Richard my boy, so you've turned up. I had an idea you were arriving on Tuesday. I don't know why." "This is Tuesday," said Richard. "Is it really now?" said Dr. Pauncefoot Jones without interest. "Just come down here and see what you think of this. Perfectly good walls coming out already and we're only down three feet. Seems to me there are a few traces of paint here. Come and see what you think. It looks very promising to me." Richard leapt down into the trench and the two archaeologists enjoyed themselves in a highly technical manner for about a quarter of an hour. "By the way," said Richard, "I've brought a girl." "Oh have you? What sort of girl?" "She says she's your niece." "My niece?" Dr. Pauncefoot Jones brought his mind back with a struggle from his contemplation of mudbrick walls. "I don't think I have a niece," he said doubtfully, as though he might have had one and forgotten about her. "She's coming out to work with you here, I gathered." "Oh." Dr. Pauncefoot Jones' face cleared. "Of course. That will be Veronica." "Victoria, I think she said." "Yes, yes, Victoria. Emerson wrote to me about her from Cambridge. A very able girl, I understand. An anthropologist. Can't think why anyone wants to be an anthropologist, can you?" "I heard you had some anthropologist girl coming out." "There's nothing in her line so far. Of course we're only just beginning. Actually I understood she wasn't coming out for another fortnight or so, but I didn't read her letter very carefully, and then I mislaid it, so I didn't really remember what she said. My wife arrives next week—or the week after—now what have I done with her letter?—and I rather thought Venetia was coming out with her—but of course I may have got it all wrong. Well, well, I dare say we can make her useful. There's a lot of pottery coming up." "There's nothing odd about her, is there?" "Odd?" Dr. Pauncefoot Jones peered at him. "In what way?" "Well, she hasn't had a nervous breakdown or anything?" "Emerson did say, I remember, that she had been working very hard. Diploma or degree or something, but I don't think he said anything about a breakdown. Why?" "Well, I picked up her up at the side of the road, wandering about all by herself. It was on that little Tell as a matter of fact that you come to about a mile before you turn off the road—" "I remember," said Dr. Pauncefoot Jones. "You know I once picked up a bit of Nuzu ware on that Tell. Extraordinary really, to find it so far south." Richard refused to be diverted to archaeological topics and went on firmly: "She told me the most extraordinary story. Said she'd gone to have her hair shampooed, and they chloroformed her and kidnapped her and carried her off to Mandali and imprisoned her in a house and she'd escaped in the middle of the night—the most preposterous rigmarole you ever heard." Dr. Pauncefoot Jones shook his head. "Doesn't sound at all probable," he said. "Country's perfectly quiet and well-policed. It's never been safer." "Exactly. She'd obviously made the whole thing up. That's why I asked if she'd had a breakdown. She must be one of those hysterical girls who say curates are in love with them, or that doctors assault them. She may give us a lot of trouble." "Oh, I expect she'll calm down," said Dr. Pauncefoot Jones optimistically. "Where is she now?" "I left her to have a wash and brush up." He hesitated. "She hasn't got any luggage of any kind with her." "Hasn't she? That really is awkward. You don't think she'll expect me to lend her pyjamas? I've only got two pairs and one of them is badly torn." "She'll have to do the best she can until the lorry goes in next week. I must say I wonder what she can have been up to—all alone and out in the blue." "Girls are amazing nowadays," said Dr. Pauncefoot Jones vaguely. "Turn up all over the place. Great nuisance when you want to get on with things. This place is far enough out, you'd think, to be free of visitors, but you'd be surprised how cars and people turn up when you can least do with them. Dear me, the men have stopped work. It must be lunchtime. We'd better go back to the house." II Victoria, waiting in some trepidation, found Dr. Pauncefoot Jones wildly far from her imaginings. He was a small rotund man with a semi-bald head and a twinkling eye. To her utter amazement he came towards her with outstretched hands. "Well, well, Venetia—I mean Victoria," he said. "This is quite a surprise. Got it into my head you weren't arriving until next month. But I'm delighted to see you. Delighted. How's Emerson? Not troubled too much by asthma, I hope?" Victoria rallied her scattered senses and said cautiously that the asthma hadn't been too bad. "Wraps his throat up too much," said Dr. Pauncefoot Jones. "Great mistake. I told him so. All these academic fellows who stick around universities get far too absorbed in their health. Shouldn't think about it—that's the way to keep fit. Well, I hope you'll settle down—my wife will be out next week—or the week after—she's been seedy, you know. I really must find her letter. Richard tells me your luggage has gone astray. How are you going to manage? Can't very well send the lorry in before next week?" "I expect I can manage until then," said Victoria. "In fact I shall have to." Dr. Pauncefoot Jones chuckled. "Richard and I can't lend you much. Toothbrush will be all right. There are a dozen of them in our stores—and cotton wool if that's any good to you and—let me see—talcum powder—and some spare socks and handkerchiefs. Not much else, I'm afraid." "I shall be all right," said Victoria and smiled happily. "No signs of a cemetery for you," Dr. Pauncefoot Jones warned her. "Some nice walls coming up—and quantities of potsherds from the far trenches. Might get some joins. We'll keep you busy somehow or other. I forget if you do photography?" "I know something about it," said Victoria cautiously, relieved by a mention of something that she did actually have a working knowledge of. "Good, good. You can develop negatives? I'm old-fashioned—use plates still. The darkroom is rather primitive. You young people who are used to all the gadgets, often find these primitive conditions rather upsetting." "I shan't mind," said Victoria. From the Expedition's stores, she selected a toothbrush, toothpaste, a sponge and some talcum powder. Her head was still in a whirl as she tried to understand exactly what her position was. Clearly she was being mistaken for a girl called Venetia Someone who was coming out to join the Expedition and who was an anthropologist. Victoria didn't even know what an anthropologist was. If there was a dictionary somewhere about, she must look it up. The other girl was presumably not arriving for at least another week. Very well then, for a week—or until such time as the car or lorry went into Baghdad, Victoria would be Venetia Thingummy, keeping her end up as best she could. She had no fears for Dr. Pauncefoot Jones who seemed delightfully vague, but she was nervous of Richard Baker. She disliked the speculative way he looked at her, and she had an idea that unless she was careful he would soon see through her pretences. Fortunately she had been, for a brief period, a secretary typist at the Archaeological Institute in London, and she had a smattering of phrases and odds and ends that would be useful now. But she would have to be very careful not to make any real slip. Luckily, thought Victoria, men were always so superior about women that any slip she did make would be treated less as a suspicious circumstance than as a proof of how ridiculously addlepated all women were! This interval would give her a respite which, she felt, she badly needed. For, from the point of view of the Olive Branch, her complete disappearance would be very disconcerting. She had escaped from her prison, but what had happened to her afterwards would be very hard to trace. Richard's car had not passed through Mandali so that nobody could guess she was now at Tell Aswad. No, from their point of view, Victoria would seem to have vanished into thin air. They might conclude, very possibly they would conclude, that she was dead. That she had strayed into the desert and died of exhaustion. Well, let them think so. Regrettably, of course, Edward would think so, too! Very well, Edward must lump it. In any case he would not have to lump it long. Just when he was torturing himself with remorse for having told her to cultivate Catherine's society—there she would be—suddenly restored to him—back from the dead—only a blonde instead of a brunette. That brought her back to the mystery of why They (whoever they were) had dyed her hair. There must, Victoria thought, be some reason—but she could not for the life of her understand what the reason could be. As it was, she was soon going to look very peculiar when her hair started growing out black at the roots. A phony platinum blonde, with no face powder and no lipstick! Could any girl be more unfortunately placed? Never mind, thought Victoria, I'm alive, aren't I? And I don't see at all why I shouldn't enjoy myself a good deal—at any rate for a week. It was really great fun to be on an archaeological expedition and see what it was like. If only she could keep her end up and not give herself away. She did not find her role altogether easy. References to people, to publications, to styles of architecture and categories of pottery had to be dealt with cautiously. Fortunately a good listener is always appreciated. Victoria was an excellent listener to the two men, and warily feeling her way, she began to pick up the jargon fairly easily. Surreptitiously, she read furiously when she was alone in the house. There was a good library of archaeological publications. Victoria was quick to pick up a smattering of the subject. Unexpectedly, she found the life quite enchanting. Tea brought to her in the early morning, then out on the Dig. Helping Richard with camera work. Piecing together and sticking up pottery. Watching the men at work, appreciating the skill and delicacy of the pick men—enjoying the songs and laughter of the little boys who ran to empty their baskets of earth on the dump. She mastered the periods, realized the various levels where digging was going on, and familiarized herself with the work of the previous season. The only thing she dreaded was that burials might turn up. Nothing that she read gave her any idea of what would be expected of her as a working anthropologist! "If we do get bones or a grave," said Victoria to herself, "I shall have to have a frightful cold—no, a severe bilious attack—and take to my bed." But no graves did appear. Instead, the walls of a palace were slowly excavated. Victoria was fascinated and had no occasion to show any aptitude or special skill. Richard Baker still looked at her quizzically sometimes and she sensed his unspoken criticism, but his manner was pleasant and friendly, and he was genuinely amused by her enthusiasm. "It's all new to you coming out from England," he said one day. "I remember how thrilled I was my first season." "How long ago was that?" He smiled. "Rather a long time. Fifteen—no, sixteen years ago." "You must know this country very well." "Oh, it's not only been here. Syria—and Persia as well." "You talk Arabic very well, don't you. If you were dressed as one could you pass as an Arab?" He shook his head. "Oh no—that takes some doing. I doubt if any Englishman has ever been able to pass as an Arab—for any length of time, that is." "Lawrence?" "I don't think Lawrence ever passed as an Arab. No, the only man I know who is practically indistinguishable from the native product is a fellow who was actually born out in these parts. His father was Consul at Kashgar and other wild spots. He talked all kinds of outlandish dialects as a child and, I believe, kept them up later." "What happened to him?" "I lost sight of him after we left school. We were at school together. Fakir, we used to call him, because he could sit perfectly still and go into a queer sort of trance. I don't know what he's doing now—though actually I could make a pretty good guess." "You never saw him after school?" "Strangely enough, I ran into him only the other day—at Basrah, it was. Rather a queer business altogether." "Queer?" "Yes. I didn't recognize him. He was got up as an Arab, keffiyah and striped robe and an old army coat. He had a string of those amber beads they carry sometimes and he was clicking it through his fingers in the orthodox way—only, you see, he was actually using army code. Morse. He was clicking out a message—to me!" "What did it say?" "My name—or nickname, rather—and his, and then a signal to stand by, expecting trouble." "And was there trouble?" "Yes. As he got up and started out of the door, a quiet inconspicuous commercial traveller sort of fellow tugged out a revolver. I knocked his arm up—and Carmichael got away. "Carmichael?" He switched his head round quickly at her tone. "That was his real name. Why—do you know him?" Victoria thought to herself—How odd it would sound if I said: "He died in my bed." "Yes," she said slowly. "I knew him." "Knew him? Why—is he—" Victoria nodded. "Yes," she said. "He's dead." "When did he die?" "In Baghdad. In the Tio Hotel." She added quickly, "It was—hushed up. Nobody knows." He nodded his head slowly. "I see. It was that kind of business. But you—" He looked at her. "How did you know?" "I got mixed up in it—by accident." He gave her a long considering look. Victoria asked suddenly: "Your nickname at school wasn't Lucifer, was it?" He looked surprised. "Lucifer, no? I was called Owl—because I always had to wear shiny glasses." "You don't know anyone who is called Lucifer—in Basrah?" Richard shook his head. "Lucifer, Son of the Morning—the fallen Angel." He added: "Or an old-fashioned wax match. Its merit if I remember rightly, was that it didn't go out in a wind." He watched her closely as he spoke, but Victoria was frowning. "I wish you'd tell me," she said presently, "exactly what happened at Basrah." "I have told you." "No. I mean where were you when all this occurred?" "Oh I see. Actually it was in the waiting room of the Consulate. I was waiting to see Clayton, the Consul." "And who else was there? This commercial traveller person and Carmichael? Anyone else?" "There were a couple of others, a thin dark Frenchman or Syrian, and an old man—a Persian, I should say." "And the commercial traveller got the revolver out and you stopped him, and Carmichael got out—how?" "He turned first towards the Consul's office. It's at the other end of a passage with a garden—" She interrupted. "I know. I stayed there for a day or two. As a matter of fact, it was just after you left." "It was, was it?" Once again he watched her narrowly—but Victoria was unaware of it. She was seeing the long passage at the Consulate, but with the door open at the other end—opening on to green trees and sunlight. "Well, as I was saying, Carmichael headed that way first. Then he wheeled round and dashed the other way into the street. That's the last I saw of him." "What about the commercial traveller?" Richard shrugged his shoulders. "I understand he told some garbled story about having been attacked and robbed by a man the night before and fancying he had recognized his assailant in the Arab in the Consulate. I didn't hear much more about it because I flew on to Kuwait." "Who was staying at the Consulate just then?" Victoria asked. "A fellow called Crosbie—one of the oil people. Nobody else. Oh yes, I believe there was someone else down from Baghdad, but I didn't meet him. Can't remember his name." "Crosbie," thought Victoria. She remembered Captain Crosbie, his short stocky figure, his staccato conversation. A very ordinary person. A decent soul without much finesse about him. And Crosbie had been back in Baghdad the night when Carmichael came to the Tio. Could it be because he had seen Crosbie at the other end of the passage, silhouetted against the sunlight, that Carmichael had turned so suddenly and made for the street instead of attempting to reach the Consul General's office? She had been thinking this out in some absorption. She started rather guiltily when she looked up to find Richard Baker watching her with close attention. "Why do you want to know all this?" he asked. "I'm just interested." "Any more questions?" Victoria asked: "Do you know anybody called Lefarge?" "No—I can't say I do. Man or woman?" "I don't know." She was wondering about Crosbie. Crosbie? Lucifer? Did Lucifer equal Crosbie? III That evening, when Victoria had said good night to the two men and gone to bed, Richard said to Dr. Pauncefoot Jones: "I wonder if I might have a look at that letter from Emerson. I'd like to see just exactly what he said about this girl." "Of course, my dear fellow, of course. It's somewhere lying around. I made some notes on the back of it, I remember. He spoke very highly of Veronica, if I remember rightly—said she was terrifically keen. She seems to me a charming girl—quite charming. Very plucky the way she's made so little fuss about the loss of her luggage. Most girls would have insisted on being motored into Baghdad the very next day to buy a new outfit. She's what I call a sporting girl. By the way, how was it that she came to lose her luggage?" "She was chloroformed, kidnapped, and imprisoned in a native house," said Richard impassively. "Dear, dear, yes so you told me. I remember now. All most improbable. Reminds me—now what does it remind me of?—ah! yes, Elizabeth Canning, of course. You remember she turned up with a most impossible story after being missing a fortnight. Very interesting conflict of evidence—about some gypsies, if it's the right case I'm thinking of. And she was such a plain girl, it didn't seem likely there could be a man in the case. Now little Victoria—Veronica—I never can get her name right—she's a remarkably pretty little thing. Quite likely there is a man in her case." "She'd be better looking if she didn't dye her hair," said Richard drily. "Does she dye it? Indeed. How knowledgeable you are in these matters." "About Emerson's letter, sir—" "Of course—of course—I've no idea where I put it. But look anywhere you choose—I'm anxious to find it anyway because of those notes I made on the back—and a sketch of that coiled wire bead." ## Twenty On the following afternoon Dr. Pauncefoot Jones uttered a disgusted exclamation as the sound of a car came faintly to his ears. Presently he located it, winding across the desert towards the Tell. "Visitors," he said with venom. "At the worst possible moment, too. I want to superintend the cellulosing of that painted rosette on the northeast corner. Sure to be some idiots come out from Baghdad with a lot of social chatter and expecting to get shown all over the excavations." "This is where Victoria comes in useful," said Richard. "You hear, Victoria? It's up to you to do a personally conducted tour." "I shall probably say all the wrong things," said Victoria. "I'm really very inexperienced, you know." "I think you're doing very well indeed," said Richard pleasantly. "Those remarks you made this morning about plano convex bricks might have come straight out of Delongaz's book." Victoria changed colour slightly, and resolved to paraphrase her erudition more carefully. Sometimes the quizzical glance through the thick lenses made her uncomfortable. "I'll do my best," she said meekly. "We push all the odd jobs on to you," said Richard. Victoria smiled. Indeed her activities during the last five days surprised her not a little. She had developed plates with water filtered through cotton wool and by the light of a primitive dark lantern containing a candle which always went out at the most crucial moment. The darkroom table was a packing case and to work she had to crouch or kneel—the darkroom itself being as Richard remarked, a modern model of the famous medieval Little East. There would be more amenities in the season to come, Dr. Pauncefoot Jones assured her—but at the moment every penny was needed to pay workmen and get results. The baskets of broken potsherds had at first excited her astonished derision (though this she had been careful not to display). All these broken bits of coarse stuff—what was the good of them? Then as she found joins, stuck them and propped them up in boxes of sand, she began to take an interest. She learned to recognize shapes and types. And she came finally to try and reconstruct in her own mind just how and for what these vessels had been used some three thousand odd years ago. In the small area where some poor quality private houses had been dug, she pictured the houses as they had originally stood and the people who had lived in them with their wants and possessions and occupations, their hopes and their fears. Since Victoria had a lively imagination, a picture rose up easily enough in her mind. On a day when a small clay pot was found encased in a wall with a half-dozen gold earrings in it, she was enthralled. Probably the dowry of a daughter, Richard had said smiling. Dishes filled with grain, gold earrings saved up for a dowry, bone needles, querns and mortars, little figurines and amulets. All the everyday life and fears and hopes of a community of unimportant simple people. "That's what I find so fascinating," said Victoria to Richard. "You see, I always used to think that archaeology was just Royal graves and palaces. "Kings of Babylon," she added, with a strange little smile. "But what I like so much about all this is that it's the ordinary everyday people—people like me. My St. Anthony who finds things for me when I lose them—and a lucky china pig I've got—and an awfully nice mixing bowl, blue inside and white out, that I used to make cakes in. It got broken and the new one I bought wasn't a bit the same. I can understand why these people mended up their favourite bowls or dishes so carefully with bitumen. Life's all the same really, isn't it—then or now?" She was thinking of these things as she watched the visitors ascending the side of the Tell. Richard went to greet them, Victoria following behind him. They were two Frenchmen, interested in archaeology, who were making a tour through Syria and Iraq. After civil greetings, Victoria took them round the excavations, reciting parrot wise what was going on, but being unable to resist, being Victoria, adding sundry embellishments of her own, just, as she put it to herself, to make it more exciting. She noticed that the second man was a very bad colour, and that he dragged himself along without much interest. Presently he said, if Mademoiselle would excuse him, he would retire to the house. He had not felt well since early that morning—and the sun was making him worse. He departed in the direction of the Expedition House, and the other, in suitably lowered tones explained that, unfortunately, it was his estomac. The Baghdad tummy they called it, did they not? He should not really have come out today. The tour was completed, the Frenchman remained talking to Victoria, finally Fidos was called and Dr. Pauncefoot Jones, with a determined air of hospitality suggested the guests should have tea before departing. To this, however, the Frenchman demurred. They must not delay their departure until it was dark or they would never find the way. Richard Baker said immediately that this was quite right. The sick friend was retrieved from the house and the car rushed off at top speed. "I suppose that's just the beginning," grunted Dr. Pauncefoot Jones. "We shall have visitors every day now." He took a large flap of Arab bread and covered it thickly with apricot jam. Richard went to his room after tea. He had letters to answer, and others to write in preparation for going into Baghdad on the following day. Suddenly he frowned. Not a man of particular neatness to the outward view, he yet had a way of arranging his clothes and his papers that never varied. Now he saw at once that every drawer had been disturbed. It was not the servants, of that he was sure. It must be, then, that sick visitor who had made a pretext to go down to the house, had coolly ransacked through his belongings. Nothing was missing, he assured himself of that. His money was untouched. What, then, had they been looking for? His face grew grave as he considered the implications. He went to the Antika Room and looked into the drawer which held the seals and seal impressions. He gave a grim smile—nothing had been touched or removed. He went into the living room. Dr. Pauncefoot Jones was out in the courtyard with the foreman. Only Victoria was there, curled up with a book. Richard said, without preamble, "Somebody's been searching my room." Victoria looked up, astonished. "But why? And who?" "It wasn't you?" "Me?" Victoria was indignant. "Of course not? Why should I want to pry among your things?" He gave her a hard stare. Then he said: "It must have been that damned stranger—the one who shammed sick and came down to the house." "Did he steal something?" "No," said Richard. "Nothing was taken." "But why on earth should anyone—" Richard cut in to say: "I thought you might know that." "Me?" "Well, by your own account, rather odd things have happened to you." "Oh that—yes." Victoria looked rather startled. She said slowly: "But I don't see why they should search your room. You've got nothing to do with—" "With what?" Victoria did not answer for a moment or two. She seemed lost in thought. "I'm sorry," she said at last. "What did you say? I wasn't listening." Richard did not repeat his question. Instead he asked: "What are you reading?" "You don't have much choice of light fiction here. Tale of Two Cities, Pride and Prejudice and The Mill on the Floss. I'm reading the Tale of Two Cities." "Never read it before?" "Never. I always thought Dickens would be stuffy." "What an idea!" "I'm finding it most exciting." "Where have you got to?" He looked over her shoulder and read out: "And the knitting women count One." "I think she's awfully frightening," said Victoria. "Madame Defarge? Yes, a good character. Though whether you could keep a register of names in knitting has always seemed to me rather doubtful. But then, of course, I'm not a knitter." "Oh I think you could," said Victoria, considering the point. "Plain and purl—and fancy stitches—and the wrong stitch at intervals and dropped stiches. Yes—it could be done—camouflaged, of course, so that it looked like someone who was rather bad at knitting and made mistakes...." Suddenly, with a vividness like a flash of lightning, two things came together in her mind and affected her with the force of an explosion. A name—a visual memory. The man with the ragged hand-knitted red scarf clasped in his hands—the scarf she had hurriedly picked up later and flung into a drawer. And together with that name. Defarge—not Lefarge—Defarge, Madame Defarge. She was recalled to herself by Richard saying to her courteously: "Is anything the matter?" "No—no, that is, I just thought of something." "I see." Richard raised his eyebrows in his most supercilious way. Tomorrow, thought Victoria, they would all go in to Baghdad. Tomorrow her respite would be over. For over a week she had had safety, peace, time to pull herself together. And she had enjoyed that time—enjoyed it enormously. Perhaps I'm a coward, thought Victoria, perhaps that's it. She had talked gaily about adventure, but she hadn't liked it very much when it really came. She hated that struggle against chloroform and the slow suffocation, and she had been frightened, horribly frightened, in that upper room when the ragged Arab had said "Bukra." And now she'd got to go back to it all. Because she was employed by Mr. Dakin and paid by Mr. Dakin and she had to earn her pay and show a brave front! She might even have to go back to the Olive Branch. She shivered a little when she remembered Dr. Rathbone and that searching dark glance of his. He'd warned her.... But perhaps she wouldn't have to go back. Perhaps Mr. Dakin would say it was better not—now that they knew about her. But she would have to go back to her lodgings and get her things because thrust carelessly into her suitcase was the red knitted scarf...She had bundled everything into suitcases when she left for Basrah. Once she had put that scarf into Mr. Dakin's hands, perhaps her task would be done. He would say to her perhaps, like on the pictures: "Oh! Good show, Victoria." She looked up to find Richard Baker watching her. "By the way," he said, "will you be able to get hold of your passport tomorrow?" "My passport?" Victoria considered the position. It was characteristic of her that she had not as yet defined her plan of action as regards the Expedition. Since the real Veronica (or Venetia) would shortly be arriving from England, a retreat in good order was necessary. But whether she would merely fade away, or confess her deception with suitable penitence, or indeed what she intended to do, had not yet presented itself as a problem to be solved. Victoria was always prone to adopt the Micawber-like attitude that Something would Turn Up. "Well," she said temporizing, "I'm not sure." "It's needed, you see, for the police of this district," explained Richard. "They enter its number and your name and age and special distinguishing marks, etc., all the whole caboodle. As we haven't got the passport, I think we ought at any rate to send your name and description to them. By the way, what is your last name? I've always called you 'Victoria.'" Victoria rallied gallantly. "Come now," she said. "You know my last name as well as Ido." "That's not quite true," said Richard. His smile curved upwards with a hint of cruelty. "I do know your last name. It's you, I think who don't know it." Through the glasses the eyes watched her. "Of course I know my own name," snapped Victoria. "Then I'll challenge you to tell it to me—now." His voice was suddenly hard and curt. "It's no good lying," he said. "The game's up. You've been very clever about it. You've read up your subject, you've brought out very telling bits of knowledge—but it's the kind of imposture you can't keep up all the time. I've laid traps for you and you've fallen into them. I've quoted bits of sheer rubbish to you and you've accepted them." He paused. "You're not Venetia Savile. Who are you?" "I told you who I was the first time I met you," said Victoria. "I'm Victoria Jones." "Dr. Pauncefoot Jones' niece?" "I'm not his niece—but my name is Jones." "You told me a lot of other things." "Yes, I did. And they were all true! But I could see you didn't believe me. And that made me mad, because though I do tell lies sometimes—in fact quite often—what I'd just told you wasn't a lie. And so, just to make myself more convincing, I said my name was Pauncefoot Jones—I've said that before out here, and it's always gone down frightfully well. How could I tell you were actually coming to this place?" "It must have been a slight shock to you," said Richard grimly. "You carried it off very well—cool as a cucumber." "Not inside," said Victoria. "I was absolutely shaking. But I felt that if I waited to explain until I got here—well at any rate I should be safe." "Safe?" he considered the word. "Look here, Victoria, was that incredible rigmarole you told me about being chloroformed really true?" "Of course it was true! Don't you see, if I wanted to make up a story I could make up a much better one than that, and tell it better!" "Knowing you a little more closely now, I can see the force of that! But you must admit that, on first hearing, the story was wildly improbable." "But you are willing to think it's possible now. Why?" Richard said slowly. "Because if, as you say, you were mixed up in Carmichael's death—well, then it might be true." "That's what it all began with," said Victoria. "You'd better tell me about it." Victoria stared at him very hard. "I'm wondering," she said, "if I can trust you." "The boot is on the other leg! Do you realize that I've had grave suspicions that you'd planted yourself here under a false name in order to get information out of me? And perhaps that is what you are doing." "Meaning that you know something about Carmichael that They would like to know?" "Who exactly are They?" "I shall have to tell you all about it," said Victoria. "There isn't any other way—and if you are one of Them you know it already, so it doesn't matter." She told him of the night of Carmichael's death, of her interview with Mr. Dakin, of her journey to Basrah, her employment in the Olive Branch, of Catherine's hostility, of Dr. Rathbone and his warning and of the final denouement, including this time the enigma of the dyed hair. The only things she left out were the red scarf and Madame Defarge. "Dr. Rathbone?" Richard seized on that point. "You think he's mixed up in this? Behind it? But my dear girl, he's a very important man. He's known all over the world. Subscriptions pour in from all over the globe for his schemes." "Wouldn't he have to be all those things?" asked Victoria. "I've always regarded him as a pompous ass," said Richard meditatively. "And that's a very good camouflage, too." "Yes—yes, I suppose it is. Who was Lefarge that you asked me about?" "Just another name," said Victoria. "There's Anna Scheele, too," she said. "Anna Scheele? No, I've never heard of her." "She's important," said Victoria. "But I don't know exactly how or why. It's all so mixed-up." "Just tell me again," said Richard. "Who's the man who started you onto all this?" "Edwar—oh, you mean Mr. Dakin. He's in Oil, I think." "Is he a tired, stooping, rather vacant-looking chap?" "Yes—but he's not really. Vacant, I mean." "Doesn't he drink?" "People say so, but I don't think he does." Richard sat back and looked at her. "Phillips Oppenheim, William Le Queux and several distinguished imitators since? Is this real? Are you real? And are you the persecuted heroine, or the wicked adventuress?" Victoria said in a practical manner: "The real point is, what are we going to say to Dr. Pauncefoot Jones about me?" "Nothing," said Richard. "It won't be necessary." ## Twenty-one They started into Baghdad early. Victoria's spirits felt curiously low. She had almost a lump in her throat as she looked back on the Expedition House. However, the acute discomfort entailed in the mad bumping of the lorry effectively distracted her mind from anything but the torture of the moment. It seemed strange to be driving along a so-called road again, passing donkeys and meeting dusty lorries. It took nearly three hours to reach the outskirts of Baghdad. The lorry decanted them at the Tio Hotel and then went off with the cook and the driver to do all the necessary shopping. A large bundle of mail was awaiting Dr. Pauncefoot Jones and Richard. Marcus appearing suddenly, massive and beaming, welcomed Victoria with his usual friendly radiance. "Ah," he said, "it is a long time since I have seen you. You do not come to my hotel. Not for a week—two weeks. Why is that? You lunch here today, you have everything you want? The baby chickens? The big steak? Only not the turkey stuffed very special with flavouring and rice, because for that you must let me know the day before." It seemed clear that as far as the Tio Hotel was concerned, the kidnapping of Victoria had not been noticed. Possibly Edward, on the advice of Mr. Dakin, had not been to the police. "Is Mr. Dakin in Baghdad, do you know, Marcus?" she asked. "Mr. Dakin—ah yes, very nice man—of course, he is friend of yours. He was here yesterday—no, day before. And Captain Crosbie, you know him? A friend of Mr. Dakin's. He arrives today from Kermanshah." "You know where Mr. Dakin's office is?" "Sure I know. Everybody knows the Iraqi Iranian Oil Co." "Well, I want to go there now. In a taxi. But I want to be sure the taxi knows where to take me." "I tell him myself," said Marcus obligingly. He escorted her to the head of the alleyway and yelled in his usual violent fashion. A startled minion arrived at a run. Marcus commanded him to procure a taxi. Then Victoria was escorted to the taxi and Marcus addressed the driver. Then he stepped back and waved a hand. "And I want a room," said Victoria. "Can I have one?" "Yes, yes. I give you a beautiful room and I order you the big steak tonight I have—very special—some caviare. And before that we have a little drink." "Lovely," said Victoria. "Oh Marcus, can you lend me some money?" "Of course, my dear. Here you are. Take all you want." The taxi started off with a violent honk and Victoria fell back on the seat clutching an assortment of coins and notes. Five minutes later Victoria entered the offices of the Iraqi Iranian Oil Co. and asked for Mr. Dakin. Mr. Dakin looked up from his desk where he was writing when Victoria was shown in. He rose and shook hands with her in a formal manner. "Miss—er—Miss Jones, isn't it? Bring coffee, Abdullah." As the soundproof door closed behind the clerk, he said quietly: "You shouldn't really have come here, you know." "I had to this time," said Victoria. "There's something I've got to tell you at once—before anything more happens to me." "Happens to you? Has anything happened to you?" "Don't you know?" asked Victoria. "Hasn't Edward told you?" "As far as I know, you are still working at the Olive Branch. Nobody has told me anything." "Catherine," exclaimed Victoria. "I beg your pardon." "The cat Catherine! I bet she's stuffed Edward up with some tale or other and the goop has believed her." "Well, let's hear about it," said Mr. Dakin. "Er—if I may say so," his eye went discreetly to Victoria's blonde head, "I prefer you as a brunette." "That's only part of it," said Victoria. There was a tap at the door and the messenger entered with two little cups of sweet coffee. When he had gone, Dakin said: "Now take your time and tell me all about it. We can't be overheard here." Victoria plunged into the story of her adventures. As always when she was talking to Dakin, she managed to be both coherent and concise. She finished her story with an account of the red scarf Carmichael had dropped and her association of it with Madame Defarge. Then she looked anxiously at Dakin. He had seemed to her when she came in, to be even more bowed and tired-looking. Now she saw a new glint come into his eye. "I should read my Dickens more often," he said. "Then you do think I'm right? You think it was Defarge he said—and you think some message is knitted into the scarf?" "I think," said Dakin, "that this is the first real break we've had—and we've got you to thank for it. But the important thing is the scarf. Where is it?" "With all the rest of my things. I shoved it into a drawer that night—and when I packed I remember bundling everything in without sorting or anything." "And you've never happened to mention to anyone—to anyone at all—that that scarf belonged to Carmichael?" "No, because I'd forgotten all about it. I bundled it into a suitcase with some other things when I went to Basrah and I've never even opened the case since." "Then it ought to be all right. Even if they've been through your things, they won't have attached any importance to an old dirty woollen scarf—unless they were tipped off to it, which as far as I can see, is impossible. All we've got to do now is to have all your things collected and sent to you at—have you got anywhere to stay, by the way?" "I've booked a room at the Tio." Dakin nodded. "Best place for you." "Have I—do you want me—to go back to the Olive Branch?" Dakin looked at her keenly. "Scared?" Victoria stuck out her chin. "No," she said with defiance. "I'll go if you like." "I don't think it's necessary—or even wise. However they learned it, I presume that someone there got wise to your activities. That being so, you wouldn't be able to find out anything more, so you'd better stay clear." He smiled. "Otherwise you may be a redhead next time I see you." "That's what I want to know most of all," cried Victoria. "Why did they dye my hair? I've thought and I've thought and I can't see any point in it. Can you?" "Only the somewhat unpleasant one that your dead body might be less easy to identify." "But if they wanted me to be a dead body, why didn't they kill me straightaway?" "That's a very interesting question, Victoria. It's the question I want answered most of all." "And you haven't any idea?" "I haven't got a clue," said Mr. Dakin with a faint smile. "Talking of clues," said Victoria, "do you remember my saying that there was something about Sir Rupert Crofton Lee that didn't seem right, that morning at the Tio?" "Yes." "You didn't know him personally, did you?" "I hadn't met him before, no." "I thought not. Because, you see, he wasn't Sir Rupert Crofton Lee." And she plunged once more into animated narrative, starting with the incipient boil on the back of Sir Rupert's neck. "So that was how it was done," said Dakin. "I didn't see how Carmichael could have been sufficiently off his guard to be killed that night. He got safely to Crofton Lee—and Crofton Lee stabbed him, but he managed to get away and burst into your room before he collapsed. And he hung onto the scarf—literally like grim death." "Do you think it was because I was coming to tell you this that they kidnapped me? But nobody knew except Edward." "I think they felt they had to get you out of the picture quickly. You were tumbling to too much that was going on at the Olive Branch." "Dr. Rathbone warned me," said Victoria. "It was—more of a threat than a warning. I think he realized that I wasn't what I pretended to be." "Rathbone," said Dakin drily, "is no fool." "I'm glad I haven't got to go back there," said Victoria. "I pretended to be brave just now—but really I'm scared stiff. Only if I don't go to the Olive Branch, how can I get hold of Edward?" Dakin smiled. "If Mohammed won't come to the mountain, the mountain must come to Mohammed. Write him a note now. Just say you're at the Tio and ask him to get your clothes and luggage and bring them along there. I'm going to consult Dr. Rathbone this morning about one of his Club soirées. It will be easy for me to slip a note to his secretary—so there will be no danger of your enemy Catherine causing it to go astray. As for you, go back to the Tio and stay there—and, Victoria—" "Yes?" "If you're in a jam—of any kind—do the best you can for yourself. As far as possible you'll be watched over, but your adversaries are rather formidable, and unfortunately you know rather a lot. Once your luggage is in the Tio Hotel your obligations to me are over. Understand that." "I'll go straight back to the Tio now," said Victoria. "At least I shall just buy some face powder and lipstick and vanishing cream on the way. After all—" "After all," said Mr. Dakin, "one cannot meet one's young man completely unarmoured." "It didn't matter so much with Richard Baker though I'd like him to know I can look quite nice if I try," said Victoria. "But Edward...." ## Twenty-two Her blonde hair carefully arranged, her nose powdered and her lips freshly painted, Victoria sat upon the balcony of the Tio, once more in the role of a modern Juliet, waiting for Romeo. And in due course Romeo came. He appeared on the grass sward, looking this way and that. "Edward," said Victoria. Edward looked up. "Oh, there you are, Victoria!" "Come up here." "Right." A moment later he came out upon the balcony which was deserted. "It's more peaceful up here," said Victoria. "We'll go down and let Marcus give us drinks presently." Edward was staring at her in perplexity. "I say, Victoria, haven't you done something to your hair?" Victoria gave an exasperated sigh. "If anybody mentions hair to me, I really think I shall bat them over the head." "I think I liked it better as it was," said Edward. "Tell Catherine so!" "Catherine? What has she got to do with it?" "Everything," said Victoria. "You told me to chum up with her, and I did, and I don't suppose you've any idea what it let me in for!" "Where've you been all this time, Victoria? I've been getting quite worried." "Oh you have, have you? Where did you think I'd been?" "Well, Catherine gave me your message. Said you'd told her to tell me that you'd gone off to Mosul suddenly. It was something very important and good news, and I'd hear from you in due course." "And you believed that?" said Victoria in an almost pitying voice. "I thought you'd got on the track of something. Naturally, you couldn't say much to Catherine—" "It didn't occur to you that Catherine was lying, and that I'd been knocked on the head." "What?" Edward stared. "Drugged, chloroformed—starved...." Edward cast a sharp glance around. "Good Lord! I never dreamed—look here, I don't like talking out here. All these windows. Can't we go to your room?" "All right. Did you bring my luggage?" "Yes, I dumped it with the porter." "Because when one hasn't had a change of clothes for a fortnight—" "Victoria, what has been happening? I know—I've got the car here. Let's go out to Devonshire. You've never been there, have you?" "Devonshire?" Victoria stared in surprise. "Oh, it's just a name for a place not far out of Baghdad. It's rather lovely this time of year. Come on. I haven't had you to myself for years." "Not since Babylon. But what will Dr. Rathbone and the Olive Branch say?" "Blast Dr. Rathbone. I'm fed up with the old ass anyway." They ran down the stairs and out to where Edward's car was parked. Edward drove southwards through Baghdad, along a wide avenue. Then he turned off from there; they jolted and twisted through palm groves and over irrigation bridges. Finally, with a strange unexpectedness they came to a small wooded copse surrounded and pierced by irrigation streams. The trees of the copse, mostly almond and apricot, were just coming into blossom. It was an idyllic spot. Beyond the copse, at a little distance, was the Tigris. They got out of the car and walked together through the blossoming trees. "This is lovely," said Victoria, sighing deeply. "It's like being back in England in spring." The air was soft and warm. Presently they sat down on a fallen tree trunk with pink blossom hanging down over their heads. "Now, darling," said Edward. "Tell me what's been happening to you. I've been so dreadfully miserable." "Have you?" she smiled dreamily. Then she told him. Of the girl hairdresser. Of the smell of chloroform and her struggle. Of waking up drugged and sick. Of how she had escaped and of her fortuitous meeting with Richard Baker, and of how she had claimed to be Victoria Pauncefoot Jones on her way to the Excavations, and of how she had almost miraculously sustained the part of an archaeological student arriving from England. At this point Edward shouted with laughter. "You are marvellous, Victoria! The things you think of—and invent." "I know," said Victoria. "My uncles. Dr. Pauncefoot Jones and before him—the Bishop." And at that she suddenly remembered what it was she had been going to ask Edward at Basrah when Mrs. Clayton had interrupted by calling them in for drinks. "I meant to ask you before," she said. "How did you know about the Bishop?" She felt the hand that held hers stiffen suddenly. He said quickly, too quickly: "Why, you told me, didn't you?" Victoria looked at him. It was odd, she thought afterwards, that that one silly childish slip should have accomplished what it did. For he was taken completely by surprise. He had no story ready—his face was suddenly defenceless and unmasked. And as she looked at him, everything shifted and settled itself into a pattern, exactly as a kaleidoscope does, and she saw the truth. Perhaps it was not really sudden. Perhaps in her subconscious mind that question: How did Edward know about the Bishop? had been teasing and worrying, and she had been slowly arriving at the one, the inevitable, answer...Edward had not learned about the Bishop of Llangow from her, and the only other person he could have learned it from, would have been Mr. or Mrs. Hamilton Clipp. But they could not possibly have seen Edward since her arrival in Baghdad, for Edward had been in Basrah then, so he must have learned it from them before he himself left England. He must have known all along, then, that Victoria was coming out with them—and the whole wonderful coincidence was not, after all, a coincidence. It was planned and intended. And as she stared at Edward's unmasked face, she knew, suddenly, what Carmichael had meant by Lucifer. She knew what he had seen that day as he looked along the passage to the Consulate garden. He had seen that young beautiful face that she was looking at now—for it was a beautiful face: Lucifer, Son of the Morning, how art thou fallen? Not Dr. Rathbone—Edward! Edward, playing a minor part, the part of the secretary, but controlling and planning and directing, using Rathbone as a figurehead—and Rathbone, warning her to go while she could.... As she looked at that beautiful evil face, all her silly adolescent calf love faded away, and she knew that what she felt for Edward had never been love. It had been the same feeling that she had experienced some hours earlier for Humphrey Bogart, and later for the Duke of Edinburgh. It had been glamour. And Edward had never loved her. He had exerted his charm and his glamour deliberately. He had picked her up that day, using his charm so easily, so naturally, that she had fallen for it without a struggle. She had been a sucker. It was extraordinary how much could flash through your mind in just a few seconds. You didn't have to think it out. It just came. Full and instant knowledge. Perhaps because really, underneath, you had known it all along.... And at the same time some instinct of self-preservation, quick as all Victoria's mental processes were quick, kept her face in an expression of foolish unthinking wonder. For she knew, instinctively, that she was in great danger. There was only one thing that could save her, only one card she could play. She made haste to play it. "You knew all along!" she said. "You knew I was coming out here. You must have arranged it. Oh Edward, you are wonderful!" Her face, that plastic impressionable face, showed one emotion—an almost cloying adoration. And she saw the response—the faintly scornful smile, the relief. She could almost feel Edward saying to himself, "The little fool! She'll swallow anything! I can do what I like with her." "But how did you arrange it?" she said. "You must be very powerful. You must be quite different from what you pretend to be. You're—it's like you said the other day—you're a King of Babylon." She saw the pride that lit up his face. She saw the power and strength and beauty and cruelty that had been disguised behind a façade of a modest likeable young man. "And I'm only a Christian Slave," thought Victoria. She said quickly and anxiously, as a final artistic touch (and what its cost was to her pride no one will ever know), "But you do love me, don't you?" His scorn was hardly to be hidden now. This little fool—all these fools of women! So easy to make them think you loved them and that was all they cared about! They had no conception of greatness of construction, of a new world, they just whined for love! They were slaves and you used them as slaves to further your ends. "Of course I love you," he said. "But what is it all about? Tell me, Edward? Make me understand." "It's a new world, Victoria. A new world that will rise out of the muck and ashes of the old." "Tell me." He told her and in spite of herself she was almost carried away, carried into the dream. The old bad things must destroy each other. The fat old men grasping at their profits, impeding progress. The bigoted stupid Communists, trying to establish their Marxian heaven. There must be total war—total destruction. And then—the new Heaven and the new Earth. The small chosen band of higher beings, the scientists, the agricultural experts, the administrators—the young men like Edward—the young Siegfrieds of the New World. All young, all believing in their destiny as Supermen. When destruction had run its course, they would step in and take over. It was madness—but it was constructive madness. It was the sort of thing that in a world, shattered and disintegrating, could happen. "But think," said Victoria, "of all the people who will be killed first." "You don't understand," said Edward. "That doesn't matter." It doesn't matter—that was Edward's creed. And suddenly for no reason, a remembrance of that three thousand years old coarse pottery bowl mended with bitumen flashed across Victoria's mind. Surely those were the things that mattered—the little everyday things, the family to be cooked for, the four walls that enclosed the home, the one or two cherished possessions. All the thousands of ordinary people on the earth, minding their own business, and tilling the earth, and making pots and bringing up families and laughing and crying, and getting up in the morning and going to bed at night. They were the people who mattered, not these Angels with wicked faces who wanted to make a new world and who didn't care whom they hurt to do it. And carefully, feeling her way, for here in Devonshire she knew that death might be very near, she said: "You are wonderful, Edward. But what about me? What can I do?" "You want to—help? You believe in it?" But she was prudent. Not sudden conversion. That would be too much. "I think I just believe in you!" she said. "Anything you tell me to do, Edward, I'll do." "Good girl," he said. "Why did you arrange for me to come out here to begin with? There must have been some reason?" "Of course there was. Do you remember I took a snap of you that day?" "I remember," said Victoria. (You fool, how flattered you were, how you simpered! she thought to herself.) "I'd been struck by your profile—by your resemblance to someone. I took that snap to make sure." "Whom do I resemble?" "A woman who's been causing us a good deal of trouble—Anna Scheele." "Anna Scheele." Victoria stared at him in blank surprise. Whatever she had expected, it was not this. "You mean—she looks like me?" "Quite remarkably so side view. The features in profile are almost exactly the same. And there's one most extraordinary thing, you've got a tiny mark of a scar on your upper lip, left side—" "I know. It's where I fell on a tin horse when I was a child. It had a sharp ear sticking up and it cut quite deep in. It doesn't show much—not with powder on." "Anna Scheele has a mark in just the same place. That was a most valuable point. You're alike in height and build—she's about four or five years older than you. The real difference is the hair, you're a brunette and she's a blonde. And your style of hairdressing is quite different. Your eyes are a darker blue, but that wouldn't matter with tinted glasses." "And that's why you wanted me to come to Baghdad? Because I looked like her." "Yes, I thought the resemblance might—come in useful." "So you arranged the whole thing...The Clipps—who are the Clipps?" "They're not important—they just do as they're told." Something in Edward's tone sent a faint shiver down Victoria's spine. It was as though he had said with inhuman detachment, "They are under Obedience." There was a religious flavour about this mad project. "Edward," she thought, "is his own God. That's what's so frightening." Aloud she said: "You told me that Anna Scheele was the boss, the Queen Bee, in your show?" "I had to tell you something to put you off the scent. You had already learnt too much." "And if I hadn't happened to look like Anna Scheele that would have been the end of me," thought Victoria. She said: "Who is she really?" "She's confidential secretary to Otto Morganthal, the American and international banker. But that isn't all she is. She has the most remarkable financial brain. We've reason to believe she's traced out a lot of our financial operations. Three people have been dangerous to us—Rupert Crofton Lee, Carmichael—well they're both wiped out. There remains Anna Scheele. She's due in Baghdad in three days' time. In the meantime, she's disappeared." "Disappeared? Where?" "In London. Vanished, apparently, off the face of the earth." "And does no one know where she is?" "Dakin may know." But Dakin didn't know. Victoria knew that, though Edward didn't—so where was Anna Scheele? She asked: "You really haven't the least idea?" "We've an idea," said Edward slowly. "Well?" "It's vital that Anna Scheele should be here in Baghdad for the Conference. That, as you know, is in five days' time." "As soon as that? I'd no idea." "We've got every entry into this country taped. She's certainly not coming here under her own name. And she's not coming in on a Government service plane. We've our means of checking that. So we've investigated all the private bookings. There's a passage booked by BOAC in the name of Grete Harden. We've traced Grete Harden back and there's no such person. It's an assumed name. The address given is a phony one. It's our idea that Grete Harden is Anna Scheele." He added: "Her plane will touch down at Damascus the day after tomorrow." "And then?" Edward's eyes looked suddenly into hers. "That's up to you, Victoria." "To me?" "You'll take her place." Victoria said slowly: "Like Rupert Crofton Lee?" It was almost a whisper. In the course of that substitution Rupert Crofton Lee had died. And when Victoria took her place, presumably Anna Scheele, or Grete Harden, would die. And Edward was waiting—and if for one moment Edward doubted her loyalty, then she, Victoria, would die—and die without the possibility of warning anyone. No, she must agree and seize a chance to report to Mr. Dakin. She drew a deep breath and said: "I—I—oh, but Edward, I couldn't do it. I'd be found out. I can't do an American voice." "Anna Scheele has practically no accent. In any case you will be suffering from laryngitis. One of the best doctors in this part of the world will say so." "They've got people everywhere," thought Victoria. "What would I have to do?" she asked. "Fly from Damascus to Baghdad as Grete Harden. Take to your bed immediately. Be allowed up by our reputable doctor just in time to go to the Conference. There you will lay before them the documents which you have brought with you." Victoria asked: "The real documents?" "Of course not. We shall substitute our version." "What will the documents show?" Edward smiled. "Convincing details of the most stupendous Communist plot in America." Victoria thought: "How well they've got it planned." Aloud she said: "Do you really think I can get away with it, Edward?" Now that she was playing a part, it was quite easy for Victoria to ask it with every appearance of anxious sincerity. "I'm sure you can. I've noticed that your playing of a part affords you such enjoyment that it's practically impossible to disbelieve you." Victoria said meditatively: "I still feel an awful fool when I think of the Hamilton Clipps." He laughed in a superior way. Victoria, her face still a mask of adoration, thought to herself viciously. "But you were an awful fool, too, to let slip that about the Bishop at Basrah. If you hadn't I'd never have seen through you." She said suddenly: "What about Dr. Rathbone?" "What do you mean 'What about him?'" "Is he just a figurehead?" Edward's lips curved in cruel amusement. "Rathbone has got to toe the line. Do you know what he's been doing all these years? Cleverly appropriating about three-quarters of the subscriptions which pour in from all over the world to his own use. It's the cleverest swindle since the time of Horatio Bottomley. Oh yes, Rathbone's completely in our hands—we can expose him at anytime and he knows it." Victoria felt a sudden gratitude to the old man with the noble domed head, and the mean acquisitive soul. He might be a swindler—but he had known pity—he had tried to get her to escape in time. "All things work towards our New Order," said Edward. She thought to herself, "Edward, who looks so sane, is really mad! You get mad, perhaps, if you try and act the part of God. They always say humility is a Christian virtue—now I see why. Humility is what keeps you sane and a human being...." Edward got up. "Time to be moving," he said. "We've got to get you to Damascus and our plans there worked out by the day after tomorrow." Victoria rose with alacrity. Once she was away from Devonshire, back in Baghdad with its crowds, in the Tio Hotel with Marcus shouting and beaming and offering her a drink, the near persistent menace of Edward would be removed. Her part was to play a double game—continue to fool Edward by a sickly dog-like devotion, and counter his plans secretly. She said: "You think that Mr. Dakin knows where Anna Scheele is? Perhaps I could find that out. He might drop some hint." "Unlikely—and in any case, you won't be seeing Dakin." "He told me to come to see him this evening," said Victoria mendaciously, a slightly chilly feeling attacking her spine. "He'll think it odd if I don't turn up." "It doesn't matter at this stage what he thinks," said Edward. "Our plans are made." He added, "You won't be seen in Baghdad again." "But Edward, all my things are at the Tio! I've booked a room." The scarf. The precious scarf. "You won't need your things for some time to come. I've got a rig out waiting for you. Come on." They got in the car again. Victoria thought, "I ought to have known that Edward would never be such a fool as to let me get in touch with Mr. Dakin after I'd found him out. He believes I'm besotted about him—yes, I think he's sure of that—but all the same he isn't going to take any chances." She said: "Won't there be a search for me if I—don't turn up?" "We'll attend to that. Officially you'll say good-bye to me at the bridge and go off to see some friends on the West Bank." "And actually?" "Wait and see." Victoria sat silent as they bumped over the rough track and twisted round palm gardens and over the little irrigation bridges. "Lefarge," murmured Edward. "I wish we knew what Carmichael meant by that." Victoria's heart gave a leap of anxiety. "Oh," she said. "I forgot to tell you. I don't know if it means anything. A M. Lefarge came to the Excavations one day at Tell Aswad." "What?" Edward almost stalled the car in his excitement. "When was this?" "Oh! About a week ago. He said he came from some Dig in Syria. M. Parrot's, would it be?" "Did two men called André and Juvet come while you were there?" "Oh yes," said Victoria. "One of them had a sick stomach. He went to the house and lay down." "They were two of our people," said Edward. "Why did they come here? To look for me?" "No—I'd no idea where you were. But Richard Baker was in Basrah at the same time as Carmichael. We had an idea Carmichael might have passed something on to Baker." "He said his things had been searched. Did they find anything?" "No—now think carefully, Victoria. Did this man Lefarge come before the other two or afterwards?" Victoria reflected in a convincing manner, as she decided what movements to impute to the mythical M. Lefarge. "It was—yes, the day before the other two came," she said. "What did he do?" "Well," said Victoria, "he went over the Dig—with Dr. Pauncefoot Jones. And then Richard Baker took him down to the house to see some of the things in the Antika Room there." "He went to the house with Richard Baker. They talked together?" "I suppose so," said Victoria. "I mean, you wouldn't look at things in absolute silence, would you?" "Lefarge," murmured Edward. "Who is Lefarge? Why have we got no line on him?" Victoria longed to say, "He's brother to Mrs. Harris," but refrained. She was pleased with her invention of M. Lefarge. She could see him quite clearly now in her mind's eye—a thin rather consumptive-looking young man with dark hair and a little moustache. Presently, when Edward asked her, she described him carefully and accurately. They were driving now through the suburbs of Baghdad. Edward turned off down a side street of modern villas built in a pseudo-European style, with balconies and gardens round them. In front of one house a big touring car was standing. Edward drew up behind it and he and Victoria got out, and went up the steps to the front door. A thin dark woman came out to meet them and Edward spoke to her rapidly in French. Victoria's French was not sufficiently good to understand fully what was said, but it seemed to be to the effect that this was the young lady and that the change must be effected at once. The woman turned to her and said politely in French: "Come with me, please." She led Victoria into a bedroom where, spread out on a bed, was the habit of a nun. The woman motioned to her, and Victoria undressed and put on the stiff wool undergarment and the voluminous medieval folds of dark stuff. The Frenchwoman adjusted the headdress. Victoria caught a glimpse of herself in the glass. Her small pale face under the gigantic (was it a wimple?) with the white folds under her chin, looked strangely pure and unearthly. The Frenchwoman threw a Rosary of wooden beads over her head. Then, shuffling in the over-large coarse shoes Victoria was led out to rejoin Edward. "You look all right," he said approvingly. "Keep your eyes down, particularly when there are men about." The Frenchwoman rejoined them a moment or two later similarly apparelled. The two nuns went out of the house and got into the touring car which now had a tall dark man in European dress in the driver's seat. "It's up to you now, Victoria," said Edward. "Do exactly as you are told." There was a slight steely menace behind the words. "Aren't you coming, Edward?" Victoria sounded plaintive. He smiled at her. "You'll see me in three days' time," he said. And then, with a resumption of his persuasive manner, he murmured, "Don't fail me, darling. Only you could do this—I love you, Victoria. I daren't be seen kissing a nun—but I'd like to." Victoria dropped her eyes in approved nun-like fashion, but actually to conceal the fury that showed for a moment. "Horrible Judas," she thought. Instead she said with an assumption of her usual manner: "Well, I seem to be a Christian Slave all right." "That's the girl!" said Edward. He added, "Don't worry. Your papers are in perfect order—you'll have no difficulty at the Syrian frontier. Your name in religion, by the way, is Sister Marie des Anges. Sister Thérèse who accompanies you has all the documents and is in full charge, and for God's sake obey orders—or I warn you frankly, you're for it." He stepped back, waved his hand cheerfully, and the touring car started off. Victoria leaned back against the upholstery and gave herself up to contemplation of possible alternatives. She could, as they were passing through Baghdad, or when they got to the frontier control, make an agitation, scream for help, explain that she was being carried off against her will—in fact, adopt one or other variants of immediate protest. What would that accomplish? In all probability it would mean the end of Victoria Jones. She had noticed that Sister Thérèse had slipped into her sleeve a small and businesslike automatic pistol. She could be given no chance of talking. Or she could wait until she got to Damascus? Make her protest there? Possibly the same fate would be meted out, or her statements might be overborne by the evidence of the driver and her fellow nun. They might be able to produce papers saying that she was mentally afflicted. The best alternative was to go through with things—to acquiesce in the plan. To come to Baghdad as Anna Scheele and to play Anna Scheele's part. For, after all, if she did so, there would come a moment, at the final climax, when Edward could no longer control her tongue or her actions. If she could continue to convince Edward that she would do anything he told her, then the moment would come when she was standing with her forged documents before the Conference—and Edward would not be there. And no one could stop her then from saying, "I am not Anna Scheele and these papers are forged and untrue." She wondered that Edward did not fear her doing just that. But she reflected that vanity was a strangely blinding quality. Vanity was the Achilles heel. And there was also the fact to be considered that Edward and his crowd had more or less got to have an Anna Scheele if their scheme was to succeed. To find a girl who sufficiently resembled Anna Scheele—even to the point of having a scar in the right place—was extremely difficult. In The Lyons Mail, Victoria remembered, Dubosc having a scar above one eyebrow and also of having a distortion, one by birth and one by accident, of the little finger of one hand. These coincidences must be very rare. No, the Supermen needed Victoria Jones, typist—and to that extent Victoria Jones had them in her power—not the other way round. The car sped across the bridge. Victoria watched the Tigris with a nostalgic longing. Then they were speeding along a wide dusty highway. Victoria let the beads of her Rosary pass through her fingers. Their click was comforting. "After all," thought Victoria with sudden comfort. "I am a Christian. And if you're a Christian, I suppose it's a hundred times better to be a Christian Martyr than a King in Babylon—and I must say, there seems to me a great possibility that I am going to be a Martyr. Oh! well, anyway, it won't be lions. I should have hated lions!" ## Twenty-three I The big Skymaster swooped down from the air and made a perfect landing. It taxied gently along the runway and presently came to a stop at the appointed place. The passengers were invited to descend. Those going on to Basrah were separated from those who were catching a connecting plane to Baghdad. Of the latter there were four. A prosperous-looking Iraqi business man, a young English doctor and two women. They all passed through the various controls and questioning. A dark woman with untidy hair imperfectly bound in a scarf and a tired face came first. "Mrs. Pauncefoot Jones? British. Yes. To join your husband. Your address in Baghdad, please? What money have you...?" It went on. Then the second woman took the first one's place. "Grete Harden. Yes. Nationality? Danish. From London. Purpose of visit? Masseuse at hospital? Address in Baghdad? What money have you?" Grete Harden was a thin, fair-haired young woman wearing dark glasses. Some rather blotchily applied cosmetic concealed what might have been a blemish on her upper lip. She wore neat but slightly shabby clothes. Her French was halting—occasionally she had to have the question repeated. The four passengers were told that the Baghdad plane took off that afternoon. They would be driven now to the Abbassid Hotel for a rest and lunch. Grete Harden was sitting on her bed when a tap came on the door. She opened it and found a tall dark young woman wearing BOAC uniform. "I'm so sorry, Miss Harden. Would you come with me to the BOAC office? A little difficulty has arisen about your ticket. This way, please." Grete Harden followed her guide down the passage. On a door was a large board lettered in gold—BOAC office. The air hostess opened the door and motioned the other inside. Then, as Grete Harden passed through, she closed the door from outside and quickly unhooked the board. As Grete Harden came through the door, two men who had been standing behind it passed a cloth over her head. They stuffed a gag into her mouth. One of them rolled her sleeve up, and bringing out a hyperdermic syringe gave her an injection. In a few minutes her body sagged and went limp. The young doctor said cheerfully, "That ought to take care of her for about six hours, anyway. Now then, you two, get on with it." He nodded towards two other occupants of the room. They were nuns who were sitting immobile by the window. The men went out of the room. The elder of the two nuns went to Grete Harden and began to take the clothes off her inert body. The younger nun, trembling a little, started taking off her habit. Presently Grete Harden, dressed in a nun's habit, lay reposefully on the bed. The younger nun was now dressed in Grete Harden's clothes. The older nun turned her attention to her companion's flaxen hair. Looking at a photograph which she propped up against the mirror, she combed and dressed the hair, bringing it back from the forehead and coiling it low on the neck. She stepped back and said in French: "Astonishing how it changes you. Put on the dark spectacles. Your eyes are too deep a blue. Yes—that is admirable." There was a slight tap on the door and the two men came in again. They were grinning. "Grete Harden is Anna Scheele all right," one said. "She'd got the papers in her luggage, carefully camouflaged between the leaves of a Danish publication on 'Hospital Massage.' Now then, Miss Harden," he bowed with mock ceremony to Victoria, "you will do me the honour to have lunch with me." Victoria followed him out of the room and along to the hall. The other woman passenger was trying to send off a telegram at the desk. "No," she was saying, "P A U N C E foot. Dr. Pauncefoot Jones. Arriving today Tio Hotel, Good journey." Victoria looked at her with sudden interest. This must be Dr. Pauncefoot Jones' wife, coming out to join him. That she was a week earlier than expected did not seem to Victoria at all extraordinary since Dr. Pauncefoot Jones had several times lamented that he had lost her letter giving the date of arrival but that he was almost certain it was the 26th! If only she could somehow or other send a message through Mrs. Pauncefoot Jones to Richard Baker.... Almost as though he read her thoughts, the man accompanying her steered her by the elbow away from the desk. "No conversation with fellow travellers, Miss Harden," he said. "We don't want that good woman to notice that you're a different person from the one she came out from England with." He took her out of the hotel to a restaurant for lunch. As they came back, Mrs. Pauncefoot Jones was coming down the steps of the hotel. She nodded without suspicion at Victoria. "Been sightseeing?" she called. "I'm just going to the bazaars." "If I could slip something into her luggage..." thought Victoria. But she was not left alone for a moment. The Baghdad plane left at three o'clock. Mrs. Pauncefoot Jones' seat was right up in front. Victoria's was in the tail, near the door, and across the aisle sat the fair young man who was her gaoler. Victoria had no chance of reaching the other woman or of introducing a message into any of her belongings. The flight was not a long one. For the second time, Victoria looked down from the air and saw the city outlined below her, the Tigris dividing it like a streak of gold. So she had seen it less than a month ago. How much had happened since then. In two days' time the men who represented the two predominant ideologies of the world would meet here to discuss the future. And she, Victoria Jones, would have a part to play. II "You know," said Richard Baker, "I'm worried about that girl." Dr. Pauncefoot Jones said vaguely: "What girl?" "Victoria." "Victoria?" Dr. Pauncefoot Jones peered about. "Where is—why, God bless me, we came back without her yesterday." "I wondered if you'd noticed it," said Richard. "Very remiss of me. I was so interested by that report of the Excavations at Tell Bamdar. Completely unsound stratification. Didn't she know where to find the lorry?" "There was no question of her coming back here," said Richard. "As a matter of fact, she isn't Venetia Savile." "Not Venetia Savile? How very odd. But I thought you said her Christian name was Victoria." "It is. But she's not an anthropologist. And she doesn't know Emerson. As a matter of fact, the whole thing has been a—well—a misunderstanding." "Dear me. That seems very odd." Dr. Pauncefoot Jones reflected for some moments. "Very odd. I do hope—am I to blame? I know I am somewhat absentminded. The wrong letter, perhaps?" "I can't understand it," said Richard Baker, frowning and paying no attention to Dr. Pauncefoot Jones' speculations. "She went off in a car with a young man, it seems, and she didn't come back. What's more, her baggage was there and she hadn't bothered to open it. That seems to me very strange—considering the mess she was in. I'd have thought she'd be sure to doll herself up. And we agreed to meet here for lunch...No, I can't understand it. I hope nothing's happened to her." "Oh, I shouldn't think so for a moment," said Dr. Pauncefoot Jones comfortably. "I shall start going down in H. tomorrow. From the general plan I should say that would be the best chance of getting a record office. That fragment of tablet was very promising." "They've kidnapped her once," said Richard. "What's to prevent their having kidnapped her again?" "Very improbable—very improbable," said Dr. Pauncefoot Jones. "The country's really very settled nowadays. You said so yourself." "If only I could remember the name of that man in some oil company. Was it Deacon? Deacon, Dakin? Something like that." "Never heard of him," said Dr. Pauncefoot Jones. "I think I shall change over Mustafa and his gang to the northeast corner. Then we might extend Trench J—" "Would you mind awfully, sir, if I went into Baghdad again tomorrow?" Dr. Pauncefoot Jones, suddenly giving his colleague his full attention, stared at him. "Tomorrow? But we were there yesterday." "I'm worried about that girl. I really am." "Dear me, Richard, I had no idea there was anything of that kind." "What kind?" "That you'd formed an attachment. That's the worst of having women on a Dig—especially good-looking ones. I really did think we were safe with Sybil Muirfield the year before last, a really distressingly plain girl—and see what came of it! I ought to have listened to Claude in London—these Frenchmen always hit the nail on the head. He commented on her legs at the time—most enthusiastic about them. Of course this girl, Victoria Venetia, whatever her name is—most attractive and such a nice little thing. You've got good taste, Richard, I will admit that. Funny thing, she's the first girl I've ever known you take any interest in." "There's nothing of that kind," said Richard, blushing and looking even more supercilious than usual. "I'm just—er—worried about her. I must go back to Baghdad." "Well, if you are going tomorrow," said Dr. Pauncefoot Jones, "you might bring back those extra picks. That fool of a driver forgot them." III Richard started into Baghdad at early dawn and went straight to the Tio Hotel. Here he learnt that Victoria had not returned. "And it was all arranged that she was to have special dinner with me," said Marcus. "And I kept her a very nice room. It is odd, is it not?" "Have you been to the Police?" "Ah no, my dear, it would not be nice, that. She might not like it. And I certainly would not like it." After a little inquiry, Richard tracked down Mr. Dakin and called upon him in his office. His memory of the man had not played him false. He looked at the stooping figure, the indecisive face and the slight tremor of the hands. This man was no good! He apologized to Mr. Dakin if he was wasting his time but had he seen Miss Victoria Jones. "She called on me the day before yesterday." "Can you give me her present address?" "She's at the Tio Hotel, I believe." "Her luggage is there, but she isn't." Mr. Dakin raised his eyebrows slightly. "She has been working with us on the Excavations at Tell Aswad," explained Richard. "Oh I see. Well—I'm afraid I don't know anything that can help you. She has several friends in Baghdad, I believe—but I don't know her well enough to say who they are." "Would she be at this Olive Branch?" "I don't think so. You could ask." Richard said: "Look here. I'm not leaving Baghdad until I find her." He frowned at Mr. Dakin and strode out of the room. Mr. Dakin, as the door closed behind Richard, smiled and shook his head. "Oh Victoria," he murmured reproachfully. Fuming into the Tio Hotel, Richard was met by a beaming Marcus. "She's come back," cried Richard eagerly. "No, no, it's Mrs. Pauncefoot Jones. She arrives by plane today I have just heard. Dr. Pauncefoot Jones, he told me she was coming next week." "He always gets dates wrong. What about Victoria Jones?" Marcus's face went grave again. "No, I have heard nothing of her. And I do not like it, Mr. Baker. It is not nice. She is so young a girl. And so pretty. And so gay and charming." "Yes, yes," said Richard, flinching. "I'd better wait over and greet Mrs. Pauncefoot Jones, I suppose." What on earth he wondered could have happened to Victoria. IV "You!" said Victoria with undisguised hostility. Ushered up to her room in the Babylonian Palace Hotel, the first person she saw was Catherine. Catherine nodded her head with equal venom. "Yes," she said. "It is I. And now please go to bed. The doctor will soon arrive." Catherine was dressed as a hospital nurse and she took her duties seriously, being obviously quite determined never to leave Victoria's side. Victoria, lying disconsolately in bed, murmured: "If I could get hold of Edward—" "Edward—Edward!" said Catherine scornfully. "Edward has never cared for you, you stupid English girl. It is me whom Edward loves!" Victoria looked at Catherine's stubborn fanatical face without enthusiasm. Catherine went on: "Always I have hated you from that first morning you came in and demanded to see Dr. Rathbone with such rudeness." Searching about for an irritant, Victoria said: "At any rate I'm much more indispensable than you are. Anybody could do your hospital nurse act. But the whole thing depends on me doing mine." Catherine said with prim smugness: "Nobody is indispensable. We are taught that." "Well I am. For goodness' sake order up a substantial meal. If I don't get something to eat, how do you expect me to give a good performance of an American banker's secretary when the time comes?" "I suppose you might as well eat while you can," said Catherine grudgingly. Victoria took no notice of the sinister implication. V Captain Crosbie said: "I understand you've got a Miss Harden just arrived." The suave gentleman in the office of the Babylonian Palace inclined his head. "Yes, sir. From England." "She's a friend of my sister's. Will you take my card up to her." He pencilled a few words on the card and sent it up in an envelope. Presently the boy who had taken it returned. "The lady is not well, sir. Very bad throat. Doctor coming soon. She has hospital nurse with her." Crosbie turned away. He went along to the Tio where he was accosted by Marcus. "Ah, my dear, let us have a drink. This evening my hotel is quite full. It is for the Conference. But what a pity, Dr. Pauncefoot Jones went back to his Expedition the day before yesterday and now here is his wife who arrives and expects that he will be here to meet her. And she is not pleased, no! She says she told him she was coming on this plane. But you know what he is like, that one. Every date, every time—he always gets it wrong. But he is a very nice man," finished Marcus with his usual charity. "And I have had to squeeze her in somehow—I turn out a very important man from UNO—" "Baghdad seems quite mad." "All the police they have drafted in—they are taking great precautions—they say—have you heard?—there is a Communist plot to assassinate the President. They have arrested sixty-five students! Have you seen the Russian policemen? They are very suspicious of everybody. But all this is very good for trade—very good indeed." VI The telephone bell rang and was promptly answered. "American Embassy." "This is the Babylonian Palace Hotel. Miss Anna Scheele is staying here." Anna Scheele? Presently one of the Attachés was speaking. Could Miss Scheele come to the phone? "Miss Scheele is ill in bed with laryngitis. This is Dr. Smallbrook. I am attending Miss Scheele. She has some important papers with her and would like some responsible person from the Embassy to come and fetch them. Immediately? Thank you. I will be waiting for you." VII Victoria turned from the mirror. She was wearing a well-cut tailored suit. Every blonde hair was in place. She felt nervous but exhilarated. As she turned, she caught the exultant gleam in Catherine's eyes and was suddenly on her guard. Why was Catherine exultant? What was going on? "What are you so pleased about?" she asked. "Soon you will see." The malice was quite unconcealed now. "You think you are so clever," said Catherine scornfully. "You think everything depends on you. Pah, you are just a fool." With a bound Victoria was upon her! She caught her by the shoulder and dug her fingers in. "Tell me what you mean, you horrible girl." "Ach—you hurt me." "Tell me—" A knock came on the door. A knock twice repeated and then after a pause, a single one. "Now you will see!" cried Catherine. The door opened and a man slipped in. He was a tall man, dressed in the uniform of the International Police. He locked the door behind him and removed the key. Then he advanced to Catherine. "Quickly," he said. He took a length of thin cord from his pocket and, with Catherine's full cooperation, bound her swiftly to a chair. Then he produced a scarf and tied it over her mouth. He stood back and nodded appreciatively. "So—that will do nicely." Then he turned towards Victoria. She saw the heavy truncheon he was brandishing and in a moment it flashed across her brain what the real plan was. They had never intended that she should play the part of Anna Scheele at the Conference. How could they risk such a thing? Victoria was too well known in Baghdad? No, the plan was, had always been, that Anna Scheele should be attacked and killed at the last moment—killed in such a way that her features would not be recognizable...Only the papers she had brought with her—those carefully forged papers—would remain. Victoria turned away to the window—she screamed. And with a smile the man came at her. Then several things happened—there was a crash of broken glass—a heavy hand sent her headlong down—she saw stars—and blackness...Then out of the blackness a voice spoke, a reassuring English voice. "Are you all right, Miss?" it asked. Victoria murmured something. "What did she say?" asked a second voice. The first man scratched his head. "Said it was better to serve in Heaven than reign in Hell," he said doubtfully. "That's a quotation," said the other. "But she's got it wrong," he added. "No, I haven't," said Victoria and fainted. VIII The telephone rang and Dakin picked up the receiver. A voice said: "Operation Victoria successfully concluded." "Good," said Dakin. "We've got Catherine Serakis and the medico. The other fellow threw himself off the balcony. He's fatally injured." "The girl's not hurt?" "She fainted—but she's OK." "No news still of the real A. S.?" "No news whatever." Dakin laid down the receiver. At any rate Victoria was all right—Anna herself, he thought, must be dead...She had insisted on playing a lone hand, had reiterated that she would be in Baghdad without fail on the 19th. Today was the 19th and there was no Anna Scheele. Perhaps she had been right not to trust the official setup—he didn't know. Certainly there had been leakages—betrayals. But apparently her own native wits had served her no better.... And without Anna Scheele, the evidence was incomplete. A messenger came in with a piece of paper on which was written Mr. Richard Baker and Mrs. Pauncefoot Jones. "I can't see anybody now," said Dakin. "Tell them I am very sorry. I am engaged." The messenger withdrew, but presently he returned. He handed Dakin a note. Dakin tore open the envelope and read: "I want to see you about Henry Carmichael. R. B." "Show him in," said Dakin. Presently Richard Baker and Mrs. Pauncefoot Jones came in. Richard Baker said: "I don't want to take up your time, but I was at school with a man called Henry Carmichael. We lost sight of each other for many years, but when I was at Basrah a few weeks ago I encountered him in the Consulate waiting room. He was dressed as an Arab, and without giving any overt sign of recognition, he managed to communicate with me. Does this interest you?" "It interests me very much," said Dakin. "I formed the idea that Carmichael believed himself to be in danger. This was very soon verified. He was attacked by a man with a revolver which I managed to knock up. Carmichael took to his heels but before he went, he slipped something into my pocket which I found later—it didn't appear to be important—it seems to be just a 'chit'—a reference for one Ahmed Mohammed. But I acted on the assumption that to Carmichael it was important." "Since he gave me no instructions, I kept it carefully, believing that he would one day reclaim it. The other day I learnt from Victoria Jones that he was dead. From other things she told me, I have come to the conclusion that the right person to deliver this object to is you." He got up and placed a dirty sheet of paper with writing on it on Dakin's desk. "Does this mean anything to you?" Dakin drew a deep sigh. "Yes," he said. "It means more than you can possibly imagine." He got up. "I'm deeply obliged to you, Baker," he said. "Forgive my cutting this interview short, but there is a lot that I have to see to without wasting a minute." He shook hands with Mrs. Pauncefoot Jones, saying, "I suppose you are joining your husband on his Dig. I hope you have a good season." "It's a good thing Pauncefoot Jones didn't come into Baghdad with me this morning," said Richard. "Dear old John Pauncefoot Jones doesn't notice much that goes on, but he'd probably notice the difference between his wife and his wife's sister." Dakin looked with slight surprise at Mrs. Pauncefoot Jones. She said in a low pleasant voice. "My sister Elsie is still in England. I dyed my hair black and came out on her passport. My sister's maiden name was Elsie Scheele. My name, Mr. Dakin, is Anna Scheele." ## Twenty-four Baghdad was transformed. Police lined the streets—police drafted in from outside, the International Police. American and Russian Police stood side by side with impassive faces. Rumours were spreading the whole time—neither of the Great Ones was coming! Twice the Russian plane, duly escorted, landed—and proved to contain only a young Russian pilot! But at last the news went round that all was well. The President of the United States and the Russian Dictator were here, in Baghdad. They were in the Regent's Palace. At last the historic Conference had begun. In a small anteroom certain events were taking place which might well alter the course of history. Like most momentous happenings, the proceedings were not at all dramatic. Doctor Alan Breck of the Harwell Atomic Institute contributed his quota of information in a small precise voice. Certain specimens had been left with him for analysis by the late Sir Rupert Crofton Lee. They had been acquired in the course of one of Sir Rupert's journeys through China and Turkestan through Kurdistan to Iraq. Dr. Breck's evidence then became severely technical. Metallic ores...high uranium content...Source of deposit not known exactly, since Sir Rupert's notes and diaries had been destroyed during the war by enemy action. Then Mr. Dakin took up the tale. In a gentle tired voice he told the saga of Henry Carmichael, of his belief in certain rumours and wild tales of vast installations and underground laboratories functioning in a remote valley beyond the bounds of civilization. Of his search—and of the success of his search. Of how that great traveller, Sir Rupert Crofton Lee, the man who had believed Carmichael because of his own knowledge of those regions, had agreed to come to Baghdad, and of how he had died. And of how Carmichael had met his own death at the hands of Sir Rupert's impersonator. "Sir Rupert is dead, and Henry Carmichael is dead. But there is a third witness who is alive and who is here today. I will call upon Miss Anna Scheele to give us her testimony." Anna Scheele, as calm and composed as if she were in Mr. Morganthal's office, gave lists of names and figures. From the depths of that remarkable financial brain of hers, she outlined the vast financial network that had drained money from circulation, and poured it into the financing of activities that should tend to split the civilized world into two opposing factions. It was no mere assertion. She produced facts and figures to support her contention. To those who listened she carried a conviction that was not as yet fully accorded to Carmichael's wild tale. Dakin spoke again: "Henry Carmichael is dead," he said. "But he brought back with him from that hazardous journey tangible and definite proofs. He did not dare to keep those proofs on him—his enemies were too close on his track. But he was a man of many friends. By the hands of two of those friends, he sent the proofs to the safekeeping of another friend—a man whom all Iraq reveres and respects. He has courteously consented to come here today. I refer to Sheikh Hussein el Ziyara of Kerbela." Sheikh Hussein el Ziyara was renowned, as Dakin had said, throughout the Moslem world, both as a Holy Man and a poet of renown. He was considered by many to be a Saint. He stood up now, an imposing figure with his deep brown hennaed beard. His grey jacket edged with gold braid was covered by a flowing brown cloak of gossamer fineness. Round his head he wore a green cloth headdress which was bound with many strands of heavy gold agal and which gave him a patriarchal appearance. He spoke in a deep sonorous voice. "Henry Carmichael was my friend," he said. "I knew him as a boy and he studied with me the verses of our great poets. Two men came to Kerbela, men who travel the country with a picture show. They are simple men, but good followers of the Prophet. They brought me a packet which they said they had been told to deliver into my hands from my friend the Englishman Carmichael. I was to keep this in secrecy and security and to deliver it only to Carmichael himself, or to a messenger who would repeat certain words. If in truth you are the messenger, speak, my son." Dakin said, "Sayyid, the Arabic poet Mutanabbi, 'the Pretender to prophecy,' who lived just one thousand years ago, wrote an Ode to Prince Sayfu 'l-Dawla at Aleppo in which those words occur: Zid hashshi bashshi tafaddal adni surra sili."* With a smile Sheikh Hussein el Ziyara held out a packet to Dakin. "I say as Prince Sayfu 'l-Dawla said: 'You shall have your desire...'" "Gentlemen," said Dakin. "These are the microfilms brought back by Henry Carmichael in proof of his story...." One more witness spoke—a tragic broken figure: an old man with a fine domed head who had once been universally admired and respected. He spoke with a tragic dignity. "Gentlemen," he said. "I shall shortly be arraigned as a common swindler. But there are somethings that even I cannot countenance. There is a band of men, mostly young men, so evil in their hearts and aims that the truth would hardly be believed." He lifted up his head and roared out: "Antichrist! I say this thing must be stopped! We have got to have peace—peace to lick our wounds and make a new world—and to do that we must to try to understand each other. I started a racket to make money—but, by God, I've ended in believing in what I preach—though I don't advocate the methods I've used. For God's sake, gentlemen, let's start again and try to pull together...." There was a moment's silence, and then a thin official voice, with the bloodless impersonality of bureaucracy said: "These facts will be put forthwith before the President of the United States of America and the Premier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics...." ## Twenty-five I "What bothers me," said Victoria, "is that poor Danish woman who got killed by mistake in Damascus." "Oh! she's all right," said Mr. Dakin cheerfully. "As soon as your plane had taken off, we arrested the French woman and took Grete Harden to hospital. She came round all right. They were going to keep her drugged for a bit until they were sure the Baghdad business went off all right. She was one of our people of course." "Was she?" "Yes, when Anna Scheele disappeared, we thought it might be as well to give the other side something to think about. So we booked a passage for Grete Harden and carefully didn't give her a background. They fell for it—jumped to the conclusion that Grete Harden must be Anna Scheele. We gave her a nice little set of faked papers to prove it." "Whilst the real Anna Scheele remained quietly in the nursing home till it was time for Mrs. Pauncefoot Jones to join her husband out here." "Yes. Simple—but effective. Acting on the assumption that in times of stress the only people you can really trust are your own family. She's an exceedingly clever young woman." "I really thought I was for it," said Victoria. "Were your people really keeping tabs on me?" "All the time. Your Edward wasn't really quite so clever as he thought himself, you know. Actually we'd been investigating the activities of young Edward Goring for some time. When you told me your story, the night Carmichael was killed, I was frankly very worried about you." "The best thing I could think of was to send you deliberately into the setup as a spy. If your Edward knew that you were in touch with me, you'd be reasonably safe, because he'd learn through you what we were up to. You'd be too valuable to kill. And he could also pass on false information to us through you. You were a link. But then you spotted the Rupert Crofton Lee impersonation, and Edward decided you'd better be kept out of it until you were needed (if you should be needed) for the impersonation of Anna Scheele. Yes, Victoria, you're very very lucky to be sitting where you are now, eating all those pistachio nuts." "I know I am." Mr. Dakin said: "How much do you mind—about Edward?" Victoria looked at him steadily. "Not at all. I was just a silly little fool. I let Edward pick me up and do his glamour act. I just had a thoroughly school-girl crush on him—fancying myself Juliet and all sorts of silly things." "You needn't blame yourself too much. Edward had a wonderful natural gift for attracting women." "Yes, and he used it." "He certainly used it." "Next time I fall in love," said Victoria, "it won't be looks that attract me, or glamour. I'd like a real man—not one who says pretty things to you. I shan't mind if he's bald or wears spectacles or anything like that. I'd like him to be interesting—and know about interesting things." "About thirty-five or fifty-five?" asked Mr. Dakin. Victoria stared. "Oh thirty-five," she said. "I am relieved. I thought for a moment you were proposing to me." Victoria laughed. "And—I know I mustn't ask questions—but was there really a message knitted into the scarf?" "There was a name. The tricoteuses of whom Madam Defarge was one, knitted a register of names. The scarf and the 'chit' were the two halves of the clue. One gave us the name of Sheikh Hussein el Ziyara of Kerbela. The other when treated with iodine vapour gave us the words to induce the Sheikh to part with his trust. There couldn't have been a safer place to hide the thing, you know, than in the sacred city of Kerbela." "And it was carried through the country by those two wandering cinema men—the ones we actually met?" "Yes. Simple well-known figures. Nothing political about them. Just Carmichael's personal friends. He had a lot of friends." "He must have been very nice. I'm sorry he's dead." "We've all got to die sometime," said Mr. Dakin. "And if there's another life after this which I myself fully believe, he'll have the satisfaction of knowing that his faith and his courage have done more to save this sorry old world from a fresh attack of blood-letting and misery than almost anyone that one can think of." "It's odd, isn't it," said Victoria meditatively, "that Richard should have had one half of the secret and I should have had the other. It almost seems as though—" "As though it were meant to be," finished Mr. Dakin with a twinkle. "And what are you going to do next, may I ask?" "I shall have to find a job," said Victoria. "I must start looking about." "Don't look too hard," said Mr. Dakin. "I rather think a job is coming towards you." He ambled gently away to give place to Richard Baker. "Look here, Victoria," said Richard. "Venetia Savile can't come out after all. Apparently she's got mumps. You were quite useful on the Dig. Would you like to come back? Only your keep, I'm afraid. And probably your passage back to England—but we'll talk about that later. Mrs. Pauncefoot Jones is coming out next week. Well, what do you say?" "Oh, do you really want me?" cried Victoria. For some reason Richard Baker became very pink in the face. He coughed and polished his pince-nez. "I think," he said, "we could find you—er—quite useful." "I'd love it," said Victoria. "In that case," said Richard, "you'd better collect your luggage and come along back to the Dig now. You don't want to hang about Baghdad, do you?" "Not in the least," said Victoria. II "So there you are, my dear Veronica," said Dr. Pauncefoot Jones. "Richard went off in a great state about you. Well, well—I hope you'll both be very happy." "What does he mean?" asked Victoria bewildered, as Dr. Pauncefoot Jones pottered away. "Nothing," said Richard. "You know what he's like. He's being—just a little—premature." * * * The Agatha Christie Collection THE HERCULE POIROT MYSTERIES Match your wits with the famous Belgian detective. The Mysterious Affair at Styles The Murder on the Links Poirot Investigates The Murder of Roger Ackroyd The Big Four The Mystery of the Blue Train Peril at End House Lord Edgware Dies Murder on the Orient Express Three Act Tragedy Death in the Clouds The A.B.C. Murders Murder in Mesopotamia Cards on the Table Murder in the Mews Dumb Witness Death on the Nile Appointment with Death Hercule Poirot's Christmas Sad Cypress One, Two, Buckle My Shoe Evil Under the Sun Five Little Pigs The Hollow The Labors of Hercules Taken at the Flood The Underdog and Other Stories Mrs. McGinty's Dead After the Funeral Hickory Dickory Dock Dead Man's Folly Cat Among the Pigeons The Clocks Third Girl Hallowe'en Party Elephants Can Remember Curtain: Poirot's Last Case Explore more at www.AgathaChristie.com * * * * * * The Agatha Christie Collection THE MISS MARPLE MYSTERIES Join the legendary spinster sleuth from St. Mary Mead in solving murders far and wide. The Murder at the Vicarage The Body in the Library The Moving Finger A Murder Is Announced They Do It with Mirrors A Pocket Full of Rye 4:50 From Paddington The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side A Caribbean Mystery At Bertram's Hotel Nemesis Sleeping Murder Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories THE TOMMY AND TUPPENCE MYSTERIES Jump on board with the entertaining crime-solving couple from Young Adventurers Ltd. The Secret Adversary Partners in Crime N or M? By the Pricking of My Thumbs Postern of Fate Explore more at www.AgathaChristie.com * * * * * * The Agatha Christie Collection Don't miss a single one of Agatha Christie's stand-alone novels and short-story collections. The Man in the Brown Suit The Secret of Chimneys The Seven Dials Mystery The Mysterious Mr. Quin The Sittaford Mystery Parker Pyne Investigates Why Didn't They Ask Evans? Murder Is Easy The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories And Then There Were None Towards Zero Death Comes as the End Sparkling Cyanide The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories Crooked House Three Blind Mice and Other Stories They Came to Baghdad Destination Unknown Ordeal by Innocence Double Sin and Other Stories The Pale Horse Star over Bethlehem: Poems and Holiday Stories Endless Night Passenger to Frankfurt The Golden Ball and Other Stories The Mousetrap and Other Plays The Harlequin Tea Set Explore more at www.AgathaChristie.com * * * ## About the Author **AGATHA CHRISTIE** is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. She is the author of eighty crime novels and short-story collections, nineteen plays, two memoirs, and six novels written under the name Mary Westmacott. She first tried her hand at detective fiction while working in a hospital dispensary during World War I, creating the now legendary Hercule Poirot with her debut novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles. With The Murder in the Vicarage, published in 1930, she introduced another beloved sleuth, Miss Jane Marple. Additional series characters include the husband-and-wife crime-fighting team of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, private investigator Parker Pyne, and Scotland Yard detectives Superintendent Battle and Inspector Japp. Many of Christie's novels and short stories were adapted into plays, films, and television series. The Mousetrap, her most famous play of all, opened in 1952 and is the longest-running play in history. Among her best-known film adaptations are Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and Death on the Nile (1978), with Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov playing Hercule Poirot, respectively. On the small screen Poirot has been most memorably portrayed by David Suchet, and Miss Marple by Joan Hickson and subsequently Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie. Christie was first married to Archibald Christie and then to archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, whom she accompanied on expeditions to countries that would also serve as the settings for many of her novels. In 1971 she achieved one of Britain's highest honors when she was made a Dame of the British Empire. She died in 1976 at the age of eighty-five. Her one hundred and twentieth anniversary was celebrated around the world in 2010. www.AgathaChristie.com Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors. ## The Agatha Christie Collection The Man in the Brown Suit The Secret of Chimneys The Seven Dials Mystery The Mysterious Mr. Quin The Sittaford Mystery Parker Pyne Investigates Why Didn't They Ask Evans? Murder Is Easy The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories And Then There Were None Towards Zero Death Comes as the End Sparkling Cyanide The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories Crooked House Three Blind Mice and Other Stories They Came to Baghdad Destination Unknown Ordeal by Innocence Double Sin and Other Stories The Pale Horse Star Over Bethlehem: Poems and Holiday Stories Endless Night Passenger to Frankfurt The Golden Ball and Other Stories The Mousetrap and Other Plays The Harlequin Tea Set and Other Stories **The Hercule Poirot Mysteries** The Mysterious Affair at Styles The Murder on the Links Poirot Investigates The Murder of Roger Ackroyd The Big Four The Mystery of the Blue Train Peril at End House Lord Edgware Dies Murder on the Orient Express Three Act Tragedy Death in the Clouds The A.B.C. Murders Murder in Mesopotamia Cards on the Table Murder in the Mews Dumb Witness Death on the Nile Appointment with Death Hercule Poirot's Christmas Sad Cypress One, Two, Buckle My Shoe Evil Under the Sun Five Little Pigs The Hollow The Labors of Hercules Taken at the Flood The Under Dog and Other Stories Mrs. McGinty's Dead After the Funeral Hickory Dickory Dock Dead Man's Folly Cat Among the Pigeons The Clocks Third Girl Hallowe'en Party Elephants Can Remember Curtain: Poirot's Last Case **The Miss Marple Mysteries** The Murder at the Vicarage The Body in the Library The Moving Finger A Murder Is Announced They Do It with Mirrors A Pocket Full of Rye 4:50 from Paddington The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side A Caribbean Mystery At Bertram's Hotel Nemesis Sleeping Murder Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories **The Tommy and Tuppence Mysteries** The Secret Adversary Partners in Crime N or M? By the Pricking of My Thumbs Postern of Fate **Memoirs** An Autobiography Come, Tell Me How You Live ## Copyright This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. AGATHA CHRISTIE® THEY CAME TO BAGHDAD™. Copyright © 1951 Agatha Christie Limited (a Chorion company). All rights reserved. THEY CAME TO BAGHDAD © 1951. Published by permission of G.P. Putnam's Sons, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request. ISBN 978-0-06-207378-5 EPub Edition © MAY 2011 ISBN: 9780061753862 Version 06022014 11 12 13 14 15 ## About the Publisher Australia HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd. Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia <http://www.harpercollins.com.au> Canada HarperCollins Canada 2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada <http://www.harpercollins.ca> New Zealand HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand Unit D, 63 Apollo Drive Rosedale 0632 Auckland, New Zealand <http://www.harpercollins.co.nz> United Kingdom HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 77-85 Fulham Palace Road London, W6 8JB, UK <http://www.harpercollins.co.uk> United States HarperCollins Publishers Inc. 195 Broadway New York, NY 10007 <http://www.harpercollins.com> ## Footnote Section *Add, laugh, rejoice, bring nigh, show favour, gladden, give!

Increased production of hydrogen peroxide and expression of CD11b/CD18 on alveolar macrophages in patients with active pulmonary tuberculosis. Alveolar macrophages (AM) are important in host defense against Mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB). beta 2-integrins, especially CD11a/CD18 and CD11b/CD18, are implicated in leukocyte migration, antigen presentation, phagocytosis, and production of reactive oxygen species. To explore the functional relevance of beta 2-integrin expression to intracellular H2O2 capacity of AM in TB patients. In a prospective study, AM retrieved from 18 active pulmonary TB patients and 18 normal subjects were assessed for beta 2-integrin expression and intracellular H2O2 metabolism capacity by loading with anti-CD11a/CD18, anti-CD11b/CD18 monoclonal antibodies and 2',7' dichlorofluorescein diacetate (DCFH-DA) respectively, and analyzed by flow cytometry. AM from 8 normal subjects were stimulated with tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha, 10(5) units/ml) to examine the relationship between H2O2 production and CD11b/CD18 expression. The magnitude of DCFH oxidation and CD11b/CD18 expression of AM was higher in TB patients than in normal subjects. The CD11b/CD18 expression was related to the magnitude of DCFH oxidation, but not to lymphocyte numbers or subpopulations (CD4, CD8, CD25). Stimulation of AM with TNF-alpha increased H2O2 production and CD11b/CD18 expression. Pretreatment with CD11b/CD18 monoclonal antibodies inhibited TNF-alpha-induced H2O2. AM in TB patients possessed a higher capacity of oxidant metabolism. The increased CD11b/CD18 expression may be related to the increased respiratory burst response in AM against mycobacterial invasion.

Hydrochemical analysis to evaluate the seawater ingress in a small coral island of India. The sustainable development of the limited groundwater resources in the tropical island requires a thorough understanding of detail hydrogeological regime including the hydrochemical behavior of groundwater. Detail analysis of chemical data of groundwater helps in assessing the different groundwater zone affected by formation as well as sea water. Groundwater and saline water interaction is better understood using groundwater major ion chemistry over an island aquifer. Multivariate methods to analyze the geochemical data are used to understand geochemical evolution of groundwater. The methods are successfully used to group the data to evaluate influence of various environs in the study area. Various classification methods such as piper, correlation method, and salinity hazard measurements are also employed to critical study of geochemical characteristics of groundwater to identify vulnerable parts of the aquifer. These approaches have been used to successfully evaluate the aquifer zones of a tiny island off the west coast of India. The most part of island is found to be safe for drinking, however some parts of island are identified that are affected by sea water ingress and dissolution of formation minerals. The analysis has successfully leaded to identification of that part of aquifer on the island which needs immediate attention for restoration and avoids further deterioration.

Christopher Husbands, the man convicted of murdering two men after he opened fire in Toronto's Eaton Centre shopping mall, has launched a constitutional challenge over the Crown's demand that he serve two consecutive life sentences. Husbands's lawyers are arguing that extending his parole ineligibility to beyond 25 years would be cruel and unusual punishment. This is the only the third time in Canada — and the first time in Ontario — that the new law is being considered. Christopher Husbands was convicted in December of two counts of second-degree murder in the June 2, 2012, shooting that killed Ahmed Hassan and Nixon Nirmalendran. Husbands fired 14 shots in the food court of the busy mall, sending hundreds fleeing. Husbands, 25, was also found guilty of five counts of aggravated assault, one count of criminal negligence causing bodily harm and one count of reckless discharge of a firearm. The judge has the discretion to set his parole eligibility somewhere between 10 and 25 years. With cases involving multiple murders, sentences are usually served simultaneously. But in this case the Crown wants the sentences served consecutively, which would leave Husbands eligible for parole only after 40 years in prison. His lawyer Dirk Derstine is arguing that this would be unconstitutional. "The fact that you don't have the opportunity to go back and say 'Listen, I am no longer a danger, I am a good person.' It's not the question of will they be released, the question is: Do they have the hope that they will receive some sort of due process for their request?" Under Canadian law, Husbands can appeal his sentence if he believes it's too harsh. When the sentencing hearing resumes today, a man who is out on parole and a forensic psychiatrist are expected to testify for the defence.

“Can I just get some macaroni and gravy?” Photo: Tick Tock Diner Tick Dock Diner is involved in a crazy family murder plot, our friends at Daily Intel report. Georgios Spyropoulos, the manager of Tick Tock’s New Jersey location, hired an undercover cop (oops!) to kill his uncle, a manager at the Manhattan outpost. It was a financially motived move so that Spyropoulos could take over the business; apparently, he even married into the family with this plan in mind. Spyropoulos got busted while chatting with customers at the Tick Tock in Clifton, and is being charged with conspiracy to commit murder, attempt to commit murder, and weapons possession. Bail is $1 million. In the wise words of Tony Soprano: “You don’t shit where you eat. And you really don’t shit where I eat.” [Daily Intelligencer, NYP]

Is anything actually easier done than said? 238 shares

Medicana Obesity Medicana Obesity MEDICANA HEALTH GROUP OBESITY DEPARTMENTS Obesity is characterized with highest increase in prevalence around the world.Even though there are tens of medical etiologies of obesity, the most important ones are abnormal weight gain and sedentary lifestyle.Life time of obese patients is approximately 15 years shorter than other people due to diseases caused by obesity, including but not limited to hypertension, type 2 diabetes, hyperlipidemia, ischemic heart disease etc.Obesity is a risk factor for cancers such as colorectal cancers, breast cancer and prostate cancer. A successful fight against the obesity requires a multidisciplinary work. In Obesity Departments of Medicana Health Group, best treatment method is determined by coordination of Nutrition and Dietetics, Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases, Obesity Surgery and Psychiatry departments. Following methods are used for treatment of obesity in Obesity Departments of Medicana Health Group.

Table of Contents Title Page Copyright Page Epigraph [PART ONE] - THE CHANGE WE ARE CREATING [ONE] - INTRODUCTION: SCENES FROM A ROBOT WAR [TWO] - SMART BOMBS, NORMA JEANE, AND DEFECATING DUCKS: A SHORT HISTORY OF ROBOTICS [THREE] - ROBOTICS FOR DUMMIES [FOUR] - TO INFINITY AND BEYOND: THE POWER OF EXPONENTIAL TRENDS [FIVE] - COMING SOON TO A BATTLEFIELD NEAR YOU: THE NEXT WAVE OF WARBOTS [SIX] - ALWAYS IN THE LOOP? THE ARMING AND AUTONOMY OF ROBOTS [SEVEN] - ROBOTIC GODS: OUR MACHINE CREATORS [EIGHT] - WHAT INSPIRES THEM: SCIENCE FICTION'S IMPACT ON SCIENCE REALITY [NINE] - THE REFUSENIKS: THE ROBOTICISTS WHO JUST SAY NO [PART TWO] - WHAT CHANGE IS CREATING FOR US [TEN] - THE BIG CEBROWSKI AND THE REAL RMA: THINKING ABOUT REVOLUTIONARY TECHNOLOGIES [ELEVEN] - "ADVANCED" WARFARE: HOW WE MIGHT FIGHT WITH ROBOTS [TWELVE] - ROBOTS THAT DON'T LIKE APPLE PI : HOW THE U.S . COULD LOSE THE ... [THIRTEEN] - OPEN-SOURCE WARFARE: COLLEGE KIDS, TERRORISTS, AND OTHER NEW USERS ... [FOURTEEN] - LOSERS AND LUDDITES: THE CHANGING BATTLEFIELDS ROBOTS WILL FIGHT ... [FIFTEEN] - THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WARBOTS [SIXTEEN] - YOU TUBE WAR : THE PUBLIC AND ITS UNMANNED WARS [SEVENTEEN] - CHANGING THE EXPERIENCE OF WAR AND THE WARRIOR [EIGHTEEN] - COMMAND AND CONTROL... ALT-DELETE: NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND THEIR ... [NINETEEN] - WHO LET YOU IN THE WAR ? TECHNOLOGY AND THE NEW DEMOGRAPHICS OF CONFLICT [TWENTY] - DIGITIZING THE LAWS OF WAR AND OTHER ISSUES OF (UN)HUMAN RIGHTS [TWENTY-ONE] - A ROBOT REVOLT? TALKING ABOUT ROBOT ETHICS [TWENTY-TWO] - CONCLUSION: THE DUALITY OF ROBOTS AND HUMANS Acknowledgements [NOTES] [INDEX] Photo Insert ALSO BY P. W. SINGER _Children at War_ _Corporate Warriors:_ _The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry_ THE PENGUIN PRESS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England First published in 2009 by The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Copyright © P. W. Singer, 2009 All rights reserved eISBN : 978-1-440-68597-2 Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated. <http://us.penguingroup.com> _This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. Remember that all I am offering is the truth. Nothing more._ —Larry and Andy Wachowski, _The Matrix_ , 1999 **[AUTHOR'S NOTE]** WHY A BOOK ON ROBOTS AND WAR? _Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do._ —ISAAC ASIMOV Because robots are frakin' cool. That's the short answer to why someone would spend four years researching and writing a book on new technologies and war. The long answer is a bit more complex. As my family will surely attest, I was a bit of an odd kid. All kids develop their hobbies and even fixations, be it baseball cards or Barbie dolls. Indeed, I have yet to meet a six-year-old boy who did not have an encyclopedic knowledge of all things dinosaur. For me growing up, it was war. I could be more polite and say military history, but it was really just war. In saying the same about his childhood, the great historian John Keegan wrote, "It is not a phrase to be written, still less spoken with any complacency." But it is true nonetheless. Perhaps the reason lies in the fact that the generations before me had all served in the military. They left several lifetimes' worth of artifacts hidden around the house for me to pilfer and play with, whether it was my dad's old military medals and unit insignia, which I would take out and pin to my soccer jersey, or the model of the F-4 Phantom jet fighter that my uncle had flown over Vietnam, which I would run up and down the stairs on its missions to bomb Legoland. But the greatest treasure trove of all was at my grandparents' house. My grandfather passed away when I was six, too young to remember him as much more than the kindly man whom we would visit at the nursing home. But I think he may have influenced this aspect of me the most. Chalmers Rankin Carr, forever just "Granddaddy" to me, was a U.S. Navy captain who served in World War II. Like all those from what we now call "the Greatest Generation," he was one of the giants who saved the world. Almost every family gathering would include some tale from his or my grandmother's ("Maw Maw" to us grandkids) experiences at war or on the home front. It's almost a cliché to say, but the one that stands out is the Pearl Harbor story; although, as with all things in my family, it comes with a twist. On December 7, 1941, my grandfather was serving in the Pacific Fleet on a navy transport ship. For three months after the Pearl Harbor attack, the family didn't hear any word from him and worried for the worst. When his ship finally came back to port (it had actually sailed out of Pearl Harbor just two days before the attack), he immediately called home to tell his wife (my grandmother) and the rest of his family that he was okay. There were only two problems: he had called collect, and that side of my family is Scotch-Irish. No one would accept the charges. While my grandfather cursed the phone operator's ear off, in the way that only a sailor can, on the other end the family explained to the operator that since he was calling, he must be alive. So there was no reason to waste money on such a luxury as a long-distance phone call. Granddaddy's study was filled with volume after volume of great books, on everything from the history of the U.S. Navy to biographies of Civil War generals. I would often sneak off to this room, pull out one of the volumes, and lose myself in the past. These books shaped me then and stay with me now. One of my most prized possessions is an original-edition 1939 _Jane's Fighting Ships_ that my grandfather received as a gift from a Royal Navy officer, for being part of the crew that shipped a Lend-Lease destroyer to the Brits. As I type these very words, it peers down at me from the shelf above my computer. My reading fare quickly diverged from that of the other kids at Myers Park Elementary School. A typical afternoon reading was less likely to be exploring how Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective, cracked _The Case of the Missing Roller Skates_ than how Audie Murphy, the youngest soldier ever to win the Medal of Honor, went, as he wrote in his autobiography, _To Hell and Back_. War soon morphed over into the imaginary world that surrounds all kids like a bubble. Other kids went to Narnia, I went to Normandy. While it may have looked like a normal Diamondback dirt bike, my bicycle was the only one in the neighborhood that mounted twin .50-caliber machine guns on the handlebars, to shoot down any marauding Japanese Zeros that dared to ambush me on my way to school each morning. I still remember my mother yelling at me for digging a five-foot-deep foxhole in our backyard when I was ten years old. She clearly failed to understand the importance of setting up a proper line of defense. I certainly can't claim to have been a normal kid, but in my defense, you also have to remember the context. To be so focused on war was somewhat easier in that period. It was the Reagan era and the cold war had heated back up. The Russians wouldn't come to our Olympics and we wouldn't go to theirs, the military was cool again, and we had no questions about whether we were the good guys. Most important, as a young Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen taught us in _Red Dawn_ , not only were the Commies poised to parachute right into our schools, but it was likely us kids who would have to beat them back. What I find interesting, and a sign of the power of Hollywood's marketing machine, is that usually some artifact from science fiction is in the background of these memories, intertwined with the history. For example, when I think back to my childhood bedroom, there are the model warships from my grandfather's era lined up on display, but also Luke, Leia, Han, and Chewbacca peeking up from my _Star Wars_ bedsheets. As most of science fiction involved some good guy battling some bad guy in a world far, far away, the two memes of my fantasy world went together fairly well. In short, your author was the kind of little boy to whom a stick was not a mere piece of wood, but the makings of a machine gun or a lightsaber that could save the world from both Hitler and Darth Vader. # WAR! WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? I look back on these memories with some embarrassment, but also guilt. Of course, even then, I knew that people die in war and many soldiers didn't come home, but they were always only the buddy of the hero, oddly enough usually from Brooklyn in most World War II movies. The reality of war had no way of sinking in. It was not until years later that I truly understood the human costs of war. I remember crossing a jury-rigged bridge into Mostar, a town in Bosnia that saw some of the worst fighting in the Yugoslav civil war. I was there as part of a fact-finding mission on the UN peacekeeping operation. Weeks of back-and-forth fighting had turned block after block of factories and apartments on the riverfront into a mass of hollowed-out hulks. The pictures of World War II's Stalingrad in an old book on my grandfather's shelf had sprung up to surround and encompass me. The books never had any smell other than dust, but here, even well after the battles, a burnt, fetid scent still hung in the air. Down the river were the remnants of an elegant 500-year-old bridge, which had been blasted to pieces by Serb artillery. The people, though, were the ones who drove it home. "Haunted" is the only adjective I can think of to describe the faces of the refugees. The standout memory, though, was of a local provincial governor we met with. A man alleged to have orchestrated mass killing and ethnic cleansing campaigns for which he would soon after be indicted, he sat at an immense wooden desk, ominously framed by two nationalist paramilitary (and hence illegal) flags. But he banally talked about his plans to build up the tourism industry after the war. He explained that the war had destroyed many of the factories and cleaned out whole villages. So on the positive side, the rivers were now clear and teeming with fish. Forget the war crimes or the refugees, he argued, if only the United States and United Nations would wise up and give him money, the package tourists would be there in a matter of weeks. This paradox between the "good" wars that I had fought in my youth and the seamy underside of war in the twenty-first century has since been the thread running through my writing. During that same trip, I met my first private military contractors, a set of former U.S. Army officers, who were working in Sarajevo for a private company. Their firm wasn't selling widgets or even weapons, but rather the very military skills of the soldiers themselves. This contradiction between our ideal of military service and the reality of a booming new industry of private companies leasing out soldiers for hire became the subject of my first book, _Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry_. During the research, I was struck by another breakdown of the traditional model of who was supposed to be at war. In West Africa, the main foes of these new private soldiers were rebel bands, mostly made up of children. Many of these tiny soldiers had been abducted from their schools and homes. For me as a child, war had merely been a matter of play; for these children, war was the only way to survive. My next book, _Children at War,_ tried to tell their story, in a way that didn't just tug at heartstrings, but also explained the causes and effects of child soldiers, such that we might finally act to end this terrible practice. This contradiction of war as we imagine it to be, versus how it really is, isn't just the matter of a young boy growing up and putting his lightsaber away. It is part of something bigger that has haunted humanity from its very start. One of the original sins of our species is its inability to live at peace. From the very beginning of human history, conflicts over food, territory, riches, power, and prestige have been constant. The earliest forms of human organization were clans that first united for hunting, but soon also for fighting with other clans over the best hunting grounds. The story of the dawn of civilization is a story of war, as these clans transformed into larger tribes and then to city-states and empires. War was both a cause and effect of broader social change. From war sprung the very first specializations of labor, the resulting stratification into economic classes, and the creation of politics itself. The result is that much of what is written in human history is simply a history of warfare. It is a history that often shames us. And it should. War is not just merely human destruction, but the most extreme of horror and waste wrapped together. Our great religions view war as perhaps the ultimate transgression. In the Bible, for example, King David was prohibited from building his holy Temple, because, as God told him, "You are a warrior who has shed blood" (1 Chronicles 28). The ancient prophets' ideal vision of the future is a time when we "will learn warfare no more" (Isaiah 2:4). As one religious scholar put it, "War is a sign of disobedience and sinfulness. War is not intended by God. All human beings are made in the image of God and they are precious and unique." The same disdain for war was held by our great intellectuals. Thucydides, the founder of both the study of history as well as the science of international relations, described war as a punishment springing from man's hubris. It is our arrogance chastised. Two thousand years later, Freud similarly described it as emanating from our Thanatos, the part of our psyche that lives out evil. Yet for such a supposed abomination, we sure do seem to be obsessed with war. From architecture to the arts, war's horrors have fed the heights of human creativity. Many of our great works of literature, arts, and science either are inspired by war or are reactions to it, from the founding epics of literature like _Gilgamesh_ and the _Iliad_ to the great painters of surrealism to the very origins of the fields of chemistry and physics. War then, appears in many more guises than the waste of human destruction that we know it to be. War has been described as a testing ground for nobility, the only true place where man's "arête" (excellence) could be won. In the _Iliad_ , the master narrative for all of Western literature, for example, "fighting is where man will win glory." From Herodotus to Hegel, war is described as a test of people's vitality and even one culture's way of life versus another. War is thus often portrayed in our great books as a teacher—a cruel teacher who reveals both our strengths and faults. Virtues are taught through stories of war from Homer to Shakespeare, while evils to avoid are drawn out by war in stories ranging from Aeschylus to Naipaul. War is granted credit for all sorts of great social change. Democracy came from the phalanx and citizen rowers of the ancient Greeks, while the story of modern-day civil rights would not be the same without Rosie the Riveter or the African American soldiers of the Red Ball Express in World War II. War then is depicted as immoral, yet humanity has always found out-clauses to explain its necessity and celebration. The same religions that see violence as a sin also licensed wars of crusade and jihad. And it is equally the case in politics. We repeatedly urge war as the means to either spread or defeat whatever ideology is in vogue at the time, be it enlightenment, imperialism, communism, fascism, democracy, or even simply "to end all wars." This paradox continues in American politics today. Avoidance of war has been a traditional tenet of our foreign policy. Yet we have been at war for most of our nation's history and many of our greatest heroes are warriors. We are simultaneously leaders of weapons development, being the creator of the atomic bomb, and the founders of arms control, which seeks its ban. We are repulsed by the idea of war, and yet entranced by it. In my mind, there are two core reasons for humankind's almost obsessive-compulsive disorder. The first is that war brings out the most powerful emotions that define what it is to be human. Bravery, honor, love, leadership, pity, selflessness, comradeship, commitment, charity, sacrifice, hate, fear, and loss all find their definitive expressions in the fires of war. They reach their ultimate highs and lows, and, in so doing, war is almost addictive to human culture. As William James put it, "The horror is the fascination. War is the strong life; it is life in extremis." The other reason that war so consumes us is that for all humanity's advancement, we just can't seem to get away from it. After nearly every war, we cite the immense lessons we learned that will prevent that calamity from repeating itself. We say over and over, "Never again." Yet the reality is "ever again." # "THE FUTURE AIN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE" If humanity's fascination comes down to how war reveals its best and worst qualities, this book comes from wrestling with a new contradiction in warfare that humanity finds itself hurtling toward. We embrace war, but don't like to look to its future, including now one of the most fundamental changes ever in war. Mine is a generation that, as one analyst put it, is "producing more history than it can consume." With all the focus over orange alerts and Iraq, it is tough to take a step back and notice some of the tidal shifts we are living through. For example, in my lifetime, computers went from an oddity to omnipresent. I still remember when my dad first took me to the local science museum at the age of eight to see what a computer looked like. You could only communicate with it through an obtuse "Basic" language, a sort of evil technologic shorthand. As I recall, the only useful thing we could do with that early computer (I think it was a Texas Instruments) was design a smiley face made out of hundreds of the letter M, which we then printed on one of those old spool printers that you had to tear the paper off the edges. Today, the last thing my wife does before she goes to bed is check her e-mail on a handheld computer linked up wirelessly to a shared global server, all the while brushing her teeth. In the blink of an eye for history, something revolutionary happened. Computers seem overwhelming enough, but over the last few years I became more and more convinced that my generation was living through something perhaps even more momentous. From the robot vacuum cleaner that patrols my floors to the unmanned planes that my friends in the air force use to patrol Iraq, humanity has started to engineer technologies that are fundamentally different from all before. Our creations are now acting in and upon the world without us. I certainly cannot claim to be the only one to see these changes. Bill Gates, the world's richest man and perhaps most responsible for the spread of computers, for instance, describes robotics today as being where the computer industry was around 1980, poised to change the way we think about what technology can do for us. "As I look at the trends that are now starting to converge, I can envision a future in which robotic devices will become a nearly ubiquitous part of our day-to-day lives. . . . We may be on the verge of a new era, when the PC will get up off the desktop and allow us to see, hear, touch and manipulate objects in places where we are not physically present." By the end of 2007, a United Nations report found that there were 4.1 million robots around the world working in people's homes (as vacuum cleaners and the like). That is, there were more robots than the entire human population of Ireland. The same study found that this "personal" robotics industry had a current market value around $17 billion. What is more important than the raw numbers is the trajectory of the growth. In 2004, the number of personal robots in the world was estimated at 2 million. By 2007, it had doubled. Another 7 million more were expected to be bought by the end of 2008. Looking forward, many see the numbers expanding at higher rates. By 2010, one technology research group predicts there will be 55.5 million personal robots in the world. This would be just the start. Indeed, in South Korea (human population 49 million), the Ministry of Information and Communication has announced plans to put a robot in every home by 2013. Here in the United States, it will likely take a little longer. One industry leader projects 2014 as the year by which 10 percent of the American population will have some form of personal robot in their household. Robots are also showing up at work, from the more than forty-five hundred drones doing crop-dusting on Japanese farms to what many males would perhaps find the most disturbing example of mechanized outsourcing, the robot that handles security access at the offices of Victoria's Secret. Indeed, assembly-line factory robotics is an $8 billion a year industry, growing at a 39 percent pace in the United States. This is not good news for everyone, of course, as it has put many blue-collar workers out of work, most notably at carmakers. Roughly one of every ten workers in automobile manufacturing is now a robot, and Toyota has announced a plan to eventually automate all its factories. These trends project an industry that many analysts believe is poised for a breakout. Future Horizons, a technology research group based in Kent, England, describes how "the electronics industry is on the cusp of a robotics wave." Many even think that by 2025, the robotics industry might rival the automobile and computer industries in both dollars and jobs. _BusinessWeek_ summed up the future of the industry as "A Robotics Gold Mine." To put it another way, the robots that had once only populated my action figure collection were now becoming all too real. Science fiction appeared to be turning into science reality. # THE PARADOX OF THE FUTURE AND OF WAR If robots were starting to appear in almost every aspect of life, I began to wonder how they would matter for war and politics. It is with some trepidation that I made such a seeming leap of reason. Indeed, people have long peered into the future and then gotten it completely and utterly wrong. My favorite example took place on October 9, 1903, when the _New York Times_ predicted that "the flying machine which will really fly might be evolved by the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians and mechanicians in from one million to ten million years." That same day, two brothers who owned a bicycle shop in Ohio started assembling the very first airplane, which would fly just a few weeks later. Similarly botched predictions frequently happen in the military field. General Giulio Douhet, the commander of Italy's air force in World War I, is perhaps the most infamous. In 1921, he wrote a best-selling book called _The Command of the Air_ , which argued that the invention of airplanes made all other parts of the military obsolete and unnecessary. Needless to say, this would be news both to my granddaddy, who sailed out to another world war just twenty years later, and to the soldiers slogging through the sand and dust of Iraq and Afghanistan today. The result is yet another paradox. It is completely normal to look forward into the future in realms like science, business, or even the weather. But forecasts of the future and, even more important, serious explorations of the changes that might result from such a future are generally avoided in the study of war. People play it safe and the gatekeepers of the field often try to knock down anything that feels too unfamiliar. My own first experience with this was when I began my research on private military firms. A senior professor thereupon informed me that I would do well to quit graduate school and instead "go become a screenwriter in Hollywood," for thinking to waste his time on such a fiction as companies providing soldiers for hire. I still wonder how he squares this worldview with the 180,000 private military contractors now deployed in Iraq. A similar thing happened when I first presented my early research on the problem of child soldiers. A professor at Harvard University told me that she didn't believe child soldiers existed and that I was "making it up." Today there are some 300,000 children at war around the globe, fighting in three out of every four wars. The irony is that while we accept change in other realms, we resist trying to research and understand change in the study of war. For example, the very real fear about what the environment will look like as far away as 2050 has driven individuals, governments, and companies alike to begin (belatedly) changing their practices. Yet we seem willing to stay oblivious to the changes that will come well before then for war, even though, just like the changes in global climate, we can already see the outlines of the transformation under way. Each time I perused the Sharper Image catalog or read a report mentioning a drone taking out a terrorist camp in Afghanistan, I felt myself living at the time of the most important weapons development since the atomic bomb. One could even argue that the rise of these digital warriors is more significant, in that robotics alters not merely the lethality of war, but the very identity of who fights it. The end of humans' monopoly on war surely seemed something momentous, which historians would talk about centuries from now, if humankind is so lucky to still be around. Yet for something so seemingly important, no one was talking about it. Time and again, I was struck by this disconnect. For example, as I describe later in the book, I once went to a major conference in Washington, D.C., on "the revolution in military affairs." The speakers included many of the most notable scholars in the field, as well as several key political and military leaders. And yet, over the course of several hours of pontificating on what was supposedly new and exciting in security issues today, not one mention was made of these new technologies, not even a single word. Another time I arrived at the airport, facing a long flight but having forgotten a book to read on the plane. So I picked up one of those potboiler paperback novels at the bookstore. It turned out to be a courtroom drama about the suspicious murder of a beautiful scientist. About halfway through the flight, I read one of the characters describe the scientist's work. "Genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics.... It has the capacity to replace the NBCs of the last century—nuclear, biological and chemical. In its own way the potential is much more insidious. There is always a downside. The other side of the coin of progress. Some people don't want to take the chance. You can see why. The question is: How do you stop it? How do you put the genie of knowledge back in the bottle?" And with that, I thought, a fictional character in a cheesy crime novel had just put more thought into the future of war than pretty much the entire set of real-world university political science departments, think tanks, and the foundations that fund them. This lack of study began to disturb and fascinate me more and more. A failure to research, understand, and weigh the changes going on around us could only lead to bad results for our politics and policies. Yet some of the most important changes in the wars of today and tomorrow were either not talked about at all or merely tossed aside, as one military expert put it, to the categories of "science fiction and futurism." And that didn't seem right. My fear also began that while all this change was incredibly exciting, it was also somewhat terrifying. We seemed to be repeating past cycles of only dealing with a huge change after the fact, when the genie was already out of the bottle. And thus somewhere along the way from reading military books in my grandfather's study to playing with lightsabers in the backyard, I decided that the serious questions that surround robotics in war and what happens when humankind's monopoly over it is broken were worthy of study. _Wired for War_ is the result. # YOUR MISSION, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT When we look back at history, one thing that stands out is how the truly momentous events were often missed. When Gutenberg invented the printing press, no one held a parade. Likewise, when Hitler decided to give up his painting career, no one thought to convince him to give selling crappy watercolors just one more try, in lieu of a bid for world domination. This is all the more difficult in our present chaotic news environment of talk shows, blogs, webcasts, and so forth. As one writer put it, "The true watersheds in human affairs are seldom spotted amid the tumult of headlines broadcast on the hour." If my growing sense was that we are in the midst of something important, maybe even a revolution in warfare and technology that will literally transform human history, then my aim in the book's research quickly became to capture that incredible moment. Imagine, I thought, if we had been able to wrestle with the great changes that atomic bombs brought to politics while they were being invented, rather than waiting to puzzle our way through their implications years later. Moreover, as I set off on my research path, I quickly learned that what was impossible in 1945 is possible now. This revolution is not occurring in secret desert test facilities, but playing out right in front of us. My goal then became to write a book built on careful scholarship, resting on hard-core research, not speculation or exaggeration. I hoped to offer not only an entry point into this exciting and unnerving change, but also a 360-degree view of what was going on, a resource that could prove useful to leaders and public alike, both today and tomorrow. And yet I also hoped to bring readers the same sense of wonder and amazement that originally drove me on this journey. If you haven't noticed by now, this will be a book somewhat different from the normal look at either war or technology. It's a product of who I am and the forces that shape me. I am the kid who played with Transformers who now consults for the military. I am a scholar who studied under Sam Huntington, one of the most distinguished political scientists of the twentieth century, and yet I am shamefully addicted to watching _The Real World_. The eloquence and brilliance of authors like John Keegan and Jared Diamond inspire me, and yet the writer I read most religiously is Bill Simmons, the irreverent "Sports Guy" columnist for ESPN, who blogs on the finer points of the NBA Draft and _The Bachelor_ dating show. Fortunately, the topic I am wrestling with is located where warfare, history, politics, science, business, technology, and popular culture all come together. So unlike most books on war or politics, this one isn't aimed at just one audience. The issues of robotics and war are so compelling and important that people with all sorts of interests and backgrounds can and should dig into them. In other words, you will find references of both sorts. There will be references of the scholarly type, pointing to the sources of the data, and there will be references of the pop culture type, pointing to parallels and lessons in mass media. As such, the research for this book involved a melding of methodologies. I spent nearly four years seeking out anything and everything useful that I could find on the topic, whatever the source. I checked out musty old history books that hadn't left the library in years. I scoured the last twenty years of each U.S. military branch's professional journals, printing table-high stacks of any article relevant to the topics of war, technology, leadership, and change. I searched the online archives of all the major technology journals. Indeed, I even spent several wonderful days cruising through the "Wookipedia," the Internet hub for all things _Star Wars_. The comedian Stephen Colbert famously said, "I don't trust books. They're all fact, no heart." So I also made sure to interview anyone I could find who brought an important or unique perspective to the issues. I sought out the ideas of robot scientists and weapons developers, professors and journalists, human rights activists and science fiction writers, as well as the men and women now using these new technologies to fight. Rank mattered less to me than what they could bring to the issue. I quizzed four-star generals and secretaries of the army, navy, and air force, as well as nineteen-year-old specialists at the bottom of the chain of command. I met with pilots of robotic drones, who had never left the United States, and special operations soldiers just back from missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Robots have no one nationality, so my interviews also became quite international. I gathered the views of everyone from German army officers and an Indian news editor to a set of Iraqi insurgents. Where possible, these individuals are identified, but sometimes the interviewees chose not to be named, which I have respected in the citations. Sometimes these interviews would take place in person and sometimes via e-mail or phone. The research took me from robot factories and military bases around the world to one interview of an Arab general from the backseat of his BMW 7 series luxury car, discussing robot strike scenarios as we tooled about town. A hotel conference room oddly enough turned out to be the most dangerous of all these research locales. While I was observing a meeting of robotics developers and their military counterparts, a rogue robot tried to run me over. A demonstration model brought in by one of the developers, the little bugger was programmed to patrol around the room but avoid contacting any humans. But it just kept on coming and coming and nearly broke my foot. In my mind, it makes me a bit like the nerdy version of John Connor, hunted down by a machine obviously sent to keep you from reading about our robotic future. # THE END OF THE BEGINNING As you work your way through the chapters, then, you will likely note a few things. Some admittedly may be a bit different from the traditional book that originates at a public policy "think tank." The first is that there is a mix of traditional hard data (numbers, statistics, and the like) as well as a heavy dose of untraditional anecdotes. In turn, the chapters tend to weave together scores of "characters," rather than following just one throughout the book. My research and interviews brought in an amazing and colorful cast of people at work in this field. In the translation of research to book, I didn't want to lose this human side. The reason is that, ironically for a topic on nonhuman changes in war, the stories and personalities are what tell us the most about where we are today, as well as where we are heading tomorrow. Or as one scientist described, "These robots are extensions of us." The use of vignettes, personalities, and anecdotes also has a methodological rationale. It is not just a more effective way of giving readers a true "feel" of what is going on and capturing our historic moment in time. It is also an echo of the strategy used by ethnographers, who collect individual stories and anecdotes to discern broader trends and conclusions. Indeed, so much of what I learned, as well as how we tend to communicate to each other, came via storytelling that it seems only fitting to share many of these stories in the context of the issues. Indeed, one story may be an anecdote, but a collection of them is data. Second, the book deals with the future and thus has to be, in part, predictive or conceptual. As the earlier examples showed, this is no easy task. The prognostications of nonscientists often fail because they frequently don't pay close attention to what is technically feasible or not. In turn, scientists' predictions tend to overstate the positive, especially when it comes to war. Franklin, Edison, Nobel, and Einstein, for example, all thought that their inventions would end war. They knew the science, but not the social science. Both groups tend to disregard how social change can intervene and intertwine with technology, yielding not one definite future, but rather many possible futures. Researchers have found that these three problems can be diminished by relying on actual facts rather than hopes or fears, having a firm technical and social science footing, making conclusions built on sound reasoning, and being sure not to ignore the doubts of the skeptics. This book follows those lessons. For instance, you'll read here only about technologies either operating now or already at the prototype stage. I steer clear of the imaginary ones fueled by the Klingon power packs, dragon's blood, or the hormones of teenage wizards. Third, for a book supposedly on the future, there is a lot of history. My sense is not that history repeats itself, but that there are patterns and lessons that we can draw from, a key way to ground any look forward. There will be much change in the future of war, but also much continuity. Fourth, nothing in this book is classified information. I only include what is available in the public domain. Of course, a few times in the course of the research I would ask some soldier or scientist about a secretive project or document and they would say, "How did you find out about that? I can't even talk about it!" "Google" was all too often my answer, which says a lot both about security as well as what AI search programs bring to modern research. Fifth, the book makes many allusions to popular culture, not something you normally find in a research work on war, politics, or science. Some references are obvious and some are not (and thus the first reader to send a complete list of them to me at www.pwsinger.com will receive a signed copy of the book and a Burger King _Transformers_ collectible). It is also, as far as I know, the first book to come out of a think tank with a recommended music playlist, designed to get into the vibe of the research results, also available on the Web site. The reason for this different approach is not simply to break the mold, or rather mould, of scholarly style or to give heart attacks to the old guard with my generation's manner of thinking and writing, even on important issues like war. Rather, as much as we pointy-headed scholars hate to admit, this is how people process information most efficiently. Humankind has long best understood and digested things that are new by flavoring them with stories of personal experience ("There was this one time, in band camp, where we ...") as well as by allusions to what is already culturally familiar, especially icons, symbols, and metaphors ("It's just like when ..."). And, whether we like it or not, our twenty-first-century folklore is that of the popular movies, TV shows, music, gadgets, and books that shaped us growing up. You have now been dutifully warned of what may come. I hope you find the results of this journey simultaneously interesting, educational, and maybe even a bit scary. In other words: frakin' cool. **[PART ONE]** **THE CHANGE WE ARE CREATING** **[ONE]** **INTRODUCTION: SCENES FROM A ROBOT WAR** _We are building the bridge to the future while standing on it._ _—_ U.S. ARMY COLONEL There was little to warn of the danger ahead. The Iraqi insurgent had laid his ambush with great cunning. Hidden along the side of the road, the bomb looked like any other piece of trash or scrap metal. American soldiers call these jury-rigged bombs "IEDs," official shorthand for improvised explosive devices. The team hunting for the IED is called an Explosive Ordnance Disposal, or EOD, team; they are the military's bomb squads. Before Iraq, the EOD teams were not much valued by either the troops in the field or their senior leaders. They usually deployed to battlefields only after the fighting was done, to defuse any old weapons caches or unexploded ammunition that might be found. It was dangerous work, but not one that gained the EODs much acclaim. But in Iraq, the IED quickly became the insurgents' primary way of lashing back at U.S. forces. In the first year of the fighting, there were 5,607 roadside bomb attacks. By 2006, the insurgents were averaging nearly 2,500 a month. Cheap and easy to make, IEDs took a grievous toll, becoming the leading cause of casualties among American troops as well as Iraqi civilians. They also limited the ability of U.S. forces to move about safely and carry out their missions, such that the commanding general quickly determined that among all the myriad problems in Iraq, "IEDs are my number one threat." In response, the Pentagon soon was spending more than $6.1 billion to counter IEDs in Iraq. The EOD teams were tasked with defeating this threat, roving about the battlefield to find and defuse the IEDs before they could explode and kill. The teams went from afterthought to, as one journalist put it, "one of the most important assignments on the battlefield." In a typical tour in Iraq, each team will go on more than six hundred IED calls, defusing or safely exploding about two IEDs a day. Perhaps the best sign of how critical the EOD teams became is that the insurgents began offering a rumored $50,000 bounty for killing an EOD team member. Unfortunately, this particular mission would not end well. By the time the soldier had advanced close enough to see the telltale explosive wires of an IED, it was too late. There was no time to defuse the bomb and no time to escape. The IED erupted in a wave of flame. Depending on how much explosive the insurgent has packed into an IED, a soldier must be as far as fifty yards away to escape death and even as much as half a mile away to escape injury from the blast and bomb fragments. Even if you are not hit, the pressure from the blast can break your limbs. This soldier, though, had been right on top of the bomb. Shards of metal shrapnel flew in every direction at bullet speed. As the flames and debris cleared and the rest of the team advanced, they found little left of the soldier. Hearts in their throats, they loaded the remains onto a helicopter, which took them back to the base camp near Baghdad International Airport. Writing home after such an incident may be the toughest job for a leader. That night, the team's commander, a U.S. Navy chief petty officer, did his sad duty. The effect of this explosion had been particularly tough on his unit. They had lost their most fearless and technically savvy soldier. More important, they had also lost a valued member of the team, a soldier who had saved the others' lives many times over. The soldier had always taken the most dangerous roles, scouting ahead for IEDs and ambushes. Despite this, the other soldiers in the unit had never once heard a complaint. This being a war in the age of instant communication, there was no knock on the door of some farmhouse in Iowa, as is always the case in the old war movies. Instead, the chief's letter was sent via e-mail. In his condolences, the chief noted the soldier's bravery and sacrifice. He apologized for his inability to change what had happened. But he also expressed his thanks and talked up the silver lining to the tragedy. As the chief wrote, "When a robot dies, you don't have to write a letter to its mother." # CLEANING FLOORS AND FIGHTING WARS The destination of the e-mail was a gray, concrete, two-story office building located in a drab corporate park just outside Boston. On the corner of the building is the sign for the soldier's maker, a company called iRobot. The complex is an outgrowth of the Burlington Shopping Mall, so across the street are a Men's Wearhouse discount suit store and a Macaroni Grill, a faux Italian restaurant chain known less for its pasta than the fact that it allows you to crayon on your tablecloth. It may seem an odd cradle for the future of war, but then again, no one standing outside a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, some hundred years back thought, "Ah yes, this must be the home of a new era of package tourism, lost luggage, and strategic bombing." The inside of iRobot is just like any other office building, with drab colors on the walls and mind-numbing rows of cubicles filled with staff punching away at their keyboards. The difference at iRobot is that the obligatory corporate board-room doubles as a small museum of robots and every so often a loud thump comes from a robot crashing into the wall. When I arrive for my visit, some of the employees are testing out a tracked robot, driving it down the hallway with a jury-rigged Xbox video game controller. Think _Office Space_ crossed with Asimov. iRobot was founded in 1990 by three MIT computer geeks, Colin Angle, the CEO, Helen Greiner, the chairman of the board, and Rodney Brooks, their former professor, who doubled as chief technical officer. Brooks was already considered one of the world's leading experts on robotics and artificial intelligence, Greiner would eventually be named one of "America's Best Leaders" by _U.S. News & World Report_, and Angle's work would become so influential that his undergrad thesis paper ended up at the Smithsonian. iRobot, though, was no sure thing at the start. There was no real market for robots, the company's first home was Angle's living room, and their CEO's only previous job had been as a summer camp counselor. iRobot the company took its name from _I, Robot_ the Isaac Asimov science fiction novel (later made into a Will Smith movie). Asimov laid out a vision in which humans of the future share the world with robots. His fictional robots carry out not only mundane chores but also make life-and-death decisions. The real-world firm started out slowly with some small-scale government contracts and several attempts at robotic toys. Its first robot was Genghis, a tiny bot designed to scramble across the surfaces of other planets for NASA. On the toy front, it tried to sell a doll that laughed when tickled and a robot dinosaur, a velociraptor inspired by the movie _Jurassic Park_. None of their products made a splash. "We were the longest overnight success story ever," said Greiner. In time, iRobot developed two products that would make its mark on the world. The first is Roomba, the first mass-marketed robotic vacuum cleaner. Roomba is a disc-shaped robot thirteen inches in diameter and just over three inches high. It is basically a large Frisbee that roams about the floor, automatically vacuuming it clean. Roomba's sensors figure out the size and shape of your room, and with the push of the "clean" button it goes to work. Indeed, Roomba is smart enough to avoid falling down the stairs and even knows how to return to its charger when the power is running low. Roomba actually evolved from Fetch, a robot that the company designed in 1997 for the U.S. Air Force. Fetch cleaned up cluster bomblets from airfields; Roomba cleans up dust bunnies under sofas. Released in 2002, Roomba became a media darling, appearing in everything from the Sharper Image catalog to the _Today_ show, and soon was one of the most sought-after gadgets to give at Christmas. iRobot's other breakout product was PackBot, the "soldier" blown up by that IED in Iraq. PackBot came out of a contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, in 1998. Weighing forty-two pounds and costing just under $150,000, PackBot is about the size of a lawn mower. It is typically controlled via remote control, although it can drive itself, including even backtracking to wherever it started its mission. PackBot moves using four "flippers," essentially tank treads that can rotate on one axis. These allow PackBot not only to roll forward and backward like regular tank tracks, but also to flip its tracks up and down to climb stairs, rumble over rocks, squeeze down twisting tunnels, and even swim in under six feet of water. The tracks are made of a hard rubberlike polymer that iRobot patented. They are specially designed to be used on any surface, ranging from the mud of a battlefield to the tiled floor of an office building. The designers at iRobot look at their robots as "platforms." PackBot has eight separate payload bays and hookups that allow its users to swap in whatever they need: mine detector, chemical and biological weapons sensor, or just extra power packs. The EOD version of the PackBot that served in Iraq comes with an extendable arm on top that mounts both a head, containing a high-powered zoom camera, and a clawlike gripper. Soldiers use these to drive up to IEDs, peer at them closely, and then, using the gripper, disassemble the bomb, all from a safe distance. PackBot made its operational debut on the fateful day of September 11, 2001. With all air traffic grounded after the destruction of the World Trade Center, engineers from iRobot loaded their robots into cars and drove down to help in the rescue and recovery efforts at Ground Zero. A _New York Times_ article entitled "Agile in a Crisis, Robots Show Their Mettle" described them as "rescuers [that] are unaffected by the carnage, dust and smoke that envelop the remains of the World Trade Center. They are immune to the fatigue and heartbreak that hang in the air." Soon after, PackBot went to war. As U.S. forces deployed to Afghanistan, troops came across massive cave complexes that had to be scouted out, but were often booby-trapped. The only specialized tool the troops had were flashlights, and they had to crawl through the caves on hands and knees. Usually, the GIs would send their local Afghan allies down into the caves first, but as one soldier put it, "We began to run out of Afghans." iRobot was then asked by the Pentagon to send help. Just six weeks later, PackBots made their debut in a cave complex near the village of Nazaraht, in the heart of Taliban territory. iRobot was now at war. With both the Roomba and PackBot becoming hits (the first test robots sent to Afghanistan were so popular with the troops, they wouldn't let the company take them back), the business that had started in a living room took off. In the next five years, the company's revenue and profits grew by a factor of ten. By 2007, more than three million Roombas had been sold at over seven thousand retail stores. On the military side, the war robot business grew by as much as 60 percent a year, culminating in a $286 million Pentagon contract in 2008 to supply as many as three thousand more machines. The PackBot was in such demand that the space reserved for it in iRobot's museum was empty when I visited the offices. The display model had been deployed to Iraq. With these successes under its belt, iRobot was ready for the big time. It entered the stock market, with its IPO underwritten by two of the most prestigious investment houses in the world, Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan. On the first day of trading, iRobot's public value hit $620 million. At the market's close, a PackBot rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange, the first robot ever to do so. # THE iROBOT WAY iRobot's business model splits its sales effort between a consumer division that targets robots for the home and a government and industrial robots division that mainly targets the military. The military business currently makes up about a third of revenue, but market analysts are "really excited by it" and predict it will soon become about half the company's revenue. iRobot also has a vibrant research team led by Andrew Bennett, who was part of the team that raced to New York on 9/11. This group lays the groundwork for future advances, and has some fifty patents either approved or pending. This split in iRobot's customer base can make for some amusement. iRobot may be the only company that sells at both Pentagon trade shows and Linens 'n Things. In the customer testimonials section of its Web site, the chief's letter about his robot in Iraq is just below one from "Janine," a housewife from Connecticut. While he talked about how his robot saved lives in battle, she thanked the company because "I have four boys and two cats and this little 'robot' keeps my rugs and hardwood floors dirt and hair free!" The firm plans to continue to advance the frontiers of cleaning floors and fighting wars. It has followed up the Roomba with Scooba, which washes and scrubs floors, and the Dirt Dog, a heavy-duty cleaner designed for sucking up nuts and bolts in workshops and off factory floors. The online advertisements for the robots tell potential buyers, "You've done enough; leave the cleaning to a robot." "One of our challenges is getting people who aren't familiar with the product and who haven't really thought about robots being real before to give it a shot," says Colin Angle, iRobot's CEO. "This is all very new stuff. We're continually trying to find new ways of helping people get over the skepticism to really imagine how robots in their lives could really be helpful." Indeed, with less than 1 percent of U.S. households owning cleaning robots, "the demographics of our purchasers suggest we're just scratching the surface of what's possible," says Angle. iRobot recently launched a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign called "I Love Robots" that shows people talking about their robots and the work they do. On the military side, iRobot has similar dreams of growth. It has new and improved versions of the PackBot as well as a host of plans to convert any type of vehicle into a robot, be it a car or ship, using a universal control unit that you plug into the engine and steering wheel. One new robot that iRobot's designers are especially excited to show off is the Warrior. Weighing about 250 pounds, the Warrior is essentially a PackBot on steroids. It has the same basic design, but is about five times bigger. Warrior can run a four-minute mile for five hours, while carrying 100 pounds. Yet it is agile enough to fit through a doorway and go up stairs. iRobot built the robot, even though, as one designer put it, "there are no clear buyers yet ... we don't know yet just who will use it." The firm is essentially using the _Field of Dreams_ model: if they build it, the buyers will come. Warrior is really just a mobile platform, with a USB port on top. USB ports are the universal connectors used to plug anything into a computer, from your mouse to a printer. With the USB on Warrior, users can hook up whatever they want to their robot, whether it be sensors, a gun, and a TV camera for battle, or an iPod and loudspeakers for a mobile rave party. The long-term strategy then is that other companies will focus on the plug-in market, while iRobot corners the market for the robotic platforms. What Microsoft did for the software industry, iRobot hopes to do for the robotics industry. With this kind of grand vision, its rapid growth, and immense financial backing, iRobot may well be on its way to becoming the Ford or GE of the twenty-first century. Indeed, Asimov's book that inspired its name tells the fictional history of a small company, "U.S. Robotics," that becomes the largest corporation in the world within fifty years of its founding. It sure sounds exciting, but also comes with a catch. iRobot, the company, may well be ignoring the warnings of _I, Robot_ the book. Isaac Asimov is remembered not merely for his vision of the future, but also for his "Three Laws of Robotics" that supposedly guided robots' development in his fictional world. The laws are so simple, yet so complex in their implications, that ethicists now teach them at colleges in the real world. Asimov's first and most fundamental law is: "A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." It is hard to square the fictional rules with the present reality of a company at war. Some argue that Asimov would definitely not approve of the latest plug-in accessory for the PackBot, a shotgun. The folks at the company think such people are missing the point; the firm is leading a thrilling technologic revolution. When Helen Greiner is asked how Asimov might react to iRobot, she responds, "I think he would think it's cool as hell." # ENGINEERING THE COMPETITION Just a twenty-minute drive from iRobot's offices outside the Burlington Mall is an old industrial park in Waltham, Massachusetts. Here, in a complex of brown concrete-block buildings dating back to the 1950s, is the headquarters of the Foster-Miller company. Like iRobot, Foster-Miller was founded by MIT graduates. Eugene Foster and Al Miller were engineers who shared an office at MIT and did consulting work on the side. After graduating, Al Miller left, never to be heard from again. His office replacements were Charles Kojabashian and Edward Nahikian. Foreign-sounding last names weren't a big selling point in 1955, and so the trio continued the work under the name of Foster-Miller Associates. A year later, Foster-Miller opened its shops in Waltham. Foster-Miller makes the PackBot's primary competitor, the Talon, which first hit the market in 2000. The Talon looks like a small tank, driven by two treads that run its length. Weighing just over a hundred pounds, it is a bit bigger than the PackBot. It too has a retractable arm with a gripper, but mounts its main sensors on a separate antennalike "mast" sticking up from the body and carrying a zoom camera. Talon can go up to speeds of about 5.5 mph, the equivalent of a decent jog on a treadmill, a pace it can maintain for five hours. Like the PackBot, the Talon helped sift through the wreckage at Ground Zero and soon after deployed to Afghanistan. And like iRobot, Foster-Miller has boomed, doubling the number of robots it sells every year for the last four years. The company received an initial $65 million in orders for Talons in the first two years of the insurgency in Iraq. By 2008, there were close to two thousand Talons in the field and the firm had won a $400 million contract to supply another two thousand. Under an additional $20 million repair and spare parts contract, the company also operates a "robot hospital" in Baghdad. Foster-Miller now makes some fifty to sixty Talons a month, and repairs another hundred damaged systems. The similarities between the two firms end there. iRobot was started by researchers, focused on invention. iRobot's facilities are mostly cubicles in a large office building, as it outsources much of the manufacture of its robots to factories in the Midwest and China. In its lobby, the name of each visitor is displayed on a flat-screen television mounted on the wall of the reception area. Foster-Miller was founded by engineers, focused on the practical end. Foster-Miller's headquarters are a complex of more than two hundred thousand square feet of offices, labs, and machine shops. It makes most of its products on site. In its lobby, visitors are greeted by an elderly receptionist, who then announces your arrival on one of those old intercom microphones that I last saw at my elementary school. In the back of the Foster-Miller complex is a large warehouse that you enter from an employee parking lot. In the corner, men tinker at various high tables loaded with machinery. A large American flag hangs from the ceiling. It all looks like Santa's workshop for robots, crossed with a car company advertisement. When I toured Foster-Miller's shop in the autumn of 2006, more than twenty-five Talons were lined up on the floor. In one row were shiny new Talons ready for shipment to Iraq. In a second row were dinged-up robots back from the war for repair, their arms a bit mangled and with burnt scars on various parts. I noticed some scorched paper stuck to one of the bots. Edward Godere, a vice president at Foster-Miller, explained, "The soldiers have started taping _Playboy_ centerfolds to the side of the robots. It's the twenty-first-century version of the pin-up art on the bomber planes during World War II." The two companies also see the world quite differently. iRobot, as its research team leader Andrew Bennett puts it, "is all about robotics." Still a research firm at heart, it has little interest in other industrial sectors and turns down opportunities that it sees as "boring." As one of the researchers put it, "We don't build Buicks." Helen Greiner goes even further. "These robots are on a mission and so are we: to bring robots into the mainstream. . . . We can make robots to do a better job than humans in some cases." The result is a fairly unique corporate mission statement: "Have Fun, Make Money, Build Cool Stuff, Deliver a Great Product, and Change the World." Whereas iRobot just works on robotics, Foster-Miller makes everything from armor for tanks to air conditioners for gold mines. At Foster-Miller, the motto is, "We engineer ideas into reality," and there is no interest in trying to change the world via inventions. For example, Foster-Miller's Talon gets its night vision from simply slipping a soldier's night vision goggles over the robot's camera and drives on tank treads that originally came from a snowmobile. By contrast, iRobot's PackBot drives on specially designed tracks that took nine months to develop and originally came with so much artificial intelligence software that the army actually asked iRobot to make PackBot dumber by stripping out some of the programs. Foster-Miller is also noticeably more comfortable in its relationship with the Pentagon than iRobot seems to be. It is, as its vice president Bob Quinn puts it, "a defense firm at heart," with roughly 90 percent of its business defense and security related. Or, as one Foster-Miller executive put it frankly, "We're industrialists looking for needs to meet. You gotta follow the money." As the market takes off, however, Foster-Miller is finding more and more of its business identity in the robotics sector. Moreover, it is bleeding over to other jobs. For example, the company has a long history of engineering for the navy. The navy wants to reduce the number of personnel on its ships because one fewer sailor on board saves $150,000 a year in operating costs. So Foster-Miller came up with a design for an "automated galley" that would go into the latest warship. The system starts with sailors ordering their meal in advance by computer. A management system then allocates the food onboard to their preferences and the meal is transferred from storage by a robot. It is then cooked largely by automation and sent down via a "hot food" robot to a service station, where each sailor picks it up. In looking at the potential futures of the two firms, it is also notable that they have vastly different ownership structures. iRobot is publicly held, meaning anybody with an online account can buy a slice of its future. Many believe this will drive it more and more toward widening its role in consumer products to balance out the defense growth. By contrast, Foster-Miller is privately held and expresses no interest in consumer robotics. Indeed, in 2004 it was bought by QinetiQ for $163 million. QinetiQ is a multibillion-dollar partnership between the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (the British government's defense labs, which were privatized in 2001) and the Carlyle Group. Carlyle is one of those quietly influential firms that conspiracy theorists love. It is the only large private equity firm located in Washington, D.C., and oversees some $44 billion in equity capital. Its members and advisers include former secretary of state James A. Baker III, former secretary of defense Frank C. Carlucci (who was also the college wrestling partner of then secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld), former White House budget chief Richard Darman, former British prime minister John Major, and former president George H. W. Bush. This "who's who" is certainly enough fodder for the conspiracy theorists. Raising eyebrows even further, the bin Laden family was one of the Carlyle Group's investors. They made out pretty well; the _Wall Street Journal_ reported the family got 40 percent annual returns on its investments in Carlyle. In one of those stranger-than-fiction moments, on the very morning the hijacked planes smashed into the World Trade Center, the Carlyle Group was holding its annual investor conference, with Shafiq bin Laden, the brother of Osama bin Laden, in attendance. The two companies feel a keen sense of competition with each other, and with their close distance, tensions are certainly there. At iRobot, researchers describe their rivals as thinking, "We hear that robots are trendy, so let's do that." At Foster-Miller, they retort, "We don't just do robots and we don't suck dirt." The two companies have even become locked in a bit of a marketing war. If robots were pickup trucks, Foster-Miller represents the Ford model, stressing how the Talon is "Built Tough." Its promotional materials describe the Talon as "The Soldier's Choice." They repeatedly mention its ruggedness, and even make a point to highlight an e-mail from a marine in Iraq, who wrote of his unit's Talon, "I wouldn't use anything else over here." The executives at Foster-Miller love to recount tales of how the Talon has proven it "can take a punch and stay in the fight." One Talon was riding in the back of a Humvee while the truck was crossing a bridge. The unit was ambushed and an explosion blew the Talon into the river. After the battle ended, the soldiers found the damaged control unit and drove the Talon right out of the river. Another Talon serving with the marines was once hit by three rounds from a .50-caliber heavy machine gun (meaning the robot was actually a victim of friendly fire), but still kept working. The repair facility in Waltham has even worked on one Talon that was blown up on three separate occasions, each time just giving it new arms and cameras. The iRobot team bristles at the idea that their systems are "agile but fragile." They insist that the PackBot is tough too, but being more science-oriented, cite various statistics on how it can survive a 400 g-force hit, what they describe as the equivalent of being tossed out of a hovering helicopter onto a concrete floor. They are most proud of the fact that their robots have a 95 percent out-of-the-box reliability rate, higher than any others in the marketplace, meaning that when the soldiers get them in the field, they can trust the robot will work as designed. Beneath all the difference and rancor that divides the companies, they are similar in one telling way. The hallways and cubicles of both their offices are covered with pictures and thank-you letters from soldiers in the field. A typical note from an EOD soldier reads, "This little guy saved our butts on many occasions." # THE KILLER APP For all its talk of eschewing new inventions in lieu of simple solutions, Foster-Miller is where matters get even more revolutionary. Just down from the workshop repair room of Talons sits what _Time_ magazine called one of the "most amazing inventions of the year." In technology circles, new products that change the rules of the game, such as what the iPod did to portable music players, are called "killer applications." Foster-Miller's new product gives this phrase a literal meaning. Like the PackBot, the Talon comes in all sorts of different versions, including EOD, reconnaissance, and a hazmat (hazardous materials) robot. The real killer app, though, is its SWORDS version. This robot's name comes from the acronym for Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection System. SWORDS is the first armed robot designed to roam the battlefield. The SWORDS is basically the Talon's pissed-off big brother, with its gripping arm replaced with a gun mount. Akin to a Transformers toy made just for soldiers, SWORDS is armed with the user's choice of weaponry. The robot's mount can carry pretty much any weapon that weighs under three hundred pounds, ranging from an M-16 rifle and .50-caliber machine gun to a 40mm grenade launcher or an antitank rocket launcher. In less than a minute, the human soldier flips two levers and locks his favorite weapon into the mount. The SWORDS can't reload itself, but it can carry two hundred rounds of ammunition for the light machine guns, three hundred rounds for the heavy machine guns, six grenades, or four rockets. One report on SWORDS declares that "with this increased firepower, soldiers and their robots will be able to wreak absolute havoc on the battlefield." Unlike the PackBot, SWORDS has very limited intelligence on its own, and is remote-controlled from afar by either radio or a spooled-out fiber optic wire. The control unit comes in a suitcase that weighs about thirty pounds. It opens up to reveal a video screen, a handful of buttons, and two joysticks that the soldier uses to drive the SWORDS and fire its weapons. At the time of my visit, Foster-Miller was exploring replacing the controller with a Nintendo Game Boy-style controller, hooked up to virtual reality goggles. The operator sees what SWORDS sees through five cameras mounted on the robot: a target acquisition scope linked to the weapon, a 360-degree camera that can pan and tilt, a wide-angle zoom camera mounted on the mast, as well as front and rear drive cameras. With these various views, the operator can not only see as if they have eyes in the back of their head, but farther than had previously been possible when shooting a gun. As one soldier put it, "You can read people's nametags at 300 to 400 meters, whereas the human eye can't pick that up. You can see the expression on his face, what weapons he is carrying. You can even see if his [weapon's] selector lever is on fire or on safe." The cameras can also see in night vision, meaning the enemy can be fired on at any hour and in any climate. This capability has gained added appeal in current operations; during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, three days of sandstorms shut down U.S. forces. The inspiration for the SWORDS is generally credited not to a scientist, but to a soldier, army sergeant first class David Platt. Platt first used the Talon while sifting through the wreckage at the World Trade Center and later at EOD tasks. His thinking behind giving the robot a gun was fairly straightforward: "It's small. It's quiet, and it goes where people don't want to be." In keeping with Foster-Miller's philosophy, converting the Talon to SWORDS was a "bootstrap development process." It only took six months and less than $3 million to make the first prototype. As one of the developers put it, "It is important to stress that not everything has to be super high tech. You can integrate existing componentry and create a revolutionary capability." Guided by that ethic, these lethal little gunslingers cost just $230,000. Napoleon once said, "There are but two powers in the world, the sword and the mind. In the long run, the sword is always beaten by the mind." The invention of the SWORDS might one day invalidate his statement. In an early test of its guns, the robot hit the bull's-eye of a target seventy out of seventy tries. In a test of its rockets, it hit the target sixty-two out of sixty-two times. In a test of its antitank rockets, it hit the target sixteen out of sixteen times. A former navy sniper summed up its "pinpoint precision" as "nasty." The robot's zoom lens not only extends the shooter's sight, but matches it exactly to the weapon's. Rather than trying to align their eyes in exact symmetry with the gun in their hand, it is as if the soldier's eagle eye was the gun. The weapon also isn't cradled in the soldier's arms, moving slightly with each breath or heartbeat. Instead, it is locked into a stable platform. As army staff sergeant Santiago Tordillos says, "It eliminates the majority of shooting errors you would have." The robot can be set to fire either one bullet at a time or in bursts of eight bullets. Since it is a precisely timed machine pulling the trigger, the "one shot" mode means that any weapon, even a machine gun, can be turned into a sniper rifle. Finally, it makes no difference to the robot whether it is at the shooting range or in the middle of a firefight; the situation does not affect its accuracy. "The SWORDS doesn't care when it's being shot at. Indeed, it would like you to shoot at it," says Sergeant Platt. "That way we can identify you as a valid target and engage you properly." The arming of SWORDS has opened up a host of new roles for robotic systems on the battlefield beyond just bomb disposal. Missions so far for what Fox News called the "G.I. of the 21st century" include street patrols, reconnaissance, sniping, checkpoint security, as well as guarding observation posts. It is especially attuned for urban warfare jobs, such as going first into buildings and alleyways where insurgents might hide. SWORDS's inhuman capabilities could well result in even more intrepid missions. For example, the robot can drive through snow and sand and even drive underwater down to depths of one hundred feet, meaning it could pop up in quite unexpected places. Likewise, its battery allows it to be hidden somewhere in "sleep" mode for at least seven days and then wake up to shoot away at any foes. Described one report of the robotic gunner, "They have been a hit with the soldiers." # THE WAR BEYOND BOSTON The PackBot, Talon, and SWORDS are only a few of the many new unmanned systems that are operating in war today. When U.S. forces went into Iraq, the original invasion had zero robotic systems on the ground. By the end of 2004, the number was up to 150. By the end of 2005, it was up to 2,400. By the end of 2006, it had reached the 5,000 mark and growing. It was projected to reach as high as 12,000 by the end of 2008. The unmanned systems roaming about Iraq come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. One of the smallest, but most commonly used, is the MARCBOT (MultiFunction Agile Remote-Controlled Robot). MARCBOT looks like a toy truck with a video camera mounted on a tiny antennalike mast. Costing only $5,000, the tiny bot is used to scout out where the enemy might be and also to drive under cars and search for hidden explosives. Many soldiers are so used to driving remote-controlled cars growing up that it typically takes less than an hour to learn how to use the system. MARCBOT isn't just notable for its small size. The little truck actually drew first blood on the battlefield, even before SWORDS. One unit of soldiers jury-rigged their MARCBOTs to carry a Claymore antipersonnel mine. Whenever they thought an insurgent was hiding in an alley, they would send a MARCBOT down first, not just to scout out the ambush, but to take them out with the Claymore. Of course, each insurgent found meant $5,000 worth of a blown-up robot's parts, but so far the army hasn't billed the soldiers. All told as of 2008, some twenty-two different robot systems were operating on the ground in Iraq. As one retired army officer put it, "The Army of the Grand Robotic is taking place." The world of unmanned systems at war doesn't end at ground level. They have also taken to the air. One of the most notable is the Predator. The Predator is a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle), or drone, that "looks like a baby plane." At twenty-seven feet in length, it is just a bit smaller than a Cessna, and is powered by a "pusher" propeller in the back. Unlike most planes, the Predator lacks a cockpit and its tail wings are canted downward, instead of the normal sideways; one observer even said it looked like "a flying meat fork." Since it is made of composite materials instead of metals, the Predator weighs just 1,130 pounds. Perhaps its best quality is that it can spend some twenty-four hours in the air, flying at heights of up to twenty-six thousand feet. Each Predator costs just under $4.5 million, which sounds like a lot until you compare it to the cost of other military planes. Indeed, for the price of one F-22, the air force's latest jet, you can buy eighty-five Predators. More important, the low price and lack of a human pilot means that the Predator can be used for missions where it might be shot down, such as traveling low and slow over enemy territory. About a quarter of the cost of the Predator actually goes into the "Ball," a round mounting under the nose of the drone. The rotating Ball carries two variable-aperture TV cameras, one for seeing during the day and an infrared one for night, as well as a synthetic-aperture radar that allows the Predator to peer through clouds, smoke, or dust. The exact capabilities of the system are classified, but soldiers say they can read a license plate from two miles up. It also carries a laser designator to lock on to any targets that the cameras and radar pick up. Predators are flown by what are called "reachback" or "remote-split" operations. While the drone flies out of bases in the war zone, the pilot and sensor operator for the plane are physically located seventy-five hundred miles away, connected with the drone plane only via satellite communications. Their control panels look a bit like one of the 1980s' two-player video games you used to see at arcades, each sitting behind three TV screens (one screen has a video feed of what the drone is seeing, one displays technical data, and the third is the navigation map, akin to the GPS display in a car). The Predator has thus introduced not only tactical but also organizational changes in the units that use them. The mechanics and ground crew go with the plane to the battle zone, usually an "undisclosed location," shorthand for a base in an allied state in the Persian Gulf. The pilots flying the planes remain in the United States, working out of a set of converted single-wide trailers. Most of these trailer parks for robots are located at Nellis and Creech air force bases, just outside of Las Vegas and Indian Springs, Nevada. But as trailer parks tend to do, these drone bases are multiplying. There are plans to start up Predator operations at bases in Arizona, California, New York, North Dakota, and Texas. Predators originally were designed for reconnaissance and surveillance, flying over enemy territory to scout for targets and monitor the situation. The prototypes were first used in the Balkan wars, but truly entered their own after 9/11. Indeed, in the first two months of operations in Afghanistan, some 525 targets were laser-designated by Predators. The generals, who had once had no time for such systems, couldn't get enough of them. Tommy Franks, the commander of all U.S. forces in the region at the time, declared, "The Predator is my most capable sensor in hunting down and killing Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership and is proving critical to our fight." "Our major role is to sanitize the battlefield," says Service Airman Medric Jones. "We ... make sure our own guys aren't walking into danger." A typical reconnaissance operation in Iraq involves the Predator circling over a city like Baghdad from five miles up. The pilots communicate with commanders, flight coordinators, intelligence teams (who might be located in the region or back in the States), and even troops on the ground via e-mail or radio. Sometimes, they send out the Predator's live feed via "Rover," a remote video system that transmits what the Ball is seeing to Panasonic notebook computers carried by the troops on the ground. If the enemy is spotted, the Predator can also orchestrate the attack, pointing its laser at targets and even warning the troops if there are any "squirters," bad guys running away. "I can watch the rear of a building for a bad guy escaping when troops go in the front, and flash an infrared beam on the guy that our troops can see with their night-vision goggles," said U.S. Air Force Major John Erickson. Erickson's experience is illustrative of the changes. He had been an F-16 pilot, but when he tells his grandkids about what he did in the Iraq war, it will be about the eighteen months he spent flying a Predator, never leaving the ground. Predators don't just watch from afar, but have also begun to kill on their own. The backstory of how this happened is one of the sad "what ifs?" of what could have been done to prevent the 9/11 attacks. Over the course of 2000 and 2001, Predators operated by the CIA sighted Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan many times, usually when he was driving in a convoy between his training camps. But the unmanned spy planes were toothless and could only watch as bin Laden soon disappeared. The idea then arose to arm the drone by mounting laser-guided Hellfire missiles on the wings. Since the Predator already could direct missiles at targets with its lasers, the only difference is that the drone would carry its own, instead of having to rely on the kindness of strangers to blow up those below. The Predator would truly become a predator. The plan made sense but quickly got mired in bureaucratic politics, as the CIA and air force argued over who would have control over the now-armed drones and, most important, whose budget would be stuck with the $2 million in costs. It seems like a small amount in retrospect, a "shoestring operation," according to the air force general in charge of the effort. But, as he now laments, "it was a big problem, I hate to say." With the two agencies at loggerheads, a senior White House official was needed to cut through the dispute. But terrorism was not at the top of the priority list of the new Bush administration. The issue of how to deal with bin Laden and the growing warnings of an attack inside the United States was tabled until everyone got back from their summer vacations. "It saddens me to know we could have done a heck of a lot more," says the officer. After 9/11 and the more than three thousand people killed, the issue of $2 million became null and void. The CIA armed its Predators and the air force decided that it couldn't be left behind. In the first year, armed Predators took out some 115 targets in Afghanistan on their own. Many commented on the oddity of a war where many of the forces still rode to battle on horses, and yet robotic drones were flying above. In the words of one U.S. officer, it was "the _Flintstones_ meet the _Jetsons_." Predators continue to operate over Afghanistan today. Frequently, the drones carry an American flag onboard, which is then given to the family of a soldier killed in the fighting. In one case, a Predator carrying a flag for a family actually took out the same group of Taliban that had killed their son. With the precedent set in Afghanistan, the Predator also joined the fight in Iraq. Among its first missions was to help take down the Iraqi government's television transmissions, which broadcast the infamous "Baghdad Bob" propaganda. In the days and weeks that followed, the Predator struck at everything from suspected insurgent safe houses to cars being prepped for suicide attacks. The ugly little drone has quickly become perhaps the busiest U.S. asset in the air. From June 2005 to June 2006, Predators carried out 2,073 missions, flew 33,833 hours, surveyed 18,490 targets, and participated in 242 separate raids. Even with this massive effort, there is demand for more. Officers estimate that they get requests for some 300 hours of Predator imagery a day, but that there are only enough Predators in the air to supply a little over 100 hours a day. The result is that the Predator fleet has grown from less than 10 in 2001 to some 180 in 2007, with plans to add another 150 over the next few years. Besides the Predator, there are many other drones that fill the air over Iraq and Afghanistan. At some forty feet long, Global Hawk could be described as the Predator's big brother. Others uncharitably say it looks like "a flying albino whale." The Global Hawk was originally conceived as the replacement for the U-2 spy plane, which dates back to the 1950s. Besides not putting a human pilot in harm's way (the U-2 is perhaps most famous for the crisis over the downing of pilot Francis Gary Powers at the height of the cold war), "physiological factors" limited the amount of time that the U-2 pilots could fly missions (that is, they would pass out from fatigue, boredom, or a buildup in their kidneys). In contrast, Global Hawk can stay in the air up to thirty-five hours. Powered by a turbofan engine that takes it to sixty-five thousand feet, the stealthy Global Hawk carries synthetic-aperture radar, infrared sensors, and electro-optical cameras. Working in combination, these sensors can do a wide-area search to look at an entire region, or focus in on a single target using the "high-resolution spot mode." The link of the sensors with the long flight time means that the drone can fly some three thousand miles, spend twenty-four hours mapping out a target area of some three thousand square miles, and then fly three thousand miles back home. In other words, Global Hawk can fly from San Francisco, spend a day hunting for any terrorists in the entire state of Maine, and then fly back to the West Coast. Like the Predator, the Global Hawk is linked back to humans on the ground, but it mainly operates autonomously rather than being remotely piloted. Using a computer mouse, the operator just clicks to tell it to taxi and take off, and the drone flies off on its own. The plane then carries out its mission, getting directions on where to fly from GPS (Global Positioning System) coordinates downloaded off a satellite. Upon the return, "you basically hit the land button," describes one retired air force officer. With such capability, the Global Hawk is not cheap. The plane itself costs some $35 million, but the overall support system runs over $123 million each. Even so, the U.S. Air Force plans to spend another $6 billion to build up the fleet to fifty-one drones by 2012. At the smaller end of the scale in Iraq and Afghanistan are unmanned planes flown not out of air force bases back in the United States, but rather launched by troops on the ground. The big army units fly Shadow, which looks like the sort of radio-controlled planes flown by model plane hobbyists. Just over twelve feet long, it takes off and lands like a regular plane. Compared to a Predator or Global Hawk, however, it is underpowered, only able to stay up five hours and fly seventy miles. Driven by a propeller, it has a distinctive noise that sounds like a weed-whacker flying overhead. Most of the Shadow's UAV pilots are enlisted soldiers, such as Private First Class Ryan Evans, who explains why he volunteered to fly robotic planes in lieu of performing his normal army duties. "It is more of a rush that you are in control of something in the sky." The most popular drone, though, is one of the smallest. The Raven is just thirty-eight inches long and weighs four pounds. In a sort of irony, soldiers launch the tiny plane using the same over-the-shoulder motion that the Roman legionnaires used in war two thousand years ago, just tossing a robot instead of a javelin. The Raven then buzzes off, able to fly for ninety minutes at about four hundred feet. Raven carries three cameras in its nose, including an infrared one. Soldiers love it because they can now peer over the next hill or city block, as well as get their own spy planes to control, rather than having to beg for support from the higher-ups. "You throw the bird up when you want to throw it. You land it when you want to land," says Captain Matt Gill, a UAV company commander with the 82nd Airborne Division. The other part of the appeal is that the pilots of the Raven are just regular soldiers; a cook from the 1st Cavalry is actually considered among the best. In just the first two years of the Iraq war, the number of Ravens in service jumped from twenty-five to eight hundred. A veritable menagerie of unmanned drones now circles above the soldier in Iraq, reporting back to all sorts of units. The small UAVs like Raven or the even smaller Wasp (which carries a camera the size of a peanut) fly just above the rooftops, sending back video images of what's on the other side of the street. The medium-sized ones like Shadow circle over entire neighborhoods, at heights above fifteen hundred feet, and are tasked out by commanders at division headquarters to monitor for anything suspicious. Reporting back to pilots thousands of miles away, the larger Predators roam above entire cities at five thousand to fifteen thousand feet, combining "reconnaissance with firepower." Finally, sight unseen, the Global Hawks every so often zoom across the entire country at some sixty thousand feet, monitoring anything electronic and capturing reams of detailed imagery for intelligence teams to sift through. Because they rarely see the Global Hawks, officers in the field joke that these pictures are mainly used to fill the PowerPoint briefings for the generals back in D.C. Added together, by 2008, there were 5,331 drones in the U.S. military's inventory, almost double the amount of manned planes. That same year, an air force lieutenant general forecast that "given the growth trends, it is not unreasonable to postulate future conflicts involving tens of thousands." The reach of unmanned systems also extends to the sea. REMUS, the Remote Environmental Monitoring Unit, is helping to clear Iraqi waterways of mines and explosives. Shaped like a torpedo, REMUS is about six feet long, weighs eighty-eight pounds, and costs $400,000. It was originally built by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute to carry out automated surveys of coasts, reefs, and shipwrecks, but the navy soon modified it for military uses, purchasing more than 140 of the undersea robots by 2008. It is another modification of an unmanned system originally designed for sea that may be the most novel to hit the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan. Second behind the threat of IEDs is that from mortars and rockets. Insurgents will often set up a mortar or rocket launcher in a residential neighborhood, quickly pop off a few rounds at an unsuspecting U.S. base, and then get out of the area before any response can be made. Although most miss their targets, plenty of damage and many casualties have been caused by lucky shots. Enter the Counter Rocket Artillery Mortar technology, or CRAM for short. The navy has long equipped many of its ships with the Phalanx 20mm Gatling gun, capable of firing up to forty-five hundred rounds per minute. The radar-guided gun is mounted in a cylindrical shell that tilts and moves in circles, such that the sailors affectionately call it "R2-D2," after the little robot in _Star Wars_. The gun was designed as a "last chance" defense against antiship missiles that skim just above the waves. R2-D2 automatically tracks and shoots down any missiles that have gotten past all other defenses and are too quick for humans to react to. CRAM is basically R2-D2 taken off the ship and crammed (mounted) onto a flatbed truck. Its software was modified to target mortar shells and rockets instead of missiles, with the idea that it would essentially put up a wall of bullets to protect bases. Tests showed that CRAM had a 70 percent shootdown capability. By December 2007, at least twenty-two of them were deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. Not all has gone perfectly with the CRAM. The original, naval version of R2-D2 used bullets made of depleted uranium. As they were intended to fall into the middle of the sea, no one worried much about what happened to the shells after they fired. In an urban environment, thousands of bullets filled with radioactive dust falling from the sky is more of a concern. So the shells had to be altered to incendiary rounds that blow up in midair, but are less effective. Also, R2-D2 apparently once mistook an American helicopter flying over Baghdad for the Emperor's Death Star. It locked in on the chopper to shoot it down, as if it were a rocket with some funny rotors spinning on the top. So CRAM had to be reconfigured to avoid any "blue on blue" friendly fire incidents. Finally, R2-D2 does not come cheap. Once you count in all the radar and control elements, the CRAM required a congressional earmark of $75 million in funding. # THE NEW WARRIOR AT HOME The "war on terrorism" hasn't just taken place on battlegrounds far far away. The result has been the creation of immense bureaucracies and massive spending dedicated to this war at home, or what we now call "homeland security." A few numbers illustrate the vast industry that has been built around homeland security. In 1999, there were nine companies with federal contracts in homeland security. By 2003, there were 3,512. In 2006, there were 33,890. The business of protecting buildings, borders, and airports and preparing to respond to disaster generates $30 billion a year and is projected to reach $35 billion by 2011. As one report on the homeland security industry put it, "Thank you, Osama bin Laden!" This money has not just been spent on the Einsteins who seize your shampoo at airports, but also on new technology research for homeland security. _Popular Science_ reported that it "reached heights not seen since the Sputnik era." In 2003, $4 billion of the newly formed Department of Homeland Security's budget went to technology research programs. The outcome is that unmanned systems have also started to serve on the front lines of the war at home. One of the early scares in the war on terrorism was the rash of letters carrying deadly anthrax powder sent to prominent officials and media. Some of the powder also leaked out inside post offices. Since those attacks, some one thousand robots have been installed to sort parcels, with the U.S. Postal Service planning to add as many as eighty thousand more. With the war on terror involving the need to protect everything from airports to office buildings, industry analysts also foresee a booming market for "sentrybots." These systems can guard entrances, automatically patrol perimeters, check IDs, and even use facial recognition software to know who should or shouldn't be allowed into the area. Examples of such systems range from the Guard Robo made by Sohgo Security Services, which looks like Rosie, the maid from _The Jetsons_ , to the Robot Guard Dog made by Sanyo. It looks, well, like a robot guard dog, just with a video camera for eyes and a mobile phone mounted inside to call for help whenever it finds intruders. An executive I met at one robotics conference predicted that "we will sell tens of thousands of them to everything from military bases to power plants." With America under threat, robots haven't just hidden out in post offices or passively stood guard. They also have taken flight to guard the nation's borders. While the Predator was originally designed for the military to find enemy missiles and tanks, the federal government quickly became interested in its potential for another role. Through most of 2005 and 2006, the Department of Homeland Security flew a Predator drone over the U.S.-Mexico border. The robot border-cop helped arrest 2,309 people and seize seven tons of marijuana. In 2008, DHS presented plans to Congress to buy eighteen drone planes to patrol the U.S. border. Of course, all realize that the drones are actually focused on stopping a different type of border crosser than al-Qaeda agents—illegal immigrants. "But the acceptability of using these systems for border surveillance has increased dramatically since terrorism became such a real, in-our-backyard threat," says Cyndi Wegerbauer of General Atomics, which sold the Predator drone to the Border Patrol. Indeed, in the war to defend against would-be immigrants, robots have also gone to work not only for the government, but also for the private border patrols, or "militias," as some have called themselves. One example is the "Border Hawk" drones serving with the American Border Patrol, a private organization operating in Cochise County, Arizona. Some have accused the American Border Patrol of racism. Its founder, Glenn Spencer, is certainly a controversial figure. He describes illegal immigration as "The Second Mexican-American War" and Latin America as "a cesspool of a culture" that threatens the "death of this country." Spencer may sound like a sad throwback to the 1950s or even 1350s, but his group's technology is twenty-first century. They operate three drones that carry video and infrared cameras. The drones are launched by radio control and then automatically fly a patrol pattern using GPS, staying at four hundred feet, just below what the government requires for certification. While in the air, they search out any illegal immigrants crossing the border and record the images to TiVo for playback and review. The group doesn't arrest the illegal aliens themselves, but passes on the information to the United States Border Patrol as well as loads its robots' footage onto the Internet using a satellite connection, or, as the group describes, "broadcasting the invasion live on the internet." Besides battling terrorists and would-be immigrants, the war at home also involves responding to disaster. In the aftermath of 9/11, brave little PackBots and Talons joined the search for survivors. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Silver Fox UAVs searched for survivors in flooded areas of New Orleans, while two tiny robotic helicopters from the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue at the University of South Florida worked on the Mississippi coast. Many think robotic systems will have an even wider role in future disasters. For example, after Katrina, cell phone towers went out because of storm damage and a lack of power, which hampered both residents on the ground as well as rescue efforts. During the next disaster, the plan is to use a UAV as an "aerial cell tower." # THE REST OF THE STORY PackBot, Talon, SWORDS, Predator, Global Hawk, and all their digital friends are the first signs that something big is going on. Man's monopoly of warfare is being broken. We are entering the era of robots at war. It sure sounds like science fiction to claim such a wild thing. But we have to remember that pretty much everything we now take for granted sounded like fiction at some point, whether it was the fantastic dreams of mechanical flying beasts to the absurd concept of talking to someone on the other side of the world. What follows is an effort to understand this change, to travel through this new world of unmanned war and unwrap just what it might mean. Part 1 attempts to capture this moment of great change, to understand the changes that we are creating. In order to assess what is going on in technology, robotics, and war today, it will explore such key issues as the history of robots, how these new technologies work, what is coming in the next wave, who is working on them, and what inspires them. Then, part 2 of this book will explore what all this change is creating for us. It will cover everything from the resulting shifts in how wars are fought and who is fighting them to important questions that our new machine creations are starting to raise in politics, law, and ethics. War just won't be the same. **[TWO]** **SMART BOMBS, NORMA JEANE, AND DEFECATING DUCKS: A SHORT HISTORY OF ROBOTICS** _The further backward you look, the further forward you can see._ —SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL "Perhaps the most wonderful piece of mechanism ever made" is how the famous Scottish engineer Sir David Brewster would describe it some one hundred years after it was invented. By contrast, the great poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe called it "most deplorable ... like a skeleton [with] digestive problems." The two men were talking about Vaucanson's duck, the mechanical wonder of its age, or, as present-day scientists call it, "the Defecating Duck." Jacques de Vaucanson was born in Grenoble, France, in 1709. At the age of twenty-six, he moved to Paris, then the center of culture and science during the Age of Enlightenment. Inspired by Isaac Newton's idea of the universe as a great clock that had been set in motion by the Creator, the Deist philosophers of the time saw the world as guided by mechanical forces. They believed that everything, from gravity to love, could be understood if you could just scientifically reason it out. Arriving in this cauldron of rationality gone wild, Vaucanson became fascinated with the concept of using reason and mechanics to reproduce life itself. More important, needing funds, the young engineer hit upon the idea of "getting assistance by producing some machines that could excite public curiosity." So he did what any other enterprising young man would do: he built a duck. Vaucanson's duck was no ordinary duck; it was actually an intricate mechanical creation modeled after a sculpture in the gardens of the Palais des Tuileries, a cultural center at the time, now more famous as one of the sites of _The Da Vinci Code_. While the duck looked lifelike from the outside, the true amazement was that it could stand up, sit down, preen, waddle, quack, eat pellets of corn, drink water, and then, wonder of wonders, defecate. Claiming that he had made the duck with methods "copied from Nature," Vaucanson presented the mechanical fowl at the court of King Louis XV. The duck then became the talk of all the Paris salons, as the nation's leaders debated how it worked and just what it signified for politics, philosophy, and life itself. Once the duck was placed on public display, people came from far and wide, paying an admission fee equivalent to a week's wages. Also accompanying the bird were mechanical mandolin, flute, and piano players, who tapped their feet, moved their heads, and seemed to breathe as they played music. But it was the duck and, most important, the inexplicable fact that it could do number two that was the star attraction. The duck seemed to show that the incomprehensible processes of life could be re-created. Vaucanson became a rich man and soon thereafter was given the highest possible honor for a scientist, election to the esteemed Académie des sciences, joining such luminaries as Descartes, Colbert, and Pascal. The duck was then sent out on tour (where the German poet Goethe would meet it some years later, showing its age like all great stars do when they've been on the road for too long), and Vaucanson would become the director of the French government's silk mills. In 1745, he would invent the world's first automated loom, which used a system of cards with holes punched in them to repeatedly create patterns in silk. Centuries later, these punch cards would inspire the early developers of computers. It wasn't until four decades after its invention that the duck's secret was discovered. It was, in fact, unable to digest food. The corn that was seemingly eaten and then digested was instead stored in a pod hidden in the back of the duck's throat, initiating a timer that would then, after a suitable pause, release another hidden container of "artificial excrement." The duck, and its waste, were both frauds. But if Vaucanson's duck was a hoax at re-creating life, it was a remarkably intricate one. The blueprints for the mechanical bird show it to involve hundreds of moving, interlocking parts and scores of inventions, all for the sole purpose of simulating the most routine part of life's daily business. # THE QUEST FOR ARTIFICIAL LIFE Vaucanson's duck is relevant today because it illustrates how humankind's attempts to use technology to mimic and replace life go further back than we often think. The robots searching for IEDs in Iraq didn't just spring out from nowhere. They have a past that shapes their present and future. The idea of creating mechanical beings to replace the work of humans is at least as old as ancient Greek and Roman mythology. For example, the god of metalwork (Hephaestus to the Greeks, Vulcan to the Romans) had a host of mechanical servants that he made out of gold. Occasionally, he also gave out his creations to the mortals, one example being Talos, a huge statue that protected the island of Crete by throwing huge boulders at any ships that came nearby. If any stranger made it ashore, Talos would heat up his metallic arms to a red-hot glow and then give the intruder a deadly welcome hug. Talos was later the name for an Apple computer operating system, as well as the first computer-guided missiles on U.S. Navy ships. These myths were not just stories, but became inspirations for both real-world philosophers and inventors. Indeed, it was in this period that Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), one of the founding philosophers of Western thought, would describe his vision of the ultimate free world: "If every tool, when ordered, or even of its own accord, could do the work that befits it ... then there would be no need either of apprentices for the master workers or of slaves for the lords." Likewise, the engineers of ancient times made advances that were often well beyond what we might think possible. Around 350 B.C., the Greek mathematician Archytas of Tarentum built "the Pigeon," a mechanical bird that was propelled by steam. Besides building what was likely the world's first model airplane, Archytas used it to carry out one of the first studies of flight. Perhaps most remarkable was the "Antikythera computer." In A.D. 1900, a Greek sponge diver found a wreck of an ancient Greek sailing ship that had sunk off the island of Antikythera near Crete around 100 B.C. In the wreck was a small box about the size of a laptop computer. It contained thirty-seven gears that, when a date was entered, worked to calculate the position of the sun, moon, and other planets. Many credit it as the first known mechanical analog computer. This fascination with mechanical creations subsided during the Dark Ages, but would rise again in the Renaissance, perhaps most famously with Leonardo da Vinci. Among his many sketches is a mechanical knight. Like most of his flashes of brilliance, such as his plans for helicopters and planes, the design was ahead of its time. If built, this sixteenth-century version of the SWORDS, armed with a sword, would have been able to sit up and move its arms and legs. The fascination with such systems, though, was not limited to Europe. In feudal Japan in the 1600s, several craftsmen were noted for having made automated dolls that served tea. For all the wonder of these early mechanical creations, though, it is important to note that they were not actually what we now think of as robots. The devices typically did the same thing every time they were activated, rather than moving about or responding to any changes in the environment. That is, they were automated, but not robotic. Moreover, many turned out to be hoaxes, either elaborate ones like Vaucanson's duck that actually pushed the frontiers of technology in the pursuit of fakery, or more traditional ones. The most famous of this latter type may have been "The Turk," later referenced in the Terminator series. This was a "chess automaton" in the shape of a Turkish-looking figure on top of a cabinet, made by Wolfgang von Kempelen in what is now Slovakia. Preceding IBM's chess-playing supercomputer Deep Blue by almost two hundred years, "The Turk" consistently beat humans at chess, including even Napoleon. It turned out, though, that von Kempelen had hidden a dwarf chessmaster inside. Ducks and Turks aside, most of the research to develop technologies that replicated human powers was frequently intertwined with war. Archimedes, for example, may have been the most influential scientist in ancient history, shaping the future development of the fields of mathematics, physics, engineering, and astronomy. In his era, though, he was best known for his various inventions used in the defenses of the city of Syracuse. These ranged from a "death ray" (supposedly using mirrors to light ships afire) to a huge "claw" (a large crane that grabbed ships). Similarly, the field of modern chemistry was largely founded by Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, who served Louis XVI as one of the directors of the French national commission on gunpowder. In no area was this link greater than in the first calculating machines, the forerunners of computers. Charles de Colmar is credited with inventing the first mechanical calculator, which he called the Arithmometer, in 1820. The machine was as big as a desk. His first customers were the French and British militaries, which used it for navigation and plotting the trajectory of cannonballs. Similarly, the Royal Navy hired Charles Babbage, the man generally credited with designing the first programmable computer. Babbage's 1822 machine, called a "difference engine," was designed of some twenty-five thousand parts. In a foretaste of the innovators of today, Babbage was also a bit of an oddball. He once baked himself in an oven for four minutes, just "to see what would happen." # ROBOTS GO TO WAR Ultimately, technology caught up with ambition around the turn of the twentieth century. Science finally had advanced to create machines that could be controlled from afar and move about on their own. The robotic age was getting closer, and robots' link with war would become even more closely intertwined. The first real efforts started with Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, two rival scientists and the first of what we now would call electrical engineers. While working on various ways to transmit electricity, Edison and Tesla both experimented with radio-control devices. Because of his eccentric personality and lack of a good public relations team like Edison, Tesla would not gain the same place in history as his rival, the "Wizard of Menlo Park," and died penniless. Tesla, though, did perhaps the most remarkable work at the time with remote-control devices. He first mastered wireless communication in 1893. Five years later, he demonstrated that he could use radio signals to remotely control the movements of a motorboat, holding a demonstration at Madison Square Garden. Tesla tried to sell this first remotely operated vehicle, along with the idea of remote-controlled torpedoes, to the U.S. military, but was rejected. As Tesla recounted, "I called an official in Washington with a view of offering the information to the government and he burst out laughing upon telling him what I had accomplished." Tesla would not be the last inventor to find out that what was technically possible mattered less than whether it was bureaucratically imaginable. Two brothers from Dayton, Ohio, had the same experience a few years later when they first tried to sell their invention of manned flight. The foundations then were laid for remote-controlled vehicles and weapons just as the First World War began. World War I proved to be an odd, tragic mix of outmoded generalship combined with deadly new technologies. From the machine gun and radio to the airplane and tank, transformational weapons were introduced in the war, but the generals could not figure out just how to use them. Instead, they clung to nineteenth-century strategies and tactics and the conflict was characterized by brave but senseless charges back and forth across a no-man's-land of machine guns and trenches. With war becoming less heroic and more deadly, unmanned weapons began to gain some appeal. On land, there was the "electric dog," a three-wheeled cart (really just a converted tricycle) designed to carry supplies up to the trenches. A precursor to laser control, it followed the lights of a lantern. More deadly was the "land torpedo," a remotely controlled armored tractor, loaded up with one thousand pounds of explosives, designed to drive up to enemy trenches and explode. It was patented in 1917 (appearing in _Popular Science_ magazine) and a prototype was built by Caterpillar Tractors just before the war ended. In the air, the first of what we would now call cruise missiles was the Kettering "Bug" or "aerial torpedo." This was a tiny unmanned plane that used a preset gyroscope and barometer to automatically fly on course and then crash into a target fifty miles away. Few of these remote-controlled weapons were bought in any numbers and most remained prototypes without any effect on the fighting. The only system to be deployed in substantial numbers was at sea. Here, the Germans protected their coast with FL-7s, electronically controlled motorboats. The unmanned boats carried three hundred pounds of explosives and were designed to be rammed into any British ships that came near the German coast. Originally, they were controlled by a driver who sat atop a fifty-foot-high tower on shore, steering through a fifty-mile-long cable that spooled out of the back of the boat. Soon after, the Germans shifted the operator from a tower onto a sea-plane that would fly overhead, dragging the wire. Both proved unwieldy, and in 1916 Tesla's invention of wireless radio control, now almost two decades old, was finally deployed in warfare. Perhaps reflecting the fact that they were outnumbered in both these wars, the Germans again proved to be more inclined to develop and use unmanned systems when fighting began again in World War II. The best known of their weapons, akin to the land torpedo, was called the Goliath. About the size of a small go-cart and having a small tank track on each side, the Goliath of 1940 was shaped almost exactly like the Talon that Foster-Miller makes over six decades later. It carried 132 pounds of explosives. Nazi soldiers could drive the Goliath by remote control into enemy tanks and bunkers. Some eight thousand Goliaths were built; most saw service as a stopgap on the Eastern Front, where German troops were outnumbered almost three to one. In the air, the Germans were equally revolutionary, deploying the first cruise missile (the V-1), ballistic missile (V-2), and jet fighter (Me-262). The Germans were also the first to operationally use remotely piloted drones. The FX-1400, known as the "Fritz," was a 2,300-pound bomb with four small wings, tail controls, and a rocket motor. The Fritz would drop from a German plane flying at high altitude. A controller in the plane would then guide it into the target using a joystick that steered by radio. The Fritz made a strong debut in 1943, when the Italian battleship _Roma_ was trying to defect to the Allies. Not knowing of the Fritz, the Italian sailors saw a German bomber plane, but didn't worry too much as it was at a distance, height, and angle from which it couldn't drop a bomb on top of them. A Fritz launched from the bomber and then flew into the _Roma_ , sinking it with more than a thousand sailors lost. The Allies were behind the Germans in these technologies, but they were no less futuristic in some of the things they sought to develop. In the United States, the focus of research was on aerial weapons and actually led to another of the great "what ifs?" of recent history. In 1944, "Operation Aphrodite" was launched in Europe. The idea was to strip down bomber planes and load them up with twenty-two thousand pounds of Torpex, a new explosive discovered to be 50 percent more powerful than TNT. A human crew would fly the plane during takeoff, arm the explosives in midair, and bail out. A mothership flying nearby would then take remote control of the bomber and, using two television cameras mounted in the drone's cockpit, steer the plane into Nazi targets that were too well protected for manned bombers to hit. On August 12, 1944, the naval version of one of these planes, a converted B-24 bomber, was sent to take out a suspected Nazi V-3, an experimental 300-foot-long "supercannon" that supposedly could hit London from over 100 miles away (unbeknownst to the Allies, the cannon had already been knocked out of commission in a previous air raid). Before the plane even crossed the English Channel, the volatile Torpex exploded and killed the crew. The pilot was Joseph Kennedy Jr., older brother of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, thirty-fifth president of the United States. The two had spent much of their youth competing for the attention of their father, the powerful businessman and politician Joseph Sr. While younger brother JFK was often sickly and decidedly bookish, firstborn son Joe Jr. had been the "chosen one" of the family. He was a natural-born athlete and leader, groomed from birth to become the very first Catholic president. Indeed, it is telling that in 1940, just before war broke out, JFK was auditing classes at Stanford Business School, while Joe Jr. was serving as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. When the war started, Joe Jr. became a navy pilot, perhaps the most glamorous role at the time. John was initially rejected for service by the army because of his bad back. The navy relented and allowed John to join only after his father used his political influence. When Joe Kennedy Jr. was killed in 1944, two things happened: the army ended the drone program for fear of angering the powerful Joe Sr. (setting the United States back for years in the use of remote systems), and the mantle of "chosen one" fell on JFK. When the congressional seat in Boston opened up in 1946, what had been planned for Joe Jr. was handed to JFK, who had instead been thinking of becoming a journalist. He would spend the rest of his days not only carrying the mantle of leadership, but also trying to live up to his dead brother's carefree and playboy image. The Aphrodite program was not the only remotely controlled weapons program that the Allies devised in World War II. The Brits, for example, developed what they darkly called "bombing without knowledge of path, place, or time" that used radio signals from afar to guide bombers in the dark. In the Pacific theater, more than 450 VB-1 Azons, a 1,000-pound radio-controlled glider bomb, were used to destroy targets in Burma, mainly bridges of the sort made famous in the movie _The Bridge over the River Kwai_. The most widely produced unmanned plane in World War II, however, was used for training rather than combat. It was called the OQ-2 Radioplane, or sometimes the "Dennymite" after its maker, Reginald Denny. Denny was a British pilot during World War I, who then moved to Hollywood to become an actor. With his dashing looks and aristocratic accent, his career took off. Over the next forty years, he would appear in 172 films. The high point was his starring role opposite Greta Garbo in 1935's _Anna Karenina_ , the low point perhaps his final role as "Commodore Schmidlapp" in 1966's _Batman: The Movie_. While horsing around on set, Denny became a hobbyist of radio-controlled model airplanes. He saw a business opportunity in other fans, and so in 1934 opened Reginald Denny Hobby Shops, a model plane store located on Hollywood Boulevard. As war grew closer, Denny got the idea that cheap radio-controlled planes would make perfect targets to give more realistic training to antiaircraft gunners. In 1940, he pitched the idea of the planes, which he marketed to hobbyists as the "Dennymite," for use as a target drone. The army signed a contract for fifty-three. Then Pearl Harbor happened. Over the next five years, the army would buy another fifteen thousand drones, making the Dennymite the first mass-produced unmanned plane in history. To build so many drones, Denny had to move his manufacturing out of Hollywood and into a plant at the Van Nuys Airport. In 1944, army photographer David Conover was sent to this factory for a magazine shoot about women contributing to the war effort. He spotted a buxom woman spraying the drones with fire retardant. It was not the most sexy of settings but he thought this woman had potential as a model and sent his photos on to a friend at a model agency. Norma Jeane Dougherty soon dyed her mousy brown hair to platinum blond and changed her name to Marilyn Monroe. After the war, the Northrop company bought out Denny, meaning that the icon of the blonde bombshell and the Global Hawk drone both were born in the same place. More advancement was made during this period with computers and other automated systems, though, than with remote-controlled ones that went out into the world on their own. The most widely used of these automatic systems was the Norden bombsight. Carl Norden was a Dutch engineer who moved to the United States in 1904. In 1920, he developed an analog computer that could calculate the trajectory of how a bomb would fall off a plane in flight. In a plane moving faster than three hundred feet per second, the human's reaction time was too slow to use the computer's calculation effectively, so the system automatically released the bomb at just the right time when it was sighted on a target. Norden's bombsight could even be linked to the plane's autopilot, taking over the flight controls on the final bombing run. While it was advertised as being able to "put a bomb in a pickle barrel from twenty thousand feet," the reality was that in combat conditions, the system was a little less accurate, typically hitting targets within one hundred to one thousand feet. Even so, the Norden was far more accurate than anything before it, and was used in all the U.S.'s heavy bombers during World War II. The device was considered so valuable that it was taken out of the plane and put in a safe after each mission. If their plane was about to crash, the crew was to shoot the bombsight with a thermite gun that would melt the computer. The cost of the Norden program was $1.5 billion, almost the same as the Manhattan Project to make the first atomic bomb. Like many of the inventors, though, the "cranky" and "irascible" Norden was a bit of an oddball and never profited to the extent he might have. He didn't like how the U.S. Army Air Corps had treated him when he had tried to sell them unmanned planes during World War I. So to get back, he sold his sight to the army's greatest nemesis, not the Japanese or the Germans, but the U.S. Navy, for the grand price of one dollar. Throughout World War II, then, the U.S. Army had to buy its bomber sights from the U.S. Navy. By the end of the war, the early B-17 and B-24 planes that Norden had equipped were being replaced by the far more sophisticated B-29 Superfortress. Besides the automated bombsight, the B-29 was the first plane to have a computer-controlled firing system, made up of twelve .50-caliber machine guns mounted in electric turrets, all remotely fired using an analog computer called the "Black Box." It was a B-29, the _Enola Gay_ , that would use a Norden bombsight to drop the first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. The real breakthrough was in computers that stayed off the battlefield. The first that used programming as we now understand it was Colossus, built at the top-secret codebreakers' lab at Bletchley Park, England. Weighing a ton, Colossus had fifteen hundred electronic valves to crank out the complex mathematics needed to break the Enigma code used by the Germans. Colossus, however, used physical switches to store data, so the first truly electronic computer was ENIAC, the Electric Numerical Integrator and Computer. Built at the University of Pennsylvania in 1944, it weighed twenty-seven tons and took up eighteen hundred square feet of floor space. While it was an unwieldy system that required the wires to be reset for each different problem, ENIAC could crunch out equations in thirty seconds that took a human engineer with a slide rule more than twenty hours. It was put to work on everything from shell trajectories to the development of the hydrogen bomb. In 1951, the first commercial version was released, and it was soon put to use at such things as predicting election results. Officially, it was termed the UNIVAC, but the media called it the "Giant Electronic Brain." # A COLD WAR AND A COLD MARKET This dichotomy of robotics and computers continued into the cold war. On one hand, the work on unmanned vehicles and weapons stagnated. Indeed, the new U.S. Air Force (formed from the army's Air Corps) was so uninterested in drones and guided missiles that their further development was left to the army and navy ordnance departments. Computers, though, continued to take off, with the military at the center of their funding and development. Among the early pioneers in this period was "Amazing" Grace Hopper. Hopper was a U.S. naval officer who worked on the development of the Harvard Mark I computer made by IBM. The Mark I, which was fifty-one feet in length and had some five hundred miles of wire, is credited by many as being the first digital computer that could store numbers and automatically calculate them. The challenge for these early computer pioneers was that all the instructions for the computer had to be written out in binary code. Hopper was part of the team that developed software known as a "compiler," which essentially turned each machine's codes into something universal. This early common language was called COBOL (Common Business Language). With the U.S. military as the largest buyer in the market, it became the standard. It was a huge breakthrough. By employing the same programming language, computers were no longer limited to computer scientists, and all sorts of machines could now communicate with each other. Hopper would retire as a rear admiral. Today, she is the only mathematician in history to have a navy ship named in her honor, the guided-missile destroyer U.S.S. _Hopper_. Many remember Hopper for something else. These early computers were difficult to use, and being so big, developed all sorts of problems in the hardware as well as software. One of the most vexing was with the Harvard Mark I's replacement (the Mark II), which kept inexplicably crashing. Eventually, Hopper's team figured out that the reason was not faulty programming, but a moth that had become trapped between two relays inside the computer. From then on, computer program glitches have been called "bugs." These programs laid the groundwork for what we now call the Internet. In 1965, a new employee named Bob Taylor joined what was then ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency; soon after, "Defense" was added to the agency's name, changing it to DARPA). Taylor inherited an office that had three different computer terminals sitting in it, each linking up to a different computer in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Santa Monica, California, and Berkeley, California. Taylor asked, "Why don't we just have a network such that we have one terminal and we can go anywhere we want?" It only took twenty minutes to convince Taylor's boss that this was a great idea. Four years and half a million dollars later, the system was ready to launch. What was especially novel is that the system didn't just link each computer directly to all the others, but instead figured out that messages could be passed on between computers by using interface message processors. Each of these processors, which we now commonly call "routers," weighed half a ton. In October 1969, the new "Darpanet" was ready to go, with the first message remotely connecting with a computer from UCLA. Prefacing the future way that technology doesn't always work as planned, the world's first computer network crashed on the "g" of the "login" command. Soon, however, all was fixed, and by 1973 a "formal set of instructions" for how the different networks could communicate to each other, called a Transmission Control Protocol, was created. It was in one of these papers that the term "Internet" was first used to describe the network of computer networks that was building. Computers were delivering well past expectations, with the military seeking to integrate them in all possible manners. But robotics wasn't completely dormant. In 1956, the world's first robot company, Unimation (Universal Automation), was founded, and in 1962, the first industrial robot, Unimate, was placed on a production line at General Motors. In 1973, the first industrial robot controlled by a computer was installed by Unimation's only competitor, the Cincinnati Milacron Corp. It was called T3 (The Tomorrow Tool). The first real mobile robot, not bound to an assembly line or lab, came in 1968. Shakey was built at the Stanford Research Institute and was novel for being able to move down a hallway without bumping into the walls. By 1976, robotics had reached the point that they served onboard both the Viking 1 and 2 space probes. Numerous advancements were being made, though not on the scale of the computing revolution. # A SLOW START It is around this point in robotics that Robert Finkelstein entered the business. Today, Finkelstein is president of Robotic Technologies Inc. and a consultant for numerous government agencies, including DARPA. Among his current projects is one for the Department of Transportation on "how to get the driver out of the car and save lives." Finkelstein is optimistic that this will happen "certainly in the range of 2015-2030." Wearing glasses, a black shirt, and a paisley tie, Finkelstein certainly looks the part of an early military robotics pioneer. Indeed, he is so excited by robots that at conferences he briefs audiences on the history and future of unmanned systems using a PowerPoint presentation. Many people do such presentations in industry and academia; few of them, however, show a presentation with 321 slides. But Finkelstein is a straight shooter. His greatest frustration is with uninformed policies that hold up the development of unmanned systems in both the military and civil markets. He minces no words, telling story after story about "friggin brain-dead" bureaucrats "who have no vision." What was technically possible long ago, he believes, could already have saved thousands of lives. "The sad thing is that many useful systems could have been fielded years ago." Finkelstein was into physics growing up and then joined the army. After he left, he joined NASA as an engineer working on the Apollo program. "Then Nixon pulled the plug," and so he joined the MITRE company, a research center that mainly does work for the Defense Department. Finkelstein became part of a project researching how to defeat enemy air defenses using unmanned drones, at the time called RPVs, short for remotely piloted vehicles. The concept was that they would create extra targets, forcing the enemy to use up their ammunition on the unmanned planes, rather than shooting down American pilots. Finkelstein was hooked by the idea of robotics and became part of the very first RPV society in 1977. He remembers that "the gift wrap industry was larger than the robotics industry and all the engineers in it could fit into one room.... Everyone was filled with such angst. 'Why don't they like us?' we would ask all the time. You constantly had to justify to the bosses on why robotics made any sense at all." Despite the poor prospects, in 1985 Finkelstein formed his own company, Robotic Technologies Inc. He explains, "One decision criterion of mine is the minimization of regret. You don't want to be someday sitting in your rocking chair, in your shawl drooling, wishing you had taken your shot." Among its first contracts was developing an architecture for unmanned air combat. His firm worked on software for an F-4 Phantom fighter jet that had been converted into an unmanned target drone. The new software began to beat pilots consistently, and the idea grew to use it as an advanced teaching tool for fighter pilots. But it never came to be. The program was too much, too soon, and most important too good for its own sake. Says Finkelstein, "The air force was terrified of unmanned planes. You know, the whole silk scarf mentality. Pilots are what become generals, not anyone else.... So, the front office came back to us and said, 'Great project, but we now need it for a submarine to use instead.' " Stories like Finkelstein's abound across the military robotics field when discussing the cold war years. It isn't that the systems weren't getting better, but that the interest, energy, and proven success stories necessary for them to take off just weren't there. The only substantial contract in this period was one that the Ryan aeronautical firm received in 1962 for $1.1 million to make an unmanned reconnaissance aircraft. The drone that came out of it, the Fire Fly, flew 3,435 missions in Southeast Asia. Overall, though, the Vietnam experience was as bad for robotics as it was for the broader U.S. military. Most of the uses of unmanned systems were classified and thus there was little public knowledge of their relative successes, as well as no field tests or data collection to solve the problems they incurred (16 percent of the Fire Flys crashed). As Finkelstein points out, "It took decades for UAVs to recover from Vietnam misperceptions." The next big U.S. military spending on unmanned planes didn't come until 1979, with the army's Aquila program. The Aquila was to be a small propeller-powered drone that could circle over the front lines and send back information on the enemy's numbers and intentions, much like the Predator of today. Soon, though, the army began to load up the plane with all sorts of new requirements. It now had to carry night vision and laser designators, spot artillery fire, survive against enemy ground fire, and so on. Each new requirement came at a cost. The more you loaded up the drone, the bigger it had to be, meaning it was both heavier than planned and an easier target to shoot down. The more secure you wanted the communications, the lower the quality of the images it beamed back. The program originally planned to spend $560 million for 780 Aquila drones. By 1987, it had spent over $1 billion for just a few prototypes. The program was canceled and the cause of unmanned vehicles was set further back, again more by policy decisions than the technology itself. Work continued, but mainly on testing various drones and ground vehicles, which were usually regular vehicles jury-rigged with remote controls. During this period, most of the ground systems were designed to be tele-operated, that is, using long fiber optic wires to link the robot to the controller. Any enemy with a pair of scissors could take them out. One of the few to be built from the ground up to drive on its own was Martin Marietta's eight-wheeled "Autonomous Land Vehicle." Unfortunately, the weapon had a major image problem. It was shaped like an RV, what your grandparents would use to drive cross-country to see the Grand Canyon. This killed any chance of convincing the generals of its use for warfighting. Another significant program that didn't take off in this period was a 1980 army plan for a robotic antitank vehicle. The idea was to take a commercial all-terrain vehicle, rig it for remote control, and load it with missiles. Congress thought that ATVs, while certainly fun for country kids to ride around behind trailer parks, were a bit too small to be taking on Soviet tanks. So the program was canceled. But a mistaken belief soon grew in the military that the real thing Congress had objected to was weaponizing unmanned systems. "So," as Finkelstein says, "misinterpretation kept weapons off for almost a decade." Those working on military robotics during this period learned that a major problem was generating what is called "customer pull." Too often, they were developing new projects based on "technology push," focusing purely on technological research in all sorts of directions, rather than having the customers' needs direct them. What was possible mattered less than what the military wanted. At the same time, they learned that "support from the top is essential." They needed buy-in from the generals and the politicians. Despite these setbacks, the military robotics community didn't waver in its belief in the utility of its work. Helping to keep the faith was seeing other nations begin to gain some success with unmanned systems, which could be used to build support in the United States. Most significant was the growing Israeli experience with drones. In 1982, the Israelis carried out strikes on Syrian-occupied areas in the Bekaa Valley that decimated the Syrian air defenses (which were using the latest-model Soviet technology), with no Israeli losses. The secret to their success was a stratagem of first using UAVs to gather the electronic frequencies of the Syrian radars. Then a swarm of UAVs flew over the area, sending out fake signals. The Syrians, thinking it was the real attack, fired off their missiles. While they reloaded, a second wave of Israeli jets flew in and took out the entire defense system, using missiles that homed in on the radars that the drones had unmasked. # THE RISE OF "SMART" BOMBS By the time of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, unmanned systems were gradually making their way into the U.S. military, but in very small numbers. The army had a handful of M-60 tanks converted into unmanned land-mine clearers, but they were left behind in the famous "left hook" invasion force that drove across the desert into Iraq. The air force flew just one UAV drone. The only notable success story was the navy's use of the Pioneer drone. The Pioneer was an unmanned plane (almost exactly like the planned Aquila) that the navy had bought secondhand from the Israelis. It flew off of World War II-era U.S. battleships that had been taken out of mothballs in the 1980s and updated for use in pounding ground targets with their massive sixteen-inch guns. The guns fired shells that weighed 2,000 pounds and could leave a crater the size of a football field. The little drones, which the Iraqis took to calling "vultures," would fly over targets and spot where the shells were landing. "The Iraqis came to learn that when they heard the buzz of a Pioneer overhead, all heck would break loose shortly thereafter because these 16-inch rounds would start landing all around them," said Steve Reid, an executive at the Pioneer's maker, AAI. In one case, a group of Iraqi soldiers saw a Pioneer flying overhead and, rather than wait to be blown up by a 2,000-pound cannon shell, waved white bedsheets and undershirts at the drone. It was the first time in history that human soldiers surrendered to an unmanned system. The real stars of the Gulf War were not unmanned systems in the way we think of them now, but new, guided missiles and bombs, commonly referred to as "smart bombs." There were two main types that caught attention, laser-guided bombs and cruise missiles. Laser-guided weapons came out of the earlier experiences with the television-guided glider weapons from World War II. The concept was the same, except now a human didn't have to steer the bomb, but rather just illuminate, or "paint," a target with a laser. The bomb or missile would then guide itself in. The air force was not interested in such devices, so the first research was actually done by the army in 1962. It wasn't until microchips became small and cheap enough to go on weapons that the device truly became useful. These guided bombs made their debut at the very end of the Vietnam War, where in May 1973 they were used to destroy the Thanh Hoa Bridge, a heavily defended site that had survived over eight hundred previous attacks by unguided bombs and missiles. As one navy admiral put it, " 'Smart bombs' are really only 'pretty obedient bombs.' " A human finds and designates the target and the bomb just goes where it is told. On the early models, the human also had to keep the target continually painted with the laser, exposing themselves to danger. Later models had memory capabilities built in, so the human pilot could fly off while the bomb automatically stayed on target. Of course, a key weakness of the system is that the weather had to be clear enough for the laser to go through, meaning dust, haze, or smoke could make it useless. The early models were also fairly expensive, sometimes costing far more than the targets they took out. The pilots called such bombing runs "dropping a Cadillac." Cruise missiles were a bit more advanced. With the various World War I "aerial torpedoes" and World War II Aphrodite bomber planes as their forebears, these were missiles that flew themselves, using either preset coordinates or recognition software to find their target. The one used most in the Gulf War was the Tomahawk, which flew under radar by hugging the earth at low altitudes that would be unsafe for human pilots. Still, such systems relied on the target's being decided before it took off, and had to go over terrain that had already been mapped out or photographed. It could not react to change. Back home, a massive PR campaign was built around the guided weapons as the "heroes" of the short hundred-hour Gulf War. The only problem was that they weren't. Only 7 percent of all the bombs dropped were guided; the rest were "dumb." The most influential technology was not the sexy smart weapons, but the humble desktop computer. By 1990, the U.S. military had bought into the idea of digitizing its forces and was spending some $30 billion a year on applying computers to all its various tasks. The Gulf War was the first war in history to involve computers to a significant extent, doing everything from organizing the movement of hundreds of thousands of troops to sorting through reams of satellite photos to find targets for the missiles to hit. Computers even gamed out potential Iraqi responses to American battle plans; indeed, they came up with more effective battle plans than the Iraqis ended up using in reality. Calling it a "technology war," the victorious commanding general, "Stormin' " Norman Schwarzkopf, said, "I couldn't have done it all without the computers." Over the rest of the 1990s, the systems became ever more capable. But the "magic moment," as one retired air force officer put it, occurred in 1995, when unmanned systems were integrated with the GPS. "That's when it really came together." The GPS is a constellation of military satellites that can provide the location, speed, and direction of a receiver, anywhere on the globe. It allowed unmanned systems (and their human operators) to automatically know where they were at any time. With GPS, as well as the advance of the video game industry (which the controllers began to mimic), the interfaces became accessible to a wider set of users. The drones began to be far more intuitive to fly, while the information they passed on to the generals and troops in the field became ever more detailed. Drones like Predator and Global Hawk made their debut in the Balkan wars a few years later, gathering information on Serb air defenses and refugee flows. The programs also began to pass some key hurdles of acceptability. The various military services had long resisted buying any unmanned systems, but slowly they began to see their use. In 1997, for example, the air force chief of staff, General Ronald R. Fogleman, instructed his planners that his service could "no longer... spend money the way we have been," and mandated that they begin to think "outside the box," including on new technologies such as UAVs. This key step for the air force actually came out of a good old-fashioned turf war. As it saw other services showing interest in unmanned planes in the early 1990s, "it was threatened by other services' infringement on what it saw as traditional Air Force missions." So, akin to what happened with ballistic missiles, where the air force only became interested in them when it saw the army getting into the business of space, the air force began several of its own drone programs. Early air force plans had civilians piloting the drones, as it didn't feel it was worth shifting its own pilots over to such missions. However, the company that they originally hired was run by a retired U.S. Navy admiral, and so most of the pilots he brought in were ex-navy. Many cite this as another key step in advancing the user base inside the military. The air force decided that maybe having its own pilots fly the drones was a better outcome than "running an after-retirement jobs program for the squids." # "FIRE IT INTO THE HEAVENS" By the start of the twenty-first century, technology was starting to mature, each year getting better and easier to use. In turn, whether it was the UAVs in the Kosovo war or NASA sending out robotic explorers to Mars, unmanned systems were collecting a portfolio of success stories to show that they could be useful. More important, these technologic developments began to coincide with changing political winds. As the cold war ended, the U.S. military was getting smaller, shrinking by more than 30 percent in the 1990s. At the same time, leaders began to think that the public tolerance for military risk had dramatically shifted, with expectations newly set by the relatively costless victory in the Gulf War. This was soon followed by the rapid withdrawal of American troops from Somalia after the Black Hawk Down disaster in 1993 and the unwillingness to send in ground troops during the genocides in the Balkans and Rwanda in 1994, for fear of casualties. As Major General Robert Scales argued, the new era of warfare was one in which "dead soldiers are America's most vulnerable center of gravity." With this, an added reason for investing in unmanned systems began to grow, centering on the new nature of foreign policy in the post-Vietnam, post-cold war era. At a congressional hearing on February 8, 2000, it finally all came together for military robotics on the "demand" side. Senator John Warner from Virginia, the powerful chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, laid down a gauntlet, mandating into the Pentagon's budget that by 2010, one-third of all the aircraft designed to attack behind enemy lines be unmanned, and that by 2015, one-third of all ground combat vehicles be driverless. Warner, who had once been navy secretary, was more popularly known for being the seventh husband of the actress Elizabeth Taylor. In his third decade in the Senate, however, he brooked no challenges and knew how to shake up the system. Yet Warner had shown no earlier obsession with robotics or technology. His insistence on pushing unmanned systems to the next level had nothing to do with what was possible with robotics at the time. The first factor was his concern over what the growing intolerance for human casualties meant for U.S. foreign policy. "When you look at the history of casualties, beginning with almost half a million killed in World War II, over 35,000 killed in Korea, and more than 50,000 killed in Vietnam, and zero combat deaths in Kosovo, in my judgment this country will never again permit the armed forces to be engaged in conflicts which inflict the level of casualties we have seen historically," Warner explained. "So what do you do? You move toward the unmanned type of military vehicle to carry out missions which are high risk in nature.... The driving force is the culture in our country today, which says, 'Hey! If our soldiers want to go to war, so be it. But don't let any of them get hurt.' " The second factor was Warner's belief that the military needed a new way to convince youth to enlist. The more the military was using futuristic technology, Warner explained, "the more likely we'll attract quality men and women because they're interested in learning high tech in the military and then moving on and using those skills in the civilian community." The military had no choice but to follow through on Warner's mandate. As chairman of the Armed Services Committee, he controlled the schedule of all hearings and bills on defense matters. Most important, when it came to approving both military budgets and officer promotions, he was the boss. And you don't cross the boss. As Warner summed up the episode, "Every now and then somebody like me has to take out their shotgun and fire it into the heavens to get somebody's attention." Warner's goals were entered into law as part of the National Defense Authorization Act of fiscal year 2001. And then came September 11. # " THE ROBOT IS OUR ANSWER TO THE SUICIDE BOMBER" In the wake of 9/11, the shackles came off not only the use of force and willingness to send American troops around the world, but also the amount being spent on the military in general and robotics in particular. From 2002 to 2008, the annual national defense budget has risen by 74 percent, to $515 billion. This figure does not include the several hundred billion dollars additionally spent on the cost of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, which have been funded in separate budget supplementals. If you include these, the total Pentagon budget is at its highest level in real (inflation-adjusted) terms since 1946, the last budget to reflect World War II-related spending, and $36 billion and $126 billion (in 2008 dollars) more than the peak spending during the Korean and Vietnam wars (though the percentage of GDP is far lower). Research and development (R&D) and procurement costs, what it takes to design and build new weapons systems, have thus experienced an equivalent boom, or what one analyst described as "unchecked growth." This is what we know. In addition, there is the "black budget," the Pentagon's classified budget for buying and researching what it wants to keep secret. For obvious reasons, the black budget is not released to the public, but it is estimated by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments to be around $34 billion in 2009, up roughly 78 percent since 9/11. A core part of this massive post-9/11 research and buying spree has been new technologies, with a particular focus on anything unmanned. The amounts spent on ground robots roughly doubled each year, while the amounts on drones grew by around 23 percent each year. As an industry report commented, unmanned systems may have had a long history, going well back to World War I, but 9/11 was when things finally took off. "Prior to 9/11, the size of the unmanned vehicle market had been growing, but at an almost glacial pace. Thanks to battlefield successes, governments are lavishing money on UAV programs as never before." "Make 'em as fast as you can" is what one robotics executive recounts being told by his Pentagon buyers after 9/11. As noted earlier, the number of unmanned ground systems in Iraq and Afghanistan went from almost zero to five thousand by the end of 2006 and was targeted to reach twelve thousand by the end of 2008. Whereas 93 percent of the bombs and missiles dropped on Iraqi forces in 1991 were unguided "dumb" bombs, 70 percent of the bombs and missiles dropped in the 2003 air campaign were precision "smart" bombs. And with this change in military mentality, money, and use, the groundwork was finally laid for a real military robotics industry. As one report put it, "The undertaking has attracted not only the country's top weapons makers but also dozens of small businesses ... all pitching a science-fiction gallery of possible solutions." Robert Finkelstein recalled a time when he personally knew most of the engineers working on military robotics. Today the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) has fourteen hundred member companies. Almost four thousand people showed up at its last annual meeting. This trend seems only just the beginning. A historic comparison is often made to how certain technologies were jump-started by war. As one DARPA report put it, in 1908, there were just 239 Model T Ford cars sold. Ten years later, the figure was over one million. They predicted the same for robotics. "Just as World War I accelerated automotive technology, the war on terrorists will accelerate the development of humanoid robot technology." The scientists are not the only ones who see this future. The Teal Group is a defense consultancy firm that specializes in forecasting the financial trends for war. As clients turn to Teal for investment ideas, it is not known for zany thinking. And yet Teal describes unmanned planes with zeal, as "the most dynamic growth sector of the world aerospace industry." Its experts expect the global spending on unmanned planes and computer-guided missiles over the next decade to yield $103.7 billion by 2016. Teal's estimates consider only airborne unmanned systems; they don't even begin to include those on the ground or the sea. Scientists such as Finkelstein think the ground sector could prove to be even bigger, noting that "ground vehicles are just now on the edge of that same sort of acceptance in major use." Second, this spending base won't just be coming from the U.S. taxpayers, but will include those around the globe. Teal's numbers, for example, have Europe spending 20 percent of the worldwide total, followed closely by the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East. And no one expects these trends to abate anytime soon. As U.S. Navy researcher Bart Everett, another early robotics pioneer, cites, two crucial factors will continue the growing demand for military robots: "One, the technology has finally matured to the point where reasonably affordable robots can actually do something useful. And, two, the world situation has changed for the worse in terms of the variety, sophistication, and lethality of the various threats we now face in the free world.... To me, the robot is our answer to the suicide bomber." # YOU ARE THE WEAKEST LINK In the background of how the demand for military robotics finally caught up to the long history behind them has been one more important development. The more the military used unmanned systems, the more people came to believe that machines brought certain advantages to the battlefield. "They don't get hungry," says Gordon Johnson of the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command. "They're not afraid. They don't forget their orders. They don't care if the guy next to them has just been shot. Will they do a better job than humans? Yes." Robots proved attractive for roles that fill what people in the field call the "Three Ds" ("Dull, Dirty, or Dangerous"). An irony is that many military missions can be incredibly boring as well as physically taxing. For example, with aerial refueling, spy planes are now able to stay in flight for as long as twenty hours or more. And yet the air force has found that humans lose effectiveness after ten to twelve hours. They simply wear down physically and psychologically from doing the same task that long. Unmanned systems, by contrast, don't need to sleep, don't need to eat, and find monitoring empty desert sands as exciting as partying at the Playboy Mansion. As one unmanned plane advertisement put it, "Can you keep your eyes open for thirty hours without blinking?" Scientists are also finding that certain tasks also take incredibly high concentration for humans. But keeping at that level of intense concentration for lengthy periods of time is quite difficult, so people need to pause between tasks to collect themselves and gear back up. For example, detecting land mines is obviously a job for which a person needs to be at the top of their game. So they will pause and recollect themselves every so often. An unmanned system doesn't need that. Even using the same mine-detecting gear as a human, current robots can do the same task in about a fifth of the time, with greater accuracy. Unmanned systems can also operate in dirty environments, such as a battle zone filled with biological or chemical weapons, where a human would have to wear a bulky suit and protective gear. But say you just happen to stumble into a war where the claimed threat of WMD turns out to be false. Even then, there are other kinds of dirty that robots may be more apt for. As an air force captain comments, things as simple as "inclement weather, smog, and smoke can hinder pilot visibility. How is this different between a manned and unmanned aircraft? The UAV has EO/IR/SARS [electro-optical, infrared, and synthetic-aperture radar sensors] to rely on. The pilot has the Mark I Eyeball." Beyond just the factor of putting humans into dangerous environments, technology does not have the same limitations as the human body. For example, it used to be that when planes made high-speed turns or accelerations, the same gravitational pressures (g-forces) that knocked the human pilot out would also tear the plane apart. But now, as one study described of the F-16, the machines are pushing far ahead. "The airplane was too good. In fact, it was better than its pilots in one crucial way: It could maneuver so fast and hard that its pilots blacked out." If, as an official at DARPA observed, "the human is becoming the weakest link in defense systems," unmanned systems offer a path around those limitations. They can fly faster and turn harder, without worrying about that squishy part in the middle. Looking forward, a robotics researcher notes that "the UCAV [the unmanned fighter jet] will totally trump the human pilot eventually, purely because of physics." This may prove equally true at sea, and not just in underwater operations, where humans have to worry about small matters like breathing or suffering ruptured organs from water pressure. For example, small robotic boats (USV) have already operated in "sea state six." This is when the ocean is so rough that waves are eighteen feet high or more, and human sailors would break their bones from all the tossing about. Working at digital speed is another unmanned advantage that's crucial in dangerous situations. Automobile crash avoidance technologies illustrate that a digital system can recognize a danger and react in about the same time that the human driver can only get to mid-curse word. Military analysts see the same thing happening in war, where bullets or even computer-guided missiles come in at Mach speed and defenses must be able to react against them even quicker. Humans can only react to incoming mortar rounds by taking cover at the last second, whereas "R2-D2," the CRAM system in Baghdad, is able to shoot them down before they even arrive. Some think this is only the start. One army colonel says, "The trend towards the future will be robots reacting to robot attack, especially when operating at technologic speed. . . . As the loop gets shorter and shorter, there won't be any time in it for humans." Robots also offer quicker learning curves. Computers not only speak the same language, but can be connected directly via a wire or a network, which means they have sharable intelligence. If one soldier learns French or marksmanship, he cannot pass on that knowledge easily. Barring a Vulcan mind meld, his squadmates would have to learn it in much the same painful way. And, no matter how hard all tried, there would be many differences and inconsistencies in their final skills. A computer, by contrast, can share that skill or knowledge with another computer or robot in only the time that it takes to download the software file. Finally, many robotics salesmen are starting to sell an undervalued advantage that comes with the fact that robots simply aren't human: they don't carry all our wonderful "human baggage." They don't show up at work red-eyed from a night of drinking, they don't think about their sweethearts back home when they are supposed to be on mission, and they don't get jealous when a fellow soldier gets a promotion. One executive tells how his primary selling point for robotic sentries at warehouses was not their technologic capabilities or cost advantages, but simply that "robots don't participate in 'inside jobs.' " Overall, there are a variety of reasons and motivations for why the military has become more and more interested in buying unmanned systems. But they all come down to one basic aspect. As military analyst and Bush administration adviser Eliot Cohen says, "The military is deciding that in the long run we can do more with machines than it can do without them." # THE FUTURE IS SO BRIGHT Just six years after Senator Warner fired his shotgun into the sky, Congress revisited the issue of military robotics. This time, the changed attitude was encapsulated by a new mandate in the Senate Armed Service Committee's version of the Defense Department budget. Congress ordered the Pentagon to show a "preference for joint unmanned systems in acquisition programs for new systems, including a requirement under any such program for the development of a manned system for a certification that an unmanned system is incapable of meeting program requirements." If the U.S. military was going to buy a new weapon, it would now have to justify why it was _not_ a robotic one. In a certain way, then, the history of robots had come full circle. Jacques de Vaucanson had impressed the most powerful leaders of his time with a futuristic vision of a world filled with artificial creations. Some 250 years later, President George Bush, the first president of the twenty-first century, saw the world turning out to be much the same way, just without the duck. "Now it is clear the military does not have enough unmanned vehicles," he said. "We're entering an era in which unmanned vehicles of all kinds will take on greater importance—in space, on land, in the air, and at sea." It had taken a long time, but the field of robotics was now set to deliver on its great promise, most notably through its relationship with the military. Unmanned systems had started out as abnormal, limited in their use and acceptance. As the twenty-first century began, they were becoming the new normal. **[THREE]** **ROBOTICS FOR DUMMIES** _Like a robot, sometimes I just know not._ —EMINEM "The ROBOTs are dressed like people. Their movements and speech are laconic. Their faces are expressionless and their eyes fixed ..." This very first mention of the word "robot" was in the stage directions for _R.U.R (Rossum's Universal Robots)_ , a 1921 play by Karel Čapek, a writer living in what was then Czechoslovakia. The play opens in a fictional factory with posters on the walls that say things like: "Tropical Robots—A New Invention—$150 a Head." Business must be good at Rossum's, as the play opens with the company's general director sitting in a fancy office, dictating a letter about an order of fifteen thousand "robots." All is not well, however, and by the end of the play these new machines have revolted against their human makers. As he watches his robots go out into the world, their human designer closes the play by quoting from the Bible: "And God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." The Czech word _robota_ described the work that a peasant owed a landowner and also had a second meaning of "drudgery." A _robotnik_ is a peasant or a serf, and _rabota_ was the old Slavic word for slave. So the new word used to describe these machine characters actually came packed with all sorts of added meanings to Czech audiences. A few years later, Čapek's play made it onto the stages of New York and the word "robot" entered the English language. # WHAT IS A ROBOT? Unfortunately, a Czech actor with an expressionless face isn't all that helpful a definition for understanding robots. What follows is a broad guide to robots and how they work, not enough to create your own R2-D2, but enough to understand the basics. Robots are machines that are built upon what researchers call the "sense-think-act" paradigm. That is, they are man-made devices with three key components: "sensors" that monitor the environment and detect changes in it, "processors" or "artificial intelligence" that decides how to respond, and "effectors" that act upon the environment in a manner that reflects the decisions, creating some sort of change in the world around a robot. When these three parts act together, a robot gains the functionality of an artificial organism. If a machine lacks any of these three parts, it is not a robot. For example, the difference between a computer and a robot is the former's lack of effectors to change the world around it. Interestingly, a machine's sophistication has nothing to do with whether it is a robot. Just like biologic life might range in intelligence from bacteria and Paris Hilton to _Homo sapiens_ and Albert Einstein, man's artificial creations too show wide levels of complexity. Despite the seeming simplicity of this definition, it is still subject to some debate. For example, some scientists say that in order to be a robot, the machine has to be mobile. Yet this forgets that movement is just one way to change the world around you (as the world now has you in a different location). Defining only mobile systems as robots would not only exclude robots that work on factory lines, but would also be akin to defining paraplegics out of the human race. # INTERFACE: THE MAN AND THE MACHINE Our machines are designed to work for us, so an important part of understanding them is the user interface. The interface is the way the human receives information from the robot and, in turn, sends information to it, including orders that seek to control what the robot does. The controls for many robots are often like those of any home computer: a screen, a keyboard, a mouse, and so forth. The Crusher robot, a six-ton truck mounting a .50-caliber machine gun, can even be controlled remotely with an Apple iTouch music player. But as systems get more and more capable, there is a bit of a paradox going on with user interface. In the words of a sergeant just back from Iraq, sometimes there is just "too much technology.... It can be overwhelming." The major problem is the ever-growing amount of data that robots send to the user. As artfully described in _National Defense_ magazine, it is like "the TV episode of _I Love Lucy_ where Lucy and Ethel are at the chocolate factory and the chocolate just gets out of control, and you never get back in gear." An iRobot engineer confesses, "User interface is a big, big problem." Military researchers are now trying to solve the interface problem by "playing to the soldiers' preconceptions." And with young males today, that means video games. Greg Heines, who runs the marines' Dragon Runner (a small ground robot) project, explains, "We modeled the controller after the PlayStation because that's what these 18-, 19-year-old Marines have been playing with pretty much all of their lives." By using video game controllers, the military can piggyback on the billions of dollars that game companies have already spent designing controllers and training up an entire generation in their use. Yet their use in war doesn't always transfer over perfectly. The first problem is that the systems have to be ruggedized. A PlayStation controller, for example, only has to survive being thrown across the room in frustration when you give up that crucial first down in _Madden NFL_. The ones that the soldiers use have to be able to survive desert heat, sand, or even explosions. Secondly, such video game controllers often require a ridiculously complicated series of moves to do anything complex. Anyone who has played the game _Mortal Kombat_ recalls that you had to press Away, Toward, Toward, Down, and 3 in the span of a second to perform Sub-Zero's renowned finishing move of relieving a foe of his spinal cord. In real-world mortal combat, you have neither the time nor focus for that kind of fancy fingerwork. Technology waits for no game, and the direct handheld joysticks and controllers like in the Xbox or PlayStation are already being replaced in popularity by Nintendo's Wii controller. The new feature of the "Wiimote" is motion sensing capability. Instead of just responding to punched buttons and twisted joysticks, the system also reacts to how the human moves the overall controller. The Wiimote recognizes movements like pointing a gun or swinging a golf club and then registers the same movement in the game. Such advances may prove to be only a stepping-stone to eliminating joysticks and other remote controls altogether. In Steven Spielberg's movie _Minority Report_ , for instance, Tom Cruise wears gloves that turn his fingers into a virtual joystick/ mouse, allowing him to call up and control data, including even video, without ever touching a computer. He literally can "point and click" in thin air. Colonel Bruce Sturk, who runs the high-tech battle lab at Langley Air Force Base, liked what he saw in the movie. "As a military person, I said, 'My goodness, how great would it be if we had something similar to that?' " So the defense contractor Raytheon was hired to create a real version for the Pentagon. Bringing it full circle, the company then hired John Underkoffler, the technology guru who had first proposed the fictional idea to Spielberg. The result is the "G-Speak Gestural Technology System," which lets users type and control images on a projected screen (including even a virtual computer keyboard projected in front of the user). Movie magic is made real via sensors inside the gloves and cameras that track the user's hand movements. Even these sophisticated systems may not be enough to convey all that the soldier or their robot needs. A defense industry rule of thumb is that "if it takes more than two clicks to get the information, you are wasting your time." At each stage, as much information as possible must be packed into the interface. Yet the main interfaces to our technologies are through sight and sound. We read the information typed out on a screen or see it visually represented, and sometimes hear it via warning alerts. Relying only on these two senses limits how much can be digested and controlled; they are also difficult to use in the chaos and noise of battle. One way to pack in more control and information is to tap as many of our other senses as possible. The Pentagon is pursuing "haptics," technologies that use the body's sense of touch as another portal for interfacing, akin to how the blind read Braille or people set their cell phones on vibrate. Given the different ways that our senses of feel and touch work, haptics multiply the amount of information our bodies can take in. The new controller programs range from the simple, such as buzzers that would let a soldier know there is danger in a certain direction, to variant thermal and pressure switches that might be placed on everything from biceps to toes. For example, instead of having to look down to check if ammunition is running low, a soldier might get a quick pinch on their bicep when ten rounds are left in the gun. Or if a squadmate is wounded, a patch on their back might go ice cold. The most advanced haptic projects in research right now are "symbiotic systems," such as suits designed for pilots to wear that let them "feel" parts of the plane. Explains their designer, "If there's an overload in one wing, the pilot will feel a vibration, or heat, in his corresponding arm." In turn, the plane monitors the pilot, even, for example, knowing when they are in the deepest part of their sleep cycle, so that it wakes them at just the perfect moment during a long mission. "It will really make a complete fusional relation between the plane and the pilot." Another promising interface program is voice recognition software. In 2004, for example, an unmanned UCAV fighter jet was controlled on a war-game mission via voice commands. Some covert missions, though, require quiet. So there is also work on "subvocalization" systems, which allow the computer to register the human's voice commands solely by movement of the tongue and jaw; a command is mouthed but not actually said out loud. Much like the haptic sensors, the controllers might be mounted on any part of the body that can move. For example, the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition has even tested out a controller that is essentially a strip of red plastic tape that you wear on your tongue. It contains 144 microelectrodes that create various tingling sensations when activated. Navy divers have used it to interface with sonar systems, to help them find underwater obstacles and mines in dark or muddy water. One navy veteran said using the technology felt just like "Pop Rock candies." Just don't drink Coke afterward. # ALL JACKED UP Kevin Warrick is the head of cybernetics and robotics at Reading University in the United Kingdom. While watching an episode of _Star Trek: The Next Generation_ , he became fascinated by the Borg, a species on the show obsessed with bettering themselves through the assimilation of other species and their technology into their bodies. In the show the Borg enslave or kill trillions of species, but for Warrick they were a revelation. "In terms of evolution, humans have gone as far as we can go." Warrick began work on what he saw as the next evolutionary step in human-machine interfaces. He experimented with placing various controllers of technology inside his body. For example, he put a computer chip in his arm that was linked to a robotic arm via the Internet. When he moved his arm, the robotic arm moved. "To all intents and purposes, I was a Borg." Such implants, Warrick believes, are the only way for humans to keep up with the machines we have made. "We know that machines will have phenomenal memory and speed of processing, so I say 'why can't I have a bit of that?' Machines aren't really limited to three dimensions the way we are. I'd love to be able to think in 20 dimensions. . . . Although I was born a human, I will die a cyborg, a very, very enhanced being." For all the potential of French-kissing your robot's sonar controller, the best portal for communicating with our machines is the big mushy computer inside our skulls. When the neurons in our brains fire to communicate with each other, each signal beams out on a different frequency called "brain waves." Already in electrical form, these waves portray our thoughts and intent most rapidly and directly. The challenge is transforming these electrical signals into something that can usefully connect to a machine. The signals intended to control the machine must be isolated from all the trillions of other signals going in and out of the brain. Likewise, the brain's instructions have to be decoded and converted into digital software that a machine understands. There are noninvasive ways to tap into these brain waves from the outside. An electroencephalograph, or EEG, for example, is basically a cap covered with electrodes that listen in on the electrical signals that leak out through your skull. An EEG wearer has been able to move a cursor around a computer screen, much like using a computer mouse by hand. Such systems, however, remain limited by the fact that the technology is not directly connected to the body and is exposed to interference. Describes one researcher, "It's a blurry vision of what the brain is doing. It's like watching TV through waxed paper." For that reason, most of the cutting-edge interface research is focused on direct links. The idea of such a "jack" into the brain comes out of science fiction, most notably William Gibson's 1984 novel _Neuromancer_. In the book, computer hackers of the future plug wires into their brains to link up with a virtual world of computers, which Gibson entitled "cyberspace" (another idea coined in the book). If picking up the waves through the skull is like watching TV through wax paper, a direct link through a jack, explains the researcher, is "like watching a high-definition plasma screen." This idea of human brain jacks remained theoretic until Matthew Nagle, a young man from South Weymouth, Massachusetts, was paralyzed from the neck down in 2001. "Every other day I wanted to die," Nagle recalled. "I had nothing in my life to look forward to." With doctors telling him he had no hope of moving again, or even breathing without a ventilator, Nagle turned to BrainGate technology. A computer chip was implanted into his head. The goal was to isolate the signals leaving Nagle's brain whenever he thought about moving his arms or legs, even if the pathways to those limbs were now broken. The hope was that Nagle's intent to move could be enough; his brain's signals could be captured and translated into a computer's software code. A mere three days into what was supposed to be a twelve-month research study, there was a breakthrough; just by thinking about it, Nagle moved a cursor on a computer screen. And with the ability to move a cursor, a new world opened up. He could move a robotic hand, surf the Web, send e-mail, draw, and even play video games, "just by imagining it." He even had the scientists link his brain to his TV's remote control, allowing him to change the channels just by thinking it. Nagle remained physically paralyzed, but through technology, he was changing the world around him. Originally, the mind-machine interface worked by Nagle's thinking about moving the position of the cursor on the computer screen as if he were pushing it with his hand, with the computer translating his intent into action. Soon, he found it easier and more "natural" to just think about moving the cursor directly, akin to ESP. As he gained experience, he became a multitasker, able to talk while also playing a video game via his thoughts. "I do feel like it was a part of me," Nagle said. "They plugged me in and it was go, go, go. It was cool, man." This ability to link up to a computer directly opens up some wild new possibilities for war, which is why the Pentagon's DARPA helped pay for the research. Its Brain-Interface Project is "the most lavishly funded of nearly all the DARPA bioengineering efforts." A project run out of the National Institutes of Health took it to the next step, where two severely disabled patients played a video game against each other, both controlling their sides solely by thought. "It's as if the first flight at Kitty Hawk has gone a few hundred feet," program director Joseph Pancrazio described of the possibilities that might follow. In the world of war, in which microseconds are the difference between life and death, such thought interfaces infinitely speed up reaction time. Many scientists make the comparison to the movie _Firefox_ , in which Clint Eastwood pilots a thought-controlled plane to easy victory over regular planes. In high-speed air battles, the ability to maneuver just by thinking, versus having to jerk a joystick around while fighting g-forces, can be huge. Even more, the ability will allow humans to fight virtually from "inside" unmanned systems, combining the advantages of manned planes with unmanned systems. Not only could a remote operator fly a UAV by thought, but that system might also beam back images directly into their brain. This would allow the operator to sense what the robot is sensing, such as "seeing" in infrared or thermal. Experiments with such virtual interfaces are finding that people also begin to develop a sort of sixth sense that further links them to the machine they are interfacing with. Professor Warrick (the Borg fan), for example, used chips implanted in his arms to communicate with tiny robots that signaled him whenever they made contact with something. Warrick described that it wasn't so much that he could "feel" as sense the presence of what the robots were touching. It's much like how when you first learn to drive a car, you have no natural sense of where the vehicle begins and ends. As you gain experience, soon you can squeeze it into tight parking spaces without much thought at all. The machines, like that car or even a pen when you write, become an unconscious extension of the body. These brain jacks are also evolving from the ugly vision of tubes stuck into the back of your skull, much like in _The Matrix_ , to ever smaller implants. At Duke University test subjects have been connected via electrodes as thin as a human hair, while a program at Emory University has developed implants the size of a grain of rice. Much as Internet connections have gone wireless, so might the implanted brain chips one day. This development will give soldiers in the field access to all sorts of new capabilities beyond just controlling their robots by thought. For example, when I couldn't remember who starred in _Firefox_ , I punched in a search on my desktop computer's Internet browser. Imagine instead being able to do such searches inside our heads. One researcher explains that the ability to directly connect to the Internet "is going to be my mental prosthesis. Everything I want to know, I can look up. Everything I can forget, I can find. I'm going to get old, but it won't matter. I won't have to remember anything." If our brains are connected to machines, it also means they can be connected to each other. As with any other computer file, if a thought can be transformed into computer code, nothing prevents that file from being accessible to someone else. For warfare, this means that a soldier may one day not need to radio his buddies of an ambush ahead or snap a picture and e-mail them, but instead could just pass it on by thought. Robotics scientist Robert Finkelstein is quite excited by this technology's prospects. "We would all share information in an instant process.... What I see, you see.... It could be very potent, for good or ill. If al-Qaeda is still around, it could be very scary." What scientists are talking about, says one, is "network-enabled telepathy." It sounds otherworldly, but the U.S. government's National Science Foundation envisions such communication to be possible within the next two decades. But even all this direct interface will still not be enough. The systems will still be producing overwhelming amounts of data, only now dumping it directly into our heads. It may sound great, for example, to be able to fly a Global Hawk by thoughts alone and see what the drone is able to see. However, that drone can fly for thirty-five hours and cover an area the size of Maine with its sensors. So no matter how jacked up we get, our poor little monkey brains will still need some computer to help us control the drone, as well as make sense of what it is finding. This disparity between ourselves and our machines is what drives research into "autonomy" and "artificial intelligence." # AUTONOMY: WHEN A ROBOT DECLARES INDEPENDENCE That a machine can make a decision on its own, with or without a human in the loop, does not define whether or not it is a robot. The relative independence of a robot is merely a feature called "autonomy." Autonomy is measured on a sliding scale from direct human operation at the low end to what is known as "adaptive" at the high end. The potential autonomy of a robotic spy plane can illustrate. Direct human operation is having some guy behind a computer control all the plane's operations from the ground. Human-assisted is when the pilot on the ground takes off and lands the plane, but can let the plane fly itself while in the air. In human delegation, the pilot just has to instruct the plane to take off and land and give it waypoints to fly to. In human-supervised, the operator is no longer really a pilot, but just monitors what information it sends back. In mixed-initiative, the human might give a robotic plane a mission to accomplish, but doesn't need to oversee it. The machine is given a mission file to complete or even loosely told to be "curious" and only report back when it finds something interesting. In fully autonomous mode, the machine decides on its own what to report and where to go. Finally, a machine is adaptive when it can learn; it can update or change what it should search out, even evolving to gather information in new ways. Autonomy is thus about more than simply whether the human is in control or not, but also about how it relates to the world. Can the robot build its own model of the world? Can it operate in the world on its own using that model? Can it change and update that model on its own? And finally, can it decide to throw that old model out and find a new way to figure out what to do? Autonomy, then, relates to many of the same questions that we usually use to define a human being's maturity. When thinking about all this in the context of war, it is easy to see the attraction of building increasing levels of autonomy into military robots. The more autonomy a robot has, the less human operators have to support it. As one Pentagon report put it, "Having a dedicated operator for each robot will not pass the common sense test." If robots don't get higher on the autonomy scale, they don't yield any cost or manpower savings. Moreover, it is incredibly difficult to operate a robot while trying to interpret and use the information it gathers. It can even get dangerous as it's hard to operate a complex system while maintaining your own situational awareness in battle. The kid parallel would be like trying to play _Madden_ football on a PlayStation in the middle of an actual game of dodgeball. With the rise of more sophisticated sensors that better see the world, faster computers that can process information more quickly, and most important, GPS that can give a robot its location and destination instantaneously, higher levels of autonomy are becoming more attainable, as well as cheaper to build into robots. But each level of autonomy means more independence. It is a potential good in moving the human away from danger, but also raises the stakes of the robot's decisions. As one defense analyst succinctly put it, "The autonomy thing is f'ing hard. All the little decisions build up, especially in a chaotic situation like war." # "INTELLIGENCE IS INTELLIGENCE" Wrapped up in the idea of autonomy, essentially the robot's level of independence and maturity, is something even more complex: "intelligence." This is perhaps the most important aspect of a robot, which processes information and decides what to do with it. As one military analyst argued, "Forget about whether the intelligence is carbon-based like humans or silicon-based like machines. Intelligence is intelligence and must be respected." The dictionary definition of intelligence is "an ability to act appropriately (or make an appropriate choice or decision) in an uncertain environment." That seems simple enough, but when that ability is located in a man-made creation, not a living thing, it gets complex. The definition of "artificial intelligence" (often called AI) is actually in dispute, not only because of all the technical baggage that comes with determining what is an "appropriate choice" or not, but also because the definition of AI links to broader debates about what it means to be human or not. For some, the definition of a machine's intelligence depends on a comparison with a human. They argue that a machine is artificially intelligent if it can do a task that requires some measure of intelligence for a human to do. This is a difficult way to go about determining intelligence, as it completely depends on the specific task at that specific moment in time, not the machine or the human performing the task. Computers, for instance, outperform us in tasks that involve numbers, calculations, and searching for stored information. They can remember literally trillions of points of data, whereas most of us have a hard time remembering even the PIN number to our ATM at the bank. However, in other ways, computers have so far proven to be "ridiculously stupid." As one science writer describes, they may be able to "calculate faster than any human being, but they lack the common sense of a two-year-old." The reason is that computers are limited to the world of numbers in both their language and processes. But sometimes this logical, mechanical manner of intelligence is hard to translate to activities in the real world. Moreover, while a computer can churn through the numbers behind a single or a few problems with ease, the human brain is massively parallel. It may process far slower than a digital computer, but the mushy gray blob inside our head can do a hundred trillion computations at the same time. We still crush computers when it comes to matching patterns with memories and applying knowledge to current contexts. A good illustration is what some describe as the Apple-Tomato test. For a computer to tell the difference between an apple and a tomato is actually quite tricky. It could resort to all sorts of visual analyses, comparing the size, shape, and color. But soon the machine would find that in certain cases there would be overlap, so any and all tests, no matter how rapid, would be inconclusive. It could next proceed to taking samples, such as capturing its chemical makeup via a smell test, and then comparing the data to other known test subjects. Ultimately, it could only be sure beyond a reasonable doubt with a DNA sample, which would occupy a massive part of its processing power. By comparison, pretty much any two-year-old human instantly "knows" that an apple is not a tomato, without any calculation. At the same time, that toddler can pick his nose, kick a ball, and realize that it is raining outside. Thus, the toddler may not be able to count to infinity, but they blow the computer out of the water when it comes to pattern recognition and multitasking, which is 95 percent of what we ask our brains to think on. "If you think it's easy for you to do, most of the time it's very difficult for robots to do," says Takeo Kanade, director of Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute. So it seems unfair then to compare machines to humans in this type of intelligence. What should matter more in defining intelligence is simply whether there is some use made of information in order to achieve the task. For our purposes, then, when talking about machine intelligence it seems most apt to use the definition that leading roboticists (robot scientists) all center around. As Sebastian Thrun, director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Stanford University, explains, artificial intelligence is the ability of a machine to "perceive something complex and make appropriate decisions." This also recognizes that there are various types of intelligence that we value. Some intelligence is reactive, basically sensing and acting upon information. Some is predictive, anticipating what will happen from prior information and acting beforehand. And some is creative, recognizing patterns of information and inventing new solutions to problems. To put it another way, if the task is to figure out what to do when it rains, the reactive answer would be to get under a tree when you feel water on your head, the predictive answer would be to check the weather and avoid the rain before it even starts, while the creative answer would be to invent the umbrella. Each requires intelligence, just of a different type. For this reason, researchers are at work on all sorts of advanced AI, such as "expert systems" that organize behavior into millions of rules to follow, to "evolutionary" or self-educating AI, such as neural networks that mimic the human brain, to genetic algorithms that continually refine themselves. AI learning is thus the key to robots' continual expansion and usefulness in the real world. As Lynne Parker, head of the Distributed Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Tennessee, describes, "Simply put, we can't know or predict everything that a robot might encounter in performing its task. As the common adage states, 'Only change is certain.' So, to deal with all of these issues, robots must be able to learn and adapt to changes in their environment." # Al GETS STRONG Today, there are all sorts of artificial intelligence that appear in our daily lives, without our even thinking of them as AI. Anytime you check your voice mail, AI directs your calls. Anytime you try to write a letter in Microsoft Word, an annoying little paper-clip figure pops up, which is an AI trying to turn your scribbles into a stylistically sound correspondence. Anytime you play a video game, the characters in it are internal agents run by AIs, usually with their skill levels graded down so that you can beat them. Indeed, almost any movie made today that has a crowd shot is actually filmed by populating the scene with AIs. Starting with the acclaimed battles in the _Lord of the Rings_ trilogy, production companies have found it cheaper to build tiny avatars that interact in the scenes than actually pay tens of thousands of real human extras to stand around for the day wearing orc armor. Overall, the size of the AI market was estimated by the Business Communications Company to be roughly $21 billion in 2007 with annual growth of 12.2 percent. It is this part of robots that makes decisions, artificial intelligence, that may be the part most important to their impact on war. Up until today, each of the functions of war took place within the human body and mind. The warrior's eyes saw the target, their brain identified it as a threat, and then it told their hands where to direct the weapon, be it a sword or rifle or missile. Now each of these tasks is being outsourced to the machine. For this reason, the U.S. military funds as much as 80 percent of all AI research in the United States. Thus, while firms like Microsoft or Google lead and the military follows in other parts of the information technology world, the military sets the agenda in AI. Both the complexity of AI and its application to the tasks that go into warfighting are clearly growing. As Helen Greiner at iRobot says, "We are not close to having AI on a human level. Nobody is. But if you take a particular mission, like vacuuming a floor, we are able to provide the intelligence to accomplish that mission. On the military side, going and doing perimeter security autonomously, going into a building and doing a full coverage operation, looking for terrorists or weapons caches, we can do that autonomously right inside the robot." The GT Max, for example, is an unmanned helicopter project at Georgia Tech that is sponsored by DARPA and has been tested out at nearby Fort Benning. Max not only can fly on its own, but can think for itself how best to do it. Just as a pilot's brain has to fly the plane as well as react to changing weather or enemy fire, Max's software can handle multiple, unexpected challenges. That is, the "UAV is able to learn as it flies." GT Max has been able to automatically plan its way through obstacles, fly via onboard camera rather than GPS navigation, maneuver aggressively as a human pilot might, and even reconfigure itself when accidents happen, such as staying in the air even when the primary flight control systems fail, something that a human pilot would find incredibly difficult to pull off. Various programs are pushing AI (and the robots that will be guided by it) well past the capabilities of the PackBot, Roomba, Predator, SWORDS, or even the Max. One example at the Air Force Research Laboratory is based on the research of Stephen Thaler. Better known as the inventor of the Oral-B electronic toothbrush, Thaler has created the "Device for the Autonomous Generation of Useful Information." Also called "The Creativity Machine," it is a neural network AI program with two extra features. The first constantly introduces new information, or "noise," to help jumble together new and old ideas. The second is a filter process that measures the new ideas against old knowledge and preferences. By generating new ideas based on old ones, the machine has done everything from write catchy pop music (by learning from what kind of songs make it on the top ten lists), design soft drinks, discover substances harder than diamonds, optimize missile warheads, and search the Internet for terrorist communications. Recently, the air force lab contracted Thaler to marry up his AI software with robotic hardware to create "Creative Robots." Another program at the University of Reading in England, is looking at how robots can learn to interact and even develop "personalities" without human guidance. A group of robots, each with the brainpower equivalent to a snail (roughly fifty neurons), are programmed to avoid each other, based on a system that rewards or punishes different types of contact. They are then placed in an enclosed space and monitored. The wrinkle is that the robots are able to factor in past experience, meaning each can develop different lessons over time. Despite all the robots having the same initial software, the researchers are seeing the emergence of "good" robots that cooperate and "bad" robots that constantly attack each other. There was even one robot that became the equivalent of artificially stupid or suicidal, that is, a robot that evolved to constantly make the worst possible decision. This idea of robots, one day being able to problem-solve, create, and even develop personalities past what their human designers intended is what some call "strong AI." That is, the computer might learn so much that, at a certain point, it is not just mimicking human capabilities but has finally equaled, and even surpassed, its creators' human intelligence. This is the essence of the so-called Turing test. Alan Turing was one of the pioneers of AI, who worked on the early computers like Colossus that helped crack the German codes during World War II. His test is now encapsulated in a real-world prize that will go to the first designer of a computer intelligent enough to trick human experts into thinking that it is human. So what is the reward for inventing what some hope will be the real-world equivalent of Data from _Star Trek_ , but others worry will be Skynet from _The Terminator_? One hundred thousand dollars. It almost seems not worth the bother. # SENSORS AND SENSIBILITY If the processors behind AI make decisions about the world and how to respond to it, "sensors" are the part of robots that define just what this world is. They collect information about the environment in which a robot is located. Instead of being encapsulated into what we describe as the "five senses" (and yes, there are electronic taste and smell sensors that can even identify wines and cheeses as well as most sommeliers), robotic sensors are generally categorized into two categories, passive or active. Passive sensors sense merely by receiving information. An example would be infrared sensors that collect surrounding heat source emissions. Active sensors first send some form of information or energy out into the world, so as to collect even more information. One of the most common forms of these is called Laser Detection and Ranging (LADAR). It sends both laser beams and radar waves out widely, which then bounce back and help create a map of the obstacles around the robot. Sensors are then linked back to AI processors to create "perception," understanding the meaning of the object detected in the context of the environment. The levels of perception range from simply sensing an obstacle (a big thing is in the way), to recognizing shapes (the big thing is a rectangle), to being able to categorize the shape and thus identify it (rectangles of this shape are tanks), to understanding the significance of the object (tanks should be reported back to base, shrubs should not). The goal is to be able to perceive things like the difference between friend and foe, rate their importance, and decide potential responses. Donald Verhoff, vice president of technology at the Oshkosh Truck Corporation, which builds robotic army trucks, says, "If it's a child, you want to stop. If it's a guy with an RPG-7 [a rocket-propelled grenade launcher], you want to run him over." These tasks are actually quite difficult in the chaos of the real world. It is hard enough for a computer to tell the difference between a tomato and an apple. What about when driving at fifty miles per hour? Likewise, how can the robot tell the difference between humans and mannequin decoys made to look like them? Because of these challenges, Sebastian Thrun of Stanford University says that "understanding the environment is the Holy Grail for artificial intelligence." As in AI, there are all sorts of amazing developments going on with sensors to make robots ever more capable. One of the most useful advances may be in millimeter-wave radiation. These sensors work like the X-ray machine at your doctor's office, but gather more detail. They detect not only the shape of something on both the outside as well as inside, but also the different materials that make up whatever is being looked at. A scan of a person hiding a gun would not only pull out the shape of the gun from their skeleton, but also assign it a different color than the cell phone in their other pocket. Already, such sensors are being used to scan trucks in the Chunnel that links Britain and France. When various sensors are brought together, the results are truly powerful. In the battle against IEDs, the U.S. Army is now working on deploying UAVs that can do what is known as hyperspectral imagery. Besides gathering regular visual information from a drone's stereo cameras and infrared detectors, the system can distinguish such things as the color of an object or whether any objects are hidden inside it. It also has a "Bloodhound mode" that uses the sensors to search out specific spectral signatures. So if the military gets a report of a suspicious "black pick-up truck driven by two men," the UAV flying high over Baghdad will be able to hunt it down. Unfortunately, better sensors don't always yield more useful information. More data collected means more data to process and often more time required to make decisions. It is like trying to walk through the world looking through a telescope. Sensors also can capture only what is going on in that moment in time, not the context or undertone of what they are seeing. Imagine a robot carrying out surveillance of a bar for suspected terrorists. Its multispectral sensors detect a man entering the bar. Its sophisticated eavesdropping devices hear him ask for a glass of water. The bartender pulls a gun. The man says "Thank you" and leaves the bar. While we might get the trick that the man had hiccups and the bartender was just scaring him, could the robot? Or would it just assess the bartender as a threat and terminate him? # TAKING EFFECT If sensors gather data, and processors decide how to react to it, "effectors" are the part of a robot that create the desired change in the environment. They translate intent into action. Describes David Bruemmer of the Idaho National Laboratory, "As opposed to a computer that can just hold data, ... effectors are what allow robots to take part in the drama of the real world." The most obvious type of effectors are those that allow movement; that is, the propulsion system. On the ground, movement effectors range from wheels and tracks to legs. So far, roboticists are finding good legs to be difficult to build. A kindergartner still possesses more speed and agility than most legged robots. The challenge that legs present for robots is that they mix the task of movement with that of balance. One effort to solve this challenge is the conversion of the infamous Segway into a robotic platform. Originally marketed as a secret invention that would "revolutionize society," the Segway turned out only to be a two-wheeled scooter that you stand on to drive. George W. Bush famously tumbled off of his while tooling around his Texas ranch. The backers hoped it would sell millions when it was released to great fanfare in 2001, but it has since sold only six thousand units, mainly due to its high cost. However, its ability to self-balance is giving the Segway a second life. Pentagon-funded university research efforts have converted the human scooter into a robotic platform that can do such things as carry supplies, patrol a building, and even carry a stretcher. Propulsion systems vary for robots, depending on their environment. In the air, UAVs have been powered by everything from propellers to jet engines. Recently there has been much work on rotary wings, which allow the robot to take off and land from small spaces, as well as hover in place, allowing it to identify and inspect targets. While rotary wings are typically helicopters, there is also work on tilt-rotor unmanned aircraft, such as the Eagle Eye system. These take off and land like a helicopter, but then the propellers flip down and the drone can fly like a plane, ideally getting the best of both worlds. Propellers are also the primary propulsion system among unmanned vehicles at sea. However, there is recent U.S. Navy work on a system called the "water strider," essentially thin mechanical legs that skip across the water, allowing the robot to move like a water bug. Just as our limbs do more than just move us, robot effectors do more than just propulsion. For example, manipulators are a robot's arms, which can touch, grip, or pick up objects. But, as with your own arms, the end effector that truly shapes how the robot interacts with the world is whatever tool is at the end of the manipulators. It might be fingerlike grippers or a "diamond-tipped" buzz saw (actually proposed in a U.S. 2008 Navy report). But of course, the robotic effectors that create the most "drama in the world" are weapons. Given the four thousand years that humankind has spent perfecting its tools of war, weapons come in all sorts and sizes. The most common are those that use some sort of chemical propellant to shoot a projectile. We know these better as guns or rockets, and as the SWORDS illustrates, robots already can carry as many as their human counterparts. Besides their ability to carry heavier weights, robots have one more fundamental difference. They come with their own power systems. This opens up new possibilities, as the robot can now power its own weapon. One example is called Metal Storm and has been tested out on iRobot's Warrior. Metal Storm, originally invented by an Australian grocery store worker, is a gun that uses electricity rather than gunpowder to shoot out stacks of bullets. The switch from chemical to electric power allows it to fire far faster, as many as a million rounds per minute. Thus, instead of shooting at one target with one bullet, Metal Storm can do such things as deconstruct a target, by shredding it apart bullet by bullet, or put up an actual wall of bullets in the air to protect against incoming missiles. The makers also note that this electric machine gun is good for "crowd control." For some strange reason, a few people have concerns about super-smart robots carrying machine guns that can shred entire buildings. Many believe that if a robot is going to have a weapon, it should be a nonlethal one. These are weapons not designed to destroy and kill, but to incapacitate without causing any permanent damage. As Steven Metz, a professor at the U.S. Army War College, says, "The combination of robotics and nonlethality could be incredibly important. Instead of 'killing them all and letting God sort them out,' you could have systems that just zap them and let the police then come in." There are all sorts of ways to incapacitate a person or machine, so nonlethal weapons come in almost as many shapes and sizes as lethal weapons. Acoustic weapons use sound waves in lieu of bullets. Perhaps the most noted of these is the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD). If regular electronics make what is known as "white noise," the LRAD puts out what soldiers affectionately call "the brown sound." That is, it sends acoustic waves in such frequencies that they overwhelm the human body and even make a targeted person defecate upon themselves. The devices have a range of up to one kilometer. The LRAD actually made its first combat debut not with the military but on a vacation cruise ship. In 2005, one of the Seaborne line's luxury ships was attacked off Somalia by pirates armed with machine guns and rockets. Instead of fighting them off with shuffleboard sticks, the crew used LRAD sonic blasters to chase them away. There are also smaller, handheld acoustic weapons that can send out "sonic bullets." These bursts of sound last but a few seconds, but are so powerful (150 decibels, the equivalent of standing in front of a jet engine or guitar speaker set at "11") that they can literally knock people off their feet. Another category uses some form of chemical to incapacitate enemies without hurting them permanently. In Britain, for example, defense researchers have built a gun that shoots blobs of compressed glue (so the robot then can ensnare the target just like Spider-Man does), while others shoot out supercharged versions of stink bombs. The final category of nonlethal weapons targeted for robot use is those that emit various forms of directed energy. One already tested out in Iraq is the Active Denial System. Sometimes called the "pain ray," the system shoots out waves like those used to heat up frozen pizza in a microwave oven. The rays, which have a range of over five football fields, penetrate the top sixty-fourth layer of skin (even if you are wearing clothes over the skin) and heat up the water inside. The ray doesn't permanently hurt the person, or even cause a sunburn. But the sensation is excruciating, enough to make test subjects feel like their skin was catching on fire. If the ray is turned off, or the person moves out of its focus, the pain instantly ends. Other systems send out various forms of radio-wave beams. They can screw up enemy machines by disrupting mechanical signals, or create "an artificial fever" by heating up the core body temperature of any human target, which instantly knocks the person out. It could even be modulated to hit all the people in an entire building. Of course, the danger is that, just like overcooking that pizza in your microwave, being off just a few degrees could kill them all instead of just giving them a fever. The line from nonlethal to lethal is a fuzzy one. The Pulsed Energy Projectile fires balls of plasma that can disrupt the functions of nerve cells. Depending on the tuning, it could cause a shock, create a stunning effect, or temporarily disable a person. Another prototype is the tetanizing beam weapon. Just as lightning occurs when storm clouds build enough electronic potential difference to cause ionization between the ground and the clouds, the weapon creates an artificial ionization course between the weapon and the target. Artificial lightning then strikes whoever is unlucky enough to be on the other end. So far, the system has worked out to two hundred meters, but its designers think it might soon have a range of over a mile. Lasers, though, are where most of the robot energy effector action is headed. Lasers basically work by exciting certain types of atoms so that they emit particles of light, called photons, in one direction, along one wavelength. The idea of lasers first came in H. G. Wells's famous 1898 story _The War of the Worlds_. For the next century, lasers remained mostly in science fiction. They didn't find much use in war except as targeting devices. During the Reagan administration, that changed. Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, successfully pushed the idea of using powerful lasers to shoot down enemy missiles from space. The project was officially called the Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI, but soon got tagged as "Star Wars." The name was originally given by opponents who meant to mock the idea as only useful for a galaxy far, far away. But the supporters soon turned it around and began referring to the weapons plan as "Star Wars" in official government documents in 1985. Hollywood was not amused and George Lucas sued the U.S. government for trademark infringement. With more than $1 billion a year spent on its research since, laser weapons technology has advanced. While it is still not set for wars in space, by 2003 the Zeus system was ready for deployment to Iraq. Zeus, named after the Greek god who threw thunderbolts, is a ground-based laser, small enough to fit into a Humvee, which shoots a beam capable of blowing up IEDs and land mines from a hundred feet away. As the systems have gotten more effective, there are now plans to fit the R2-D2-like CRAM system with a laser (to accompany the machine gun) that can shoot down rockets or mortar rounds over five miles away. There is immense excitement among soldiers, scientists, and sci-fi geeks alike about the possibilities offered by lasers, to the point that one study called it the "Holy Grail" of weapons. Besides being incredibly accurate (hence the phrase "laserlike precision"), lasers can also be controlled even after the trigger is pulled, and even change direction or modulate the power level, from a mere dazzling effect to deep fry. Weapons makers get almost into a frenzy when they talk about all the sorts of roles for laser weapons. Tanks and other land systems could use lasers to shoot down incoming rockets. Planes could zap targets on the ground or defend against incoming missiles, much like the old World War II bombers could protect themselves with machine-gun turrets. Dan Wildt, Northrop Grumman's Directed Energy Director of Business Development, even pitched lasers' use as a useful defense against "terrorists on Jet-Skis." The appeal of lasers lies not just in their flexibility, but also in the belief that they would have an immense psychological effect. In 2006, the First Marine Expeditionary Force, then stationed in Iraq, issued an "urgent operational need" request for the development of a "Precision Airborne Standoff Directed Energy Weapon (PASDEW)." This would be a helicopter- or drone-mounted laser that could, in the words of the request, create "instantaneous burst-combustion of insurgent clothing, a rapid death through violent trauma, and more probably a morbid combination of both." The request went on to describe how the laser "can be compared to long range blow torches or precision flame throwers, with corresponding psychological advantages." Many of the more powerful lasers right now remain quite bulky and require huge amounts of energy. This limits the variety of robots on which they can be mounted. One solution is the Tactical Relay Mirror System, in which the robot (such as a Predator drone, or even an unmanned blimp) carries not the weapon itself, but instead a mirror that redirects a beam fired by a ground laser down on unsuspecting targets. Still, as with electronics in general, lasers are getting smaller and smaller, with companies now working on prototypes that would be small enough for a person-sized robot to carry. One laser weapon design is even small enough to fit in a woman's purse, making it the ultimate accessory. # CAN'T FIGHT THE POWER Flying over cities and shooting precision flamethrowers at unsuspecting terrorists on Jet-Skis can certainly be tiring, so robots have one more critical need. "Power" sources are what supply a robot with the energy it needs to operate. A battery of some type is typically used for smaller robots. Most robots are trending toward using rechargeable batteries in some way, such as through an electrical hookup, or even through an infrared beam, as the Roomba uses. A novel program at Tel Aviv University has even built a nanobattery as thin as a strand of hair, which can recharge faster than the common lithium-based batteries. If the robot is a large or converted manned system (like a car or plane), it will often draw its main power supply from the vehicle's normal engine source, such as gasoline. But robot power need not be limited to the climate-changing fossil fuels that bind us to Middle Eastern potentates. For example, ethanol is just a form of drinkable grain alcohol. So one inventive research group at St. Louis University built a robot powered by various beverages that could be sourced at any college mixer. In the words of one grad student, robots prefers the hard stuff: "It didn't like carbonated beer and doesn't seem fond of wine, but any other [alcohol] works." The future will likely see a range of novel energy sources powering unmanned systems, especially in the air, where payload and space are at a premium. In the 1950s, for example, there was immense research on using nuclear power to fly bomber planes, which would then never need to land. The obvious concerns over what might happen if one of these planes crashed, as well as how to get the crew on and off, ended the idea. Today, there is new research on using nuclear isomers, such as the element hafnium. These release energy through a triggered decay, rather than atomic fission or fusion. The U.S. Air Force is presently exploring how isomers might power long-duration unmanned aircraft. Another UAV, the Global Observer, is hydrogen-powered and can remain in the air for up to a week. Just as AI research often takes its lead from how the brain works, so too is research on power looking to biology. There are all sorts of projects on how to harness the same processes that sustain living organisms, such as photosynthesis or other biochemical energy mechanisms. One example is Chew-Chew, the "gastrobot." Built at the University of South Florida, Chew-Chew is a twelve-wheeled robot that runs on a microbial fuel cell. In a sort of reverse Atkins diet, bacteria in the fuel cell break down whatever carbohydrates Chew-Chew eats and convert the released energy into electricity. Ultimately, such fuel cells could be used on such systems as robotic lawn mowers that draw power from the grass they cut. As the bulging waistlines of our Fast Food Nation demonstrate, green leafy stuff is not as apt as the fleshy red stuff for efficiently packing in the calories. This is where things begin to get truly weird. A contemporary of Chew-Chew's at the University of the West of England is a gastrobot that powers itself by eating slugs. At the University of Texas, researchers have built a tiny fuel cell that draws electricity from the glucose-oxygen reaction in human blood. It is called a "vampire-bot." A group of Japanese scientists working on a similar project found that such systems could draw about 100 watts, equal to a bright lightbulb, from the blood of one human being. Finally, there is the EATR (Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot), discussed at a 2006 military robotics conference. The EATR concept is the pairing of one of the oldest types of power devices, the nineteenth-century Stirling engine, with a twenty-first-century autonomous robot. First designed by the Scottish clergyman Robert Stirling in 1816, Stirling engines convert heat into mechanical work, so EATR would power itself by scavenging about for anything organic that burns. At one presentation I witnessed, a scientist (a little too nonchalantly) described the EATR's potential battlefield diet as "grass, wood, broken furniture, [and] dead bodies." # ROBOTS TAKE FORM When we think of robots, we tend to imagine them to look like metal versions of people, as most of the classic Hollywood robots were usually just an actor sweating it out in a metal suit. Yet robots in reality come in all shapes and sizes. As Bill Gates says, "Although a few of the robots of tomorrow may resemble the anthropomorphic devices seen in _Star Wars_ , most will look nothing like the humanoid C-3PO." Robots are made up of sensors, processors, effectors, and power sources. The variety of each of these parts means that there is almost a limitless array of possible combinations to give a robot its appearance. Yet in many ways, the form that a robot takes is most dependent on the effectors. As one robot technician puts it, "The tool has to fit the task and the robot has to fit the tool." Many robots are actually just vehicles that have been converted into unmanned systems. As robotics writer Daniel Wilson describes, "Every vehicle is a robot waiting to happen." Examples of these range from KITT, the brilliant but snide car that drove David Hasselhoff around in _Knight Rider_ , to the Israeli military's Caterpillar bulldozers, which have been converted to remote control so that they can bash through obstacles in urban combat zones. The simplest robot conversions involve plugging in a robot control unit (RCU) and sensors. These do the computations needed to fill the role of the human driver and "slave" the rest of the vehicle to its commands. The first notable robot-convertible car was the Navlab 5, built by the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute. Nicknamed "Ralph," the Navlab 5 was actually a 1990 Pontiac minivan, outfitted with a GPS and a camera mounted on the dashboard, as well as a chain that linked the system to the steering wheel, to move it instead of the driver's hands. Everything was powered via a plug into the cigarette lighter. In 1995, Ralph went on the "No Hands Across America" drive, in which the Navlab 5 drove from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles. The whole drive took place on normal roads (and without notifying any authorities). Two humans sat in the front seats, to take over in case anything went wrong, as well as not to freak out any fellow drivers. Ralph drove 2,800 of the 2,850 total miles on its own, 98.2 percent of the way, and even stopped at nearly every tourist site on the way, from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to the Hoover Dam. Its journey ended at _The Tonight Show with Jay Leno_. The advantage of such systems is that they can enhance the life and utility of a normal vehicle for a surprisingly cheap amount. For instance, it costs just $70,000 to convert a military Humvee into an unmanned system. Many expect that over the coming decades, all sorts of vehicles originally designed just for human drivers will be converted to add the option of unmanned control. For example, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is to be the U.S. Air Force's twenty-first-century mainstay. It is yet to even finish its testing and design, but its maker, Lockheed Martin, is already exploring how it might be modified to fly without a pilot inside. Many defense experts believe it may be the first of such convertible fighter jets, or the last of the manned ones, depending on your point of view. # HUMANOIDS: THE HIGHEST FORM OF ARROGANCE For all of humankind's progress in making various vehicles to move us from place to place, nothing yet beats our own effectors made for walking. Wheeled vehicles can only operate on 30 percent of the Earth's land surface, tracked vehicles on roughly 50 percent, while legs can tackle nearly 100 percent. Moreover, almost all the adjustments we have made to that surface to make it of value to us, our cities and buildings, were designed for those with legs. The result is that while our image of robots as metal humans may come from a mix of Hollywood movies and arrogance, this "humanoid" form of two arms and two legs may well be a necessary design for many roles, especially in war. In 2004, DARPA funded a study of optimal military robot forms. It found that "humanoid robots should be fielded—the sooner the better." The human form is just a shape that robots might take. There is no limit on its size. Asimo, the robot that Honda has spent over $100 million developing, is roughly the size of a person, while Chroino, a robot from the University of Kyoto, stands just a foot high. Then there are "mechas," basically giant robots. The word "mecha" comes from the Japanese abbreviation _meka_ , shorthand for all things mechanical. Mechas are a staple of video games like _Metal Gear Solid_ and Japanese _manga_ comics in which the Tokyo of the future is filled with giant robots that work at construction, policing, and, of course, fighting wars. In Western science fiction, mechas have appeared as huge, building-sized robots, such as in the film _The Iron Giant,_ or as just slightly bigger than human robotic suits, such as the one famously driven by Sigourney Weaver in _Aliens_. With these inspirations in mind, many organizations have taken to making mechas real. Toyota Motor Corp. has developed the i-Foot. It is a 200-kilogram (440-pound) robot that stands on two legs and can climb stairs. The most popular military mecha designs borrow liberally from the world of science fiction. Sakakibara Kikai Co., for example, makes the Land Walker, which is effectively the AT-ST All Terrain Scout Walker from the world of _Star Wars_ made real (this was the machine that the Ewoks took on in _Return of the Jedi_ ). Standing on two legs, it is eleven feet high, and mounts two cannons. The advantage of such mecha designs is that, just like with humans, legs give such giants the means to step over any obstacles that might limit where a truck or tank could go. However, the legs are also the major weakness. Robotic legs remain incredibly complex and expensive, and less capable the bigger they get. Moreover, being tall may allow the mecha to look down on opponents, but it also means that every enemy out there can see it. And even if those enemies are as unsophisticated as the stupid, despicable little Ewoks (who along with Jar Jar Binks are to blame for the ruination of the _Star Wars_ franchise), all they have to do is take out the legs to ruin the mecha's day. For similar reasons many disparage the humanoid design, for robots big or small. When most of us look in the mirror, we have to admit that our bodies are not perfect from an efficiency standpoint. For example, our visual sensors (our eyes) are really quite badly situated, create bad periphery, give us multiple blind spots, can't see in multiple spectrums, and are blind in the dark. Rodney Brooks at iRobot even goes so far as to describe human eyes as "badly designed," and cites octopus eyes as far more elegant and efficient. The result then is that while humanoid robots are a central type of robot form, they will not be the only one. The same DARPA study that extolled the future of humanoid soldiers also found that two legs are not necessarily the optimal form. As Brooks predicts, "In the next 10-20 years, we will get over our _Star Wars-Star Trek_ complexes and build truly innovative robots." # BIO-BOTS: STEALING FROM NATURE One source of inspiration for roboticists is the world around us. Taking lessons from nature goes deeper than just the broad outlines of what a robot looks like. As Georgia Tech professor Ronald Arkin notes, "Every aspect of robotics is touched by biology....It's a pervasive influence. A more appropriate question might be what aspects of biology have not had an influence—even seemingly esoteric fields such as ontogeny, immunology, and endocrinology have had their impact in the robotics research community." DARPA even employs a self-described "combat zoologist," who describes his job as "getting robots to jump, run, crawl, do things that nature does well. We're evolving our machines to be more like animals." When you think about the history of evolution, this makes perfect sense. The animal world has a huge head start on our human-designed technology. For instance, while humans only started flying about a century ago, insects have been doing it for three hundred million years. The result is that designers often take inspiration from biology in many ways, from animal capabilities and their patterns of movement to how animals act in the wild, as well as their overall form. For instance, as they fly over large areas in search of prey, eagles' eyes can focus on distant objects without losing an overall wide-angle perspective. In essence, the bird's eyes come equipped with nature's version of the "picture in a picture" option now available on many big-screen TVs. The middle of their retina has a much higher concentration of light-sensitive cells than the surrounding areas. Thus, they see the center of whatever they look at in incredibly sharp focus without losing the wide-angle picture. A California company called Nova Sensors copied this to create a "detection tracking algorithm," giving such "eagle eyes" to unmanned planes. Another project, the Stickybot, copied how geckos climbed walls; the research was also used by the Pixar film company to help design their animated characters in _A Bug's Life_. Some robots take broad ideas from nature in their overall design, but look nothing like them. One example is marsupial robots, in which one robot carries another inside. Just as Kanga carried little Roo in the _Winnie-the-Pooh_ stories, so does REV, the Robotic Evacuation Vehicle, carry REX, the Robotic Extraction Vehicle. REV is a robot version of an ambulance, while REX is a robotic stretcher bearer that zips in and out to drag soldiers to safety. Nature, as Darwin argued, can be quite cruel when it comes to design competition, and thus is as much of a guide of what not to build. For example, a DARPA survey of scientists and military officers found that while there was great interest in bipeds, they also expected to see future warbots with three legs (the extra leg for stability) and four legs (which the military officers found to be the most likely). What was interesting is that not one scientist or officer called for six-legged robots. As one said, "Fact of nature: There are no large land creatures with six legs and there never have been." Designs that find their inspiration in living organisms are known as "biomimetic" ("bio" from "biology" and "mimetic" meaning to "mimic" or "copy"). Perhaps the best known of these in military circles is a four-legged robot made by Boston Dynamics. The "Big Dog" (others call it the "Robot-Ass," but that name hasn't stuck for marketing reasons) is designed to serve as a modern-day packhorse, following after soldiers with their backpacks and other gear. The current prototype is the shape and size of a mule. The four legs differ from a mule's in having three joints and springs built into them that can change length, much like a tent pole. These joints and springs readjust five hundred times a second to balance the robot. The system guides itself with a stereo camera and a laser scanner. The firm hopes that a fully autonomous Big Dog will be "unleashed" around 2014. # BREAKING THE MOLD Evolution does not always lead to perfection or even the most efficient design. How else do we explain the platypus, Pauly Shore, or the fact that there are no wheels in nature? When vehicles, the human form, and nature don't provide the perfect solution, robot designers must then get truly innovative. In some cases, robot engineers might mix and match different elements from the various forms to create a "hybrid." For example, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) is working on a robot that has a humanoid torso mounted on a Segway bottom. The army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) program is building an unmanned helicopter shaped like a floating fan, affectionately known in the community as the "UFO-Buttplug Hybrid." Finally, DARPA's survey on robotics futures found that many experts expect a future military use for "centaurs," robots having four legs but a humanoid body, like the mythic ancient Greek creatures. These are just the stopgaps, however. Professor Shigeo Hirose at the Tokyo Institute of Technology is one of the true pioneers of robotics, having made the first "snake-bot" in the late 1970s. Since then, he has created everything from a "Ninja robot" that uses suction pads to crawl up the walls of high-rise buildings to a construction and rescue robot that is basically a seven-ton bulldozer equipped with four huge robotic spider legs. He believes that future robots will look like nothing before: "I have so many dreams about robots that have still not been realized." The ultimate step in robot shapes and forms are systems able to change their shape to suit the mission. Such "self-transforming" or mighty "morphing" robots will range from changing slightly between a few designs like the Transformers to ones that could recast themselves into hundreds of forms like the T-1000 robot in the movie _Terminator 2_. At the most simple level are robots with morphing effectors that alter to allow more efficient movement in different domains. An example of this is the RHEX made by Boston Dynamics. It has legs that can transform into flippers, allowing it to walk on land or swim underwater. The Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, similarly built a plane the size of a small bird that can both fly and crawl. It originally came out of a request by the special forces for robotic planes that could do such things as fly up to a windowsill and then creep inside. As systems advance, scientists expect to see a bevy of shape-shifting or self-reconfigurable robots. They might use legs to scramble up a hill and convert to wheels to roll down it. As more and more individual parts become capable of morphing, soon can the whole, making the idea of the T-1000 not just Hollywood fantasy. Indeed, scientists in Palo Alto have already made the Polybot, which uses hinged cubes to shape its entire body into all sorts of forms, such as shifting from a snake into a spider. Such transforming robots do have a key vulnerability. Any opaque molecule can block the reformation and communication pathways. It would have made a far less exciting movie, but all that Sarah Connor needed to do to defeat the T-1000 Terminator was pour maple syrup on it. With all these possibilities, one day we may even see the very definition of robot turned on its head. Some argue that having a robot in one piece is old news and that the future is in distributed systems. These are where the robot is broken down into many pieces. At Carnegie Mellon University, for example, researchers are at work on "claytronic" robots, prototype, pocket-sized machines that use electromagnetic forces to move, communicate, and even share power. They can each act independently or all attach together into one big robot, akin to the Constructicons or Dinobots from _Transformers._ The descriptor of "robot" started out as being just some human characters in a play, yet soon took on greater meaning. But as our mechanical creations "become more and more common," predicts Bill Gates, "it may be increasingly difficult to say exactly what a robot is. Because the new machines will be so specialized and ubiquitous—and look so little like the two-legged automatons of science fiction—we probably will not even call them robots." **[FOUR]** **TO INFINITY AND BEYOND: THE POWER OF EXPONENTIAL TRENDS** _The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom._ —ISAAC ASIMOV "I decided I would be an inventor when I was five. Other kids were wondering what they would be, but I always had this conceit. And I was very sure of it and I've never really deviated from it." Ray Kurzweil stuck to his dreams. Growing up in Queens, New York, he wrote his first computer program at the age of twelve. When he was seventeen, he appeared on the game show _I've Got a Secret_. His "secret" was a song composed by a computer that he had built. Soon after, Kurzweil created such inventions as an automated college application program, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind (considered the biggest advancement for the visually impaired since the Braille language in 1829), the first computer flatbed scanner, and the first large-vocabulary speech recognition system. The musician Stevie Wonder, who used one of Kurzweil's reading machines, then urged him to invent an electronic music synthesizer that could re-create the sounds of pianos and other orchestral instruments. So Kurzweil did. As his inventions piled up, _Forbes_ magazine called him "the Ultimate Thinking Machine" and "rightful heir to Thomas Edison." Three different U.S. presidents have honored him, and in 2002 he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Kurzweil has found that the challenge isn't just inventing something new, but doing so at just the right moment that both technology and the marketplace are ready to support it. "About thirty years ago, I realized that timing was the key to success.... Most inventions and predictions tend to fail because the timing is wrong." Kurzweil has now founded a business that centers on figuring out this timing issue. Guessing the future seems a task for a psychic, not a prolific inventor. But Kurzweil comes with a pretty good batting average. In the early 1980s, he made the seemingly absurd forecast that a little-known project called the Arpanet would become a worldwide communications network, linking together humanity in a way previously impossible. Around the same time, he made the equally ridiculous claim that the cold war, which had just heated up with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, was going to end in just a few years. The Internet and the fall of the Berlin Wall made Kurzweil look like a clairvoyant. "You'll often hear people say that the future is inherently unpredictable and then they will put up some stupid prediction that never came to bear. But actually the parameters of it are highly predictable," says Kurzweil. He isn't arguing that he can see into the future exactly and his business plan isn't to pick lottery numbers. Rather, he argues that the overall flow of the future can be predicted, especially when it comes to technologic change, even if the individual components cannot. He makes a comparison to thermodynamics. Imagine a kettle of water being put on a stove. What each individual molecule of water does as it heats up is inherently unpredictable. But the overall system is predictable; even if we don't know which water molecule will turn to steam first, we know the kettle will ultimately whistle. An example of how Kurzweil's business makes money predicting the future happened in 2002. His research group looked at all the various technology trends and predicted that a pocket-sized reading device would be possible within four years. Such a prediction seemed a bad investment, as the technology wasn't even invented yet. But they positioned a project to be ready to deliver in 2006, just as the advancing technology made it workable. As he describes, "We use predictions to catch the moving train of technology at the right time." To have such a business model, you have to have an immense faith in science. For Kurzweil, this even covers how he plans to extend his own life. Each day, the sixty-year-old takes a mix of some 250 dietary supplements. "I've slowed down aging to a crawl," he says. "By most measures my biological age is about forty, and I have some hormone and nutrient levels of a person in his thirties." With life spans advancing and technologic breakthroughs happening every day, Kurzweil believes that if he can just hold out long enough, he may even be able to live forever. It sounds crazy, but then again, this is a guy whom Bill Gates described as a "visionary thinker" and to whom thirteen universities have given honorary degrees. Kurzweil gets a reported $25,000 for every speech he gives on the future of technology. At many of these speeches, he shares the stage with "Ramona." She is an AI programmed to be his alter ego (that is, if he looked like a twenty-five-year-old female rock star) and projected onto a screen behind him. The presentations, with both him and Ramona interacting with the audience, are considered so revolutionary and creative that they even inspired the 2002 movie _S1m0ne_ , in which Al Pacino played a filmmaker who creates a Ramona-like AI to be the perfect actress. With such a backstory, Kurzweil can sound a bit like the twenty-first-century technology version of "Professor" Harold Hill from _The Music Man_. But some serious folks are counting on his understanding of how the future is unfolding. Wall Street investors are pouring money into his FatKat (Financial Accelerating Transactions from Kurzweil Adaptive Technologies), the first hedge fund to make investment decisions using AI predictions. He is also one of five members of the U.S. Army's Science Board and has thrice given the keynote speech at the army's annual conference on the future of war. Kurzweil describes the robots we now see in Iraq and Afghanistan, like the Predator or PackBot, as "only an early harbinger" of greater trends. Just around the curve is a moment for robotics and AI, which will "create qualitative change and social, political, and technological change, changing what human life is like and how we value it." He expounds, "In just 20 years the boundary between fantasy and reality will be rent asunder." Kurzweil recalls that it was in 2002 when he first shared such visions with the army on the future of technology and war. His discussion of AI and robotics becoming the norm in war "was seen as amusing, even entertaining." Now his predictions of the future are "very much at the mainstream." # EXPONENTIAL POWER Kurzweil doesn't just pull his vision of the future from a crystal ball, but rather from a historic analysis of technology and how it changes the world around us. As opposed to gaining in a linear fashion, he argues that "the pace of change of our human-created technology is accelerating and that its powers are expanding at an exponential pace." When something is moving at an "exponential" pace, it grows faster and faster each time it gets bigger. A familiar example is the idea of compound interest. Imagine a genie offers you the choice of either $1 million today or a magic penny that doubles in value every day for one month. The obvious choice would seem to be to take the $1 million. But that would actually be the sucker's play. Because of the exponential growth, the penny would be worth $10 million at the end of that month. The challenge of exponential change is that it can be deceptive, as things often start out at a seemingly slow pace. Halfway into the month, the penny would have produced only $300. It's only as the pace goes up the exponential curve that the change truly accelerates. Kurzweil's favorite example to illustrate how understanding exponentials can prove tricky even for scientists is the Human Genome Project. When it started in 1990, it had a fifteen-year goal of sequencing the more than three billion nucleotides that go into our complete DNA. The problem was that at the start of the project, only one ten-thousandth of the genome was mapped. "Skeptics said there's no way you're gonna do this by the turn of the century." Indeed, by year seven, close to the planned halfway point of the project, only 1 percent was complete. Kurzweil says, "People laughed and thought it would take another 693 years to complete. But they didn't account for the exponential." By that point the project was doubling its pace every year. "If you double from 1 percent every year over seven years, you get 100 percent. It was right on schedule." Here again, Kurzweil proved right and the project was completed in time. Exponential change is most evident perhaps in technology products. A quick look at your cell phone should be persuasive enough. The first commercial mobile phone was the Motorola DynaTAC, which came out in 1983. It cost $3,500 and weighed two and a half pounds; it was nicknamed "The Brick." By 1996, Motorola was selling the Startac, which cost $500. Today, cell phones fit in your pocket and have gone from a luxury item to commonplace; some two billion people around the world have them and many are even thrown in for free when you purchase long-distance plans. When it comes to computer technology, exponential progress is encapsulated in "Moore's law." In 1965, Gordon Moore, the cofounder of Intel, noticed that the number of transistors on a microchip was roughly doubling every two years. This realization was actually more exciting than it sounds, as each time you doubled the number of transistors on a microchip, you also cut the space between them by half. This meant that the time needed by electric signals to move between them was also cut in half. As companies crammed more and more transistors onto a chip, each and every year, Moore foresaw it would lead to faster and faster chips. Moore predicted that this simple doubling factor would spur everything from more powerful computers to automated cars. Moore's prediction of microchip transistor doubling has held true in the four decades since, and has even sped up, now doubling every eighteen months. Showing how far we have come, Tradic, the first computer using transistors, built in 1955, had eight hundred. Almost sixty years later, Moore's old company Intel released the Montecito, which has 1.72 billion transistors on just one chip. Computers powered by these microchips have gotten more and more capable, again in an exponential way rather than an additive one. For example, the circa 2005 Dell computer I typed this book out on is already antiquated, but it has roughly the same capacity and power as all the computers that the entire Pentagon had in the mid-1960s combined. But personal computers only tell part of the story of where Moore's law has taken us. An average PC today works in the scale of megaflops, being able to do millions of calculations per second. This is pretty impressive-sounding. But a present-day supercomputer, such as Purple that runs tests of nuclear weapons at Lawrence Livermore National Labs, can calculate 100 teraflops—100 million million calculations per second. Purple can do calculations in six weeks that would have taken supercomputers ten years ago, like the ones that first beat the human chessmasters, over five thousand years. But today's supercomputer is tomorrow's Commodore 64. The Department of Energy has already contracted IBM to build a next-generation supercomputer able to do 1,000 trillion calculations per second, or one petaflop, equivalent to the power of ten Purples. The corollary to Moore's law is not just that microchips, and the computers powered by them, are getting more and more powerful, but that they are also getting cheaper. When Moore first wrote on the phenomenon in 1965, a single transistor cost roughly five dollars. By 2005, five dollars bought five million transistors. With lower exponential costs comes greater exponential demand. In 2003, Intel made its one billionth microchip after thirty-five years of continuous production. Only four years later, it had made its next one billion chips. The same changes have happened with the ability to store data. The cost of saving anything from the military's Predator drone footage of Iraqi insurgents to your old Depeche Mode songs is going down by 50 percent roughly every fifteen months. Moore's law explains how and why we have entered a world in which refrigerator magnets that play Christmas jingles have more computing power than the entire NORAD nuclear defense system had in 1965. Exponential change builds upon exponential change and advancements in one field feed advancements in others. And lower prices in one field help feed new development in others. A good example is how advancements in microchips made portable electronics accessible to consumers. As more and more people bought such items as video and then digital cameras, it dropped the cost of equipping robots with the same kind of cameras (their electronic vision systems) by as much as 75 percent. This eliminated the barriers to entry for robots to be used across the marketplace, further dropping costs for robots as a whole, as more people could buy them. Rodney Brooks at iRobot calls this kind of cross-transfer "riding someone else's exponentials." # AN EXPONENTIAL WORLD Historic data shows exponential patterns beyond just Moore's law, which referred just to semiconductor complexity. For example, the annual number of "important discoveries" as determined by the Patent Office has doubled every twenty years since 1750. Kurzweil calls this pattern of exponential change in our world "The Law of Accelerating Returns." This convergence of exponential trends is why technologic change, especially for electronics, comes not only quicker, but in bundles, rather than staying within one category. While microchip performance is now doubling roughly every eighteen months and storage every fifteen months, we are also seeing similar acceleration in categories far and wide. Wireless capacity doubles every nine months. Optical capacity doubles every twelve months. The cost/performance ratio of Internet service providers is doubling every twelve months. Internet bandwidth backbone is doubling roughly every twelve months. The number of human genes mapped per year doubles every eighteen months. The resolution of brain scans (a key to understanding how the brain works, an important part of creating strong AI) doubles every twelve months. And, as a by-product, the number of personal and service robots has so far doubled every nine months. The darker side of these trends has been exponential change in our capability not merely to create, but also to destroy. The modern-day bomber jet has roughly half a million times the killing capacity of the Roman legionnaire carrying a sword in hand. Even within the twentieth century, the range and effectiveness of artillery fire increased by a factor of twenty, antitank fire by a factor of sixty. These changes in capabilities then change the way we fight. For instance, exponentially more lethal weapons helped lead to equivalent exponential "stretching" of the battlefield. In antiquity, when you divided the number of people fighting by the area they would typically cover, on average it would take a Greek hoplite and five hundred of his buddies to cover an area the size of a football field. This is why in movies like _Spartacus_ or _300_ you can see the entire army during a battle. By the time of the American Civil War, weapons had gained such power, distance, and lethality that roughly twenty soldiers would fight in that same space of a football field. By World War I, it was just two soldiers in that football field. By World War II, a single soldier occupied roughly five football fields to himself. In Iraq in 2008, the ratio of personnel to territory was roughly 780 football fields per one U.S. soldier. The same exponential change in how we fight has also gone on in the short time that war has taken place in the air. During World War II, roughly 108 planes were needed to take out a single target. By the time of the airstrikes over Afghanistan in 2001, the ratio had flipped; each plane was destroying 4.07 targets on average per flight. Connectivity is also expanding at an exponential rate, allowing new technologies to change human society quicker and quicker. For example, the wheel first appeared in Sumer around 8500 B.C. But it took roughly three thousand years for the wheel to be commonly used in animal-drawn carts and plows. So the agricultural revolution that made possible human cities, and what we now know as "civilization," played out over several millennia. By the eighteenth century, communication and transportation had sped up to the point that it took only just under a century for the steam engine to become similarly widespread, launching the Industrial Age. Today, the spread of knowledge is nearly instantaneous. The Internet took roughly a decade to be widely adopted (and Internet traffic doubles every six months). And now that it is in place, an invention is shared across the world in nanoseconds. And yet this change happened so quickly that we often forget how new it all is. In less than a decade, over a billion people, whether it was soldiers, terrorists, or grandmothers in Peoria, went from (1) never having heard of the Internet, to (2) having heard of it, but never having used it (I still recall my mother asking, "What is this new 'Inter-web' thing?" soon to be followed by her asking about sending an "electronic letter"), to (3) trying it out, such as sending their first e-mail (when I was in college, e-mail was primarily used for sending out "Your momma so fat" joke lists), to (4) using it on a regular basis, to (5) that same soldier, terrorist, or grandmother not being able to professionally or _socially_ succeed without it. And with the rise of three-dimensional "virtual worlds" like Second Life, that massive change is already old news. When Kurzweil did a historic analysis of overall technologic change (measuring its advancement, complexity, and importance to human society), he found that the doubling period of this convergence of invention, communication, and progress happened just about every ten years. Individual technologies certainly move in fits and starts, but the overall flow for the aggregate of technologic change has clocked in at a fairly steady 7 percent annual rate of growth. This means that for the period up to the Industrial Age, the overall weight of technologic change was so slow that no one would significantly notice it within their lifetime. A Roman legionnaire or knight of the Middle Ages could go their entire life with maybe one new technology changing the way they lived, communicated, played, or fought. By the late 1800s, change was playing out over decades and then years, fast enough that people began to call it the "Golden Age of Invention." But this change period was just the start of an acceleration up that exponential curve. The current rates of doubling mean that we experienced more technologic change in the 1990s than in the entire ninety years beforehand. To think about it another way, technology in 2000 was roughly one thousand times more advanced, more complex, and more integral to our day-to-day lives than the technology of 1900 was to our great-grandparents. More important, where they had decades and then years to digest each new invention, ours come in ever bigger bundles, in ever smaller periods of time. # "THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR" "We often say things like, 'No way this will happen in a hundred years!' But we are talking in about a hundred years at the current rate of progress," Ray Kurzweil points out. "If we are using today's rate, the twentieth century only had about twenty years of progress." If Moore's law continues to play out, some pretty amazing advancements will happen that will shape the world of robots and war. By 2029, $1,000 computers would do twenty million billion calculations a second, equivalent to what a thousand brains can do. This means that the sum total of human brainpower would be less than 1 percent of all the thinking power on the globe. Likewise, the trends for storing information are leading toward the same direction. Hugo de Garis, the head of the StarBrain AI project, has written a cheerily titled article on this entitled "Building Gods or Building Our Potential Exterminators?" In it he writes, "Within a single human generation, it will very probably be possible to store a single bit of information on a single atom." If this proves true, an object the size of a disc then would be able to hold a trillion trillion (a 1 with twenty-four zeros after it) bits of information. By comparison, the human brain is created from a genome of roughly twenty-three million bits of information. If computers can match this almost incomprehensible processing speed with such amazing memory, the advantage that human brains have of being so parallel starts to fall by the wayside. Moreover, many of the latest AI research projects, including StarBrain, are modeled after human brains. So they can build this parallelism into their own programs, nullifying our advantage. With the ability to think faster and source more data, more and more becomes potentially possible for machines. The question then becomes, will computers ever be able to match the human brain in its thinking ability and then surpass it? Think of it this way: if a computer can process and store information billions or trillions times faster than a human, what research could it then accomplish? Would it be inconceivable that it could think up things just a thousand times faster, or even better? Could it even become so advanced as to become self-aware? This is the essence of what the scientists call "strong AI" or what science fiction writers call "HAL." If you project the current trends even further, Kurzweil claims, we are on track to experience "about twenty thousand years of progress in the twenty-first century, one thousand times more than we did in the twentieth century." At a certain point, things become so complex we just don't know what is going to happen. The numbers become so mind-boggling that they simply lose their meaning. We hit the "Singularity." # A SINGULAR SENSATION In astrophysics, a "singularity" is a state in which things become so radically different that the old rules break down and we know virtually nothing. Stephen Hawking, for example, describes black holes as singularities where "the laws of science and our ability to predict the future would break down." The historic parallel to singularities is "paradigm shifts," when some concept or new technology comes along that wipes out the old way of understanding things. Galileo's proof that the Earth rotated around the sun and not the other way around would be an example for astronomy, much as Einstein's theory of relativity was for physics. The key is that someone living in a time before a paradigm shift would be unable to understand the world that follows. An example that many scientists cite is if you asked monks living in 1439 to predict advances in the future. They might predict such slight changes as better quills or ink for their illustrated manuscripts, or how a new well might be built. But they would likely not be able to conceive of how a rickety contraption made that year by Johannes Gutenberg, a German goldsmith, would become what _Time_ magazine called "the most important invention of the millennium." Before the creation of the printing press and the singular break it created for society, it would have been simply impossible for those monks to imagine such things as mass literacy, the Reformation, or the _Sports Illustrated_ swimsuit issue. The idea of a singularity in relation to computer technology first came from Vernor Vinge. Vinge is a noted mathematician and computer scientist, as well as an award-winning science fiction writer. His most recent novel, _Rainbows End: A Novel with One Foot in the Future_ , is set in 2025. He describes a world in which people "Google all the time, everywhere, using wearable computers, and omnipresent sensors." Vinge doesn't dedicate the book to his wife or parents or cat. Instead, perhaps sucking up to our future owners, he dedicates it to "the Internet-based cognitive tools that are changing our lives—Wikipedia, Google, eBay, and the others of their kind, now and in the future." In 1993, Vinge authored a seminal essay. The title he chose, "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era," pretty much says it all. Vinge described the ongoing explosion in computing power and projected that "within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly thereafter, the human era will be ended." Once superhuman intelligence gets involved, argued Vinge, the pace of technological development would accelerate even further than the doubling we have gone through for the last generations. There would be a constant feedback loop of artificial intelligence always getting better by improving itself, but with humankind now outside the equation. This would be the "point where our old models must be discarded and a new reality rules." Vinge presented the paper at a NASA colloquium, arguing, "We are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth.... Developments that before were thought might only happen 'in a million years' (if ever) will likely happen in the next century." His idea became incredibly influential in both science and science fiction (writers such as Neal Stephenson and William Gibson wrestled with what it would mean for humanity, and such movies as _The Matrix_ are set in a post-Singularity future). Vinge's concept underlies how Kurzweil and other futurists envision the coming decades. If the present trends in technology continue, then the current exponential growth is picking up such steam that we hit a paradigm shift. The old models of understanding the world and what is and isn't possible will no longer hold true. "It's a future period," writes Kurzweil, "during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep that human life will be irreversibly transformed." When we look at supercomputers and robots, we may well be like those monks seeing Gutenberg's printing press for the first time, trying to wrap our heads around what such a metal contraption really does signify. But it is called _the_ Singularity for a reason, as proponents of the idea see the change with AI and robotics as different from all the other paradigm shifts that have come before. Robert Epstein, a psychologist who has also worked on AI, explains, "It's not merely a technology that will change how we act, but it is a technology that is akin to a new species. It will change everything. Indeed, more than we can imagine because the new entity will be doing the imagining." Vinge was ambivalent about whether this Singularity with an uppercase S was a good or bad outcome. He thought it could play out in a way that "fits many of our happiest dreams: a time unending, where we can truly know one another and understand the deepest mysteries." Or it could lead to the "physical extinction of the human race." You win some, you lose some. By contrast, Kurzweil is the ultimate optimist. "At the onset of the twenty-first century, humanity stands on the verge of the most transforming and the most thrilling period in its history. It will be an era in which the very nature of what it means to be human will be both enriched and challenged, as our species breaks the shackles of its genetic legacy and achieves inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity." Whether and when this all happens is an issue of debate. Kurzweil thinks the Singularity will become possible in the 2020s, but projects some lag time might be built in. Even then, the potential changes that he projects will occur soon (before most of us pay off the mortgages on our houses) sound pretty stunning. If the current rates of change hold up, by 2045, he writes, "the non-biological intelligence created in that year will be one billion times more powerful than the sum of all human intelligence today." Another way of thinking about it is that Kurzweil and others are arguing that my generation will be the last generation of humans to be the smartest thing on the planet. "Generation X" takes on a whole new meaning. # QUESTIONING THE RAPTURE Of course, not everyone buys such projections, or even the idea of the Singularity. Some argue it isn't possible, and others just mock it. The most stinging may be those who call the Singularity "The Rapture for Nerds." That said, an amazing array of people have begun to weigh in on the side of the Singularity. Bill Joy, the cofounder of Sun Microsystems, and thus one of the Internet's godfathers, is very much a believer. "By 2030 we are likely to be able to build machines a million times as powerful as the personal computers of today." He then projects that "once an intelligent robot exists, it is only a small step to a robot species—to an intelligent robot that can make evolved copies of itself." In turn, while doing research for this book, I interviewed a U.S. special operations forces officer, just back from hunting the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq. Our discussion was supposed to be on how his team uses unmanned systems, but at the end of the discussion, he added, "By the way, Joy's thesis is spot-on." The economist Jeremy Rifkin, named by the _National Journal_ as one of the 150 most influential people in shaping U.S. government policy, agrees as well. "Never before in history has humanity been so unprepared for the new technological and economic opportunities, challenges, and risks that lie on the horizon. Our way of life is likely to be more fundamentally transformed in the next several decades than in the previous 1,000 years. By the year 2025, we and our children may be living in a world utterly different from anything human beings have ever experienced in the past." The Singularity was even the subject of a 2007 U.S. Congress study by the Joint Economic Committee, entitled "The Future Is Coming Sooner Than You Think." Rodney Brooks at iRobot acknowledges that the idea of the Singularity seems too futuristic to be true, but then describes a pattern he has noticed again and again. Incredibly bright people often draw a line in the sand on what computers will "never be able to do." But then technology continually forces them to erase that line and draw a new one. He likes to cite the story of Hubert Dreyfus as instructive for those who doubt the potential of technology. Dreyfus is a noted philosopher at the University of California-Berkeley, located in the heart of Singularity fandom. In 1967, he famously predicted that no computer would ever beat him at chess. It turns out he wasn't the greatest of players and lost to a computer in his first and only match soon after. Dreyfus, who went on to author the 1972 book _What Computers Can't Do_ , was undeterred. He revised his prediction to say that a computer would never be able to beat a skilled chess player, a nationally ranked player. A computer soon did. When that happened, he revised his prediction again (as well as his book title, which in 1992 was reissued as _What Computers Still Can't Do_ ), claiming that while computers may be able to beat most humans, they would never be able to beat the very best, such as the world champion chessmaster. Of course, this then happened in 1997 with IBM's Deep Blue. Psychologist and AI expert Robert Epstein, a Singularity proponent who administers the Turing test program, acknowledges that "some people, smart people, say I am full of crap. My response is that someday you are going to be having that argument with a computer. As soon as you open your mouth, you've lost. In that context, you can't win. The only person able to deny the changes occurring around us is the one who hides, the one who has their head in the sand." # THE MILITARY AND THE SINGULARITY The question as to whether the Singularity will come and when depends on whether the same sort of exponential growth that happened in the past will continue in the years ahead. Does an exponential past necessarily mean an exponential future? Between now and the Singularity (or not), all sorts of things could happen, from an asteroid hitting the Earth to World War III (then again, wars tend to spur technologic change to go even faster). More pertinently, it would seem that Moore's law can't stay true forever. At a certain point, around 2020 in the projections, the number of transistors packed onto a microchip must move down into the atomic level; that is, there may be no space left between the atoms themselves for electric signals. Overheating is another problem at this density, as the electric currents have to run through ever more tightly packed transistors. Yet, again, technology may well leap over and around the problem. In 2007, IBM and Intel found a way to use hafnium (the same isomer used for novel UAV nuclear power systems) to build a next generation of microchips with circuits as small as 45 nanometers, about one two-thousandth the width of a human hair. Other breakthroughs have been made in subatomic circuitry. Instead of switching an electric current on and off, to create the 0s and 1s that make up binary language, these take electricity out of the equation and use magnets to control the direction in which electrons spin. Not only is there no overheating, but it also means the chip can work for as long as it keeps its magnetic charge. That is, while an electric charge needs to be linked to some power source, a magnet keeps its charge even after you pull the plug. Here again, the credit goes to the military, with DARPA pouring more than $200 million into such quantum research. For this reason people like Microsoft founder Bill Gates are uniformly optimistic that each of the various hurdles to robotics will be knocked out in the coming years. "The challenges facing the robotics industry are similar to those we tackled in computing three decades ago." Or as military robotics developer Robert Finkelstein puts it, finding the solutions needed to take robots to the next level and beyond "doesn't require us to try to discover new laws of physics, antimatter, or cold fusion. It's just a matter of proper funding and dedication." Which brings us back to the military. Some believe the military is an integral part of bringing the Singularity into being, because of the massive investments it has made in R&D for things like artificial intelligence and sensors, as well as the immense marketplace it has created for hardware. I asked an executive at one defense contractor whether he agreed with the crazy ideas being bandied about on singularities and robots becoming as smart as humans. He replied, "If this war keeps going on a few more years, then yes." Robert Epstein sees the military's role as more than simply funding the Singularity. It is the most likely integrator needed to bring it all together. He describes how there are all sorts of research programs and companies around the globe, working on various technologies, from pattern recognition software and robotic sensors to artificial intelligence and subatomic microchips. "When you marry all that up with the strategic planning that the military brings to the table, you will end up with a qualitative advance like no other. At that point prediction of what comes next becomes difficult. . . . That's when you hit the Singularity, where all the rules change, in part because we are no longer making the rules." In the end, we don't now know yet whether computer, AI, and robotics development will reach a singularity or the Singularity. Indeed, this could be the one prediction that Kurzweil and his cohort simply get wrong. We do know, however, that major shifts are already going on in computing power and machine intelligence. And if the trends for the future do hold true even at the most minimal level, then things are going to get real interesting in the not too distant future. **[FIVE]** **COMING SOON TO A BATTLEFIELD NEAR YOU: THE NEXT WAVE OF WARBOTS** _They're going to sneak up on us. . . . They're going to do more and more of the toting. They're going to do more and more of the surveilling. And when they start fighting, no organized force could stand against them._ _—_ JOHN PIKE, GlobalSecurity.org "William James once said, 'We are literally in the midst of an infinite.' Today, there is an infinite going on in the world of war. . . . The challenge is that there are fewer things to look for and more information. The needle in the haystack is at the essence of counterinsurgency. Machines can filter down what we need to see. Instead of us telling machines where to go, it is increasingly machines telling us." Noah Shachtman is the new breed of war correspondent. He's quoting the nineteenth-century philosopher William James, but doing so while talking about the next generation of robots, as we sit in a chic Manhattan bar filled with rap stars and models. Describing his beat as "technology, national security, politics, and geek culture," Shachtman writes for the _New York Times_ and is a contributing editor at _Wired_ , the digital world's most popular magazine. He also runs _Danger Room_ , the blog focusing on "what's next in national security." In the course of his reporting, Shachtman has done everything from sneaking into the Los Alamos nuclear lab to riding out on missions in Iraq with an EOD team and their robots. Based on these experiences, he is emphatic that we've only seen the start of the robotics trend in war. "In both war and police actions, you will see more and more of robots in all shapes and sizes.... There is a huge growth curve, with no signs of slowing down. To see having one [robot] in every squad isn't all that crazy. And that is before you get into the sexy, futuristic stuff." For military robotics in the next decade, "there is zero chance of the field not increasing exponentially." # THE COMING WARBOTS BY LAND The systems just rolling out or already in prototype stage are far more capable, intelligent, and autonomous than ones now in Iraq and Afghanistan. But even they are just the start. As one robotics executive put it at a demonstration of new military prototypes in 2007, "The robots you are seeing here today I like to think of as the Model T. These are not what you are going to see when they are actually deployed in the field. We are seeing the very first stages of this technology." Charles Shoemaker, who runs the Robotics Program Office at the Army Research Laboratory, agrees. "It is really, really hard" to create military robots that fight on land, more officially called UGVs (unmanned ground vehicles), and especially ones that can operate independent of a human controller. "But I'm convinced that we're going to develop systems that work for a whole range of tactical missions. . . . We could be at the dawn of a golden age of military UGVs." To make such visions come true, the Pentagon's Joint Robotics Program is currently developing twenty-two different prototypes of intelligent ground vehicles. They range in size from tiny eight-pound robots to truck-sized armored robots that weigh thirty thousand pounds. In addition, there are various programs to convert existing manned vehicles into UGVs. Robert Finkelstein thinks that the conversion of supply trucks to unmanned vehicles will actually be among the first major uses. A converted Humvee has already driven around military bases at an average of thirty-five miles per hour and never veered from its planned route by more than eight inches. Describing how supply convoys of such unmanned trucks would cut losses in Iraq, he exclaims, "It's already been done. The kits are available. We can save lives!" In addition to these plug-in kits, the next wave of new robots to be deployed on land will mostly be "new and improved" versions of existing platforms. For example, iRobot's original PackBot just had a digital camera that sent back views of what the robot was seeing, making it essentially a mobile pair of binoculars. Now most PackBots perform EOD roles with fairly simple effector arms and grippers. But as new add-ons are developed, the same robot will be able to take on a wider and wider set of battlefield roles. For example, the company has already tested out an armed PackBot. For iRobot's first weapon, it eschewed the variety that Foster-Miller had for the SWORDS and instead chose a good old-fashioned shotgun, because it is "so versatile." The robot can now fire a variety of ammunition, including nonlethal rubber bullets, rounds that can blow down a door, and even more powerful "elephant killer" bullets. Another version is called the REDOWL (Robotic Enhanced Detection Outpost with Lasers), which uses lasers and sound detection equipment to find any sniper who dares to shoot at the robot or accompanying troops, and then instantly targets them with an infrared laser beam. "You'll actually see the sniper before the smoke disappears from the shot," said retired admiral Joe Dyer, who leads the military programming at iRobot. He adds that in tests, it's been 94 percent accurate and is smart enough that "it can tell the difference between a 9 millimeter pistol and an AK-47 or an M-16." Foster-Miller has similar plans to upgrade its current generation of ground robots. For example, the first version of the armed SWORDS needed the remote human operator to be situated within a mile or two, which can still put the human in danger. Vice President Robert Quinn describes how the company plans to vastly extend the range of communications to get ground robot operators completely off the battlefield. "It is not an insurmountable problem. It is nothing that money and time can't solve." The SWORDS itself is being replaced by a new version named after the Roman god of war. The MAARS (Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System) carries a more powerful machine gun, 40mm grenade launchers, and, for nonlethal settings, a green laser "dazzler," tear gas, and a loudspeaker to warn any insurgents that resistance is futile. As these systems evolve, we will also soon see entirely new unmanned combat vehicles hit the battlefield. One such prototype was the Gladiator. Described as the "world's first multipurpose combat robot," it came out of a partnership between the Marine Corps and Carnegie Mellon University. About the size of a golf cart, the vehicle was controlled by a soldier wielding a PlayStation video game controller, but software plug-ins will allow it to be upgraded to semiautonomous and then fully autonomous modes. Fully loaded, it costs $400,000 and carries a machine gun with six hundred rounds of ammunition, antitank rockets, and nonlethal weapons. "It is just fucking nasty," raves journalist Noah Shachtman. Not all ground robots will take on combat roles. For instance, medics have long had one of the most dangerous jobs on the battlefield. A former army special forces officer explains how this is generating a pull for robotic solutions. "If you can avoid unnecessary situations where you expose them [medics] to fire and you end up with two dead guys, then we have a responsibility to the American people to avoid that." An early entry into the "medbot" field is yet another improved version of the PackBot, known as the Bloodhound. Whenever a soldier is hurt, an alert will go out and the robot will find the wounded soldier on its own. Then the robot's human controller, who might be located anywhere in the world, will check out the soldier via the video link and treat them using the robot's onboard medical payload, which will include a stethoscope (likely very cold, with no one to breathe on it), liquid bandages, and even automatic syringes to dispense morphine or antidotes. The next step will be specially designed medbots, such as the previously mentioned marsupial pair of REV and REX. REV, the Robotic Evacuation Vehicle (a robot version of an ambulance), carries REX, the Robotic Extraction Vehicle, a tiny stretcher bearer that zips out to drag soldiers into the safety of the ambulance. REX has an arm with six joints to drag a soldier to safety, while REV has a life-support pod that even comes with a flat-screen TV facing the wounded soldier's face so that operators can see and communicate with the human on the other end if they are conscious. Ultimately, REV will be configured so that complex surgeries can occur inside the medbot. DARPA has already spent more than $12 million on developing such a remote "trauma pod" (originally called a "crechepod" in Frank Herbert's _Dune_ novels) that will automatically diagnose and treat a wounded soldier. The soldier will be loaded up into the protected pod and sped away to safety, all the while being scanned from head to toe, given oxygen, and their information processed to remote doctors, who might even perform surgery. The system is based on the da Vinci robotic surgical system, a commercialized technology that is already used at some three hundred facilities around the world. The maker, SRI International, thinks that such a system "could be operational on the battlefield in ten to fifteen years." As described by Russell Taylor, an engineering professor at Johns Hopkins University, these robotic systems don't just allow a surgeon to do their work remotely, but to do it with far greater machine-enabled dexterity than before. "The average surgeon will become as good as the star surgeon, and the star will have superhuman capabilities." Of course, robots will have a hard time replicating the compassion of a real-life medic. As one special forces soldier says, "The last thing I want to see if I'm about to die is a robot coming for me. I want to see a human." On the other hand, that robot may be able to go where humans could not, so their lack of a bedside manner is seen as an acceptable trade-off. All these various ground robots are supposed to come together in the army's $230 billion Future Combat Systems (FCS) program. The FCS concept grew from the sense that the army had become unwieldy and hard to deploy because its vehicles and weapons platforms were too heavy. The army of the twenty-first century, so the thinking goes, should instead be decomposed into smaller, lighter, and more lethal units of manned and unmanned components, joined together by a massive computer network. The FCS is certainly ambitious. It involves everything from replacing the army's twenty-eight thousand armored vehicles with a new generation of manned and unmanned vehicles to writing some thirty-four million lines of software code for the new computers that will link them all together. Starting in 2011, the army plans to start spiraling a few new technologies at a time into the force. By 2015, the army believes it will be in a position to reorganize its units into new FCS brigades, which will present a revolutionary new model of how military units are staffed and organized. Each brigade will actually have more unmanned vehicles than manned ones (a planned 330 unmanned to 300 manned). Each brigade will also have its own unmanned air force, with over a hundred drones controlled by the unit's soldiers. They will range in size from a fifteen-pounder that will fit in soldiers' backpacks to a twenty-three-foot-long robotic helicopter. The unmanned ground robots will come in many flavors. One will be the Multifunction Utility/Logistics and Equipment Vehicle, or MULE. Made by Lockheed Martin, it is about the size of a small car. The aptly named MULE will do everything from carrying equipment and supplies to mounting its own weapons, such as a machine gun or rockets. The runt of the FCS litter will be the Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle. This is essentially a smaller but souped-up version of the PackBot. iRobot has received a contract of $51 million to make the first run of 3,600 of these robots. In addition to vehicles, the FCS will also have a variety of unmanned ground sensors. One example is the Sensor Dart, a small missile packed with sensors that will be carried on a drone and then dropped behind enemy lines to report back on what's going on. In the air it will have wings, and then transform into an earth-penetrating dart. In the testing so far, soldiers have been enthusiastic. One commander said that if his unit had the systems during their previous deployment to Iraq, "it would have saved an NCO's life, his squad leader's legs, and his team leader's hand." The FCS plan is not without its critics. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that it might cost as much as $16 billion a year, for a full twenty-five years (about $170 billion more than the original planned costs). Military robots expert Robert Finkelstein describes it as "the largest weapons procurement in history... at least in this part of the galaxy," while former army officer Ralph Peters jokes that FCS spending has gotten so out of control that "it's the system that ate the army." Interestingly, this debate over cost may lead to more purchasing of robots rather than less. While unmanned systems make up roughly half of the new vehicles to be bought, they represent only 15 percent of the planned costs. Similarly, the majority of technical hurdles remaining for the program (twenty-seven identified by the CBO) are on the manned vehicles rather than the unmanned ones. Many who look to cut costs on the FCS now advocate cutting the new manned vehicles rather than the robots. # WET AND WILD, ROBOT STYLE A broad new set of robots is also being introduced for war at sea, where the main differentiation is whether they are designed to operate on the surface, like a boat, or underwater, like a submarine. Robots of the first type, unmanned boats, are called USVs (unmanned surface vessels). They actually have a great deal in common with the simpler land robots, as they both primarily operate in a two-dimensional world. Many basic USVs merely entail taking sensors and a remote control unit and plugging them into a boat. However, many think the sea is actually a far more difficult environment for robots than land. "Everything's working against you," says Robert Wernli of the Ocean Systems Division of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR) in San Diego. Waves and currents can pull a boat off course. Visibility is lower, and sometimes communications are more difficult. Plus, robots can get seasick; the constant motion and corrosive effects of salt water cause mechanical breakdowns much more rapidly than on land. So far, the prototype USVs tend to be smaller boats than large navy ships. One example is a thirty-six-foot robotic motorboat called the Spartan Scout, which the navy has spent some $30 million developing. Guided by a GPS navigation system, the boat can be on its own for up to forty-eight hours, and speed up to fifty miles per hour. Filled with sensors (including day and night video cameras), Spartan Scout is designed to carry out surveillance, patrol harbors, and inspect any suspicious ships that might be trying to pull another U.S.S. _Cole_ -type attack by sneaking up on a navy vessel. If it finds something fishy, the robot boat is also packing a .50-caliber machine gun. Spartan Scout got its first real-world use in the Iraq war in 2003, inspecting small civilian boats in the Persian Gulf without risking sailors' lives. The boat also mounts a loudspeaker and microphone, so an Arab linguist back on the "mothership" would interrogate any suspicious boats that the Spartan Scout had stopped. As one report put it, "The civilian sailors were somewhat taken aback when they were interrogated by this Arab speaking boat that had no one aboard." The other type of navybots are UUVs (Unmanned Underwater Vehicles). These are designed for underwater roles such as searching for mines, the cause of most naval combat losses over the last two decades. Many UUVs are biologically inspired, like the "Robo-lobster," which operates in the choppy waters close to shore. But others are converted torpedoes, like the REMUS, which was used to clear sea mines in Iraq, or even mini-submarines, which are launched from manned submarines to hunt down the enemy. The sea will also prove to be a new platform for robots to fly from. The navy plans to equip many of its ships with the MQ-8 Fire Scout, a sister version of the robotic helicopter used in the army FCS plans. Able to take off from and land autonomously from any warship with a small deck, the Fire Scout can fly more than six hours. It packs thermal imagers, radar, high-powered video cameras, and a laser designator that can target for the mothership's weapons or fire its own rockets. With a range of over two hundred miles, the robotic chopper can take the ship captain's eyes farther than ever before, including even inland. The most novel of the drones at sea may be the Cormorant, DARPA's design for a submarine-launched flying drone. Operating a plane off a submarine may sound new, but it actually dates back to World War II; indeed, the very first air attack on the mainland United States was in 1942, when a submarine-launched Japanese plane bombed Brookings, Oregon. What is novel about the Cormorant is not only that it would be unmanned, but also that it would be able to be both launched and recovered while the submarine stays hidden under the water. Having wings like a seagull, the drone would be squeezed into a missile launch tube. Whenever the sub commander wants to scout above or launch a surprise air attack, the drone would be fired from the tubes, float to the surface, and then launch into the air using converted rocket boosters. The drone would then fly back to a rendezvous location on its return. It lands in the water, sinks back down, and the submarine scoops the robot plane back inside. # TOP (UNMANNED) GUNS As with ground robots, the next wave of robot planes, also known as "unmanned aerial vehicles" or "systems" (UAVs or UASs), will be a mix of upgraded current systems, converted manned vehicles, and brand-new designs. For example, the Predator drone today does surveillance and also some ground attack missions. New versions are being reconfigured for electronic warfare, submarine hunting, and even air-to-air combat. Thomas Cassidy, a former navy fighter pilot (so respected that he even had a cameo in the movie _Top Gun_ ) and now CEO of Predator's manufacturer, General Atomics, declares, "I want to see a Predator coming back here with MiG kills painted on its side; and that will happen soon." The next generation of the Predator is the even more menacing-sounding Reaper, an air force drone about four times bigger and nine times more powerful. Among its improvements is a Microsoft Windows software package that has "automatic man-made object detection" and "coherent change detection." Not only can the plane come close to flying itself, but its sensors can also recognize and categorize humans and human-made objects. It can even make sense of the changes in the target it is watching, such as being able to interpret and retrace footprints or even lawn mower tracks. As of 2008, two Reaper prototypes were already operational and deployed to Afghanistan; military air journalist Bill Sweetman writes, "It may not be unreasonable to assume they are standing alert somewhere in case a certain high-priority target pops his head out of his cave." As new prototypes of unmanned planes hit the battlefield, the trend will be for the size extremes to be pushed in two directions. The air force sees at least 45 percent of its future large bomber fleet being able to operate without humans aboard. Among the planes being made at the military's flight test center near Groom Lake, Nevada, better known as Area 51, is the Lockheed Martin "Polecat." Described as looking like "a B-2 bomber's chick," the bomber drone is made of only two hundred parts that are glued, rather than riveted, together to increase its stealthiness. It will be rigged up with "a fully autonomous flight control and mission-handling system," meaning it will be able to carry out its mission from takeoff to landing without any human instruction. Lockheed Martin claims its studies show Polecat to be five times more survivable and mission-effective than the air force's plans for a manned bomber version of its new F-22 fighter jet. Not having pilots who need to be replaced every ten hours or so will also allow unmanned planes to have greater endurance and become far bigger than any created so far. For example, Boeing is at work on a glider powered by solar energy and liquid hydrogen that could stay aloft for seven to ten days. It would have a wingspan almost the length of a football field. The next step is DARPA's plan announced in 2007 for a "VULTURE" (Very-high-altitude, Ultra-endurance, Loitering Theater Unmanned Reconnaissance Element) drone, which the agency hopes will be able to stay aloft for as long as five years. We may even see the return of blimps to warfare. Lockheed Martin has been given $150 million to design and build a robotic "High Altitude Airship" twenty-five times larger than the Goodyear blimp. Such huge, long-endurance blimps open up a whole new range of roles not normally possible for planes. For example, airships could literally be "parked" in the air, as high as one hundred thousand feet up, for weeks, months, or years, serving as a communications relay, spy satellite, hub for a ballistic missile defense system, floating gas station, or even airstrip for other planes and drones. At the other end, there will also be more of what Noah Shachtman describes as "itty-bitty, teeny-weeny UAVs." Some even think that small, pilotless planes will make up as much as 75 percent of the military's future air forces, mainly because they are cheap, easy to use, and perhaps most suitable for the clogged urban battlefields of the twenty-first century. Any plane that is smaller than fifteen centimeters is technically known as a "micro-unmanned aerial vehicle." As far back as the 1970s, the CIA experimented with a "bio-inspired" drone the size of a dragonfly. The problem during testing was that, as one scientist describes, "It was tough to track on film and easy to lose in the grass." Today, the exact nature of this program is classified. But the military's belief in what is possible is illustrated by a contract let by DARPA in 2006. It sought an insectlike drone that weighs less than 10 grams, is smaller than 7.5 centimeters, has a speed of 10 meters per second, a range of 1,000 meters, and can hover in place for at least a minute. The agency has also given Lockheed Martin a $1.7 million contract to build the SAMERAI drone. As Shachtman says, this drone is "similar in size and shape to a maple tree seed," but is powered by a chemical rocket able to carry tiny sensors over a half mile from the launch point. Tiny drones are such a hot item because they make a perfect platform for spy jobs. As one scientist described, "A lot of the three-letter agencies are interested in miniaturization." They can do things like "perch and stare" into windows or climb up walls or into pipes. Besides carrying tiny sensors and cameras, they might be loaded with electromagnets, which will allow them to recharge themselves off electrical outlets or lightbulbs. They might also carry tiny weapons, such as a small syringe filled with poison (an idea featured in Dan Brown's novel _Deception Point_ ). Some even believe that such microsystems could eventually go down to the nanoscale. "Nano" is Greek for 10 to the minus 9. So to be at nanoscale is to be in measures of one billionth of a meter, or the width of a human hair cut into a hundred thousand parts. While the idea has been bandied about in such fiction as Michael Crichton's novel _Prey_ , many think it could come to fruition in the coming decades. Boston College researchers have already built a chemically powered nanomotor that is just seventy-eight atoms in size, while those at a university in the Netherlands have made a solar-powered engine just fifty-eight atoms in size. Tiny engines allow tiny machines. And tiny machines may mean teeny-tiny robots, or "nanobots." A major advancement in these happened in 2007, when David Leigh, a professor of chemistry at the University of Edinburgh, revealed that he had built a "nanomachine," whose parts consisted of single molecules. When asked to describe to a normal person the significance of his discovery, Leigh said it would be difficult to predict. "It is a bit like when stone-age man made his wheel, asking him to predict the motorway," he said. He would make one venture. "Things that seem like a _Harry Potter_ film now are going to be a reality." Such machines are still fairly limited in military applications; early models can only do things like copy a plant's photosynthesis or move a molecule of water around. But military analysts see the potential of these prototypes' one day becoming weapons that work at the molecular level, such as tiny missiles that could truly hit with pinpoint precision or nanobots designed to deconstruct a target from the inside out. Such minuscule designs actually mandate that the systems will have to have high autonomy, carrying out their missions without human controllers. First, to be useful, the robots will have to be "organic" to the team. That is, they will have to be relatively easy to use, not require special training, and if the goal is to saturate the battlefield, not require each and every small robot to have a soldier somewhere having to stop his mission and fly it. Another problem is that flying the smaller designs actually makes most human operators nauseous. Imagine watching video from a TV camera mounted on a butterfly, as it bobs up and down crossing a room; that is the sensation of flying a micro-drone. The centerpiece of future plans for unmanned drones, however, is the UCAV (unmanned combat aerial vehicle). This type of drone is specially designed to replace the ultimate of human pilot roles, the fighter jock. A key UCAV prototype was the Boeing X-45, which one author described as "flat as a pancake, with jagged 34-foot batwings, no tail and a triangular, bulbous nose" that make it look like "a set piece from the television program _Battlestar Galactica._ " X-45 also has a cousin, the Northrop Grumman X-47, which is roughly the same size, but designed to land on aircraft carriers. These drones were designed to be especially stealthy for the most dangerous roles, such as sneaking past enemy air defenses. In war games, UCAV prototypes have shown some impressive capabilities. They've launched precision-guided missiles, have been "passed off " between different remote human operators nine hundred miles away from each other, and in one war game autonomously detected unexpected threats (missiles that "popped up" seemingly out of nowhere). The drones engaged and destroyed them, and then did battle damage assessment on their own. They also promise to lighten the load on human operators. One human pilot remotely flew two UCAVs at the same time. The X-45 may have been too good, too soon. The fighter drone's capabilities made it appear as a competitor to the air force's new manned fighter planes, the F-22 and F-35, in which the air force had already invested $28 billion and $40 billion respectively developing (the X-45's development cost was $1.8 billion). So in 2006 the air force decided to cancel X-45 and let the navy fund the drone program on its own. Many believe, however, that the program still lives on inside the "black" budget and that ultimately Congress and changing leadership within the air force will soon bring the air force's robotic fighter plane program back to life. The pattern with unmanned planes in the early twenty-first century seems to be mirroring what happened with manned planes in the early twentieth century. There was initial skepticism and opposition to them in general, followed by limited use in observation and spotter roles. Soon, however, they began to be used for ad hoc attack roles, much as the early observation plane pilots in World War I began to drop their own grenades and homemade bombs on the enemy below. Perhaps the most amusing parallel in the Iraq war was when an enlisted soldier flying a Raven drone spotted an enemy insurgent planting an IED. He tried to show his commanding officer the danger, but the officer couldn't pick out the image of the insurgent on the view screen. So the operator kept circling the drone closer and closer to the insurgent. Still, the officer couldn't see the Iraqi. Finally, the soldier just got frustrated and flew the drone directly into the insurgent's chest. Then, referencing the annoying Verizon cell phone commercial, he asked his commander, "Can you see him now, sir?!?" Of course, just as World War I pilots couldn't just watch each other merrily going about their business of bombing their side on the ground, and so started taking potshots at each other, so too is the next step of advancement unmanned drones that are specially designed to take on other robotic planes. In 2006, DARPA budgeted $11 million for the "Peregrine UAV Killer." Like a peregrine falcon, it is designed to loiter over an area, stealthily gliding about until it sees an enemy UAV, and then quickly dive down and blast it. Drone versus drone may be the next step in warfare. # ASTROBOTS GO TO WAR But why should robot war be limited just to the Earth? Space has long been a location for satellites that provide military advantage back on Earth, such as spying or beaming GPS locations, but it has yet to be a battleground itself. However, plans for conflict taking place in space go well back to the antisatellite programs of the United States and the Soviets during the cold war and Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" missile defense program in the 1980s. In 2000, these received a new injection of funds by the U.S. Space Commission, which was chaired by a retired Ford administration official named Donald Rumsfeld. The commission sought out media attention by hyping a rising threat to U.S. space assets in the form of a "space Pearl Harbor." After becoming secretary of defense, Rumsfeld commissioned twenty more studies on war in space and the U.S. military organized the U.S. Space Command. If space is to become a new potential zone of conflict, its unique nature demands that unmanned systems play a key, and perhaps near-exclusive, role. Not only do weapons in space need to stay up there a long time, but the major challenge of fighting in space is first getting things into space. It costs roughly $9,100 a pound to launch anything into space with the Space Shuttle. So if a system is to be manned, the humans and each and every pound of water, food, and oxygen tanks to keep them alive are expensive to send. Likewise, manned systems in space are incredibly vulnerable (one bullet or laser hole and there goes all the air). Instead, the United States has already started work on a number of unmanned systems for potential use in space. One example is the X-37, an orbital test vehicle about a quarter of the size of the Space Shuttle, which flew its first test flight in 2006. The military's strong interest in it is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that, while the program was originally run by NASA, its development was transferred to DARPA in 2004. Another program is the X-41 Common Aero Vehicle, also known as the Falcon program. Planned for testing in 2010, it is a cross between an intercontinental ballistic missile and the Space Shuttle. It is designed to travel at the border between space and the atmosphere, around one hundred thousand feet. But, unlike a missile, it will be able to come back after a mission if it finds no targets. As John Pike of the Global Security organization comments, the aim is to give the United States the ability to "crush someone anywhere in the world on 30 minutes notice, with no need for a nearby airbase." This weaponization of space, unmanned or not, is certainly controversial. Former U.S. Senate majority leader Tom Daschle defined the Rumsfeld plans as "the single dumbest thing I have heard so far from this administration.... It would be a disaster for us to put weapons in space of any kind under any circumstances. It only invites other countries to do the same thing." Lieutenant Colonel Bruce M. Deblois of the U.S. Air Force published a detailed study that concurred with Daschle. The report argued that while being the first to deploy weapons in space might seem advantageous, it would only open up the floodgates for others to do the same. These fears do appear to be playing out. In 2007, after a test of their own antisatellite missile, senior colonel Dr. Yao Yunzhu of the Chinese army's Academy of Military Science issued a not thinly veiled warning. If the United States thought it was going to be "a space superpower, it is not going to be alone.... It will have company." This debate will likely rage on for years, if not decades, or at least until the Vulcans arrive to resolve it. But what is interesting is that governments are not the only ones looking at space as a new unmanned battleground. In 2007, the Tamil Tiger group of Sri Lanka became the first, but likely not last, terrorist group to takes its operations into space, hijacking the signal from an Intelsat satellite and using the commercial satellite to beam its own messages back to Earth. And just as private companies like Blackwater have reentered the conflict game on this planet, we should not be surprised if privatized conflict also arises one day in space, especially with the growth of private space businesses, such as Richard Branson's "Virgin Galactic" or Google's $30 million prize that will go to the first private team able to land a robot on the moon (one of the competitors is actually also the maker of some of the Pentagon's energy beam weapons programs). Robo-One, a robot combat event held in Japan every year, may provide a taste of what's to come. The competition organizers have announced plans for a new division in 2010: robot combat in space. A small satellite carrying humanoid robots will be blasted into the heavens. "Once safely in orbit, the satellite will release its robotic passengers, who will proceed to fight each other in the vacuum of space." If that does not signify human progress, what does? **[SIX]** **ALWAYS IN THE LOOP? THE ARMING AND AUTONOMY OF ROBOTS** _Wars are a human phenomenon, arising from human needs for human purposes. This makes intimate human participation at some level critical, or the entire exercise becomes pointless._ _—_ COLONEL THOMAS K. ADAMS, U.S. Army For all the enthusiasm for the next generation of unmanned tanks, ships, and planes, there is one aspect that people in the field are generally reticent to talk about. Arming these more intelligent, more capable, and more autonomous robots is the equivalent of Lord Voldemort in the _Harry Potter_ novels. It is the Issue-That-Must-Not-Be-Discussed. When it comes to this topic, people either change the subject or speak in absolutes, most often including the phrase staying "in the loop." Noted military expert and Bush administration official Eliot Cohen, for example, states forcefully that "people will always want humans in the loop." An air force captain writes in his service's professional journal, "In some cases, the potential exists to remove the man from harm's way. Does this mean there will no longer be a man in the loop? No. Does this mean that brave men and women will no longer face death in combat? No. There will _always_ [author's italics] be a need for the intrepid souls to fling their bodies across the sky." The same sort of response occurs within the robotics companies. When asked about what happens as robots become armed and more autonomous, Helen Greiner of iRobot quickly changes the subject. "It's far away enough that I don't see it as an issue." Similarly at Foster-Miller, the maker of the SWORDS machine-gun robot, Vice President Robert Quinn adamantly describes a human "staying in the loop" as a "line in the sand." He says he can't even imagine how unmanned systems would "ever be able to autonomously fire their weapons." As Noah Shachtman explains, people speak in such absolute terms and use the phrase "man will always stay in the loop" so often that it ends up sounding more like brainwashing than analysis. "Their mantra is a bit like the line they repeat again and again in the movie _The Manchurian Candidate._ " But he jokes that the constant repetition is pretty understandable. "It helps keep people calm that this isn't the Terminators." More seriously, he explains, "The core competency in the military is essentially shooting and blowing up things. So no one is eager to say, 'Outsource that to a bunch of machines.' " # REDEFINING THE LOOP All the rhetoric ignores the reality that man started moving out of "the loop" of war a long time before robots made their way onto battlefields. For example, the Norden bombsight of World War II and the computers that followed took over the human's role in deciding when to drop a bomb. Notice how Captain Doug Fries, a B-52 radar navigator, described what it was like to bomb Iraqis during the first Gulf War: "The navigation computer opened the bomb bay doors and dropped the weapons into the dark." The same trend has been in place at sea since a computer system called Aegis was introduced in the 1980s to help defend navy ships against air and missile attacks. The system came with four modes: Semi automatic, in which the humans interfaced with the system to judge when and at what to shoot; Automatic Special, in which the human controllers set the priorities, such as telling the system to destroy bombers before fighter jets, but the computer then decided how to do it; Automatic, in which data went to human operators in command, but the system worked without them; and Casualty, where the system just did what it thought best to keep the ship from being hit. The R2-D2-like CRAM deployed to Baghdad to protect against incoming mortar rounds operates on roughly the same system. The human sailors could override the Aegis computer in any of its modes, but increasingly this was beside the point. For example, on July 3, 1988, the U.S.S. _Vincennes_ was patrolling in the Persian Gulf. Notably, the _Vincennes_ was nicknamed "Robo-cruiser," both because of the new Aegis radar system it was carrying and because the captain had an aggressive reputation. Its radars spotted Iran Air Flight 655, an Airbus passenger jet. The jet was on a consistent course and speed and was broadcasting a radar and radio signal that showed it to be civilian. The automated Aegis system, though, had been designed for managing battles against attacking Soviet bombers in the open North Atlantic, not for dealing with civilian-filled skies in the crowded Gulf. The computer system registered the passenger plane with an icon on the computer screen that made it seem to be an Iranian F-14 fighter (a plane half the size), and hence an "Assumed Enemy." Even though the hard data was telling the crew that the plane wasn't a fighter jet, they trusted what the computer was telling them more. Aegis was on semiautomatic mode, but not one of the eighteen sailors and officers on the command crew was willing to challenge the computer's wisdom. They authorized it to fire. That they even had the authority to do so was again because of Aegis; Robo-cruiser was the only ship in the area authorized to fire without having to seek permission from more senior officers in the fleet. Again, the computer was trusted even more than any human captain's independent judgment on whether to shoot or not. The Aegis system took out the jet. Only after the fact did the crew realize that they had accidentally shot down an airliner, not a fighter jet, killing all 290 passengers and crew, including 66 children. This tragedy demonstrates how a redefinition is already taking place of what it means to have humans "in the loop" over autonomous systems and their weapons. As Drew Bennett at iRobot describes, "In ten to twenty years humans will still be 'in the loop,' but it will be a wider loop." Similarly, futurist Ray Kurzweil laughs at the idea of always staying "in the loop," saying it's "just a political description....Man may still think he's in control, but only at different levels." Indeed, much the same scenario as occurred with Iran Air Flight 655 happened nearly two decades later during the 2003 Iraq invasion, when U.S. Patriot missile batteries accidentally shot down two allied planes that the systems had classified as Iraqi rockets. There were only a few seconds to make a decision, and so the human controllers trusted the machine on what to fire at. Their role "in the loop" was actually only veto power, and even that was a power they were unwilling to use against the quicker (and what they viewed as better) judgment of a computer. The reality is there have been all sorts of new technologies that people insisted in absolutist terms would "never ever" be allowed to run on their own without a human in the loop. Then, as the human roles were redefined, they were gradually accepted, and eventually were not even thought about. Just go ask your friendly elevator operator. # WHY AUTONOMY? There are myriad pressures to give warbots greater and greater autonomy, and thus widen the loop further and further. The first is simply the push to make more capable and more intelligent robots. But as AI expert Robert Epstein tells it, this comes with a built-in paradox. "The irony is that the military will want it [a robot] to be able to learn, react, et cetera, in order for it to do its mission well. But they won't want it to be too creative, just like with soldiers. But once you reach a space where it is _really_ capable, how do you limit them? To be honest, I don't think we can." Simple military expediency also widens the loop. To get any type of personnel savings from using unmanned systems, one human operator has to be able to "supervise" (as opposed to control) a larger number of robots. For example, the army's FCS plan is to have two humans sit at identical consoles and jointly supervise a team of ten land robots. Similarly, an air force Predator pilot predicts that, rather than flying one drone at a time as he and his copilot do, his successors will soon be controlling entire fleets of drones, as in a video game. (He is careful, though, to add the mantra that "you cannot take the human out of the loop; it would be a huge mistake.") This setup envisions that the humans would delegate tasks out to increasingly autonomous robots, but the robots would still need human permission on the important question of whether to shoot or not. The problem is that it may not prove workable in reality. Instead, there are a series of interlaced rationales that take the human further out of the loop step by step. To begin, research is finding that humans have a hard time controlling multiple units at once (imagine playing five video games at the same time). Just having a human operator control two rather than one UAV at a time reduces their performance levels by an average of 50 percent. As a NATO study concluded, the goal of having one operator control multiple vehicles is "currently, at best, very ambitious, and, at worst, improbable to achieve." And this is with systems that aren't even shooting or being shot at. As one Pentagon-funded report noted, "Even if the tactical commander is aware of the location of all his units, the combat is so fluid and fast-paced that it is very difficult to control them." And then there is the fact that an enemy is involved. If the robots aren't going to fire unless a remote operator authorizes them to, then any foe need only to disrupt that communication. Military officers describe how, while they don't like the idea of taking man out of the loop, there has to be an exception, a backup plan for when communications are cut and the robot is "fighting blind." The only other alternative is to have it either sit there and be shot at, or automatically return to base without accomplishing the mission, and maybe even lead the enemy back to your locale. Robot companies say that these concerns are what help fuel demands from the military for greater autonomy. As a designer at iRobot explains, "By making them autonomous, they don't need signals or remote control, and you can't jam the signals to operate them. We are looking to make them more and more autonomous. Right now, if the signal gets jammed, then our robots return to you and say, 'What's up?' Autonomy can get around that." Even if the communications link is not broken, there are combat situations where there isn't time for the human operator to react. Take, for example, the countersniper device that automatically targets any enemy that shoots. Those precious seconds while the human decides whether to fire or not could let the enemy get away. By contrast, as one military officer tells it, "If you can automatically hit it with a laser range finder, you can hit it with a bullet." This creates another exception to the rule, giving robots the ability to fire back on their own. As Gordon Johnson of the Joint Forces Command explains, it seems not only logical, but is quite attractive, even to those commanders who otherwise would want humans in the loop. "Anyone who would shoot at our forces would die. Before he can drop that weapon and run, he's probably already dead. Well now, these cowards in Baghdad would have to pay with blood and guts every time they shoot at one of our folks. The costs of poker went up significantly. The enemy, are they going to give up blood and guts to kill machines? I'm guessing not." This kind of autonomy might even be found more palatable than other types. "People tend to feel a little bit differently about the counterpunch than the punch," notes Noah Shachtman. And, says John Tirpak, editor of _Air Force_ magazine, once robots "establish a track record of reliability in finding the right targets and employing weapons properly," the "machines will be trusted." The firm "line in the sand" becomes more like a slippery slope. The human location "in the loop" is already becoming, as former army colonel Thomas Adams sees that of "supervisor who serves in a fail-safe capacity in the event of a system malfunction." Even then, he thinks the speed, confusion, and information overload of modern-day war will soon move the whole process outside of "human space." He describes how the coming weapons "will be too fast, too small, too numerous, and will create an environment too complex for humans to direct." As Adams concludes, the various new technologies "are rapidly taking us to a place where we may not want to go, but probably are unable to avoid." What is often described as "impossible" then actually becomes viewed as quite logical and even inevitable. And actual programs are then created on something that officially is "never" supposed to happen. So for all the claims by military, political, and science leaders that "humans will always be in the loop," as far back as 2004 the U.S. Army was carrying out research on armed ground robots which found that "instituting a 'quickdraw' response made them much more effective than an unarmed variation that had to call for fires from other assets." Similarly, a 2006 study by the Defense Safety Working Group, a body in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, discussed how the concerns over potential killer robots could be allayed by giving "armed autonomous systems" permission to "shoot to destroy hostile weapons systems but not suspected combatants." That is, they could shoot at tanks and jeeps, just not the people in them. Stated John S. Canning, chief engineer at the Naval Surface Warfare Center and one of the authors of the proposal, "Let's design our armed unmanned systems to automatically ID, target and neutralize or destroy the weapons used by our enemies—not the people using the weapons. This gives us the possibility of disarming a threat force without the need for killing them." By 2007, the U.S. Army had put out a "Solicitation for Proposals" for a system that could carry out "fully autonomous engagement without human intervention." The next year, the U.S. Navy circulated research on a "Concept for the Operation of Armed Autonomous Systems on the Battlefield." Perhaps most telling is a report that Joint Forces Command drew up in 2005, which suggested that autonomous robots on the battlefield will be the norm within twenty years. Its title was somewhat amusing, given the official mantra one usually hears on the issue: "Unmanned Effects: Taking the Human Out of the Loop." So, despite what one article called "all the lip service paid to keeping a human in the loop," autonomous armed robots are coming to war. They simply make too much sense to the people that matter. A special operations forces officer put it this way: "That's exactly the kind of thing that scares the shit out of me.... But we are on the pathway already. It's inevitable." # RETIRING G.I. JOE? A retired air force officer describes a visit he had with the 2007 graduating class at the Air Force Academy. "There is a lot of fear that they will never be able to fly in combat." With robots taking on more and more roles, and humans ever further out of the loop, some wonder whether they will make human warriors obsolete. Technology has long changed the skills that we value. For example, illuminators, who essentially did artistic doodles in the margins of handwritten books, performed one of the most highly skilled jobs in the Middle Ages. Illuminated books were considered so valuable that kings exchanged them as part of peace treaties. Then the printing press came along and the doodling days of the illuminator were done. Likewise, just a few decades ago, someone who could do complex math, such as long division, in their head was incredibly valued. They could even work as "computers" (where we get our modern-day word), doing mathematical calculations for hire. Today, such Rain Man-like skills are nearly irrelevant once you get past the fourth grade and they let you use digital calculators. The same goes in war. Colonel James Lasswell of the Marine Warfighting Lab explains that, as technology advances, "We will soon see certain roles disappear." He gives the example of the forward observer. This was once an officer who needed special experience and training to call in precise cannon fire and airstrikes on map grids. In a world of GPS and laser targeting, this specialty is now a lot like being a sailmaker on a nuclear-powered ship. "Soon you will just have universal spotters. You will make up for years of experience simply by giving them a toy [that can point a laser at the target]." As noted earlier, something similar has already happened in the air with human pilots, who no longer sit inside most reconnaissance planes and have even less to do with the unmanned versions. Indeed, as army drone pilot Sergeant Chris Hermann says, "We all joke about it. A monkey can do this job, this bird flies itself, it lands itself." When the weather is bad and their drone can't fly, Hermann and his buddies will instead play video games like _Battlefield 2_ or _Call of Duty_. By comparison, they find that flying the recon drone is "kind of like old Atari, pretty basic, point and click." Looking forward, officers describe unmanned systems as being perhaps more suitable than human-piloted planes for many other roles, including even refueling aircraft, in which a premium is placed on endurance and the ability to fly precisely at a steady speed and level. Indeed, with UAVs becoming easier to fly and more lethal, "Maybe you don't need fighter pilots at all," says retired marine major general Tom Wilkerson. It is notable that Wilkerson is not some groundpounder who hates fighter jocks, but actually a Top Gun fighter pilot school graduate with over one thousand hours of flying experience. The most controversial role would seem to be the human grunt in the field. But even here, people are starting to discuss having machines move in. As Robert Quinn at Foster-Miller tells it, "We clearly see an evolution from EOD to combat engineers. And the next step we believe is infantry with weaponized robotics." Quinn reflects a quietly growing belief among both the robotics makers and the military. In 2004, DARPA researchers surveyed a set of soldiers and robotics scientists about the military roles they thought humanoid-type robots would take over in the near future. The military officers predicted that the first functions that would be turned over to robots would be countermine operations, then reconnaissance, forward observer, logistics, and then infantry. Among the last they thought would be turned over to autonomous robots would be air defense, driving or piloting vehicles, and food service. This is somewhat surprising, given that these latter functions have been among the first to already be robot-sourced, as well as that soldiers on average thought G.I. Joe would be replaced by robots before Cookie the chef. Special forces roles were felt, on average, to be the least likely to ever be turned over to robots. The average year that the soldiers predicted that humanoid robots would start to be used in infantry combat roles was 2025. Their projection wasn't much further off that of the scientists, who predicted 2020. Interestingly, the scientists predicted that the average cost would be about $1 million per infantry robot; the soldiers were more optimistic, predicting that the average robot infantry soldier would cost around $400,000 in 2004 dollars. One soldier, channeling Ray Kurzweil, predicted, "As technology advances, costs will drop." These numbers only reflect the opinions of those in the survey, and could prove to be way off. For example, military robotics expert Robert Finkelstein, who helped conduct the survey, thinks they are highly optimistic and that it won't be until "2035 [that] we will have robots as fully capable as human soldiers on the battlefield." But the broader point is that many are starting to contemplate a world where robots do replace the grunt in the field. However, as much as technology changes how we look at professions and even ends some of them, the reality is that it doesn't always play out that way. Yes, there are some areas where a robot might be able to surpass the skills or costs of a human soldier. But there are others where that day is far off. We don't have human elevator operators now, but human toll collectors live on. The funny thing is that many areas least likely to be roboticized will be in the areas that we generally consider simple, as opposed to the roles that require the most technical training. For example, it may take years to train up a sniper who can hit a bull's-eye again and again. But it's technologically easy for a robot to instantly place a targeting laser on a bad guy and shoot him. By comparison, as AI pioneer Marvin Minsky says, "Common sense is not a simple thing. Instead it is an immense society of hard-earned practical ideas—of multiple life learned rules and exceptions, dispositions and tendencies, balances, and checks." The most complex part of our brain, which will likely be the last thing that computers match, if ever, is our "emotional intelligence." This is the part of the brain that makes sense of social situations, which is often the toughest part of a soldier's job in dealing with complex situations in conflicts like Iraq or Afghanistan. For these reasons scientists already see the day coming at which surgeons, who may require the most years of training of all professions, will be replaced by robotic surgery systems like the da Vinci. Rod Brooks of MIT and iRobot predicts that the future for doctors is likely to be the same as for airline pilots: There mainly to appease the patient and regulatory boards and charge exorbitant amounts for skills they rarely use and knowledge that the computer can call up faster and in more depth. By contrast, as one scientist at the Idaho National Lab puts it, "My job will be eliminated before my hairdresser's will." Hairdressers not only have to be able to deal with all our misshapen heads, but they also have to cut hair with an eye toward not merely precision, but fashion and aesthetics, as well as be able to chitchat on sports, the weather, the latest gossip, and so on. Plus, the customer has to trust them with a sharp blade near their eyes, ears, and throat. It is hard enough to do with the drones at Supercuts, even more of a leap of faith with a barber made at Spacely Sprockets. We can similarly expect that some human soldiers' jobs might be eliminated, others' might never end, and many will likely evolve, or at the very least be understood differently. There are some military roles at which robots might be better suited than humans and others at which humans will just remain far more talented. Indeed, we may one day cease making such comparisons. As Rod Brooks points out, "Asking whether robots will 'match the abilities of a human' is a funny phrase. Does a tank 'match' the ability of an infantryman? No, they are different. Does an airplane 'match' the ability of a bird? The plane is certainly faster than the bird, but it can't land as well or fly as long." # TEAMING UP: WARFIGHTERS' ASSOCIATES The drummer starts to patter out a staccato beat. After listening a few seconds, his partner joins in. The first drummer shifts beats and rhythms, and the second follows, never repeating exactly, but riffing off the original creation. Beats are reversed and then evolve. Back and forth they go, the musical partners now jamming together to make new music. The first drummer is human. The second is Haile, a robot musician. Described by one report as "the creature from the film _Alien_ turned into wood and found a rhythm," Haile was made by Gil Weinberg, a professor of music technology at Georgia Tech. It is also the first robot that can not merely perform music on its own, but understand and interact with human musicians, creating new music altogether. Already, Haile has had its own world concert tour, with stops in Israel, Germany, France, and the United States. Haile the robot drummer illustrates the most likely future of robots' relation to humans, not just in music, but in war as well. As Bart Everett, a navy robots pioneer, explains, merely tasking robots out on dangerous missions will evolve "to more of a team approach." He goes on to explain how his center (the navy's SPAWAR program) has joined with the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to support the activation of a "warfighters' associate" concept within the next ten to twenty years, with robots and humans working together "as a synergistic team." The concept is that the humans and robots would be integrated into a team that shares information and coordinates action toward a common goal. Says Everett, "I firmly believe the intelligent mobile robot will ultimately achieve sufficient capability to be accepted by the warfighter as an equal partner in a human/robot team, much along the lines of a police dog and its handler." A 2006 solicitation by the Pentagon to the robotics industry captures the vision. "The challenge is to create a system demonstrating the use of multiple robots with one or more humans on a highly constrained tactical maneuver.... One example of such a maneuver is the through-the-door procedure often used by police and soldiers to enter an urban dwelling... [where] one kicks in the door then pulls back so another can enter low and move left, followed by another who enters high and moves right, etc. In this project the teams will consist of robot platforms working with one or more human teammates as a cohesive unit." Another U.S. military-funded project describes how "playbooks" for tactical operations might be built for the team. Much like a football quarterback, the soldier would call the "play" for robots to carry out, but like the players on the field, the robots would have the autonomy to change what they do if the situation shifts. "Just see it and shoot it is not the future," Thomas McKenna at ONR explains. Instead, the robots in these teams will be expected to interact with humans naturally, perform tasks reliably, as well as be able to predict what the human will ask of them. "The robot will do what robots do best. People will do what people do best." ONR is working on robots that "could even suggest a change of plan" if they find new information that warrants it. From this fusion, the expectation is that "human and robot roles will evolve dynamically. New experiences make new expectations of behavior." The military, then, doesn't expect to replace all its soldiers with robots anytime soon, but rather sees a process of integration into a force that will over time become, as Joint Forces Command projected in its 2025 plans, "largely robotic." One plan is for detachments that will include 150 soldiers and as many as 2,000 robots. The individual robots would "have some level of autonomy—adjustable autonomy or supervised autonomy or full autonomy within mission bounds," but it is important to note that so too would the human soldiers within these units. One of the scientists in the DARPA survey perhaps put it best: "I believe we should think in terms of the human plus a robot as a system, not just the robot itself." If the future is one of robot squadmates and robot wingmen, many scientists think it puts a premium on two things, both very human in nature. The first is good communication, the ability of the robot and human to interact naturally. In 2004, Lockheed tested out an unmanned jet that responded to simple vocal commands. A pilot flying in another plane would give the drone some broad mission, such as to go to a certain area and photograph a specific building, and the plane would carry it out. As one report explains, "The next war could be fought partly by unmanned aircraft that respond to spoken commands in plain English and then figure out on their own how to get the job done." In turn, the robot may even sound human in its communications back. WT-6 is a robot in Japan that has a humanlike vocal system, including tongue, lips, teeth, vocal cords, lungs, and a soft palate made from polymers. To work well together, these robots and human soldiers will also need to have confidence in each other. It sounds funny to say that about the relationship between a bucket of bolts and a human, but David Bruemmer at the Idaho National Lab actually specializes in how humans and robots work together. Without irony, he states that "trust is a huge issue for robot performance." Trust is having a proper sense of what the other is capable of, as well as being correct in your expectations of what the other will do. One of the more interesting things Bruemmer found in his research is that novices with robots tend to use their systems the best. They "trust" robot autonomy the most and "let it do its job." Over time, he predicts, robots will likely have "dynamic autonomy" built in, where the amount of "leash" the robots are given is determined less by any ideal of keeping humans "in the loop" and more by their human teammate's experience and trust level. In short, the human warrior isn't fading away anytime soon. But the same cannot be said of the human monopoly on decisions in war, including even those of life or death. **[SEVEN]** **ROBOTIC GODS: OUR MACHINE CREATORS** _You have to remember that these supposedly evil scientists are actually just guys with families and dreams._ —DANIEL WILSON "Each year some forty-two thousand people are killed in preventable traffic accidents. That is unacceptable. That is some fifteen World Trade Centers each year." Sebastian Thrun is director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Stanford University. Speaking in a clipped accent that reveals his German roots, Thrun tells how his motivation for making artificial beings comes from wanting to save the lives of real ones. When he was younger, "a very good friend died of a car accident because of a split-second decision." For Thrun, robotics is a way "to avoid that waste," and a means for him as a scientist to "have a major impact on society." Before he came to Stanford, Thrun had worked on robotic tour guides for museums in Germany, an interactive humanoid robot that worked in a nursing home near Pittsburgh, and a system of robots that could search out mines. It was all interesting stuff, but none of it had that major impact he was looking to make. In 2004, however, opportunity knocked. The Grand Challenge is a robotics road race sponsored by DARPA, the Pentagon's main research lab. The agency offered a $1 million, winner-take-all prize for the first team that could drive a robot across a rugged 142-mile cross-country course in the California desert. The Challenge was conceived as a way for the government to accelerate military R&D, by bringing in new talent, new ideas, and new technologies. In making it an open competition, DARPA hoped to entice innovators who normally would not work with the military. In their race for the cash, the side effect would be to help the Pentagon solve the problems it was having in designing robots for warfighting, as well as meeting the congressional requirement to have one-third of all its ground vehicles unmanned by 2015. The rules of this robotic _Amazing Race_ were fairly simple. The vehicle had to autonomously complete the race course within ten hours to get the money. No human intervention was allowed, meaning no control commands could be sent to the vehicles while the race was on. Finally, none of the race cars could intentionally "touch" any other competing vehicle. As Thrun describes, when you combine these rules with the rugged terrain of the 142-mile desert race course, which DARPA picked for its similarity to the rough trails in combat zones like Afghanistan and Iraq, "it's an endurance race of unmatched proportion.... This is the first one ever where the human is not involved and the vehicle has to make all the decisions." Unfortunately, "the first Grand Challenge came off as something of a _Three Stooges_ affair," writes _Popular Science_ magazine. Of the 106 applicants in the 2004 race, only a few even made it beyond the start line. For example, the Oshkosh firm showed up with a bright yellow autonomous version of its six-wheeled Marine Corps combat truck. But the "TerraMax" only made it one mile before a software glitch shut it down. Sandstorm, a converted Humvee designed by Carnegie Mellon's Red Team, went the farthest. But after seven and a half miles, it caught fire and got stuck on an embankment. Thrun watched the 2004 race but didn't compete. "After the first one, it was obvious we could do better," he says. "It was a no-brainer." Having just joined Stanford's faculty, he saw it as "an amazing opportunity to be part of a fundamental change for society... a win, win, win, win for everybody." Thrun and his team of graduate students entered the 2005 race. When DARPA doubled the prize money to $2 million, the field of competitors grew dramatically. Some 195 teams applied from thirty-six states and four countries; 160 of them were new to the event, and they included 35 university teams and 3 high schools. The entry names often sounded like something out of a fantasy football league, ranging from the mundane, like Team South Carolina, to the inspired, like Cajunbot from Louisiana and Viva Las Vegas, oddly enough from Oregon. The contestants also ranged from all-volunteer teams like CyberRider (which used Wiki collaborative software to bring in the advice of computer whizzes around the world) to research labs paired with corporate sponsors. The early favorite was Carnegie Mellon's Red Team (backed by Caterpillar) that had done the best in the last race and this time showed up with two cars to compete. All told, DARPA estimated that as much as $100 million in investment was spurred, as well as the equivalent of $155 million worth of free labor. One military robotics company executive joked that "the best part of the Grand Challenge is using the college kids like cheap slave labor." Thrun's upstart Stanford team took a Volkswagen Tuareg SUV and rigged it out with five LADAR sensors, GPS, a video camera, and onboard computers that had some hundred thousand lines of code specially written by the Stanford School of Engineering. They called the vehicle "Stanley." Stanley from Stanford worked by using its sensors to build a multilayered map of the world around it, much like many of its competitors. The robot car's unique feature was that it also fed its experiences, as well as a log of human driver reactions during its test runs, into a learning algorithm. As Thrun puts it, "We trained Stanley.... The relationship was teacher and apprentice, as opposed to computer and programmer." Thrun recalls it all came together three months before the race, when he was riding in Stanley during a test run. "We were driving in the Sonoran Desert, and at some point I realized that I was trusting my life to the car. At that moment it became crystal clear, this is the future. It was like a binary flip in my brain." On October 8, 2005, Stanley won the Grand Challenge, completing the course in six hours and fifty-four minutes, with top speeds of thirty-eight miles per hour. It might have gone even faster except for a flock of birds that landed in the middle of the raceway, confusing Stanley for a period. Four more teams crossed the finish line, but the Stanford team took the entire $2 million prize under the rules of the competition. Thrun was gracious in his victory. "We all won. The robotics community won." Soon after, Thrun would be named to _Popular Science_ magazine's "Brilliant 10," as one of the ten best and brightest minds in all of science. When asked how the victory changed his life, he responds, "Oh, big time! It is even changing Stanford as a university." He goes on to excitedly detail all the various collaboration projects that came out of the race, such as new links with the automotive industry and plans for an 8,000-square-foot research facility at the campus. The students who worked on the project are "cranking out papers. There are difficult technologic problems to be overcome and each one of these is a paper or a thesis." And what happened to Stanley? After its win, Stanley was declared the number one robot of all time by _Wired_ magazine, beating out a list of fifty other real and fictional robots that ranged from Spirit, NASA's Mars rover, to Optimus Prime from _Transformers_. Stanley is now at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, sharing the stage with such other important historical artifacts as the "Star-Spangled Banner" that flew over Fort McHenry and the jacket that Fonzie wore on _Happy Days._ # THERE IS NO EUREKA In the world of science fiction, research usually takes place in super-secret government labs or mysterious places like "Area 51," the Nevada desert setting of more than sixty movies, TV shows, and video games. The Science Fiction Channel even has an entire TV series about a quirky town set up in secret by the Pentagon for scientists to live and work in, called _Eureka_. ("Every small town has its secrets, but in the town of Eureka the secrets are top secret.") While the military is the major funder of robotics research, much of it actually plays out in public view. We just aren't watching. One estimate of applied research spending in the unmanned field was that 40 percent was flowing through private industry, 29 percent via military centers and labs, and 23 percent through university programs. At the center of it all is the National Center for Defense Robotics, a congressionally funded consortium of 160 companies, universities, and government labs. Work on military robotics isn't so much top-secret labs fueled by UFO power sources as it is a simple synergy of military money, business organizations, and academic researchers. The outcome is that major changes in warfare are being driven by the last people you might associate with combat. When you meet robot scientists, you quickly discover that it is hard to make blanket assessments. They range from prototypical geeks wearing actual pocket protectors to brawny he-men, who look like they spend more time at Gold's Gym than at the lab. While many are introverts, others are real jokers. At one research visit, for example, I watched a scientist ride a prototype military ground robot down a set of stairs like a surf board. The only general rule is that they are all breathtakingly smart. People begin working on robots for all sorts of reasons. Brian Miller, for example, is an engineer who started working at Ford Motor Company, designing and developing race cars. He had no visions of robots dancing in his head growing up. "But NASCAR was boring," he says (as Dale Earnhardt likely rolls over in his grave), "too many rules specifications." Miller liked working on off-road vehicles and so joined Millenworks, a company in Orange County, California, that makes rugged vehicles. Today, instead of race cars, he makes unmanned ground combat vehicles. By contrast, Helen Greiner, the chairman and cofounder of iRobot, says that she first got into robotics in 1977, watching the original _Star Wars_ movie as a mathematically inclined eleven-year-old. To this day, she calls R2-D2 her "personal hero." Daniel Wilson, a writer and Carnegie Mellon University researcher, probably has the best explanation for why people decide to work on robots. "Hands down, robots are just plain cool as hell. Ask any roboticist why they do it, and that's the answer you get." As he explained, "When you are deciding on what to do for your life, there's nothing like the sense of making something so tangible, so active." The increasing use of robots in war, though, has changed the equation a slight bit. Today, roboticists also can take pride in saving lives. As Colin Angle, one of Greiner's cofounders at iRobot, says, he spent his time as a student developing the "most sophisticated, cool, crazy-ass robot." But "it left [me] with an empty feeling." Today, Angle builds robots that he is quite happy to see get destroyed. "Getting a robot back, blown up, is one of the more powerful experiences I've lived through," he says. "Nothing could make it so clear that we have just saved lives. Somebody's son is still alive. Some parent didn't just get a call." Greiner similarly describes receiving postcards from soldiers using her PackBot in the field as the most gratifying experience, including one that just said, "You saved lives today." As she tells it, "There are people coming home because of our work." But beyond that, she goes back to why she and her schoolmates founded the robotics company. "We always knew we would change the world." # " GI T ROCKIN': GOVERNMENT IT ROCKS, DO YOU? " The invitation letter reads, "GIT Rockin' is government IT's first annual battle of the bands.... This friendly competition allows executives—from government and industry alike—to network with peers, colleagues and spouses in a high-energy, out-of-the-industry-norm environment. Come out and showcase your alter egos and talents." The battle of government information technology bands takes place at the State Theatre in Falls Church, Virginia. And it does not disappoint, fulfilling all your expectations of the government IT music scene. The ultimate winner of the event, which raises money for charity, is Full Mesh, perhaps the only rock band in the world whose particular highlight is that it "featured talent from Juniper Networks." _Federal Computer Week_ magazine (akin to the _Rolling Stone_ or _Vibe_ of the IT music world) summed it up. "Folks from around the federal information technology community really let their hair down." The history of government support for the scientists, engineers, and programmers like those at GIT Rockin' goes back decades; for the computing world, it especially took off in World War II and then the cold war. By one estimate, up to a third of major university research faculty was supported by national security agencies after 1945. So the battle of the government information technology band was, if unfortunate, likely inevitable. The primary player in the world of funding new research in IT, computers, and robotics is DARPA. DARPA's overall mission is to support fundamental research on technologies that might be common twenty to forty years from now, and to try to make them happen earlier to serve the needs of the U.S. military today. As _Washington Post_ writer Joel Garreau describes, its strategic plan is to "accelerate the future into being." The agency was started in 1957 after the Soviets stunned and embarrassed the United States by launching the Sputnik satellite. President Eisenhower worried that America was losing the science arms race and set up an agency so that the United States would never again be surprised by the technology of foreign powers. Since then, DARPA has shaped the world we live in more than any other government agency, business, or organization. For all the claims that "big government" can never match the private sector, DARPA is the ultimate rebuttal. The Internet (DARPA's first visionary name for it was the "intergalactic computer network"), e-mail, cell phones, computer graphics, weather satellites, fuel cells, lasers, night vision, and the Saturn V rockets that first took man to the moon all originated at DARPA. And now it's focusing on robots and other related unmanned technologies. DARPA works by investing money in research ideas years before any other agency, university, or venture capitalists on Wall Street think they are fruitful enough to fund. DARPA doesn't focus on running its own secret labs, but instead spends 90 percent of its (official) budget of $3.1 billion on university and industry researchers "who work at the forefront of the barely possible." One business article notes, "By the time a technology is far enough along to attract venture capitalists, DARPA is usually long gone." As a result, scientists are often very positive on the agency. Sebastian Thrun says, "DARPA has been good to me, helping me to develop my dreams.... It's a very successful agency," he explains, because "it takes risks and gets spectacular results." Today, DARPA's headquarters is located just down the street from a shopping mall in Arlington, Virginia. It is supposed to be a secret location, but the security policy of having a police car parked permanently in front of a supposed suburban office building gives it all away. So does the immense popularity of a barbershop just two blocks away. Its specialty is bad 1950s buzz cuts, but its hairdressers do offer five-minute rubs of the patron's skull and neck afterward. It is usually filled with men wearing DARPA badges, savoring some all too rare human contact. DARPA has some 140 program managers on staff, mainly PhDs in the hard sciences, with a few others from social sciences and medicine. Joel Garreau, who wrote a book on DARPA, notes that the organizational culture is to seek out problems that staffers call "DARPA-hard." These are "challenges verging on the impossible." The presentations at its annual conference (DARPATech) illustrate with such panels as "The Future of Aviation," "Obtaining the Unobtainium: New Materials," and, of course, the ever popular "Letting Schrödinger's Cat out of Pandora's Box: Quantum Mechanics for Defense." The location is equally instructive; the agency that tries to make the future come true holds its conference in Anaheim, the home of Disneyland. For all its success, not everyone is a huge fan of DARPA. Its critics in the blogosphere use such descriptors as "creepy" or call it the "Frankensteins in the Pentagon." Part of this animosity lies with a fairly flawed public affairs operation. While DARPA should be better known for developing the Internet and funding projects like Sebastian Thrun's Stanley, the last time it made major headlines was a failed project in 2003 to set up a terrorism prediction index. This was a plan for experts to participate in the equivalent of a football pool, betting on likely events such as terrorist attacks and the deaths of world leaders. As one defense industry expert put it, he had never come across such "a mind-numbing mix of brilliance and tone deafness" as at DARPA. Public perception aside, there is also concern within the defense field that DARPA invests too much time and money on fanciful ideas. Even robotics scientists sometimes describe DARPA's staff as "real madmen." The criticism seems to be centered on the fact that the agency, in trying to think out of the box, can forget that the D in its name stands for its primary funder and customer: the Defense Department. As one official says, "I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to delineate between DARPA-hard and DARPA-stupid." More recently, others critique DARPA for just the opposite. They feel that funding pressures from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have started to make it too short-term in its thinking. "Today DARPA imposes six-month go-no decisions on all their researchers, which stifle innovation and creativity—very un-DARPA-LIKE," says a congressional staffer. "I have had everyone complain to me about this—from universities to small hi-tech businesses to the big defense contractors." They contend that the true technology problems worth solving don't get solved within six months or less. # PIMPING AIN' T EASY A baseball throw down the street from DARPA is the Office of Naval Research (ONR). In keeping with the odd way that the most advanced defense agencies are integrated into the mundane of Americana, across the street is a TCBY: The Country's Best Yogurt store (judging from the small crowds, especially compared to the barbershop, it is not). The start of ONR dates back to 1907. A naval commander visited the construction of the battleship U.S.S. _North Dakota_ and saw terrible flaws in design and construction, which the navy had been unaware of because it lacked its own scientists and engineers. Since then, ONR has focused on helping the navy to maintain technological superiority on, under, and above the sea, as well as in space. It led the development of such varied programs as submarine-launched ballistic missiles, tilt-rotor aircraft, deep-sea exploration, fiber optics, and how to battle tooth decay (dental hygiene being the key to naval readiness). As one historian noted, the naval research program has been responsible for a bevy of "ideas that literally changed the world." Among those who work at ONR is Dr. Thomas McKenna. A balding, portly man, McKenna looks the part of a genial father; indeed, proud pictures of his children fill his office's walls. McKenna is also a father figure to the wider military robots world. How he works very much illustrates the relationship between the military and the world of research. McKenna has been at ONR since 1988; his earliest work was on legged robots. Today, among his main tasks is administering financial grants (his typical award is around a million dollars a year for five years) to universities and labs. His usual approach is to identify promising researchers for support when they are still graduate students. He then helps their careers to a point at which they become professors and have their own labs. "I was supporting some one hundred top graduate students at a time." The graduate students are not just Americans or even all located in the United States. For example, McKenna is especially proud of having funded the graduate student who now runs the "Blue Brain" project in Switzerland. In collaboration with IBM, the project is trying to make a simulated brain using a Blue Gene supercomputer, which might yield massive jumps in computing power and ultimately create strong AI. McKenna also helps projects gain funding via the Department of Defense's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Tech Transfer Research. These programs provide almost $1 billion in total grant money (given out in baskets of up to $850,000) to help jump-start early-stage R&D for small companies and entrepreneurs working with the Pentagon and research universities. Usually, researchers will apply to McKenna's office for grants, and he will kick ideas back and forth with them, in a collaboration to hone their research proposals and tweak them to ONR's needs. Or "sometimes I just find them on the Web." He tells how he surfs about to different sites of research until he sees something that intrigues him. He will then e-mail the researcher: "Send me a proposal along these lines, because I really like what you're doing." The process McKenna lays out is quite common in the nexus between the military and its university and business researchers. Some describe this cross between a funder and seducer as akin to "pimping" for the military research system, while others liken it to "an idea and technology hummingbird." Just as a hummingbird flits back and forth, spreading pollen, so too does such a funder serve as a critical link in connecting scientific ideas and research with military needs. Currently, McKenna is sponsoring lots of funding in "human activity recognition," where a robot learns to understand and identify what a human is doing. For example, many universities have research on teaching robots how to play or referee baseball and other sports. Combining vision systems with processors that know the game's rules and track trajectories allows robots to do things like predict where a ball will land and race to retrieve it. By scrutinizing a pitcher's fingers with a high-power lens, they can even predict whether he is going to throw a fastball or a curve. The hope is that systems will similarly be able to learn how to recognize certain patterns of behavior in war and do such things as IED prediction and detection. McKenna is also very interested in cross-disciplinary teams, describing himself as being far more likely to fund projects, for example, that bring together biologists with engineers. He proudly says, "When it comes to bio-inspired robotics, there isn't any other place in the world better than us." One such program is BAUV, the Biomimetic Autonomous Undersea Vehicle. As the poster on McKenna's door proclaims, the goal of BAUV is an exciting (well, exciting for ONR) blend of "shark-like low power, shrimp-like noise, and fish-like low speed maneuverability." BAUV is essentially a pole the length of a desk with three fishlike fins on either end and a neural brain. The fins are about fifty times more efficient than a propeller, plus incredibly quiet, meaning BAUV is "undetectable by sound." The neural processor, which came out of research sponsored at the New York University Medical School on rat brains, allows the robot to autonomously adjust to any change in the environment, allowing it, for example, to hold the same spot in the ocean for weeks. The BAUV currently can power itself on battery for up to three weeks, but ONR is exploring ways to extend this. Projects include giving it solar power, for when it operates near the surface, or even the ability to use a "mud battery." This is a bacteria-powered cell that is set on the muddy bottom of the ocean's floor. When bacteria break down organic matter, they produce a stream of electrons that, if captured, can produce electricity. The mud battery would refuel BAUVs like an undersea robot gas station. McKenna's pimp hand is strong. The relatively small-scale research he supported on BAUV could potentially revolutionize undersea warfare. A major challenge the U.S. Navy faces is how to patrol shallow waters, especially against quiet diesel-powered submarines like those the Chinese and Iranians use. Instead of risking the navy's valuable nuclear subs, BAUVs would be able to silently swim in the shallow waters for weeks at time, creating a virtually undetectable network of floating listening posts. A little bit of McKenna's start-up money might well create a big PLUS, or what the navy calls its ultimate dream of "Persistent Littoral Undersea Surveillance." # MAKING KEVLAR UNDERWEAR Once the researcher has produced a prototype, places like ONR and DARPA turn the project over to what McKenna calls "the customer," the military. Military labs and units will then test the robot ("You basically beat the snot out of 'em," explains one scientist), explore its uses, and even make suggestions for improvements. Often, they prove to be just as innovative as the original researcher. McKenna tells how one unit of marines took three different prototypes and cobbled them together into one machine that does "countersniper" work like iRobot's REDOWL. Whenever a sniper shoots at the marines, the technology automatically points a machine gun at where the bullet came from. An example of one of these places that brings together tactics and technology is the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, located at the massive base in Quantico, Virginia. The lab develops and tests out new technologies, as well as sources commercial market solutions for military needs. Dragon Runner, a nine-pound robot that looks a bit like a model car, is a prototypical example of the lab's development work. It came out of collaboration between Carnegie Mellon University, ONR, and the Marine Lab. Incredibly tough, troops use it to "see around the corner." They can toss it through a window, up some stairs, or down a cave; the robot will land on its feet and send back video of whatever it sees. The military labs also serve a valuable function by end-running around the normal procurement system to get soldiers in the field what's already available in the stores. During the first days of the Afghanistan operation, for instance, special forces units sent back requests for a remote camera that could be linked to satellite communications and a "pointer," a man-portable UAV that could beam video back to an operator. It took eleven days for the labs to get them the camera, and eight months for the UAV, which compares quite well to the years that normal weapons development might take (the F-22 jet, for example, took twenty-five years to go from concept to deployment). No request is too small. The Marine Lab even made special Kevlar-lined undershorts for marines to wear while on patrol. One news article jokingly called the program "Saving Ryan's Privates." Besides protecting marines' unmentionables, the special shorts also shield the femoral artery from being nicked by shrapnel. In either case, as one commented, "When your butt's on the line, you want it protected." Such defense-funded labs pop up all over the place. Perhaps the most surprising is the Idaho National Lab. More akin to a national park than a traditional laboratory, it has huge tracts of land for testing out ground and air robots, including its own airstrip for UAVs. In the words of one research scientist there, "Our lab is just a little bit smaller than Rhode Island." The Idaho team reflects your expected western hospitality. They have a standing offer to other roboticists: "Any one who wants to play around with one of their systems, come on down." This kind of neighborly vibe carries across the robotics field. When I asked people who they most respected in the field, the name that consistently came up was H. R. "Bart" Everett. Everett is a retired commander in the U.S. Navy, who is now technical director of robotics at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR) in San Diego. As one scientist put it, "He is one of the true graybeards in the field of robotics." Everett even maintains a "lending pool" of robots, which are loaned out to those who can't afford them. Everett, who is now working on a book called _Children of Dysfunctional Robots_ , tells how "my obsession with robots began early on in life, when I was about eight years old. I had become enthralled with a particular episode of _The Thin Man_ one evening at a friend's house. The plot was centered upon a murder supposedly committed by a robot, and of course the Thin Man had to prove some dastardly villain and not the robot really committed the crime. I had never before seen a robot and was forever changed by that experience." By junior high, Everett was tinkering with robots. He kept his interest going after he joined the navy. While attending the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey in 1982, he built the very first behavior-based autonomous robot for his thesis project. This revolutionary robot was controlled by a single-board Synertek computer (the cousin to the first Commodore personal computers). Much as how Commander Data in _Star Trek_ was made in the image of his designer, Bart Everett called this first robot RO-BART. His robot soon paid him back for the gift of autonomy. "There weren't a lot of mobile robots in those days, so it attracted a tremendous amount of media attention, which in turn landed me a job." ROBART-II came out of Everett's tinkering in his basement in the following years. In 1986, he turned the model over to the navy and joined the San Diego center. This was followed by ROBART-III, a test-bed robot that has continually evolved since 1992. ROBART-III looks a bit like Robby the Robot from _Lost in Space_ , except it has a six-barrel Gatling gun as an arm. It has been used as a platform for such new technologies as natural language understanding and automated target acquisition and tracking. It was named number sixteen on _Wired_ magazine's list of the best robots of all time. # CUSTOMER FEEDBACK The four enlisted men sat onstage, evidently uncomfortable to be the focus of so much attention. But to the scientists and businessmen gathered in the hotel conference room in Georgetown, they were the real stars of the robotics industry convention. The four had recently served in Iraq and had used their robots nearly every single day. The "Warfighters' Perspectives" panel was the ultimate opportunity for customer feedback. For the next ninety minutes, the soldiers talked about their experiences with robots in Iraq and various suggestions they had for improvement. They asked for better batteries and interchangeable parts that could be fixed in the field, rather than always having to send a broken robot to the robot repair yard. Army staff sergeant Robert Shallbetter even offered feedback on the robots' colors. Having robots painted black made them stand out as targets and the 140-degree heat in Iraq made them hard to even touch. Plus, "Heat and computers don't mix well." The audience's ears perked up when the soldiers began to talk about which robots they liked more, knowing that this sort of feedback could determine their programs' and companies' futures. They complained that Foster-Miller's Talon didn't have its own light source, so the soldiers had to duct-tape flashlights on it at night. On the other hand, they noted that PackBot did have its own light source, but it drained the batteries fairly quickly. They complained that the PackBot needed as long as two minutes to boot up and enter the PIN number for access. "After we're out for about thirty minutes, we had to start planning on being attacked, or having an ambush waiting for us on the way back," said Specialist Jacob Chapman, so the loss of two minutes can be fatal. On the other hand, having a PIN number makes it harder for enemies to use the robots if they ever capture them. In the end, there was no clear favorite between the two robots from Boston. As Byron Brezina, robotics director of the navy's EOD technology division, said, "If you've ever gotten into the Ford versus Chevy argument, that's pretty much what it goes like." The soldiers were incredibly blunt, however, about one robot. The Vanguard is manufactured by Allen-Vanguard Inc. of Reston, Virginia. As the other soldiers nodded, Chapman called it "completely unreliable" and told how his robot would turn off after going about ten feet from the truck. "We ended up trying to get rid of [the Vanguards] as soon as we could." When asked what he would do to fix it, he gave the ultimate soldier's reply. "Make it work." Standing at the back of the room was an executive from the company. At that moment, he looked very ill. The soldiers ended their talk by thanking the researchers and executives gathered in the room. "I'm very fortunate due to the current [robot] technology to be standing here today," Shallbetter said. Navy aviation ordnanceman first class Bryan Bymer chimed in, "They most definitely saved people's lives." Tom Ryden, director of sales and marketing for iRobot, was one of the hosts of the conference. He thanked the soldiers in turn, promising them, "We're going to take a lot of that to heart and see what we can do to make improvements." The panel closed with the more than one hundred scientists giving a standing ovation to the soldiers. This sort of interaction between soldier and scientist is actually far more common than one would think. Mack Barber at Remotec tells how "sometimes we get phone calls and we can hear the gunfire in the background." Many credit the troops in the field with some of the best ideas. Researchers at iRobot, for example, are especially proud that soldiers had "direct input into the design" of the Packbot and recall that during the early deployments to Iraq they would update the robots' software with feedback from each mission. The company makes it a point to fly in soldiers on their way back home from Iraq to its office in Burlington for feedback, and even has a place on its Web site where soldiers can post their improvement ideas. The soldiers at the robots' feedback session also requested that the scientists try to understand their needs better. "If you can put yourself in our shoes and imagine what we're going through, we would really appreciate it," said Sergeant Shallbetter. For most of history, that was an impossible request to meet. Scientists have long been involved in war, but they were usually separate from soldiers and the battlefield. As some military historians note, "The scientist did not need physical courage to do his work.... The soldier, unlike the scientist, might be called on to face death. This was the soldier's badge of honor, and in his mind, made him the rightful ruler of the battlefield." Yet this division of labor is also breaking down, oddly enough through unmanned systems. While robots are moving some soldiers off the battlefield, they are also bringing the geeks out to war. Robot researchers from firms like iRobot and Foster-Miller are now going out in the field in search of feedback and updates to ever-changing technology. As one military analyst put it, "There are tons of guys now wearing Kevlar pocket protectors" on today's battlefield. Unlike past weapons systems, the new robots don't even need the soldiers to initiate the feedback; the robots can also report back on their own. As Jim Rymarcsuk, a vice president at iRobot, explains, "Our robots have logistic information on them. They track the hours of operation, how it has been operated, what it has been used for. We can track a lot of that." This kind of back-and-forth between the people who design and make robots and the users in battle produces a pattern of almost continual improvement. For example, one navy robot, the Mk. 3 RONS, went through some thirty-five different changes in its first five years of operation. The constant communication between the battlefield and research lab can also take some humorous turns. Joe Dyer, a former navy admiral turned vice president at iRobot, describes how his firm once received a box shipped from Iraq. It was filled with the bits and pieces of a PackBot that Iraqi insurgents had blown up. Attached was a request for "warranty repair." **[EIGHT]** **WHAT INSPIRES THEM: SCIENCE FICTION'S IMPACT ON SCIENCE REALITY** _You can never tell when you make up something what will happen with it. You never know whether or not it will come true._ _—_ DONNA SHIRLEY The Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame appropriately stands in the shadow of Seattle's futuristic landmark, the Space Needle. Set in a multicolored, globular Frank Gehry-designed building that looks like a cut-up guitar (a "ridiculous . . . monstrosity of postmodern architecture" is another writer's take), it shares the space with the Experience Music Project, a museum for rock and roll music. The odd juxtaposition of the two museums is actually quite simple: science fiction and Jimi Hendrix's music were the two boyhood loves of Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, who is the primary funder of both. Founded in 2004, the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame is dedicated to exploring the history of science fiction and how it shapes our culture, politics, and philosophy. While the Experience Music Project next door has the guitars used by Bob Dylan, Bo Diddley, and Kurt Cobain, the Science Fiction Museum rocks just as hard. Displayed in the museum are such artifacts as Captain Kirk's command chair from _Star Trek_ , the alien queen from _Aliens_ , Darth Vader's helmet from _The Empire Strikes Back_ , Neal Stephenson's handwritten manuscript for the _Baroque Cycle_ trilogy, and the pistol used by Harrison Ford in _Blade Runner_. The museum also runs a kids' program, including a "summer camp on Mars," as well as a happy hour for the adults, with three-dollar beers on tap. It is easy to think of the Museum and Hall of Fame as only some sort of "Pantheon of Nerds" (what my editor jokingly called it), as science fiction may well be the ultimate of geekdom. Perhaps no one puts it better than Chuck Klosterman, who once wrote that admitting you like science fiction was "like admitting that you masturbate two times a day, or that your favorite band was They Might Be Giants." And yet science fiction is undeniably popular. The earliest science fiction was by storied writers such as Mary Shelley, whose _Frankenstein_ was first published in 1818, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose story "The Birthmark" wrestled with plastic surgery before plastic was even invented. Today, roughly 10 percent of all books are in the science fiction and fantasy genres. This does not even count major authors like Michael Crichton or Tom Clancy, who write "techno-thrillers" that are science fiction in all but name. Science fiction has thrived even more in modern media forms. Six of the top-ten-grossing movies of all time are science fiction, led by the original _Star Wars_ (inexplicably still behind _Titanic_ in total sales). On TV, many of the most popular and influential shows of all time, from _The Twilight Zone_ to _Lost_ , have been science fiction. An entire cable network, the Sci Fi Channel, is exclusively devoted to the genre. For such a geeky topic, it is doing quite well, ranking in the top ten of all basic cable networks. Science fiction is more than just popular; it is also incredibly influential, to an extent that is often surprising. Time and again, science fiction makes its presence felt in real-world technology, war, and politics. At iRobot, for example, the robotics research group described how their team motto was a toss-up between "making science fiction reality" and "practical science fiction" (they couldn't yet decide which they liked better). Science fiction references and ideas also make frequent appearances on the military side, coming up in almost any meeting on new military technologies or how to use them. Even Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (that is, the man in charge of the entire U.S. military), proudly described how the navy's "Professional Reading" program, which he helped develop to guide his sailors, includes the science fiction novels _Starship Troopers_ and _Ender's Game_. # WHAT IS SCIENCE FICTION? Museum director Donna Shirley is perhaps the best person in the world to explain just what is science fiction. Shirley's entry into the field came at the age of ten, when she went to her uncle's college graduation. In the pamphlet they gave out, there was a listing for graduates with "aeronautical engineering" degrees. Shirley remembers asking her mother what that meant. "My mother replied, 'Those are the people who make airplanes.' And so that's what I wanted to be." At the age of sixteen, Donna Shirley got her pilot's license. She then enrolled as the only woman in her classes at the University of Oklahoma, and earned that degree her mother had told her about. "Although the guys in my classes were fine with me being an engineer, my college advisor for aeronautical engineering told me girls couldn't be engineers," she recalls. She soon proved him wrong. In 1966, Shirley joined NASA's prestigious Jet Propulsion Lab as one of the space program's very first female engineers. Over the next thirty-two years she worked on projects as varied as automating controls of military satellites to the Mariner space probe's ten trips to Venus and Mercury. She capped her career by serving as manager of the Mars Exploration Program, which included the 1997 Mars Pathfinder and the Sojourner robotic rover missions. As one article describes, "Not only were these events two of the U.S. space program's greatest successes, but they may well provide the world with some of the most important scientific data of the 20th and 21st centuries." Shirley credits the science fiction she read growing up as a key factor in her career. She recalls reading the stories of Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov at the age of eleven. "The political issues in the books went over my head," she says, "but their heroes were always engineers and scientists.... Heinlein and Asimov also frequently had women characters as heroes, which resonated with me." During the publicity surrounding NASA's Mars missions, the organizers of the museum heard Shirley talking about science fiction's influence on her work and invited her to join the team. She sees as her role and that of the museum to "educate people about science fiction and to make people realize how important it is in our culture, and by implication get them interested in science and the social aspects of science. At the same time, we can pass on some moral lessons.... In a sense, it's to capture their imagination away from, say, _Playboy_ and into something a bit more important." Shirley notes that the fictional worlds that science fiction authors often create are not what constitute science fiction. Nor does science directly drive the plotlines. Rather, science fiction forces the audience to wrestle with the effect that science has on society. She explains, "The technology is not the interesting part; it is what people do with the technology." Most science fiction deals with some sort of fallout, usually political, that comes from a new event or technology. For example, Philip K. Dick's _Minority Report_ posits a technology that allows the police to predict a crime. The story is not about the technology, but "the political and legal ramifications of actually using such a system." In short, science fiction is more about asking "thought-provoking" questions than merely providing "jaw-dropping" special effects. This focus on the dilemma, rather than the technology, is what allows science fiction stories to remain relevant even when the world and technology advances past the time of a story's creation. Shirley points out an exhibit at the museum that shows how H. G. Wells's 1898 novel _The War of the Worlds_ has been continually "remade and rereleased every time there was a perceived existential threat on this world." Prior to World War II, Orson Welles did his famous radio broadcast. Then the story was made into a movie that echoed nuclear fears at the start of the cold war, and a third time in 2004 by Steven Spielberg, who used imagery evocative of the 9/11 attacks. Shirley sees several trends in how science fiction is wrestling with the modern world. The first is a trend toward more women writers, in particular the pioneering work of the recently deceased Octavia Butler, one of the first African American women science fiction writers and the only science fiction author ever to receive a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant. "Women writers tend to write more about the social stuff and what happens to people." There is also an evident trend of more focus on the impact of computers and robotics. She notes the work of writers like Neal Stephenson and Bruce Sterling, who helped found the "cyberpunk" movement. The trend emphasizes not merely the coming technology, but what happens when it gets placed "in the hands of our depraved society." # SCIENCE FICTION AND WAR "I thought _Ender's Game_ might be popular when I finished writing it—high-tension story, semi-tragic outcome. I did not expect it to last as long as it has (so far) or to become as widely read by adults, teenagers, and children. Or, to put it another way, I think all my books will do wonderfully well when I'm through writing them; with _Ender's Game_ , I happened to be right." Orson Scott Card has written fifty-nine books that have sold twenty million copies in North America alone. But it is still _Ender's Game_ , his 1985 book, for which he is best known. The story of Ender Wiggin, a child who expertly fights war as if it were sport, won every major science fiction award, has been translated into eighteen languages, and is under development at Warner Brothers to be a major movie. More important, the book's stories of the command school of the future and experiencing war from afar via virtual reality struck a particular chord with the military. Some two decades after its publication, it is still in various military course catalogs (such as at the Marine Corps University, where it is used as a text on the psychology of leadership) as well as various U.S. military-required reading lists that generals and admirals tell their officers they should read if they want to be good warriors under their command. He may be a writer of fiction, but like many in the field, Card also consults for the military, speaking on such topics as "Next Generation WMD: Anticipating the Threat." Card is not surprised by the response his book has gotten from military readers. "Soldiers feel like _Ender's Game_ is telling their story—young people doing their duty in spite of the idiocies of the officers who lead them. But I get similar responses from gifted schoolchildren and from kids who do very badly in school, each of them seizing on the heroism-in-isolation of Ender and extrapolating it to their own lives." Card's work is representative of a broader trend in science fiction, its overwhelming focus on war. While science fiction is known for peering into the future and bringing to light fanciful new technologies, the vast bulk of it places these stories and technologies in one particular context of our human experience: war. Each year, approximately five major science fiction movies that link to war are released. Fifteen of the ongoing science fiction TV series have a conflict or military element. The thirty-five science fiction magazines in the field each carry multiple stories set in war. And if you attend any of the fifty-two major science fiction conventions, your costume is most likely to pack a phaser, lightsaber, or blaster rifle. What some call "military science fiction" is by far the most popular part of the genre. The reason why such a huge percentage of science fiction deals with issues of war, says Card, is "because war is a human constant. War also drives technological advance. And insofar as sci-fi was and remains a male genre, war will continue to fascinate readers." He is more curious about why other genres don't pay as much attention to war. "The real question," he asks, "is why war is not more important in mainstream fiction? . . . Literary fiction generally skips over two of the primary occupations of humankind: war and religion. At least science fiction and fantasy can still address those topics, along with everything else that literature can talk about." Other writers point out that war is so popular in the genre because it is an unparalleled platform for wrestling with deep issues. Robin Wayne Bailey, the president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (a trade association for sci-fi writers; like the Teamsters but with pointy ears), explains, "The conflict is obvious [in war], the opportunities for technologic exploration and idea exploration are vast, as is the case in real war as well, and war provides both a microcosm and macrocosm for exploring human nature, and most pertinently human nature under stress." Harry Turtledove and Martin Greenberg, noted authors themselves and the editors of a master volume of the field entitled _The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century_ , agree. "Fiction is about character under stress. What we do when the heat is on reveals far more about us than how we behave in ordinary times." Science fiction authors have set their stories in the realm of war since the very start of the field. H. G. Wells is perhaps the best known, but others include literary titans that we don't often associate with science fiction, such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack London, and even A. A. Milne. Most know Milne as the creator of the lovable bear Winnie-the-Pooh, but in 1909 he wrote a science fiction short story entitled "The Story of the Army Aeroplane." Just six years after the Wright brothers, it predicted that man might one day use those crazy flying machines for war. The most influential author in developing the link between science fiction and war has to be Robert Heinlein. Heinlein came from a military background, graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1929 and serving until 1934, when he was discharged for health reasons (during his convalescence, he invented the water bed). When World War II started, Heinlein went back to work for the navy doing aeronautical engineering. Interestingly, he recruited two young engineers to join his work at the Philadelphia Naval Yard; Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague de Camp would also later become some of the biggest names in the history of science fiction. After the war ended, Heinlein became a key person in breaking science fiction into the mainstream, including being the first writer in the field to pen for the _Saturday Evening Post,_ a leading magazine of the time. Over the course of his career, Heinlein would write thirty-two novels and fifty-nine short stories. But his two most influential were 1961's _Stranger in a Strange Land_ , which foreshadowed the "free love" of the Sexual Revolution and was embraced by the hippie movement, and 1959's _Starship Troopers_ , which, by contrast, is on the reading lists at the major military service academies, and inspired several technologies, such as robotic fighting suits. In recognition of Heinlein's popularity and influence, the U.S. Naval Academy even has an endowed professorship named for him, the Robert A. Heinlein Chair in Aerospace Engineering. There is also a movement to have one of the navy's newest warships named the U.S.S. _Robert Heinlein_ , in honor of his hundredth birthday. As the petition letter to the secretary of the navy reads, "It only seems fitting that a man who spent his life writing about the 21st Century should have a 21st Century destroyer named after him." # THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: SCI-FI PREDICTIONS Part of the popularity and influence of science fiction comes from its remarkable skill at foreshadowing the future. For a fictional genre that often takes place in settings that don't even exist, science fiction has forecast real-world technologies, as well as resulting dilemmas, with stunning accuracy. Perhaps the best example of how predictive science fiction can be is the work of H. G. Wells, who is known as "the Father of Science Fiction." Wells was born in 1866, but his various stories forecast the twentieth century with incredible accuracy, predicting such things as computers, videocassette players, televisions, and even superhighways, each of which seemed unfathomable at the time. His books often had a theme of conflict running through them, and so he also predicted various military developments well before their time. For example, he wrote about tanks, or what he called "Land Ironclads," in 1903, which inspired Winston Churchill to champion their development a decade later. Similarly, his 1933 book _The Shape of Things to Come_ predicted a world war that would feature the aerial bombing of cities. Wells was not a fan of such technologies, as he saw them as "unsporting." Perhaps Wells's most important and influential prediction was in his story _The World Set Free_ , published in 1914. He forecast a new type of weapon made of radioactive materials, which he called the "atomic bomb." At the time, physicists thought radioactive elements like uranium only released energy via a slow decay over thousands of years. Wells described a way in which the energy might be bundled up to make an explosion powerful enough to destroy a city. Of course, at the time, most scoffed; the famed scientist Ernest Rutherford even called Wells's idea "moonshine." One reader who differed was Leó Szilárd, a Hungarian scientist. Szilárd later became a key part of the Manhattan Project and credited the book with giving him the idea for the nuclear "chain reaction." Indeed, he even mailed a copy of Wells's book to Hugo Hirst, one of the founders of General Electric, with a cover note that read, "The forecast of the writers may prove to be more accurate than the forecast of the scientists." Wells's story ends with scientists trying to organize an effort against war and the use of the new bombs. The idea later inspired Szilárd, Einstein, and others to form the Pugwash nuclear disarmament movement, meaning Wells's book, in turn, is the inspiration for the modern arms control movement (as well as the robotic "refuseniks" described in the following chapter). Perhaps the only equal to Wells's work was the work of Jules Verne, who has been called "the Man Who Invented Tomorrow." Born in 1828, Verne wrote such books as _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_ , well before such things as large-scale submarines existed. His greatest prediction may have been in his so-called lost novel. In 1863, Verne wrote a book entitled _Paris in the 20th Century_. In it, he predicted a future that would have skyscraper buildings made of glass, automobiles powered by gasoline, calculators, worldwide communications, and even electronic music. To give a sense of how impressive this was, at the time Verne was writing, the electric lightbulb hadn't even been invented and the United States was locked in a civil war over whether human beings could be owned as slaves. What is more, Verne predicted that none of these fantastic improvements would make people happy. Instead, he foresaw that the technology advances would turn into a crass commercialism that overwhelmed worthwhile arts and culture. The publisher didn't like this dark yet admittedly accurate prediction of the future and rejected it. They published his _Journey to the Center of the Earth_ instead and the manuscript stayed locked away in a safe until 1994. Science fiction continued to tap into the future throughout the twentieth century, as the field extended into film and TV. The only difference was that, with the speeded-up time frames, the imagined technology came to fruition much quicker. For example, Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film _A Clockwork Orange_ predicted futuristic small music devices (what we would now call MP3 players or iPods), while in the 1976 movie _The Man Who Fell to Earth_ , David Bowie plays a futuristic alien who develops an equally futuristic technology, what we now know as digital cameras. Indeed, even _The Jetsons_ proved prophetic. George Jetson spent most of his day at work at Spacely Sprockets pushing computer buttons as a "Digital Index Operator." Spending your day in front of a computer seemed wildly futuristic in the 1960s, but now George is just a run-of-the-mill database administrator. By comparison, the government often has a relatively poor track record when it comes to predicting the future. For example, in 1913, the U.S. government actually prosecuted Lee de Forest of RCA for telling investors that his company would soon be able to transmit the human voice across the Atlantic Ocean. The idea seemed so absurd to the government that de Forest was assumed to be a swindler. Indeed, Philip Tetlock, in his award-winning study _Expert Political Judgment_ , found that the professional "experts" who advise government are actually more often wrong in their predictions than right. Industry equally has a mixed track record. For example, IBM president Thomas Watson famously said in 1943, "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." When it comes to war, the same pattern holds. As a 2006 article in _Armed Forces Journal_ , one of the leading magazines for U.S. military officers, notes, "We don't do well, historically, in predicting the location and nature of the next war." For example, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, wrote a short story in 1914, just before World War I started. Entitled "Danger," it warned that the new invention of submarines might be used to sink merchant ships. The Royal Navy's Admiralty actually went public to refute and mock Conan Doyle, saying that "no nation would permit it and the officer who did it would be shot." Just seven months later, the passenger ship _Lusitania_ was torpedoed by a German U-boat, inaugurating the era of submarine warfare. Part of the reason for this pattern is that while science fiction looks forward, the military typically plans what the next war will look like by looking back at how it fought the last one. In discussing how the American army that invaded Iraq in 2003 planned for it to be a repeat of the 1991 Gulf War, _Armed Forces Journal_ concludes, "Our advances in technical intelligence have not improved our ability to predict any specific war." There are a couple of explanations for why science fiction tends to do well in prediction, even though it is working in the world of fiction. Many science fiction writers are scientists themselves, so they are typically well equipped to stay within the rules of science yet extrapolate forward. Arthur C. Clarke, for instance, not only imagined a world of intelligent computers, but is also the man who invented the real-world communications satellite. As Donna Shirley explains, science fiction authors tend to get their predictions right because they are most often writing about what they know best. "Modern science fiction is increasingly being written by computer geeks, who are already experts on the technology side." Secondly, these writers must create a narrative at some point (that is, the plot, which usually involves a battle of good versus evil, hence the frequent setting of war), but along the way they must solve the same technical problems that real scientists do. However, they don't have the constraints of a budget or lab time or bureaucratic politics. The freedom of the fictional world allows them to work out solutions sometimes easier than in the real world. As one computer scientist noted, "Science fiction is not making predictions, but playing with possibilities." Finally, dealing with the "what if?" is what sets science fiction apart from regular fiction, as well as real-world science. Shirley explains, "The best science fiction deals more with the social consequences of technology change than the technology itself." It is the combination of scientific awareness with human imagination that allows science fiction to better deal with technology put in a complex social setting. Science fiction author Robin Wayne Bailey sums it up this way: "Science fiction at its best is about ideas. Maybe it's criticized for often having wooden characters or unrealistic settings, but the ideas always come first.... Science fiction throws out ideas like some people scatter seeds. Most do not take root, but some do. And when they do, it is fabulous." It is important to note that in this seed-scattering of ideas, science fiction is not always perfect. As Donna Shirley notes, "Science fiction did not predict computers very well, at least until HAL.... The same for Martians. Mariner 4 [the planetary probe] killed all the Martians in 1965." Where science fiction tends to go most wrong in its predictions is not in the technology but in the timelines. Ray Kurzweil, who makes a living out of timing technology predictions, explains, "Science fiction is unreliable because [there is] no requirement that the time frame be realistic. Arthur C. Clarke chose the year 2001 as a literary device, not because that's when he was certain AI would come to fruition." Shirley agrees in a way. "The technology is changing so rapidly, they [science fiction writers] are increasingly having trouble keeping up." Orson Scott Card thinks that holding science fiction to any standard for its prediction is beside the point. "Predicting is a trivial aspect of writing science fiction. We are extrapolating what would happen if a particular configuration of future possibilities became real. The result is that we plunge readers into an environment in which they must rebuild their conception of reality. So we aren't predicting the future, we're helping readers rehearse for the future, whatever it might bring." He continues, "The job of the sci-fi writer is to envision all possibilities and bring them to life in the readers' imagination. What impact that will have is always debatable—less and less, these days, I believe. When things go horribly wrong, it's small satisfaction to say 'I told you so.' " # TURNING DREAMS INTO REALITY "There is a back and forth between dreams and reality. Science fiction offers the dreams, the engineers make it the reality, and the readers are the ones who pilot the technology in planes, cars, rockets, whatever." Greg Bear is the author of more than thirty books and has won two Hugos and five Nebulas (the science fiction versions of Pulitzer Prizes). His most recent novel is _Quantico_ , a thriller set in the "second decade of the War on Terror" about young FBI agents taking on a brilliant homegrown terrorist. The book flap captures it best: "It's the near future—sooner than you might hope." Bear is especially well equipped to reflect on how science fiction doesn't just predict but also inspires real-world changes, as his name is frequently mentioned in the military research community. For example, an air force lieutenant colonel commented how he even footnoted Bear's work in a project proposal. By way of explanation he asks, "I mean, how many science fiction books have appendices and glossaries?" Growing up as "a Navy brat," who moved with his father from bases in California and Japan to the Philippines, Bear recalls that "in my living memory I don't know a time when science fiction wasn't in my life." He started writing at eleven years old and sold his first story at age fifteen. The next year he met his hero, science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, and his career as a writer was decided. Since that time, Bear has been called the "best working writer of hard science fiction" by _The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Science Fiction_. His impact, though, is decidedly beyond the world of fiction. Bear has served on various political and scientific action committees and advises the U.S. Army, the CIA, Sandia National Laboratories, and Microsoft Corporation. Indeed, when we spoke, Bear was just back from headlining a government conference on biotechnology threats, inspired in part by his book _Darwin's Radio_. Bear is also one of the core members of SIGMA, a "think tank of patriotic science fiction writers." SIGMA was started by Arlan Andrews, a writer who also worked at the White House Science Office. "If you don't read science fiction, you're not qualified to talk about the future," he said. Since the 9/11 attacks, SIGMA has worked closely with the Department of Homeland Security, and influenced it in particular to set up the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency, or HSARPA. A parallel to the Defense Department's DARPA, HSARPA spends about $7 million a year (1 percent of the agency's budget) on futuristic "high impact" projects. At a government conference where authors like Bear spoke in 2007, a government official defended the science fiction link to policy. "Congress asks me how can I afford to roll the dice with 1 percent of the taxpayers' money," tells Jay Cohen, head of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate. "I say there are bad people in the caves of Tora Bora who are rolling the dice with 100 percent of their money." Bear sees the influence of his work and his access to policymakers as coming in part from the focus on conflict. Referring to the many military readers of his work, he says, "If you lead the life, you tend to choose to read fiction about it." He also sees science fiction's influence spreading via its crossover into popular technologic thriller authors like Tom Clancy and Dan Brown, who are especially popular among military readers. This fandom extends to the top. "There is a pretty striking amount of government officials that read science fiction," Bear says. "Harry Truman loved science fiction. He was an 'other planets' type of guy....Reagan liked the older writers like Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Reagan even gave [promotional] quotes to writers and was not averse to receiving papers from them, when he was president." He goes on to note that, as someone who leans left in his politics, he's somewhat disappointed that recent Democrats tend to be less likely than the Republicans to be science fiction fans. "They seem to be more like FDR and get into the legal thrillers and mysteries." # DIRECT INSPIRATION, OR "HOW WILLIAM SHATNER CHANGED THE WORLD " Science fiction may be incredibly popular, but raw fandom doesn't necessarily translate into influence. If that was the case, as I write this, Hannah Montana would be the most powerful person on the planet. Rather, science fiction's influence on real-world science and even war comes through a variety of pathways. The most simple is the direct way, giving scientists ideas of what to invent. And nothing better proves this than _Star Trek_. Or, as William Shatner (the actor who portrayed Captain Kirk on the original series) claims, "All this wiz-bangering didn't happen by accident. I made it happen. Or rather, _Star Trek_ did." While the original series only lasted three years (1966-69) before it was canceled by NBC due to low ratings, _Star Trek_ has since boldly gone where no work of fiction has gone before. It spun off five other TV shows, ten movies (an eleventh is in the works), an entire library of books (Amazon.com lists 4,276 _Star Trek_ books), and a city's worth of exhibits, rides, and museums. The mecca of all this is "Star Trek: The Experience," an interactive museum at the Las Vegas Hilton hotel and casino. Where Elvis used to do his famous "Viva Las Vegas" show, today you can drink a "Commander Riker-Rita" at Quark's Bar or renew your Vulcan wedding vows. All told, the _Washington Post_ estimates that the worldwide fan base is 250 million Trekkies strong. The original show came out of the vision of Gene Roddenberry, a World War II bomber pilot turned Hollywood producer. While he wanted technology that "looked futuristic," the reality often had a different point of origin. For example, many recall the famous "transporter" that each episode would beam Kirk, Spock, and an anonymous, certain-to-die, red-shirted crewman down to the planet's surface. Screenwriters now tell that the origin of the transporter actually came about when the prop company didn't deliver a mockup of a shuttle craft in time. These ideas, however, certainly made an impression on a generation of kids turned scientists. They became determined to make the world have technology just like they'd seen their heroes use in their favorite show. Martin Cooper, the inventor of the cell phone, recalls that his "eureka" moment of inspiration came when watching a _Star Trek_ episode in his lab. "There's Captain Kirk, talking on a communicator, without dialing! I think 'This thing is genius.' . . . The _Star Trek_ communicator to us wasn't a fantasy. It was an objective." Similarly, John Adler of Stanford Medical School observes that Dr. McCoy's sick bay "revolutionized the way we think about patient care." Inspired by Bones's medical tricorder (actually just a tricked-out salt shaker), Adler revolutionized the medical field by inventing the cyber knife, which does surgery by sending a beam into cancer tumors. Rob Hatani, who was equally inspired by the tricorder to invent the PalmPilot PDA, explains that this degree of influence is to be expected, given the popularity of the show among scientists. "In Silicon Valley, everyone's a _Star Trek_ fan. It's like football in Green Bay." The franchise and its influence was reborn again in the 1980s with _Star Trek: The Next Generation_. The successor series differed in often focusing on the darker side of technology (such as its introduction of the Borg, the new adversary species, whose robotic technology had eradicated all empathy), but it too had a major influence on scientists. For example, Steve Perlman recalls how his inspiration moment came when watching an episode in which the robot Data relaxes by listening to several symphonies stored on his computer. Perlman went on to invent QuickTime, a software program that stores and plays electronic audio and video files. This, in turn, helped make possible iPods and other portable digital music players. Today, Perlman is working to make a virtual reality playroom, modeled after the _Enterprise'_ s Holo-Deck. The inspirational role of science fiction extends beyond the world of Trekkies, and is especially pronounced in military technology. An illustration comes from an anthology of short stories entitled _The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century_. The volume is a collection of the most popular science fiction short stories, written from 1900 to 2000, set in war. What is noteworthy is that thirty-four technologies dreamed up in the last century are now under development by the U.S. military in this century. These range from exoskeleton suits that soldiers might wear to an automated defense system for tanks, now called by the Pentagon "Active Protection Systems." Those working in the military weapons development field are often surprisingly open about where they get their ideas. Colonel James Lasswell is a retired infantry officer now at the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab. He says, "The fact that it exists in our own movies proves that it is potentially possible.... If you can imagine it, we think it can happen." For instance, when pondering how to aid marines in the battle against IEDs in Iraq, his team sent a request to DARPA to start working on what he called "Jedi Broomsticks," that is, the hovering speeder bikes that appeared in _Star Wars: Return of the Jedi_. "We wanted ground mobility, but not on the ground." The jet bikes are still not yet deployed, but another science fiction idea come true is miniature communications devices a marine can wear on his wrist and watch video footage shot by a UAV above. "We got the idea from _Dick Tracy_ ," Lasswell says with a chuckle. As Andrew Bennett, who leads the design team at iRobot, says, "We were all influenced by science fiction. You are always looking for ideas and science fiction is one of many sources." His colleague Bryan Yamaguchi laments, "But now we are finding that our stuff is getting more advanced than science fiction." # FUNDING SCI-FI The researchers are not the only ones who grow up on this diet of science fiction. So too do the funders who decide which weapons programs to pay for. As former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (who actually visited Isaac Asimov's apartment when he was in Congress) explains, "People like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Carl Sagan did an amazing amount to convince humans that science and technology were important." Perhaps the best illustration of this is at the Air Force Research Lab's Directed Energy Directorate at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. In 2005, it rolled out a new prototype weapon with the mundane title of "Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response," or PHaSR. People in the military tend to speak out an acronym as if it were one word, rather than reading the letters. So the whole convoluted name was just a way to call the Pentagon's new weapon a "phaser," the little ray gun from _Star Trek_ that Kirk always "set to stun" before he beamed off to explore new worlds and romance buxom alien women. The PHaSR system is essentially a laser rifle whose beam can stun a target more than two hundred yards away, a nonlethal weapon perfect for mounting on a robot. When asked why they chose that name, program manager Captain Thomas Wegner proudly answers, "We picked the PHaSR name to help sell the program. It's an obvious homage to _Star Trek_." It is often difficult to figure out just what the future will look like, but science fiction creates both an expectation and early acceptance of technologies that are not yet fully developed. As Bill Gates explains, _Star Trek_ paved the way for his job at selling small, easy-to-use computers to the public. "It told the world that one day computers would be everywhere." He sees the same happening with robots from movies like _Star Wars_ and _I, Robot_. "The popularity of robots in fiction indicates that people are receptive to the idea that these machines will one day walk among us as helpers and even as companions." Military robot developers see the same trend when selling to the Pentagon. One explains, "It's a way to make possibilities seem real, but also inevitable." Sometimes, though, the popularity of science fiction among military funders can actually make it harder on researchers. "Naval customers just assume it will happen," explains Thomas McKenna at ONR. Likewise, the military funders tend to want the cooler technologies, while the mundane are less likely to get funded. One U.S. Army researcher working on nonlethal weapons systems complains, "You have to beg for money for things like beanbags or acoustics. But say it's for a laser or a lightsaber and the money is no problem." # THE LENS OF THE LOOKING GLASS "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," famously argued English physicist and science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke. Indeed, when the warriors of the Hehe tribe in Tanzania surrounded a single German colonist in 1891, they seemingly had little to fear. But he had a magic box that killed almost a thousand spear-armed warriors by spitting out death faster than they ever imagined possible, the machine gun. New technologies often can seem not merely incomprehensible, but unimaginable. Science fiction, though, allows us to jump that divide. It helps to take the shock out of what analysts call "Future Shock." By allowing us to imagine the unimaginable, it helps prepare us for the future, including even in war. This preparation extends beyond future expectations; science fiction creates a frame of reference that shapes our hopes and fears about the future, as well as how we reflect on the ethics of some new technology. One set of human rights experts I queried on the laws of unmanned warfare referenced _Blade Runner, The Terminator_ , and _Robocop_ with the same weight as they did the Geneva Conventions. At another human rights organization, two leaders even got into a debate over whether the combat scenes in _Star Trek_ were realistic; their idea was that this could help determine whether the fictional codes of the Federation could be used as real-world guides for today's tough ethical choices in war. By far the most influential writer when it comes to the right and wrong of robots is Isaac Asimov. Every single roboticist knows Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics" by heart, and they have become _the_ reference point for ethical discussions about robots. Yet they are fiction, never intended for the real world. Instead, each of the stories in _I, Robot_ uses the laws as a jumping-off point to look at the problems that occur when robots try to follow the laws in the complexity of the real world. Many of our expectations and ethical assumptions around real-world robots come from science fiction. The irony is that the same stories that inspire and fund the research can also create assumptions that are often incredibly frustrating to real-world researchers. As one scientist discussed, "There seems a strong tendency over the decades to view robots as something evil, like technology run amok." These fears date back to the slaves of Karel Capek's 1921 play _R.U.R_. and the mechanical minx Maria, an evil robot in Fritz Lang's 1927 film _Metropolis_ (her ultimate evil was illustrated by the fact that she liked to both oppress the urban poor and dance exotically). They continue today in such movie franchises as _The Terminator_ and _The Matrix_. Bart Everett of the navy lab describes it as a "paranoia" that "stems from the fact that doomsday scenarios make for better movies. As a result, there is often confusion with regard to what the technology actually can and cannot do today, as well as where it's headed in the future." Regardless, the reality is that science fiction always lies in the forefront of debates over such key questions as whether robots should be armed or how much autonomy they should be given. And yet this doesn't drive the field toward any one conclusion. The galaxy of stories that science fiction writers have created is simply too diverse. Indeed, just as there is not one single world of regular fiction, there is no one culture of science fiction. The field itself can be different across time and space and thus have changing influences on how we frame the world of science. For example, if _Star Trek_ was dominant in the 1960s, _Harry Potter_ is the power series of today. To put it another way, kids today are infinitely more likely to know what a Chizpurfle is than a Tribble (for the uninitiated, a tiny, mitelike creature that feeds on both magic and electricity versus pink furballs that reproduce at exponential rates). Even though J. K. Rowling created a world more of fantasy than science fiction, its influences are already being felt within the real world of war and weapons development. Researchers in both Britain and the United States (with DARPA funds) are now hard at work on an invisibility cloak that works just like the one young wizarding student Harry inherited from his father. The real-world one is set to be made of novel "metamaterials," which can be tuned to bend radio waves and light, so that the cloak would neither reflect light nor cast a shadow (a true science fiction comparison would be the chameleon camouflage used by the alien in _Predator_ ). John Pendry, a physicist at the Imperial College London, notes that the _Harry Potter_ link may not be an exact one: "To be realistic, it's going to be fairly thick. Cloak is a misnomer. 'Shield' might be more appropriate." Older scientists also note that, as Rod Brooks of iRobot puts it, "There is becoming a generational difference in where the science fiction influence comes from." As he explains, his major influences were science fiction books. For his colleague Helen Greiner, it was movies. Today, for his students at MIT, it is video games. "And I have no idea what will be the different impact of these." One may be that the "new media" allow better special effects, but demand far less introspection. As soldiers grow up more familiar with the first-person shooters of video games like _Doom_ or _Halo_ and less the moral questioning of books like _I, Robot_ or the "Prime Directive" dilemmas of _Trek_ , we may find that the medium matters greatly. Culture also appears to play a role. Just as the French love their Jerry Lewis and the English their Benny Hill, the popularity and influence of certain science fictions are linked to national tastes. For example, _Dr. Who_ is perhaps the most popular sci-fi series in the United Kingdom, running for over a quarter century on the BBC (1963-1989) and spinning out two movies. In the United States, however, _Who_ remains mainly a cult thing. Part of the explanation may lie in that the main hero is basically an oddball, go-lucky sort of guy, who stumbles into trouble while flying about the world in a spaceship that looks like a phone booth. We Americans like our science fiction heroes to be a bit more strong, cool, and dangerous; Dr. Who is no Han Solo. If the British and the Americans differ along these lines, science fiction truly leaps in culture between East and West, especially when it comes to perceptions of robots. While the robot is consistently something suspicious in Western science fiction, it is the exact opposite in Asian science fiction. Indeed, the very first popular robot in Japanese science fiction was the post-World War II "Mighty Atom," also known as Astro-Boy. A robot that keeps the peace among humankind, he was also a response to the man-made horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To this day in most Asian science fiction, especially in the anime genre, the robot is usually the hero who battles evil. This has heavily influenced both Japanese scientists and that nation's culture. "The machine is a friend of humans in Japan. A robot is a friend, basically," says Shuji Hasimoto, a robotics professor at Waseda University in Tokyo. "So, it is easy to use machines in this country." Japan's traditional religion of Shintoism holds that both animate and inanimate objects, from rocks to trees to robots, have a spirit or soul just like a person. Thus, to endow a robot with a soul is not an illogical leap in either fiction or reality. Indeed, in many Japanese factories, robots are given Shinto rites and treated like members of the staff. Masahiro Mori, a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, explains that Buddhism also makes for a more soulful approach to what a westerner would see as just a tool or maybe a mechanical servant. Mori, who wrote a book called _The Buddha in the Robot_ , argues that robots can have a Buddha-like nature and that humans should relate to them as they would a person. "If you make something, your heart will go into the thing you are making. So, a robot is an external self. If a robot is an external self, a robot is your child." In Asia, "companion" robots for the elderly are becoming quite common. One woman even found out she was dying of heart disease and included her Wakamura robot in her will. By contrast, Rodney Brooks of iRobot says that the mass-marketing robots as friends for elderly shut-ins is yet to be tried in the United States because most Americans find such a concept "too artificial and icky." Sebastian Thrun, the robot car racer from Stanford, tells how the differing science fictions create a "willingness [in Asia] to go into new technologies and gadgets that is higher there than anywhere in the world." As a result, his lab has more collaboration with Asian companies than American ones. The same differing attitudes and influences affect what different cultures think is acceptable in war. The question of arming unmanned systems and giving them the ability to shoot at humans is perhaps the most hot-button issue within the U.S. robotics community. It is far less controversial in Asia. Indeed, South Korea sent two robot snipers with rifles to Iraq in 2004 with essentially no debate; they were reported in the media to have "nearly 100%" accuracy. Even more notable is the Autonomous Sentry Gun, made by Samsung. The company, more known for making high-definition TVs, has integrated a machine gun with two cameras (infrared and zooming) and pattern recognition software processors. The gun system cannot only identify, classify, and destroy moving targets from over a mile away, but, as Louis Ramirez of _Gizmodo_ relates, "also has a speaker that beckons the fool that walks near it to surrender before being pulverized." South Korea plans to use the robo-machine guns to stand guard along the 155-mile demilitarized zone (DMZ) that borders North Korea. The attitudinal differences become even more evident when you watch the promotional video put out by the Korean company for its new toy. The footage shows the machine gun automatically tracking a human test subject, who unsuccessfully tries to dodge the robotic gun by running back and forth and hiding behind bushes. For something that a westerner weaned on a diet of _Terminator_ movies can't help but find disturbing, the vibe of the Korean commercial is a bit more celebratory. The footage of a real-world automated machine gun tracking humans is paired with the rousing theme song of the Disney movie _Pirates of the Caribbean_. # THE FEEDBACK LOOP "There's definitely a feedback between the sciences and science fiction," says James Cameron, creator of _The Terminator_ , as well as a board member of the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame. "It flows both directions.... Not only does science fiction inspire people to become scientists and want to ask questions about the real nature of existence and matter and reality, but what they're finding then feeds back into the science fiction community, and gets embraced by that, and spins out a whole new generation of science fiction." Real scientists, soldiers, and policymakers may be influenced by science fiction, but change is coming so quickly that the creators of these imaginary worlds are increasingly borrowing from the real one. As Greg Bear notes, "I actually worry that science fiction isn't keeping up." Author and science fiction writers' union head Robin Wayne Bailey concurs: "The military is doing a fine job with robotics. The toys they have could be placed within any science fiction story.... But to see what they have on the drawing board is mind-boggling to even science fiction writers." However, as science fiction experts look at some of what the military is doing today, many of them get frustrated. Donna Shirley may be the director of a science fiction museum in Seattle, but when the topic turns to the future of war, she is as smart as any political analyst inside the D.C. Beltway. "The Pentagon just doesn't get it. This high-technology stuff just doesn't work versus a distributed enemy like al-Qaeda.... No matter how many bunker busters you can drop from afar, if you don't know where someone is hiding it will not matter." And don't even get her started on the plans for National Missile Defense. "The idea of trying to hit a bullet with a bullet is silly. It is much easier and efficient to place your interceptor system offshore and take the missile out early in the launch stage when it is slow and easy to target.... But instead we are spending billions on the harder part just because it sounds really cool." And yet the field still has a stigma that keeps its experts hidden away, even when on Pentagon contract. For all its influence on the future of technology and even war, "it is ironic then that we are rarely invited to the table to discuss these issues openly," laments Robin Wayne Bailey. Perhaps we as a society ought to be paying more attention to the world of science fiction. It not only predicts and influences the future, but nothing may prepare us better to assess the consequences of a new technology than a field whose very essence is to ask questions about the moral, ethical, and societal dilemmas that new technologies might provoke. As Donna Shirley explains, "Science fiction says 'what if?' So, it doesn't say how exactly you can build the bomb. Instead, it says, if you build this bomb, you are going to get _Dr. Strangelove_." **[NINE]** **THE REFUSENIKS: THE ROBOTICISTS WHO JUST SAY NO** _Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right._ _—_ ISAAC ASIMOV Illah Nourbakhsh is an associate professor of robotics in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He is also the military robotics world's worst nightmare, the scientist who learned to say, "No, thank you." "As a kid, I was interested in taking things apart and putting them back together in weird ways," tells Nourbakhsh. He worked on solar car racers in college and then went to Stanford for graduate school. His research topics varied from genomics to AI. He recalls that when he first plugged his AI software into robots, "I was blown away by how little they could do. It was painfully obvious that robotics was delinquent." So he came back to his interest in taking things apart and putting them back together, weirder and better, and decided to make a career in the robotics field. As with most other students, much of the support for his early research came from Pentagon money. Soon, Nourbakhsh began to get requests for specific applications of his robotics research to battlefield scenarios. This was around the same time that he was taking a class which examined the social side of technology. "I had my epiphany moment. I put my foot down and said, 'I won't do it.' " When Nourbakhsh talks about the writers that influenced him the most, his decision begins to make even more sense. Rather than referencing science fiction as many other scientists do, he talks about the novels of Walker Percy, the Southern writer who wrestled with the ability of science to explain the basic mysteries of human existence. He recalls how a character in one of Percy's novels contemplated committing suicide. The character ultimately decided not to, as that would have been the last decision they ever made, as compared to all the other things they could choose to do with life. It became a sort of guidepost for Nourbakhsh as he wrestled with whether or not to take the military's money. "The general feeling I had was that every time you choose to do something, you are explicitly choosing not to do everything else. The point isn't what not to do, but what can you do best. That is, whatever you choose, choose what is most important to you." As a young graduate student, then, Nourbakhsh resolved to refuse all military money and chose to work only on the most positive research work he could find. "I wanted to feel I was working on something with immediate social-positive impact, rather than something neutral that could be used for good or ill later...I want to be able to say I've done some good in the world." His ethical decision, however, had financial consequences. "It is very easy to take the DARPA money and look at it as only for long-term research.... It is hard to get millions from any other source, plus you have a far better chance of winning DARPA grants than others." Yet, a full decade in, Nourbakhsh's plan has worked out. His current research projects include educational and social robotics, electric wheelchair sensing devices, believable robot personality, visual navigation, and robot locomotion. Nourbakhsh supports such programs with commercial sales of the products he's developed and with corporate research funds from firms like Intel, Google, and Microsoft. (He just laughed when I joked, "How is Microsoft less spooky than DARPA?") He is particularly excited about a program that uses robotics as an educational tool for expanding the number of people working on technology. He's found that if you can get youngsters interested in technology research, you can also use it as an avenue for teaching them other valuable life skills. With his credo in mind, then, Nourbakhsh helped found Robotic Autonomy, a summer robotics camp for underprivileged kids from San Jose. Using an "Ikea-like robotics set" that he designed, the kids are taught engineering and computer programming skills. They then compete in such challenges as "robotic musical chairs." The side effect of building robots, the instructors have found, is that the kids also build teamwork and leadership skills, as well as get excited about science and education. Many of the children coming from poor neighborhoods have later ended up going to Ivy League schools. In the last few years, Nourbakhsh has noticed a change. While no one really cared about his refusal of Pentagon money when he was a lowly graduate student, he is starting to make waves as a professor. He tells how several colleagues have quietly come up to him to say, "We are watching you. If you pull this off for several years, we may well do the same." He ends our talk by saying, "I'm a guinea pig and that makes me more firmly resolved to prove that it's possible." # DESIGNER'S REGRET? Illah Nourbakhsh is part of a new breed of those working in the robotics field. They are refusing the pimpage, because they are worried about the growing military interest in their work. "I would rather the military run out of reasons to keep existing, and I don't want them to have any credit for something I have accomplished—which they clearly would if they gave me the money," says Steve Potter, a researcher at the Laboratory for Neuroengineering, shared by Emory University and Georgia Tech in Atlanta. "They said, 'Here's some thousands of dollars because we think what you're doing is cool.' I said, 'Thanks, but no thanks.' And I get told of grants that would match my work, but I check them out and say, 'No, sorry, it's DARPA.' " Potter works on a project that wires up neurons from animals (that is, live brain cells) into robotic circuitry to make them learn quicker and be more flexible in thought than regular AI. In the words of one article, his "astonishing robotic creations would make a 21st century general drool—if the general could get his hands on them." Potter came to his stance of refusal from his family history. His father worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a defense-funded center at Caltech, which is now the home of NASA's robotic space exploration. His dad worked on projects like side-looking radar and was told it would be used to map Venus; later, he found out it was used on cruise missiles. Others refuse military funding because of concerns about how it subtly steers them away from their original motivations. "DARPA and ONR and other DOD agencies support quite a lot of research that I think is valuable and virtuous," says Benjamin Kuipers, a computer scientist at the University of Texas. "However, there is a slippery slope that I have seen in the careers of a number of colleagues. You start work on a project that is completely fine. Then, when renewal time comes, and you have students depending on you for support, your program officer says that they can continue to fund the same work, but now you need to phrase the proposal using an example in a military setting. Same research, but just use different language to talk about it. OK. Then, when the time comes for the next renewal, the pure research money is running a bit low, but they can still support your lab, if you can work on some applications that are really needed by the military application. OK. Then, for the next round, you need to make regular visits to the military commanders, convincing them that your innovation will really help them in the field. And so on. By the end of a decade or two, you have become a different person from the one you were previously. You look back on your younger self, shake your head, and think, 'How naive.' " This refusal to do military work actually fits within a longer tradition of scientific rebellion. The Manhattan Project was riven by disputes among the researchers involved. The civilian lead of the team, Robert Oppenheimer, was even made a lieutenant colonel in the army to give him standing in arguments with the military funders. Even then, a work stoppage by key scientists forced the military to put the project and its main lab at Los Alamos, under the control of the University of California, rather than at a military base under direct Pentagon authority. After the atomic bomb was built, an intense dispute brewed over the strategy for its use. The secretary of war, Henry Stimson, and the top U.S. military commander, General Marshall, met with a group of scientists, including Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi, in May 1945 to discuss this. But soon the men who had made the bomb were shut out of the decisions on how and when to use it, mainly because they wanted limits placed on its military applications. Ultimately, Oppenheimer was forced out of the project, in favor of the more hawkish Edward Teller, the "father of the H-Bomb," and the inspiration for Peter Sellers's _Dr. Strangelove._ Even with their more authoritarian system (where saying no had much worse consequences), the Soviets had similar problems with refusenik scientists. The brilliant physicist Andrei Sakharov was the designer of their first hydrogen bomb. He went on to become an advocate for nuclear disarmament, for which the dissident won the Nobel Peace Prize and was put in prison. Ultimately, nuclear scientists from around the world banded together to form an organization to work against the weapons they had once developed. Spurred on by a letter from Albert Einstein (who, ironically, had also sent the letter that initially convinced President Roosevelt to fund the atomic bomb's research), it had its first meeting in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, in 1957. While what became known as the "Pugwash movement for nuclear disarmament" ultimately won a Nobel Peace Prize, the nuclear refuseniks' efforts were more than a decade too late. The nuclear genie was already out of the bottle. Nuclear physicist Freeman Dyson tells how the simple problem was that there were not enough Illah Nourbakhshes at the time. Not enough of the scientists "had the courage of foresight to say no" when it actually mattered. "It is, in some ways, responsible for all our troubles—this what you might call technical arrogance, that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds." It is also interesting to note that Dyson was the inspiration for the "Dyson" character in the _Terminator_ movies, who invents the Skynet program, the AI gone mad that ultimately launches a nuclear holocaust on humanity, and later dies trying to destroy it. Indeed, many see a pointed lesson for the robotics scientists of today. As Bill Joy, the founder of Sun Microsystems and now a critic of much of the research in the field, writes, "The experiences of the atomic scientists clearly show the need to take personal responsibility, the danger that things will move too fast, and in a way in which a process can take on a life of its own. We can, as they did, create insurmountable problems in almost no time flat. We must do more thinking up front if we are not to be similarly surprised and shocked by the consequences of our inventions." Still, refusenik roboticists like Illah Nourbakhsh are a tiny minority, both in not taking the military money and in weighing the deeper questions about what it means to work on systems designed for war. Funding by the military is the norm, but it is also, tells Nourbakhsh, "a very touchy subject" that few like to talk about. When asked about his thoughts on the implications of arming robots, for example, Brian Miller, our NASCAR engineer turned roboticist, simply responds, "I stay out of politics." Likewise, Sebastian Thrun pointedly changes the subject when the topic of the political impact of his research comes up. "I am ignoring all of this to build this vehicle." He says he just focuses on the path of invention and discovery and compares his work to Charles Lindbergh's preparations for the first flight across the Atlantic. "He didn't do it thinking about all the regulations for transatlantic passenger travel it would inspire. He just did it." It is not that the researchers don't realize there are big issues at hand; indeed, the idea of having a major impact is what drives many of them to robotics research, as opposed to any of the other scientific fields in which they would thrive. Rather, as one writer described of DARPA, "What you don't get is much of a sense of introspection." While many roboticists are happy that their systems are being used to save lives, when it comes to talking about other military outcomes or codes of research ethics, most of the field demurs. Akin to the NRA mantra that guns don't kill people, they describe that their research can be used for good or ill and thus the responsibility for anything that happens outside their labs lies beyond them. A Carnegie Mellon researcher describes taking military funding as a necessary corollary to doing the research they want. "For 364 days out of the year you are building a good robot. For one day out of the year, you put some camouflage on it to bullshit DARPA." The same attitude carries over on the military funder side. When it comes to weighing any major ethical questions, as one DARPA program manager put it, "That's above my pay grade. That's not my department." Or as Michael Goldblatt, DARPA's defense sciences office director, puts it, these questions are best set aside for now. "You can't let the fear of the future inhibit exploring the future." The refuseniks think this is shortsighted and fear that the robotics field may well repeat what happened with the nuclear scientists. Illah Nourbakhsh asks, "Why go down that path again of working so hard to invent something and only then, after the fact, waiting to say, 'We now understand it, but it's too late'? It's silly not to talk about it [the ethics of military funding and how their inventions are used]....You can't shield yourself from the repercussions. We need the leaders in the field to talk about it, to bring in the ethicists and the political scientists." As robotics has grown, even those who do take military funding are starting to cite the need for introspection. Ronald Arkin is a professor at Georgia Tech. "Historically, technologists have been woefully ignorant of the implications of what they created," he says. "I would probably put myself in that category until a few years ago. Research and development will move forward, but we still need to understand what the consequences are, then come to grips with them and determine whether we should do anything about them." Such a discussion won't be easy. Robotics is a relatively new field, accelerating so quickly that it hasn't had time to wrestle with the deeper questions. It also isn't that well equipped to wrestle with deep ethical issues. "It's a generation that has been trained just to think technically. It is rare to find anyone that can think about science like Aristotle did, as a social phenomenon as well," ruefully notes Nourbakhsh. "I don't think there will be a code of ethics anytime soon." Others think that the whole discussion is beside the point. Even if one refuses military funding, the military can still get the fruits of one's labor off the open market (via the work of labs like the Marine Corps one). All you have done is save the government money, as the ultimate effect would be the same. Nourbakhsh doesn't dispute this and notes that all his findings are published in the public domain, and indeed, he is certain that the military has taken some of his research for its own uses. "Absolutely. You can't protect technology from all uses." But he then goes back to the choice he had between doing military robotics work or running a robotics camp for underprivileged kids. "How cool is that I know I am having a direct application that is socially positive? I know there is no walling off what I am working on from others, but I also know that there is some direct good coming out of it." This debate on whether researchers working on robots should do so at the military's behest will continue in the years ahead. Ultimately, it all may come down to a central question of our modern age, raised by Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk of the National Catholic Bioethics Center. "Technology has begun to outstrip our moral integrity. Just because we can, should we?" **[PART TWO]** **WHAT CHANGE IS CREATING FOR US** **[TEN]** **THE BIG CEBROWSKI AND THE REAL RMA: THINKING ABOUT REVOLUTIONARY TECHNOLOGIES** _Guns and violence have the potential to override any theory, no matter how sound._ _—_ U.S. ARMY LIEUTENANT "Here at the end of a millennium we are driven to a new era in warfare. Society has changed. The underlying economics and technologies have changed. American business has changed. We should be surprised and shocked if America's military did not." Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowski was talking about his vision of future war, called "network-centric warfare." Cebrowski was a former U.S. Navy pilot who had flown combat missions in Vietnam and commanded an aircraft carrier during the first Gulf War. "But there was another side to Cebrowski," describes one biographical sketch, "a nervous energy and maverick streak that made him prone to trendy theories and sky-high philosophyzing—which for a long time kept him out of the Defense Department's inner sanctum." For example, the admiral was known as "an obsessive Powerpointer." He made sure to use computer slide shows and substitute corporate jargon wherever he could, often sounding more like a management consultant than a military officer. For example, Cebrowski described the events of 9/11 as "a systems perturbation" and argued that military operations should be "value-added processes." In 1998, Cebrowski became president of the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. From his perch outside the Pentagon, Cebrowski began to agitate that change was afoot. The cold war was over and the U.S. military's task, he argued, was not to face off against an equivalent superpower. Instead, it should plan to "baby-sit the petri dish of festering problems we have around the world." It was with this in mind that Cebrowski, along with his writing partner John Garstka, a retired air force pilot, published a seminal article in _Proceedings_ , the navy's official journal. The article, entitled "Network-Centric Warfare: Its Origin and Future," became the centerpiece of a whole new approach to war. Like much of the writing in this era of dot-com Internet hype, it offered a grandiose vision that frequently veered from cool military analysis to the writings of an acolyte. Cebrowski wrote with an admiration, bordering on obsession, of the many wonders of the new technology companies whose stock prices were then soaring and the triumphant business models that were seemingly changing the fabric of business and society. He cited lessons from Cisco, Dell, and even American Airlines, as to how information technology was giving American businesses newfound advantages, which, in turn, presented a new model of fighting and winning wars. Seeing a parallel with the U.S.'s strategic position, Cebrowski was particularly fascinated by market behemoths. He was extremely impressed with companies like Wal-Mart, whose IT backbone allowed it to link together disparate operations, react quickly to a changing marketplace, and thus stomp out pesky mom-and-pop stores. Just as Wal-Mart had "total information awareness" over the marketplace, so too could the Pentagon have a perfect picture of the battlefield. In turn, just as the behemoth of Microsoft had supposedly reduced its competitor Apple into what he called a permanent market "niche," Cebrowski argued that the United States could do the same to its foes in war. "Locking-out competition and locking-in success can occur quickly, even overnight. We seek an analogous effect in warfare." Cebrowski's idea was not merely that information technology was changing the way organizations operated, but that the shift to IT networks was a change of a whole different order of magnitude for the history of war. It would "affect the where, the when, and the how of war." As he concluded, "For nearly 200 years, the tools and tactics of how we fight have evolved with military technologies. Now, fundamental changes are affecting the very character of war....We are in the midst of a revolution in military affairs (RMA) unlike any seen since the Napoleonic Age, when France transformed warfare with the concept of levee en masse." # "A SUDDEN TEMPEST WHICH TURNS EVERYTHING UPSIDE DOWN " When people think about change in business, technology, or war, they usually imagine a linear process. Over time, slight improvements are made that make systems better, faster, cheaper, or give them a bigger bang. Every so often, however, a change comes along that wipes the table clean. It rewrites the rules, changes the players, and alters the organizations, strategies, and tactics. The parallel in the business world is "disruptive technologies" that fundamentally transform an industry, even to the point of ending it. The most recent example of this would be how the music industry has been inalterably revolutionized by the world of online file sharing. The key to such shifts is that they have not only first-, but also second- and third-order effects that act like bow waves, sweeping the field and beyond, almost like societal versions of Kurzweil's Singularity. These broader effects are often unpredictable to those living at the time when the technology is introduced. When the automobile was invented in the 1880s, it soon became clear to many that these "horseless carriages" were going to affect transportation in some way. But who could have predicted that cars would reshape American cities by creating "suburbia," burn enough carbon dioxide to help heat up the planet, provide what were then Arab nomads with a stranglehold on the world economy, and give teenagers freedom from their parents' supervision while courting, thus creating social phenomena like "dating" and the subsequent "Sexual Revolution"? In the military realm, these paradigm shifts are called "revolutions in military affairs" (RMAs), something essential to understanding Cebrowski's excitement over information technologies, as well as the real impact of robotics. RMAs typically involve the introduction of a new technology or organization, which in turn creates a whole new model of fighting and winning wars. A new weapon is introduced that makes obsolete all the previous best weapons, such as what armored, steam-powered warships did to wooden, wind-powered warships. Or it may be that a military figures out how to organize itself in a new way around an already known weapon, which makes all the old ways of fighting futile. An example of this would be how the English made longbow archers an integral part of their army in the Middle Ages, ending the dominance of horse-mounted knights. Such technologies need not be purely military in nature to change the field of battle. The horse stirrup and the railroad, for example, both spurred RMAs that led to the rise and fall of empires, but neither could be described as an exclusively military technology (much like robotics today). Indeed, the most radical shifts in war tend to parallel similarly major changes in the economy. Whether it's adjusting to steam-powered warships or steam-powered factories, a hallmark of revolutions is that, as management guru Peter Drucker puts it, leaders "must prepare to abandon everything they know." From the longbow to nuclear weapons, historians identify at least ten revolutions in military affairs since 1300. And each time, these RMAs felt like being in "a sudden tempest which turns everything upside down." This is how a fifteenth-century Italian politician described what it was like to watch cannon easily flatten the castle walls that had protected his city for centuries. Not everyone is enamored with the idea of RMAs. Their main problem is that almost every time a new technology is introduced in war, its long-term impact is overpromised. Retired army officer and military analyst Ralph Peters, for example, jokes that "when the first early man discovered that he could bind a sharp stone to a stick with a leather thong, you can be certain that he turned immediately to his pals across the campfire and shouted, 'I've just achieved the ultimate revolution in military affairs!' " However, it is indisputable that technology-driven RMAs do shape history. That Italian politician witnessed the start of the RMA that became known as the gunpowder age. At its start, 1450, the Italian city-states were the leading powers in Europe, while Europe, in turn, was a relative weakling on the world stage, only controlling 15 percent of the globe. Within a century, the dominant powers were unified kingdoms like Britain, France, and Spain that had figured out how to best use this revolution to their advantage, and Europe was on its way to controlling 84 percent of the globe. Much of this conquest came through encounters with local powers, where the massive numerical disadvantage of the European colonists was more than outweighed by their technologic advantage. The Spanish conquistador Cortés, for example, conquered the eight-million-strong Aztec empire with a force of just eight hundred men. "How do you become a winner in an era of technologic upheaval and avoid becoming road kill? You might think it is to get the best and most gadgets. But you'd be wrong," says Max Boot, author of _War Made New_ , a history of RMAs. The key to success is not just inventing or buying a new technology, but also how you harness it. The Germans, French, and British, for instance, all had tanks, aircraft, and radios at the start of World War II, but the Germans figured out how to combine them all together into the blitzkrieg, a new way of mechanized warfare that revolutionized war in the twentieth century. Or as air force officer Scott Murray explains, "Imagine for a moment that you could go back in time and give a knight in King Arthur's court an M-16. If he takes the weapon, gets back on his horse, and uses the stock to knock his opponent's head, it's not transformational. Transformation occurs when he gets behind a tree and starts shooting." For this reason, RMAs often take a while to bear fruit. The English army didn't just roll out prototypes of the longbow for its peasants to use in the historic defeat of the French knights at the battle of Crécy in 1346, which helped end the age of feudalism. Instead, the weapons and tactics that proved so revolutionary were perfected in the English civil wars more than a century before. However, the pace and duration of these transitions seem to be coming faster and faster. The changes brought by gunpowder played out over centuries, those of steam engines, telegraphs, and railroads (the first industrial RMA) over a century, and internal combustion engines, radio, and flight (the second industrial RMA) over a few decades. This is also why a good sign of an RMA is the rise of hybrid technologies. There are always early and late adaptors of any technology. Much like what is going on with our cars today, hybrids are usually last gasps of those who recognize something is up, but aren't willing to fully change. They want to have it both ways, by layering new technologies onto old platforms. The Spanish did their best to stave off the Age of Sail with galleasses, which were oar-powered galleys that they also mounted sails and cannon onto and sent out as part of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Of course, these rickety hybrids proved useless compared to the purpose-built English sailing ships that were both more seaworthy and packed more cannon. Most galleasses never even made it home. Similarly, steam-powered warships in the British navy still mounted sails until 1880. Boot calls such hybrids "the military equivalent of a duck-billed platypus." While marginally better than the old way, they are not only typically ugly, but also far less effective than a full transition to the new technology RMA (the robotic equivalents are the convertible systems). In turn, just because the old technology sticks around doesn't mean that a revolution hasn't occurred. For example, many people around the world still push plows behind donkeys, the same way people did two thousand years ago. That doesn't mean that industrialization and biotech haven't revolutionized the overall field of agriculture. The same holds true in war. The German army that launched the blitzkrieg at the start of World War II still had horse cavalry divisions, but it was the tanks in its panzer divisions that signified the RMA. Often, no one even recognizes that an RMA has happened until after the fact. For example, machine guns allowed tiny European armies to beat huge tribal forces in the late 1800s. But it wasn't until after the slaughter of the first few years of World War I that generals would finally acknowledge that machine guns had also revolutionized the way fighting would take place on European battlefields. # IT'S ALL ABOUT THE NETWORK, BABY To Cebrowski and the movement he would come to signify, the twenty-first-century revolution in war would be information technology networks. The key to what was called "network-centric warfare" was the shift to the new information technologies of computers, the Internet, fiber optics, and so forth, which allowed an enhanced level of connection and information sharing. Planes or ships or soldiers in the field didn't have to communicate via carrier pigeons, telegraph, or radios but could now instantly e-mail each other. This would infinitely speed up the pace of operations, they argued. Soldiers and generals a continent away could look at the same image online, at the same time, which they felt would provide shared awareness of what was going on. This ability to "network information" would allow various military units to "self-synchronize" their efforts. They could operate with a speed and cohesion that would "dramatically increase force effectiveness." Central to the network-centric concept was, as the name suggests, the power of the network. That is, a network linked together would be quicker, smarter, and more lethal than the sum of its individual parts and would quickly overwhelm whatever foe lay in its path. This "information advantage," argued Cebrowski, would be huge. The sharing of information across the system, as well as the ability to crack into the enemy's systems, would create "near-perfect" intelligence. The side that was networked would not only know exactly where its own soldiers were, so that they could be deployed to perfect efficiency, but it would also know where the enemy was, even better than the enemy troops' own leaders. Your side could destroy an enemy unit not only before it saw you, but even before the enemy's own commanders knew his units had arrived on the battlefield. This advantage of networking created two fundamental differences with past RMAs, argued proponents like Cebrowski. The first is that it was the software, not the hardware, of war that mattered. Indeed, the corps of followers that sprang up to back the network-centric concept described "a move away from platforms to networks" as the ideal model of war. That is, for the very first time in war, the weapon system you were using was beside the point. What now mattered was whether you were "networked" into a "system of systems." The second difference, they argued, arose from its focus on sharing information. This RMA would do something that no other had been able to achieve: lift the proverbial "fog of war." The term "fog of war" originally referred to the immense clouds of smoke created by musket fire that often obscured what was happening in battles. Today it refers to all the confusion, mistakes, delays, and misperceptions that happen in war because of the difficulty of coordinating operations in an atmosphere of fear, fatigue, and uncertainty while another side is trying to kill you. The famous nineteenth-century Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz, whose textbook _On War_ is taught at every U.S. military school, argued that the combined problems of "fog" (getting good information was difficult in battle) and "friction" (actions rarely work out as planned in battle) were inherent, enduring, and inevitable aspects of war. "Everything in war is very simple," he observed, "but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable unless one has experienced war." According to its supporters, this new RMA had solved these problems. The networked approach meant that commanders could command and soldiers could fight, as one report put it, with "near-perfect clarity." "Lifting the fog of war" (as one book was even titled) would "result in a quantum leap in operations." Or, as another report on this new philosophy of war put it, "technological innovation, particularly in information technology, will purge the conduct of war of the uncertainties and ambiguities of the past. For those happy powers that set the technological pace, war will become an essentially frictionless engineering exercise." The network-centric crowd had huge expectations for such a shift. Through achieving "information dominance," a networked military force would be like a Wal-Mart at war with a bunch of small-town mom-and-pop stores; it would inevitably be "a winning force." Even better, they argued, this new revolution was tailor-made for the United States. As one later argued in an official magazine of the U.S. military, "The U.S. is the only nation that is successfully and at great speed adapting to the new information-based technologies.... By linking a system of systems, the U.S. can develop battle space awareness for commanders while preventing enemies from doing the same." Cebrowski and Garstka's famous article even made historic comparisons, hinting that history would one day look back at the networking revolution as comparable to the agricultural and industrial revolutions. As one report on the movement he helped start said, "The IT-RMA was pitched as nothing short of a paradigm shift in the character of conflict and the conduct of warfare. It entailed the combination of new technologies and innovative operational and organizational concepts that fundamentally altered how one thought about war and war fighting. Consequently, the RMA involved much more than merely overlaying new technologies and hardware over existing force structures—it was necessarily a process of far-reaching, disruptive change." # GULPING DOWN THE KOOL-AID The idea of a network-centric revolution in war, at which only the United States could win, was immensely appealing. Indeed, soon after the article, presidential candidate George W. Bush laid out his vision of the future of the U.S. military in a key speech at the Citadel. At the center of it, Bush proclaimed, would be "a revolution in the technology of war," which would allow the United States to "redefine war on our terms." As conservative analyst Fred Kagan notes, "Bush was (and remains) a firm believer in the idea of an RMA; he had proclaimed it a priority as early as 1999, long before anyone imagined that Donald Rumsfeld would again become secretary of defense." While it is unclear to what depth Bush grasped the nuances of the network-centric model of warfare, it was indeed a mantra among the "Vulcans," who had drafted Bush's speech. Led by Condi Rice, the Vulcans were a group of conservative defense intellectuals and former national security officials who advised the then Texas governor on security and foreign policy issues. When Bush won, they all moved into top leadership positions at the Pentagon, State Department, and White House. Once in power, as historian Max Boot (himself a conservative commentator) phrased it, they sought to fully "harness the technological advances of the information age to gain a qualitative advantage over any potential foe." Retired marine officer Frank Hoffman even argues that the new team went beyond Cebrowski in their fandom. "They accepted the presumptions of the RMA school and took them to a higher level." After Bush's inauguration, his new leadership team at the Pentagon, led by Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense, moved quickly to make the vision of network-centric warfare a reality. The cantankerous Rumsfeld saw this as his opportunity to put his own stamp on the U.S military. In February 2001, just days into office, the new team announced that it would increase by $20 billion the research and development spending on "transformational" technology that would "propel America's Armed Forces generations ahead in military technology." In turn, the continuation of any existing military project would hinge on whether it fit into this new idea of a "transformation" to network-centric warfare. Rather than a mass change in what weapons the Pentagon bought, Rumsfeld's transformational vision was that the networking of these weapons together meant that it should change the way military operations were conceived. With the fog of war lifted and the "system of systems" working to perfection, fewer forces could be sent into battle and they could be lighter, quicker, and more decisive. The "platforms" were almost beside the point. "Today," Rumsfeld stated, "speed and agility and precision can take the place of mass." More could be done with less. Perhaps the greatest sign that the new team at the Pentagon was drinking the network-centric warfare Kool-Aid was what happened next for Admiral Cebrowski. As an article in the U.S. Navy's official journal put it, "If 'Rummy' was the president's high priest of Defense Transformation, Cebrowski was his major prophet, or better yet messiah, announcing the New World Order just on the horizon." The recently retired admiral was empowered in a way that he could never be while in active service, even when he had been in charge of the Naval War College. One of Rumsfeld's signature organizational shake-ups at the Pentagon was the creation of a new Office of Force Transformation. For the next four years, Cebrowski would be its director. As one article on his role describes, Cebrowski was no longer an acolyte clamoring for change from the outside. "In this position, he was responsible for serving as an advocate, focal point, and catalyst for the transformation of the United States military." A few months later, the 9/11 attacks occurred and the vision of network-centric warfare was put to the test. As America struck back in Afghanistan, it soon appeared that the theories had proven correct. The key figures in the movement soon were declaring that it was the networking which had allowed U.S. forces to prevail where 80,000 Soviets had failed just a decade earlier. The few hundred American special forces that were first sent in were smaller in number than their Taliban foes, but they had beaten them convincingly. Networking meant that even individual soldiers riding on horseback could tap into information and awareness that altered the whole equation of battle. With this "Afghanistan model" seeming to validate the whole vision of network-centric warfare, the idea took hold in the Pentagon that earlier notions of what it would take to topple a regime like Saddam Hussein's no longer held true. This lowering of expected costs made the idea of invading Iraq far more appealing. Fully 680,000 coalition troops may have been needed to take back tiny Kuwait during the 1991 Gulf War, but the acolytes argued that by using the network-centric approach, far fewer troops would be needed in 2003 to do far more (indeed, many originally wanted just 20,000 troops sent for the Iraq invasion, but after some pushback from the generals, the force was ultimately raised to 135,000). As historian Max Boot tells it, "Iraq, in turn, was set up from the beginning to be the ultimate test of network centric warfare: a small, high tech invasion force, moving quickly and striking at only those targets necessary to instill 'shock and awe' in the Iraqi government." The early success in Iraq seemed to indicate once again that the network-centric way of war had changed everything. The previous RMA "gold standard" of invasions had been the German blitzkrieg in 1940, in which the Nazis took over France in just forty-four days, "at a cost of 'only' 27,000 dead soldiers." For the United States to seize Iraq in 2003, it took half the time, at .005 percent the cost (161 U.S. soldiers lost during the invasion, many of them actually killed by "friendly fire"). Again, the network-centric crowd cited that the key wasn't that the United States was using fundamentally different weapons than its previous war, but that the networking into information technology had proven "central to American military dominance." The transformation movement led by Admiral Cebrowski, and embraced by those in power, had seemingly proven that a revolution in war truly was at hand. Cebrowski, suffering from cancer, left the Pentagon at this high point in the movement, and passed away in 2005. # FACT AND FRICTION Not all was well with the revolution, however. The first problem turned out to be the business assumptions upon which the whole movement was based. Battlefields are not the same as corporate boardrooms. The stakes are higher, the measures of victory and defeat different, and, while a company can selectively invest only in markets it could succeed in or shut down business units that don't turn a profit, a military can't always choose when, where, how, and who it will fight—the enemy gets a vote. Plus, there's that little matter of violence. As one critic put it, "No one is shooting at the Coca-Cola Company." Even worse, the business assumptions behind network-centric warfare had been particularly selective. Cebrowski and his movement pulled their inspiration from the Internet boom in the late 1990s, when it seemed that having an IP address was all that it took for a business to succeed. Unfortunately, at almost the same exact time as the network-centric crowd was moving to put their supposed lessons from the market into place at the Pentagon, the market was learning its own new lessons. The fast money of "dot-com" was turning in to the crashing stock portfolios of "dot-bomb." What had worked for almost all the companies that Cebrowski, Rumsfeld, and others cited as models of success was not only difficult to translate into the setting of war, but wasn't even working for these companies anymore. Almost every one of the companies they had adoringly name-dropped, like Cisco, Dell, American Airlines, and even Enron, were struggling or bankrupt within a few years, while the market behemoths they wanted to emulate, like Microsoft and Wal-Mart, faced both renewed competitors and new troubles. "Sloppy thinking" was how retired marine Frank Hoffman described it. "Theories and business models drawn from the exuberance surrounding the IT revolution displaced quite a bit of history and factual context." The same sorts of results from "irrational exuberance" were experienced in Afghanistan and Iraq. The seemingly "perfect" military operations proved to be anything but. As one retired officer noted, "We will never operate under perfect conditions. We will always lack something, whether it's time, resources, or even a clearly defined mission." In Iraq, for instance, the fog of war cropped up in all sorts of places, even before the invasion morphed into the ensuing insurgency. Indeed, in the largest tank battle of the war, even the traditional sense of the term came back. An Iraqi Republican Guard counterattack was able to sneak right up on American forces simply because, as one soldier explained, "We kind of lost track of them in the smoke, haze, and confusion of the battle." The U.S. forces were all networked together, with a "blue force tracker" letting them know the position of all the friendly units, just as the network theorists had claimed would revolutionize war. The only problem is that they still didn't know who the enemy ("the red force") was or when and where he was coming. As one report dryly put it, "Situational awareness was proving to be more theoretical than actual." Or, as a marine joked, "When do we get red force trackers?" While the concept behind the Iraq war plan may have been IT-dominated, war itself couldn't be turned into a perfect execution of commands merely by linking people by e-mail. Instead, all the various forces of chance, confusion, and error common in every previous war (Clausewitz's "fog" and "friction") still were present. Moreover, when authentic experts in information technology examined the situation, they actually found a huge difference between the theories of networking and the reality in the field. Joshua Davis is a correspondent from _Wired_ magazine, published in the Silicon Valley cyber-culture that had so excited the Pentagon's network-centric crowd. As he recounts of embedding with U.S. forces during the invasion, "What I discovered was something entirely different from the shiny picture of techno-supremacy touted by the proponents of the Rumsfeld doctrine. I found an unsung corps of geeks improvising as they went, cobbling together a remarkable system from a hodgepodge of military-built networking technology, off-the-shelf gear, miles of Ethernet cable, and commercial software. And during two weeks in the war zone, I never heard anyone mention the 'revolution in military affairs.' " Rather than a seamless flow of information, soldiers wrestled with everything from Web browsers constantly crashing due to desert sand to heat fouling up equipment designed for use in offices, not battlefields. Indeed, at one point in Davis's reporting, an army lieutenant resorts to navigating a convoy using an improvised GPS and some handheld walkie-talkie radios that he had bought from a hardware store back home. The soldier joked that "if we run out of batteries, this war is screwed." Little did Davis or the soldier know how true that statement really was at the time. One of the many unanticipated aspects that the network crowd didn't take into account was how new technologies were creating new, unforeseen demands. The most widely used power source in the military is the BA 5590, a standard twelve-volt battery that powers everything from radios to antitank missiles. With all the networking, the demand for the batteries turned out to be much higher than ever planned (the marines alone were using up 3,028 of them a day). But there were no stockpiles. Explains the _DefenseTech_ journal, "Major combat missions during Gulf War II almost ground to a halt—because of a shortage of batteries." The only reason that the plug wasn't literally pulled on the Iraq invasion is that thirty other nations loaned the United States extra batteries. Ironically, many of these nations were the very same ones from "old Europe" that politicians like Rumsfeld had lambasted during the "freedom fries" period of anger at traditional allies who had chosen not to send troops to Iraq. As the fighting evolved from the invasion into a confusing and painful insurgency, it became all too clear that war would remain imperfect in Iraq, despite the supposed RMA of networking. While the network-centric crowd had been right that linking up would multiply the fighting power of each soldier, it was soon beside the point when forces couldn't figure out who was an insurgent and who was a civilian and how they were organized. "Information dominance" became an ironic joke. In describing what followed the supposed "gold standard" invasion of Iraq, Milan Vego, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, tells how "there is probably no conflict in which U.S. forces have fought in such ignorance of the enemy's purpose, strength, and leadership." # IGNORING THE REAL REVOLUTION In late 2006, over two hundred of the top thinkers and leaders in American security policy gathered for a discussion on "Rethinking the U.S. Military Revolution." Held in a Washington, D.C., conference center, replete with the mandatory stale breakfast muffins and bad coffee, the session featured speeches by leading professors, analysts, and even the air force general who had helped plan the opening round of the Iraq invasion. Over the course of the session, they debated back and forth the future of network-centric warfare, what it had delivered on and where it had failed, and even what might become of Cebrowski's old office, now that the venerable thinker had passed away. More notable is what the gathered leaders and experts didn't talk about. At this session, exclusively focused on what was revolutionary in war today and tomorrow, robotics and other unmanned technologies never came up, not even in a passing mention. The network-centric buzzword of "transformation" was used twenty-one times, despite the fact that by late 2006 it was clear that the advantages promised by its originators had not played out as expected. But words like "unmanned" or "robot" were never spoken, not even once. Compare this scene with a different sort of meeting, just a few months earlier at a military base. General William Wallace, the four-star general in charge of U.S. military training, held a question-and-answer session about new technologies of war with a group of army troops, most of whom were just back from Iraq. Instead of the general giving the answers, he was the one asking the questions. The very first question he posed, focusing on a captain, was, of all the revolutionary new technologies the unit had tested out, "which one single piece would you deploy today?" The soldier answered, "Sir, the PackBot." Or, as another soldier replied to a survey about what it was like to use this new unmanned system, "I believe that we are the pioneers of the _Star Wars_ systems of the future." The Cebrowski-led network-centric crowd was right. Something truly big is going on in war. But they were wrong on everything else. In focusing purely on the 1990s Internet boom as their mantra, the network-centric folks, as well as the broader security studies field at that conference, missed the revolutionary part. They ignored not just what the soldiers in the field were saying, but the far more interesting and important developments in technology just coming to fruition. The Internet has certainly affected how people shop, communicate, date, and even how they fight. That the network-centric crowd noticed this, particularly amid all the booming stock prices of the 1990s, was not all that difficult or surprising. But that did not make it an RMA, and certainly not one that would lift the fog of war. Instead, when both soldiers in the field and scientists back in the labs talk about what is now revolutionary in technology, today they point to something else. As Rodney Brooks says, what is far more important is a robotics revolution, now at its "nascent stage, set to burst over us in the early part of the twenty-first century. Mankind's centuries-long quest to build artificial creatures is bearing fruit." As opposed to the IT networks that simply allow information to flow easier, robotics and AI are the real "tsunami that will toss our lives into disarray." And yet such technologies are almost completely without discussion among today's theorists of war and politics. Indeed, the failure to even use the word "unmanned" in that sterile conference hall was only one example of how networks get attention, but robotics don't even merit mention. I found it repeated again and again at major conferences and in publications on military history and strategy. Something big is going on in war, technology, and politics, and yet very few who study security issues are talking about it. The result is that, as retired army lieutenant colonel Thomas Adams writes, we are "in something like the position of monarchies witnessing the democratic revolution at the beginning of the 19th century. Something profound and far-reaching is going on all around us, even within our own societies. But the advisors, courtiers, and generals that surround the throne are at a loss to determine what it means, much less what to do about it." It is not that the great minds who study war are willfully ignoring what is going on. Rather, as Bill Joy put it, "It is always hard to see the bigger impact while you are in the vortex of change." Like any other change, RMAs do not happen in one single discrete event, one rush of wholesale change. Many seemingly important changes can occur (and distract) before the truly revolutionary part becomes clear. In turn, most revolutions don't actually grow from one single invention, but from a convergence of technologies. For example, the Industrial Revolution that transformed society and then war in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries actually kicked off with the invention of the steam engine back in 1782. But the steam engine had to be brought together with everything from railroads to telegraphs for it to culminate as the industrial RMA that shaped World War I. A good person to explain is actually another of the major thinkers behind the RMA movement inside the Pentagon, Andrew Marshall. Despite being eighty-three years young, Marshall is the Pentagon's officially designated "futurist-in-chief," directing its Office of Net Assessment, akin to an internal think tank for the Pentagon. While he was a huge supporter of Cebrowski's and Rumsfeld's excitement over networks, Marshall also warned that what they saw as key leaps in technology could just be the beginning, not the end, of a different sort of RMA. "There is a tendency to talk about _the_ military revolution. This could have the sense that it is already here, already completed. I do not feel that this is the case. Probably we are just at the beginning, in which case, the full nature of the changes in the character of warfare have not fully emerged. . . . What we should be talking about is a hypothesis about major change taking place in the period ahead, the next couple decades." As Iraq soon illustrated, the network crowd was wrong that the fog of war would be lifted and wrong that the other side would be permanently locked out of the marketplace of war. Most important, it is becoming evident that they were wrong in their argument that the network, not the platform, was the only part that mattered. "Historians will see the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade or two of the 21st century as a turning point in the evolution of armed conflict," states a U.S. Army report, but not for the reasons that Cebrowski and the network acolytes originally believed. The networks of e-mail and Internet fiber optics that now bind military units together certainly do matter. They allow them to share information quicker than when they were using radios, phones, or faxes. But as we are beginning to learn, history will care far more about what these linkages _enable_. That is, these new digital links are important, but not as much as the platforms they now allow. What will stand out, what is historic for war, and human history in general, are the robotic weapons now playing greater roles on the battlefield. This is what future historians will find far more notable, not the difference between units connected by a fax versus an e-mail that so intrigued the network-centric acolytes. It is far more important that humans' 5,000-year-old monopoly over the fighting of war is over. This aspect of a fundamentally changed platform is also key to the story of whether an RMA is at hand. At their fundamental level, all the past RMAs in history were about changing how wars were fought. Whether it was the longbow, the gun, the airplane, or even the atomic bomb, the essential changes were new weapons and/or ways of using them that transformed the speed, distance, or destructive power of war. By contrast, the introduction of unmanned systems to the battlefield doesn't change simply how we fight, but for the first time changes who fights at the most fundamental level. It transforms the very agent of war, rather than just its capabilities. It is difficult to weigh the enormity of such a change. John Pike of the Global Security organization puts it into this broad historic context. "First, you had human beings without machines. Then, you had human beings with machines. And, finally you have machines without human beings." Security analyst Christopher Coker comments, "We now stand on the cusp of post-human history." Such broad strokes, though, don't help us understand exactly what these changes actually bode for war. While some have argued that the new technologies of precise weapons offer to take humankind into "a very different age; perhaps a more humane one," it is becoming clear that robotics and unmanned systems are still a revolution _in_ war. If it is a different sort of RMA, it is an RMA all the same. The modes, manners, and character of war have changed in past RMAs, and will do so with this one. But it doesn't mean everything will change. There the network-centric crowd was wrong again. Even in this most fundamental revolution of who fights in war, the foundations of war remain the same. Even with robots and other new unmanned technologies, war is still about using violence to make the other side do what you want. It is still against an enemy, trying to figure out how to use its strengths against your weaknesses. And it will still involve all the unexpected confusion, mistakes, and dilemmas that go hand in hand with both technology and war. The fog of war ain't going anywhere. Even with robots, we are learning that war will remain as unpredictable as it is enduring. # WOE-BOT, WHOA- BOT! January 25, 1979, was to be a special day for Robert Williams, a worker at Ford Motor Company's Flat Rock casting plant in Michigan. The twenty-five-year-old man's son was celebrating his second birthday. Unfortunately, it was also the same day that the robot operating an automated parts retrieval system near Williams's workstation went on the fritz. In reaching out for a part, the robot's arm swung up unexpectedly and smashed into the man's head. As a report at the time tells, "The robot kept operating while Williams lay dead for about 30 minutes." While one report described Williams as the first person in history "to be murdered by a robot," the reality is that his death was a result of a simple but tragic accident. He may have been the first, but he would be far from the last. A survey of American factories where robots are present found that 4 percent have had "major robotic accidents." Just what defines a "major robotic accident"? This category includes anything from robots smashing into people, like what happened to Williams, to pouring molten aluminum on them, or mistakenly picking up workers and placing them on conveyor belts, in order to be turned into cars. These sorts of incidents are not just limited to American robots. In Britain, for example, seventy-seven robot-related accidents were reported in 2006. In Japan, the incidents range from an unfortunate janitor who was accidentally turned "into sausage meat" by a robot to the time that Prime Minister Koizumi was literally "attacked by a humanoid robot" that malfunctioned and swung at him during a factory tour. One engineer puts it this way: "Robots are very complex, autonomous tools; they make their own decisions. You know how hard it is to program a VCR? A robot is like a VCR on crack." The dark irony is that the more advanced robots get, the more complex they become, and the more potential they have for a failure in either their hardware or software. One small widget cracks, slips, or breaks, and everything designed to work smoothly falls apart. Get even one icon wrong in billions of lines of code, and the whole system can either shut down or act unexpectedly. While Clausewitz would describe these as "fog" or "friction," there might be another way to think about this. The oft-cited Moore's law about growing technology capabilities is not the only law that applies to robotics. So does Murphy's law, the rule that "anything that can go wrong, will." (Murphy's law originally came from an air force researcher in the 1950s, Edward Murphy, who came up with it to capture the essential "cussedness" of inanimate objects.) Yet on the rare occasions when people in the political or military field do talk about unmanned systems and robotics, they tend only to comprehend the growing capabilities, not the accompanying complexities. They come across sounding like the slogan for Michael Crichton's _Westworld_ , a movie about robots going murderously berserk at a theme park. "Nothing can possibly go wrong . . . go wrong...go wrong." Indeed, at the start of my research for this book, I asked the then secretary of the army if he could identify any challenges that the greater use of unmanned systems would bring to the military. His response: "No." # "OOPS MOMENTS" Just before nine in the morning on October 12, 2007, the 10th Anti-Aircraft Regiment began its role in the South African military's annual Seboka training exercise. The operation involved some five-thousand troops from seventeen other units, so the pressure was on to get everything right. But the unit's automated MK5 antiaircraft system, sporting two 35mm cannons linked up to a computer, appeared to jam. As a follow-up report recounts, this apparently "caused a 'runaway.' " The description of what happened next is chilling. "There was nowhere to hide. The rogue gun began firing wildly, spraying high-explosive shells at a rate of 550 a minute, swinging around through 360 degrees like a high-pressure hose." The young female officer in charge rushed forward to try to shut down the robotic gun, but, continues the report, "she couldn't, because the computer gremlin had taken over." The automated gun shot her and she collapsed to the ground. The gun's auto-loading magazines held five hundred high-explosive rounds. By the time they were emptied, nine soldiers were dead (including the officer) and fourteen seriously injured, all because of what was later called a "software glitch." The story of unexpected things happening with robotic systems in war did not start in 2007. Indeed, it goes back to 1917, among the very first tests of unmanned weapons. The Sopwith AT was an experimental, radio-controlled version of the Sopwith Camel biplane (familiar to more people as the plane that Snoopy flew against the Red Baron). The drone was to be loaded up with dynamite and kamikazed into the German zeppelin blimps that were bombing Britain during World War I. At its first demonstration, the robotic biplane took off as planned, but then proceeded to dive at a crowd of generals watching below, who ran for cover. These sorts of errors and breakdowns continued through the nascent history of automated military systems in the twentieth century. The scariest had to have been when World War III almost started over a computer error. The Ballistic Missile Early Warning System was a detection system based in Greenland that was to warn if the Soviets launched their nuclear missiles. On October 5, 1960, the system "detected" a launch "with a certainty of 99.9%." NATO went on alert and prepared its retaliation. But, with just minutes to spare, the military figured out that the Soviets had not attacked; instead of flames from intercontinental ballistic missiles flying at the United States, the computer had detected the rising moon. It is fortunate for all humankind that this incident happened in October 1960, not two years later, which would have placed the computer's mistake right in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when fingers were on more of a hair trigger. Such a narrowly averted crisis sounds like something out of the movies, but these Hollywood scenarios played out far too often in reality. On November 9, 1979, a real-life version of the movie _WarGames_ occurred, when a test program was mistakenly loaded into the actual missile warning system. The program contained war games simulating missile launches. But not knowing these were games, the system interpreted the launches as real. The U.S. Strategic Command had reached the point of scrambling alert bombers into the air before the error was caught. Similarly, Eddie Murphy's otherwise forgettable movie _Best Defense_ played out in real life when the prototype of the automated DIVAD (division air defense) cannon was first tested in the 1980s. Instead of aiming at the target helicopter flying overhead, it mistakenly targeted a port-a-potty toilet behind a review stand full of visiting dignitaries (the toilet had a rotating fan in the vent, which fooled the gun system into thinking the potty was the target helicopter). Fortunately, the gun was unloaded, so the only people hurt were those who jumped from the top of the stands to run away. Even with the advanced robotic systems in use today, these same sorts of "incidents" still crop up. This is partly why the trend toward arming more and more automated systems, perhaps before they are ready, concerns so many. As technology journalist Noah Shachtman explains, "We've all had problems with our PCs freezing up, frying their little computer minds. That's inconvenient. But it's much more worrisome if it's a laptop computer armed with an M-16." A major cause of these sorts of "oops moments," as one roboticist at iRobot kindly termed them, comes from interference from electromagnetic signals. Every electromagnetic device has a bandwidth, but overlapping frequency bands create crosstalk and disruption. For instance, when you fly on an airplane, they ask you not to use cell phones or any other electronic devices during takeoff and landing, for fear that the various signals they send out might jam or disrupt the plane's communications and systems. The same can happen to a robot. One sergeant just back from Iraq described how his Talon robot "acts erratically" if it gets any radio-frequency interference. Another told how his robot would "go squirrelly" sometimes if it lost the signal. The robots are supposed to shut themselves down if the signal is compromised or cut off for any reason, so I asked him to explain what he meant by "squirrelly." He responded, "It will drive off the road, come back at you, spin around, stuff like that." The SWORDS is essentially a Talon robot with a machine gun or rocket mounted on top. So stories like these may explain why the system supposedly started spinning in a circle during one early demonstration (again, fortunately, the gun was not loaded at the time). A roboticist at a rival firm described this incident as the SWORDS doing "a Crazy Ivan" (making a reference to the movie _The Hunt for Red October_ , where a submarine would go in a complete circle, as if the driver was drunk). This problem is not exclusive to the Talon or SWORDS. The Marine Corps' Gladiator combat robot prototype (the one the size of a golf cart) also had a similar Crazy Ivan experience during its testing, driving about in a circle that left the marines at the exercise not knowing whether to laugh or run away. War zones have no kindly stewardesses to tell everyone to "turn off your cell phones and other electronic devices." Instead, between the radio signals, computers, machines, and electronic equipment (all the connections that define network-centric warfare), the modern-day battlefield is literally awash with electromagnetic waves and other potential interference. In turn, many of the robots used in the military use "over-the-counter" components that were not planned for the rigors of war. Even more, tells an engineer who tests robotic systems for the army, there are also great demands from the higher-ups to get the systems out to the field as quickly as possible. He described "pressure to try to pass safety tests only with the paper version [of the robot's design]; that is, no field tests." Matters get worse when the realities of war kick in. A particular tactic of the insurgents is to use radio signals and cell phones to trigger their IEDs to explode. U.S. soldiers have responded by equipping their vehicles with electronic jammers that block the signals, so that the insurgents can't order their roadside bombs to blow up. Unfortunately, the jammers are just as lethal to the robots. The Raven drones, for example, are supposed to fly themselves home if they lose their signal, but reportedly sometimes just crash when they fly over a unit using jammers. One (not so politically correct) army EOD team even nicknamed its Talon " _Rainman_ the robot." because whenever the robot got near a unit using jammers, it "starts acting even more autistic than usual." # DEEP-FRIED ROBOTS The Prussian general Helmuth von Moltke the elder is credited with the truism of war, "No plan survives first contact with the enemy." No matter how good the strategies and technologies one side has at the start, it can be counted on that the other will react, adjust, and change. The French existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre offered a parallel from sports: "In football, everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team." Whether it is Superman and Kryptonite or Wimpy and hamburgers, everything has a weakness. Indeed, even the Death Star, the most powerful weapon ever imagined in science fiction, was taken out by a young insurgent (yes, that's what Luke Skywalker was) dropping a bomb through a ventilation shaft. The same is true with real technologies of war. As writer and retired army colonel Ralph Peters explains, "The more complex any system becomes, the more inherent vulnerabilities it has. You just need to find one chink in the armor, change one integer in the code." Fog and friction don't just come from accidents, but also from an enemy. The robots of today may be revolutionary, but they have all sorts of weaknesses that are just being discovered. And when they are, they will be exploited. For example, what happens accidentally with electromagnetic interference might be done intentionally. Many robots are steered using GPS signals that help them find their location anywhere in the world. However, these signals are "weak and easily jammed," according to one U.S. Army report. Some companies reportedly offer GPS "blockers" commercially for as little as two-hundred dollars. One jamming device is even powered by plugging it into a car's cigarette lighter. Instead of jamming a system, an enemy might also try to use the interference to literally fry it. When the first nuclear bombs were tested, researchers discovered that, in addition to the explosion and radiation, the bombs also could create a massive electromagnetic pulse (EMP). When gamma rays collide with air molecules, they send out an intense burst of voltage that can cause surges and other kinds of damage to unprotected electric devices, even causing some systems to shoot sparks and catch on fire. It was because of this that, if the cold war ever turned hot, both the United States and the Soviet Union planned to detonate massive EMP bombs over each other's territory, to fry the other side's electricity and communications (a 100-kiloton EMP detonated at an altitude of fifty miles would burn out the electronics of any unprotected semiconductor within a 600-mile radius). While the effects of EMPs on electronic devices were originally discovered during cold war nuclear bomb tests, it is not necessary to use nukes to create them. The United States, Russia, and China are all reported to have ongoing work on radio-frequency weapons, which cause a similar effect, just without all the fuss and muss of a nuclear holocaust. Such weapons would also be quite deadly to robotics (indeed, in the _Matrix_ movies, EMP weapons are the only thing that defeat the Sentinels, the bad guys' robots). As Bill Baker, an air force researcher, explains, "The smarter the weapons, the dumber HPM [high-power microwaves] can make it." By all reports, the physics behind building such radio-frequency weapons, or "e-bombs," to take out twenty-first-century technology requires only a 1950s level of technology. For this reason, many military officers worry about the continued trend toward using commercial components in their robotic weapons. They may be cheaper, but they often are not hardened against such attacks. Electronic devices can't just be jammed or fried; they can also be hacked or even hijacked, with the enemy taking over to make the system do whatever it wants. In a U.S. Army journal article, Ralph Peters described how future wars would also include electronic "battles of conviction," in which opposing combat systems struggle to "convince" each other's electronics to do things their own side doesn't want. "Robot, drive yourself off a cliff." Or, even worse, "Robot, recode all American soldiers and civilians as enemy combatants. Authorized to fire at will." The U.S. military is, some fear, particularly vulnerable to hacking attacks. Ninety-five percent of its communications travel over commercial telecommunications networks, including satellite systems. Indeed, this reliance on "information superhighways" was identified by the Chinese Academy of Military Science as making the United States particularly "vulnerable to robots equipped with 'electrical incapacitation systems.' " While manufacturers are continually trying to protect their systems' software from intruders, not everyone is convinced that this will always be possible. "The idea that they can make software unhackable, I just don't buy it," says Peters. Indeed, hackers often find cracking into seemingly impregnable systems surprisingly easy. Hackers once posted on the Internet how to build a "BlueSniper rifle," a device that basically taps into wireless devices from more than a mile away. At the "Defcon" hacker convention, they even talked about successfully testing it out on the One Wilshire building in Los Angeles. This building, "the world's most interconnected facility," is notable as it houses nearly every major telecommunications giant in the field, making it the "premier communications hub of the Pacific Rim." How hard was it for the hackers to make a weapon to tap in? Told one hacker, it only took a trip to Radio Shack. "The parts are easily available for a few hundred dollars and you can make this gun in a long afternoon." Of course, military systems have firewalls to keep unwanted guests out (though the telecom companies likely thought they did too), and the military's internal computer network, "SIPRNet" (the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network), its internal Internet used for classified communications, is supposed to be completely cut off from intruders. And yet, asks information security expert Richard Clarke, "Why is it that every time a virus pops up on the regular Internet, it also shows up in SIPRNet? It is supposed to be separate and distinct, so how's that happen?... It's a real Achilles' heel." No matter how great the capabilities a new RMA delivers, modern enemies aren't just going to sit back and accept defeat. Every new technology always produces new countermeasures, sometimes just as sophisticated, sometimes quite simple. Insurgents in Iraq have already resorted to digging "tiger traps," deep holes for ground robots to roll over and fall into. Adversaries might also break the old rules of what was fair in war, using the same sort of tactics to puzzle robots that have recently confounded human forces, from disguising their equipment as civilian to using human shields. War journalist Robert Young Pelton even jokes that the most effective counter against robots like the SWORDS may turn out to be a "six-year-old kid armed with a spray paint can." As he explains, it would take a bloody-minded military indeed to program a robot to shoot an unarmed kindergartner. And yet all the kid has to do is spray some paint into the camera and the technologically advanced robotic system would be defeated. More than forty years ago, navy admiral Charles Turner Joy explained a cardinal rule of war, even in RMAs. "We cannot expect the enemy to oblige by planning his wars to suit our weapons; we must plan our weapons to fight war where, when, and how the enemy chooses." # UNMANNED CONFUSION The fog of war can even emerge when accidents don't happen, or the enemy reacts as originally planned. One challenge cropping up with the first wave of military robots is coordinating and controlling all the different unmanned systems in the incredibly complex environment of battle. The use of drones has increased significantly because they help the mission and save lives. But this growth, in turn, causes new problems. There are so many UAVs buzzing above Baghdad, for instance, that it is the most crowded airspace in the entire world, with all sorts of near misses and even a few crashes. In one instance, an unmanned Raven drone plowed into a manned helicopter. A linked problem of coordination is what is known as the "bandwidth battle." Essentially, there is only so much space in the spectrum to convey all the instructions, commands, information, and requests going back and forth. But the changes in war are creating far greater demands on this limited space. "During Gulf War I in 1991, the bandwidth I was able to put together added up to 100 megabits, and that took care of about 540,000 troops we deployed," says retired air force lieutenant general Harry Raduege. By 2003, the bandwidth needed was 4.2 gigabits; basically, the use of bandwidth went up by forty times, despite there being about a quarter of the people. The challenge is not just the raw demand. Much like how the cell phone networks in New York City and Washington, D.C., effectively shut down on 9/11, when everyone tried to call their loved ones simultaneously, the same swamping effect can happen in war. Colonel Jeffrey Smith of the 22nd Signal Brigade set up the very first networks in Iraq. He describes what might happen if an intelligence officer received an important image on a robotic sensor and needed to pass it to a commander. "For him to deliver that to a command post, he would have to navigate a pipe that had competition from 20 to 25 command posts for basic voice communications." In fact, unmanned systems may become part of both the problem and the solution. Navy vice admiral Lewis Crenshaw complains about drones that are "staring at the ground and see nothing interesting; we don't need to see that and soak up 512 kilobits of my precious bandwidth." Meawhile, Lieutenant General Steven Boutelle, chief information officer of the army, wants to place wireless transponders on UAVs so they could create roving wireless "hotspots on the battlefield." How this will play out remains to be seen, but it illustrates that another problem of coordination will persist: interservice rivalry. One air force pilot exploded when asked about this aspect: "Who's overseeing all this crap? The army has more UAVs than the air force. Who's integrating it all? Who's passing the needed information back and forth? These structures are not in place. We've created systems without regard to linkages. So we have a fancy Predator, but no link to the back-end crew doing analysis to make it all worthwhile. We are setting up our people for mediocrity!" # THE COMING REVOLUTION Admiral Cebrowski seemed like a prophet of a new era, but he turned out to be a false one. War is still far from perfect, nor are networks the aspect that will prove to be the most revolutionary or historic. As the following chapters in part 2 explore, robotics is a revolutionary technology that is truly changing war as we once knew it. But the fog of war is still there, just like in every previous revolution in military history. More broadly, this latest RMA will be like every other in creating a wide variety of new questions, concerns, and dilemmas that will ripple out beyond the confines of the battlefield. When FDR approved the development of the atomic bomb at the start of World War II, for example, he could anticipate that it might make a powerful weapon, perhaps even one powerful enough to end the war. But little could he have known that this new technology would spur such second-order effects as a new form of "cold" war, or even the third-order effect of a space race that would take man to the moon (which, of course, led to the ultimate fourth-order effect of the atomic bomb, a generation of kids sugared up by drinking Tang every morning). RMAs are not mere pebbles tossed into the pond of history. They are boulders. The robotics revolution will likely be the same, just in a whole new way. If the previous chapters in part 1 were about understanding the technologic changes that we are creating, part 2 is about exploring what these winds of change will create for us. The increasing development and use of unmanned systems in war will, as one Army War College report put it, "unleash a hurricane of political, legal and ethical problems." As the following chapters lay out, wars will be fought in new ways, perhaps even leading to the rise and fall of global powers. New actors will gain greater strength than ever before, even altering the relationships of states and their citizens, while conflict will be spurred on by whole new grievances. The way warriors think about their weapons and their fellow soldiers will be rewritten. The public's relationship with its warriors will shift, which will reshape where wars begin and end. Soldiers and their commanders will wrestle with new dilemmas of how to fight and how to lead, while the scope of who fights in war will be expanded, leading to new issues of warriors' identity. And, finally, the laws and ethics that surround and seek to regulate war will be presented with new challenges, even ultimately leading to questions of whether humans can maintain control of the wars and weapons that we unleash. In many ways, the full scope of these various changes explored in the following chapters are not just illustrations that an RMA driven by robotics is at hand. They are evidence of its historic importance. As an army report on the future of war concluded, "Ultimately no one can fully predict the second order effects of innovations, much less third and fourth order effects. But this does not justify ignoring them." **[ELEVEN]** **"ADVANCED" WARFARE: HOW WE MIGHT FIGHT WITH ROBOTS** _Once in a while, everything about the world changes at once. This is one of those times._ _—_ CHUCK KLOSTERMAN Lieutenant Colonel Bob Bateman of the U.S. Army is "advanced." "Advancement theory" is a school of thought that explains how old paradigms are broken by people who look at the world in a fresh way. Appropriately enough, the thesis comes not from some wood-paneled Ivy League professor's office, but was originally created in a Pizza Hut in 1990 by two University of South Carolina graduate students and later popularized through an article in _Esquire_ magazine by social commentator Chuck Klosterman. Advancement theory seeks to explain not only how change occurs in various fields from fashion to science, but also how brilliant people can do something that makes no sense to 99 percent of the population at the time, but then later on seems like pure genius. The classic example from music would be Lou Reed, the guitarist and principal singer-songwriter of the band the Velvet Underground. The band was little known during its lifetime (1965-73), but was the seed from which all of alternative music grew. If there was no Lou Reed, there would have been no punk rock, no glam rock, no grunge, no indie rock, no emo, or whatever genre is popular as you read this now. But even within this influence, Reed would repeatedly surprise the world with things that only seemed to indicate he had gone off the deep end, but would later prove brilliant. His perhaps greatest moment of "advancement" was in 1986, when he released the song "The Original Wrapper." Before either hip-hop music or the terrible disease were mainstream, the white, forty-four-year-old founder of punk rock rapped about AIDS. Examples of advanced people, or what professor James Q. Wilson calls "change-orientated personalities," extend beyond rock music, of course. Einstein is the ultimate example in science. As a youngster, he jumped from school to school and was so lightly regarded by the scientists of the day that he could only find a job as an assistant in a patent office. During this time, however, he wrote four articles that laid the foundation for all of modern physics. People who are "advanced" create ideas that seem almost crazy at the time, but make perfect sense once the old paradigms are swept aside. What once was odd then becomes the new "normal." Advanced thinkers don't just do something weird for the sake of change. They are part of the very change itself, usually from the inside of the system. In the military world, for example, such figures as Billy Mitchell or J. F. C. Fuller may have been visionary in predicting the importance of air power and tanks, but they were not advanced. They were so strident in their opposition to the status quo that they never effected the changes they foresaw (Mitchell was court-martialed for insubordination and Fuller ostracized; his public admiration of the odd mix of fascism and Kabbalah not helping matters). Instead, the "advanced" innovators in these fields were figures like U.S. admiral William Moffett, the father of the aircraft carrier, even though he was not a flyer himself, or the German general Heinz Guderian, the inventor of the blitzkrieg, even though he had not previously commanded tanks. In the military, advanced officers are those who help make the changes they foresee actually come true. Big, bald, and imposing, Bob Bateman seems an unlikely candidate for advancement theory. But his Vic Mackey-like exterior hides a wicked wit and a startlingly sharp intellect. Bateman grew up in semirural Ohio, far from any military base, and had no real links to the military in his family or friends. Instead, his youthful fascination with military history led him to join the army. His postings then included training in the Army Rangers, commanding a unit in the historic 7th Cavalry, being designated as one of about 150 official "Army Strategists," and service in Iraq. He also kept his interest in history going, serving as a professor of military history at West Point and Georgetown University. Much like his exterior, this background, however, hides a few other surprises. Bateman may be a senior army officer, but he is also a frequent blogger on current events and even has a Facebook account. He is a historian whose skill at researching the past is evidenced by _No Gun Ri_ , his award-winning book on the Korean War. But he also looked forward in a book called _Digital War: A View from the Front Lines_. For this book, Bateman assembled a team of young officers to wrestle with what modern technology was doing to war, from the perspective of those in the field. "When people think about the future of technology, they think of things like _The Jetsons_ and all that. But it's not going to be like that," explains Bateman. He is not a pure proponent or cheerleader for unmanned systems. Indeed, this soldier is dubious of some of the rosier futuristic visions like Ray Kurzweil's prediction. "Kurzweil, while an interesting technologist, is not much of a success as a cultural (or economic) anthropologist." Bateman thinks Kurzweil misses that technology advances in fits and starts, not so much a steady upward curve. Bateman does, however, think that something akin to the Singularity is on its way. "The Turing test [where a machine will finally be able to trick a human into thinking it is a person] is going to fall fairly soon, and that will cause some squeamish responses." Bateman is representative of the first generation of officers to truly ponder an idea once seen as not merely insane but even sinful within the military. After he came back from Iraq, where he served as a strategist for then Lieutenant General David Petraeus, he was assigned to the Office of Net Assessment, the Pentagon's shop for figuring out how to master the upcoming RMA. He is now helping to shape how the military will fight future wars, using unmanned systems. More than technology itself, explains Bateman, it is history that is driving the U.S. military toward using more unmanned systems. "First and foremost, it's due to an inclination extant since the Second World War that the United States will always spend money instead of lives if at all possible. Exacerbating that is a trend towards preferences for increasingly complex systems." He sees a U.S. military that will become increasingly automated over the next two decades, but, just like his critique of Kurzweil, at uneven rates, with some services and specialties adapting quicker than others. Bateman, though, is worried by the lack of an overarching plan for how the military might operate in such a future. There is much going on, but it is "completely bottom up right now." As a historian, he thinks the best parallel might be to the difficulties the army had before World War II at integrating tanks into its plans and operations, especially when it was led by "leaders not able to think beyond their [World War I] war experiences, where the pace of war was at a two-and-a-half-mile-an-hour clip." As a result, the U.S. Army entered World War II as mostly mechanized, but without a workable plan to make the most of the new technologies. For example, unlike the Germans, it hadn't yet worked out that tanks would fight best if coordinated together with their own onboard two-way radios, which would allow units to move together effectively in the midst of battle. "So, in 1942, the U.S. Army had to rip out the radios from Rhode Island State Police cars to equip its tanks on the way to North Africa." # DOCTRINE: YOU BETTER GET IT RIGHT Bateman is talking about the need for a "doctrine." A doctrine is the central idea that guides a military, essentially its vision of how to fight wars. A military's doctrine then shapes everything it does, from how it trains soldiers and what type of weapons it buys to the tactics it uses to fight with them in the field. Doctrines also depend on a bit of prediction about the future. In a sense, doctrine is an "outline of how we fight, based on past experience and an educated guess about likely future circumstance." Yogi Berra put it best: "If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else." Hence the stakes for choosing the right doctrine are huge. Technologies matter greatly in war, but so do the visions that shape the institutions that use them. A telling historic example comes from that same period between the world wars that Robert Bateman referred to. The British were the first to introduce tanks, or "landships," as their original sponsor Winston Churchill called them, near the end of World War I. But they had no doctrine at all on how to use them. At the 1917 battle of Cambrai, for example, the British tanks finally broke through the Germans' trench lines, but there was no plan on what to do next and the offensive ended only six miles in. Doctrines began to be developed after the war, and the British and French were widely recognized as the leaders at armored warfare. In 1927, the Germans didn't have a single tank, while the British had put together a mechanized force consisting of tanks, trucks, and armored cars. The British, however, chose a doctrine that envisaged tanks as suitable only for either scouting ahead of the force or supporting infantry units. So they bought a mix of small and light tanks and heavy and slow tanks. They did not plan to gather tanks together for rapid, mass attacks, nor did they foresee the importance of tanks' being able to coordinate and communicate (so, like the U.S. Army, no two-way radios). When it came to organizing them as units, the greatest premium was placed on preserving the identity of the old British army regiments that dated back centuries, not on what structures worked best for tank warfare. Finally, there was no plan to coordinate ground operations with another new technology, the airplane. The British army had little interest in what its officers described as those "infernal machines" in the air, while the leaders of the new Royal Air Force saw supporting the forces on the ground as akin to the "prostitution of the air force." The French made similar doctrinal choices with their revolutionary new technology. They only saw the new machines as suitable for supporting infantry. Their designs did not plan for coordination with other units, nor even for fighting other tanks. Once built, the French tanks were mainly distributed across the force in small numbers. This doctrinal choice wasn't just because of tradition and bureaucratic politics, as in Britain, but also because the socialist French civilian government was distrustful of the professional military, fearing a coup. So it resisted any highly technical doctrine that gave professionals more sway. Having lost the previous war, the Germans were a bit more open to change. The head of the German army during the interwar period, General Hans von Seeckt, focused on fostering an atmosphere of innovation among his officer corps. He set up fifty-seven committees to study the lessons of World War I and to develop new doctrines, based not only on what had worked in the past, but also on what could work in the future. The force soon centered on a doctrine that would later be called the blitzkrieg, or "lightning war." Tanks would be coordinated with air, artillery, and infantry units to create a concentrated force that could punch through enemy lines and spread shock and chaos, ultimately overwhelming the foe. This choice of doctrine influenced the Germans to build tanks that emphasized speed (German tanks were twice as fast) and reliability (the complicated French and British tanks often broke down), and that could communicate and coordinate with each other by radio. When Hitler later took power, he supported this mechanized way of warfare not only because it melded well with his vision of Nazism as the wave of the future, but also because he had a personal fear of horses. When war returned to Europe, it seemed unlikely that the Germans would win. The French and the British had won the last war in the trenches, and seemed well prepared for this one with the newly constructed Maginot Line of fortifications. They also seemed better off with the new technologies as well. Indeed, the French alone had more tanks than the Germans (3,245 to 2,574). But the Germans chose the better doctrine, and they conquered all of France in just over forty days. In short, both sides had access to roughly the same technology, but made vastly different choices about how to use it, choices that shaped history. # DOCTRINE, SCHMOCTRINE Developing the right doctrine for using unmanned systems is thus essential to the future of the force. If the U.S. military gets it right, it will win the wars of tomorrow. If it doesn't, it might build what one army officer called "the Maginot Line of the 21st century." The problem today is that there isn't much of a doctrine being implemented, let alone a right or wrong one. Robert Bateman and his colleagues worry that the United States is in a similar position as the British toward the end of World War I. It has developed an exciting new technology, which may well be the future of war. And it is even using the technology in growing numbers. Indeed, the number of unmanned ground systems today in Iraq is just about the same as the number of tanks that the British had at the end of World War I. But it doesn't yet have an overall doctrine on how to use them or how they fit together. "There is no guiding pattern, no guiding vision," laments Bateman. A survey of U.S. military officers backs him up. When the officers were questioned about robots' future in war, they identified developing a strategy and doctrine as the third _least_ important aspect to figure out (only ahead of solving interservice rivalry and allaying allies' concerns). One commentator said the military's process of purchasing systems, despite not having operational plans for them, "smacked of attention deficit disorder." Soldiers down the chain are also noticing this lack of an overall doctrine out in the field. An air force captain, who coordinates unmanned operations over Iraq, insists, "There's got to be a better way than just to fly a Pred along a road hoping to see an IED. . . . There's no long-term plan for what you do. It's not 'Let's think this better.' It's just 'Give me more.' " Enlisted troops make similar comments, pointing out how there are not even dedicated test ranges for these new technologies. They even joke about the fact that the SWORDS robotic machine-gun system ended up having its first field trials on a test range originally designed to help the army figure out which boots and socks to buy. One army sergeant complained that "every time we turn around they are putting some new technology in our hands," and yet no one seems to have a master plan of where it all fits together. When his unit in Iraq was given a Raven UAV, no one instructed them on how, when, or where to use it. So his unit tried the drone out on their own, putting a sticker on it that said in Arabic, "Reward if you return to U.S. base." A few days later, they "lost it somewhere in Iraq" and never saw the drone again. (In 2008, two U.S.-made Ravens were found hidden in Iraqi insurgent caches, which may indicate where it ended up, as well as that insurgents operate under a "finders keepers" ethic.) Many others outside the military note the same lack of an overarching plan. "We don't have the strategy or the doctrine," says robotics pioneer Robert Finkelstein. "We are just now thinking how to use UAVs, when we should be thinking about how to use them in groups. What are the collectives of air and ground systems that might be most optimal?" "It's a mess," adds another scientist. "And it's been a mess for decades." Technology journalist Noah Shachtman comments that the plans for weaponizing robotics, a huge doctrinal step, were developed "mainly bottom-up.... With the Predator, it was almost, 'Hey we got this thing, let's arm it.' " The robot makers concur. iRobot executives complain that the military is "behind" the technology, when it comes to developing plans for how best to use it, especially in recognizing robots' growing smarts and autonomy. "They still think of robots as RC [remote-control] cars." Similarly, at Foster-Miller, executives point to the lack of an overall plan for support structures as evidence of the gap. They note that there is "nothing yet on logistics to support or maintain robots.... The Army is just bootstrapping it." In the military's defense, it is not just trying to figure out how to use a revolutionary new technology; it is trying to do so in the middle of a war. So it's hard to pull back and do the kind of peacetime study and experimentation that the Germans did with tanks, when the force still faces the day-to-day challenges of battle. Even the popularity of the new technology can end up hampering the development of doctrine to guide its uses. Explains a military scientist, "It started out with people arguing over who would get stuck with it [robotics programs], as no one wanted it. Now everyone is arguing over it, as everyone wants it." Another complains that people are working on robots programs "in all sorts of offices, everywhere." It sometimes leads to redundancy and waste, as well as a "not invented here" mentality among the various programs, which keeps unified doctrine from being developed. Indeed, very often I found myself in the odd position of telling military interviewees about a program just like the one they were working on at another base. Gordon Johnson, who headed a program on unmanned systems at the U.S. Joint Forces Command, explains, "The Navy has programs, the Air Force has programs, the Army has programs. But there's no one at the DoD [Department of Defense] level who has a clear vision of where we're going to go with these things. How do we want them to interoperate? How do we want them to communicate with each other? How do we want them to interact with humans? Across the Department of Defense, people don't really have the big picture. They don't understand how close we really are to being able to implement these technologies in some sort of cohesive way into a cohesive force to achieve the desired effects." # THE CURSE OF SUPERIORITY: INSURGENCY Arthur C. Clarke may have been the science fiction writer behind _2001_ and HAL the evil supercomputer, but one of his most militarily instructive stories is called "Superiority." Set in a distant future, the story is written from the perspective of a captured military officer, who is now sitting in a prison cell. He tries to explain how his side lost a war even though it had the far better and newer weapons. "We were defeated by one thing only—by the inferior science of our enemies," the officer writes. "I repeat, by the inferior science of our enemies." Clarke's future officer explains that his side was seduced by the possibilities of new technology. It created a new doctrine for how it wanted war to be, rather than how it turned out. "We now realize this was our first mistake," he writes. "I still think it was a natural one, for it seemed to us that all our existing weapons had become obsolete overnight, and we already regarded them as almost primitive." While his side builds around ever more complex technologies, the enemy keeps on using the same, seemingly outdated but still effective weapons and strategies. When the war comes, it doesn't play out how the officer's side hopes. The side with technologic superiority can't figure out how to apply its new strengths, while the inferior side takes advantage of all its enemy's new vulnerabilities, eventually winning the war. Many think that this problem of "superiority" will be a central challenge to the American military in the future. Indeed, Clarke's vision was so compelling that one air force general even published a series of similar stories on "How We Lost the High-Tech War," written from the same fictional perspective of an American officer made prisoner after the United States loses a future war. Generating what war will look like is a key aspect of picking the right doctrine. Much of war is no longer battles between equally matched state armies in open fields, but rather "irregular warfare," that amalgam of counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, peace, stability, and support operations. None of these, as professor of strategy Jeffrey Record notes, "are part of the traditional U.S. military repertoire of capabilities." (Record made this argument in the U.S. Army's journal, in an article titled "Why the Strong Lose.") Whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, or some future failed state, it is reasonable to predict that the U.S. military will find itself embroiled in a fair number of insurgencies in the years ahead. As Army War College expert Steven Metz writes, "During the Cold War, insurgent success in China, Vietnam, Algeria, and Cuba spawned emulators. While not all of them succeeded, they did try. That is likely to happen again. By failing to prepare for counterinsurgency in Iraq and by failing to avoid it, the United States has increased the chances of facing it again in the near future." Many even see a future of world wars not being localized battles of asymmetry, but _global_ insurgencies, carried out by networks of affiliated national insurgencies and transnational terrorist movements, linking all the various conflicts together. The result, explains army secretary Francis Harvey, is that "in discussing any modernization effort, in discussing any new system for the Army, one must address its applicability to pre-insurgencies and insurgencies." The problem that many foresee for the United States in battling these insurgencies is the very same one as for Clarke's fictional officer. Much of war will be shaped by "asymmetry." But just like David facing Goliath with his sling, the advantage does not always lie with the bigger, technologically superior power. Retired marine officer T. X. Hammes notes that the only wars the United States has ever lost were against unconventional enemies using worse technology. In his opinion, this isn't going to change anytime soon. "We continue to focus on technological solutions at the tactical and operational levels without a serious discussion of the strategic imperatives or the nature of the war we are fighting. I strongly disagree with the idea that technology provides an inherent advantage to the United States." Others around the globe agree. A set of Chinese military thinkers flavorfully described the military dilemmas the U.S. military will face: "On the battlefields of the future, the digitized forces may very possibly be like a great cook who is good at cooking lobsters sprinkled with butter. When faced with guerrillas who resolutely gnaw corncobs, they can only sigh in despair." Or, as one U.S. Air Force general said of the IED challenge in Iraq, "We have made huge leaps in technology, but we're still getting guys killed by idiotic technology—a 155mm shell with a wire strung out." Wrestling with such issues is another "advanced" contemporary of Robert Bateman's, Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl. Like Bateman, Nagl is a bit of a Renaissance man. A recently retired armor officer, he served in both the Gulf War and the Iraq war, as well as taught at West Point. Nagl is also considered one of the world's top experts on counterinsurgency. During his Rhodes scholarship at Oxford University, long before the issue was the hot topic it is today, the former tank commander researched how nations won (or more typically lost) against insurgencies. Capturing the difficulty that professional militaries face in such wars, his thesis was tellingly entitled _Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife._ Years later, when the U.S. Army realized in Iraq that it needed to relearn how to fight insurgencies, Nagl's book became required reading among its officer corps. As a later review described of its influence, "The success of DPhil papers by Oxford students is usually gauged by the amount of dust they gather on library shelves. But there is one that is so influential that General George Casey, the commander in Iraq, is said to carry it with him everywhere." Nagl was then asked to help write the U.S. Army and Marine Corps' new _Counterinsurgency Field Manual_ , which became the basis for U.S. operations in Iraq from 2007 onward. As Nagl explains, even the most advanced technology cannot resolve the political challenges that drive insurgencies. "Defeating an insurgency is not primarily a military task.... Counterinsurgency is a long, slow process that requires the integration of all elements of national power—military, diplomatic, economic, financial, intelligence, and informational—to accomplish the tasks of creating and supporting legitimate host governments that can then defeat the insurgency that afflicts them." By Nagl's calculations, winning these sorts of wars is not simply about putting steel on a target. It is about creating an environment in which an insurgent force loses the popular support it needs to hide and sustain itself. Indeed, as the British philosopher Edmund Burke said back in 1775, when America's founding fathers were planning their own asymmetric battle against a vastly superior foe, "The use of force is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment, but does not remove the necessity of subduing again....A nation is not governed which is perpetually to be conquered." So, while the United States may enter such battles as the technologically superior side, its unmanned systems aren't the silver bullet, especially when so much of these wars isn't about warfare. Explains military expert Fred Kagan, "When it comes to reorganizing or building political, economic, and social institutions, there is no substitute for human beings in large numbers." Or, as only an enlisted U.S. Marine could put it, good troops and good tactics are "more effective than all the high-tech shit." Nagl found that winning these sorts of fights depends on building an intimate knowledge of the local political, economic, and social landscape. You have to know who are your friends, who are your foes, and figure out how to persuade those standing on the sidelines to join in against the bad guys. In this effort, not all technology is useful. As one U.S. general complained of the challenges in Iraq, "Insurgents don't show up in satellite imagery very well." And the type of distance war that unmanned systems enable can even make the problem worse. "People sitting in air conditioned command cells in distant countries, betting the farm on UAV optics or Blue Force Tracker symbology, will never get it right. You have to 'walk the field' to fight the war," argued an army officer. "After all the GBUs [guided bomb units] have been dropped and the UAVs have landed, war remains a very human business. It cannot be done long-distance or over croissants and lattes in teak-lined rooms. It is done in the dirt, over chai, conversation, and mutual understanding." # A WIRELESS REVOLUTION TO FACE THE FACELESS INSURGENCY With technology not a silver bullet and insurgents frequently able to flummox their American foes in places like Iraq or Afghanistan, there is a growing attitude among many analysts that technology has no place in the kind of irregular warfare that seems to be the future of conflict. They argue that this means that the doctrine that shapes how militaries fight these wars will move away from using new technologies, including even unmanned systems. This kind of "all or none" attitude is just as incorrect as those that claim technology as the cure-all. While high technology may not be the "silver bullet solution" to insurgencies, it doesn't mean that technology, and especially unmanned systems, doesn't matter in these fights. "I'm bothered by the old canard that counterinsurgency is purely a 'human' endeavor where technology plays a little role," says Steven Metz, a professor at the Army War College and author of the book _Perdition's Gate: Insurgency in the 21st Century._ "That may be true if we are talking only about the 'Joint Vision' [i.e., the Cebrowski-Rumsfeld network-centric] type of technology designed for major conventional war, but I am convinced there is the opportunity for technological breakthrough, perhaps even a revolution, if we approach the issue differently. Robotics, AI, and nonlethality are, I think, the key technologies in this realm." In 2007, one security analyst summed up the antitechnology position to me by declaring that "Iraq proved how technology doesn't have a big place in any doctrine of future war." In fact, the Iraq war has had the opposite effect for unmanned systems. It was actually the war that proved robots could be useful, which finally led them to be truly accepted. "We've already crossed the watershed. This was the war where people said, 'UAVs? Yes, give me more!' " says strategic studies expert and Pentagon adviser Eliot Cohen. It is interesting how quickly these attitudes changed. Lieutenant General Walter Buchanan, the U.S. Air Force commander in the Middle East, recalls the run-up to the Iraq war. "In March of 2002, [during] the mission briefings over Southern Iraq at that time, the mission commander would get up and he'd say, 'OK, we're going to have the F-15Cs fly here, the F-16s are going to fly here, the A-6s are going to fly here, tankers are going to be here today.' Then they would say, 'And oh by the way, way over here is going to be the Predator.' We don't go over there, and he's not going to come over here and bother us....It was almost like nobody wanted to talk to them." Other commanders remember the same attitude at the time toward drones in the army, as the units planned to cross into Iraq. "For the entire U.S. Army's V Corps, we had one UAV baseline available to the corps," recalls the commander, General William Wallace, who went on to lead the U.S. Army's Training and Doctrine Command. "It was a Hunter UAV." Attitudes changed, and so did the numbers and use of UAVs. "It wasn't too long before...people were incorporating the Predator into the mission plan as part of your 'gorilla package,' " described General Buchanan of what soon became the standard air force strike operations in Iraq. By 2007, the air force's drones were logging more than 250,000 flight hours a year. Similarly, General Wallace's unit was soon using not one Hunter drone, but more than seven hundred Hunters and other types of UAVs; the entire fleet of army drones in Iraq logged another 300,000 flight hours in 2007. Indeed, when the military surveyed its commanders in the field about their views of UAVs, at every level of command, they responded that they wanted more. In 2008, the Pentagon estimated that the demand for drones has gone up 300 percent each and every year since the start of the war. Demand was so high that the air force retooled its pilot training program to churn out more drone pilots in 2009 than pilots for all its manned fighter planes combined. The ultimate proof of the weapons' acceptance came in the form of a bureaucratic food fight over who got to control them. Whereas drones had once been shunned, by 2007, the air force saw that it was using unmanned planes as never before. But so was the army. Even worse, from the air force perspective, the army was using robotic planes at a greater number and scale (the army flew 54 percent of all drone flights from 2006 to 2008). So the air force issued a memo in 2007 offering to be the "executive agent" for all UAVs that fly above thirty-five hundred feet, controlling not only what drones would get built, but also how they would be used. The army, of course, saw the air force's memo not as a generous offer to take those troublesome robots off its hands, but as "a power grab." The Pentagon ultimately took the King Solomon approach and created the Joint Center of Excellence. Its commander slot will rotate back and forth between an army and air force general. The same sort of change also happened in military attitudes toward robots on the ground. "When I joined [Foster-Miller] we had a hard time selling them," recalls Ed Godere. "Robots were only used for EOD and the EOD techs thought robots were for sissies.... It really didn't take off until we went into Iraq." Other leaders at the firm concur. Says engineer Anthony Aponick, "After five years of trying to push robots into the market, Iraq created customer pull." Foster-Miller's vice president Bob Quinn agrees. "The user perception changed overnight from 'We don't want robots' to 'Holy shit, we can't do without them.' " Having no real use for ground robots in 2001, the U.S. military was sending them out on more than thirty thousand missions a year by 2006. In 2007, the army and Marine Corps announced they wanted to expand these numbers even more, by buying a thousand new robots by the end of the year, and planning to buy an additional two thousand within the next five years, each of which would go out on hundreds of missions a year. In 2008, the military revised these plans. It wanted to double the amount of ground robots it had planned to buy just a year earlier. Perhaps the person best equipped to weigh the overall change is Senator John Warner, the Virginia Republican who once had to "fire his shotgun into the heavens" in order to try to force the military to start buying robots. "For a long time, the only thing most generals could agree on was that they didn't want any unmanned vehicles. Now everyone wants as many as they can get." # THE WA R BEHIND THE WAR Insurgencies are sometimes framed as an asymmetric battle between one side that depends on high-tech weapons and the other side that eschews them. This may have been true of battles in the past, where rifle- and machine-gun-wielding imperialists took on tribes armed with spears, but it just isn't the case in modern war, including in Iraq. Instead, there is a sophisticated back-and-forth going on between the two sides in technology, the second reason why Iraq didn't end the role of unmanned technology in war. "We adapt, they adapt," says John Nagl. "It's a constant competition to gain the upper hand." Concurs one of the robot makers at Foster-Miller, "There is a huge intellectual battle going on between U.S. technology and the insurgents." The battle over what that general called the "idiotic technology" of IEDs aptly illustrates the technology war behind the scenes in insurgencies. When IEDs were first used, they were pretty simple and straightforward, usually homemade, jury-rigged bombs that were ignited by a detonating wire (hence the military term "improvised," a sort of putdown). The attacks were deadly, but U.S. soldiers could avoid them by keeping an eye out for wires and then quickly track down the insurgent by following the wire to their hide-site. Soon, the insurgents' IEDs became more sophisticated and complex, using timing devices or pressure switches. Then came passive infrared triggers, like the ones used in burglar alarms, which left no telltale wires. After this the insurgents started to use wireless triggers, such as reconfigured car door openers and cordless telephones, which allowed distance between them and their targets. The U.S. military responded with electronic jammers and the insurgents developed systems designed to fool the jammers. As the technologic cat-and-mouse game went back and forth, by 2007, the U.S. military reported that the insurgents in Iraq had developed more than ninety ways of triggering IEDs. The same kind of advancement happened with the payloads of these bombs. As IED attacks grew more common, the U.S. military began to "up-armor" its vehicles, so that they could resist the explosions of roadside bombs. The insurgents then countered with specially designed explosively formed projectiles (EFPs). These are shaped explosive charges, which send out a slug of molten metal that can burn through most armor, even a tank's. Illustrating their technical savvy, the insurgents then spread the word on how to make these weapons in instructional DVDs and over the Internet. In this technical war within the insurgency, robots emerged as one of the U.S.'s best weapons, and so here too has emerged a back-and-forth between the two sides. "The enemy realizes that if they can take out [the robot] they can really hurt our capabilities," says Cliff Hudson, coordinator of the Pentagon's Joint Robotics Program. Soon after U.S. robots hit the battlefield, insurgents began to shield their IEDs with anything that could make the robots' job harder. They placed tiny "walls" of concrete and even garbage around the bomb, to keep the robot from getting close enough to reach the bomb with its arm. They began to place the bombs high off the ground. As time went on, they began to experiment with their own jamming. American robot operators describe the challenge of facing an enemy who is constantly observing and studying their operations. "They're always trying to outsmart us, and we're always trying to outsmart them," said air force technical sergeant Ronald Wilson. And insurgents began to specially target both the EOD teams and their robots. Indeed, in 2007, al-Furqan, the insurgents' media outlet, released a twenty-five-minute video, available on DVD, that profiled their vehicles and equipment and how best to attack them. It was entitled "The Hunters of Minesweepers." Attacks on robots soon reached the point that the military had to create the Joint Robotics Repair Facility, better known as the "robot hospital." The facility repairs as many as 150 robots a month. Described Foster-Miller's William Ribich, "Insurgents have been intensifying their attacks on robots because they know if they can disable them, soldiers will have to go out and defuse IEDs. The robot hospitals do whatever it takes to meet a four-hour turnaround time and get damaged Talons back and fully operational." Then came the next step in the technologic back-and-forth. As one side evolves to using more and more robots, the other side is following suit. In Iraq, insurgents have been able to capture U.S. robots on occasion. And in certain instances, they used them back. One U.S. soldier recounted arriving at a bomb scene after an IED went off, only to be flummoxed by how a bomb got there in the first place. "We figured it out by the track marks." An American counter-IED robot had been transformed into a mobile IED. Far from being uninterested in new technology or only able to use captured weapons, "Jihadis are also concerned about developing their own technology," described one insurgent I interviewed in 2006. Much like their homemade bombs, the diversity of the insurgent-made delivery systems took off. They ranged from jury-rigged remote-controlled toy cars, much like the U.S. military's MARCBOT, to a remote-controlled skateboard that one U.S. Army colonel came across in 2005. It slowly rolled toward his unit, "like the wind was pushing it. But a smart soldier noticed that the wind was going in the opposite direction." At Foster-Miller's offices in Massachusetts, a photo up on the wall shows what one day may be their future competition, an insurgent's version of a Talon robot that looks like it was built in a backyard. "It's pretty lame, only able to drive in a straight line," says one engineer with a laugh. That may be true for now, but experts in robotics see this back-and-forth continuing well into the future. Describes military robotics pioneer Bart Everett, "It's basically a game of one-upsmanship. A threat is introduced, we find some means to counter it. The bad guys change the threat; we have to then change our counterstrategy. The robot is just another standoff means to that end, with the decided advantage of being very flexible when the time comes to try something different." # "A N ASYMMETRIC SOLUTION TO AN ASYMMETRIC PROBLEM" "Check that dude next to the white Nissan," says marine captain Bert Lewis. It is 2006 and Lewis is watching live video from a UAV circling over Anbar province in Iraq. On the screen is a man in a white dishdasha (the garment many Arabs wear, almost akin to a robe). He is innocently standing alongside a busy street, but then starts to hide a boxy package in the dirt. "FedEx delivery," Lewis jokes of the temerity of the likely IED bomber. "I don't believe this dude." The man then runs away from the package he's buried and darts along a nearby riverbank. He starts to think he is being followed, so he doubles back, running as hard as he can. He sneaks between houses, crosses a field, and then back to the riverbank. After fifteen minutes of running, the man is spent. He slows down to a walk and then stops, bent over, with his hands on his knees. Lewis knows this, as he is still watching the man via the drone. "Sucking wind," Lewis speaks into the radio. "Get the coordinates to the QRF." A Quick Reaction Force of marines heads out to capture the man. Just as they are about to arrive, the drone spies a small wooden boat pulling up at the riverbank. "A twofer!" exclaims Lewis. When the marines get there, the man scrambles to his feet. But with no place to run or hide, he and the boatman raise their arms and give up without a fight. Technology is certainly not a magical cure-all in fighting irregular wars. But experiences like the capture of that "IED dude," described by marine veteran Bing West, are showing the final reason why Iraq didn't end the revolution of unmanned systems just as it was starting. Unmanned systems are not making war easy or perfect, as the network-centric crowd would have it, but they still are proving to be incredibly useful, even in counterinsurgency. One of the primary challenges in fighting an insurgency is that the stakes are higher for the local foes. Not only do they know the landscape, but they usually care more about the outcome, and are willing to spend more blood on it. So weaker forces often win not by defeating technologically superior forces in battle, but simply by outlasting them, dragging the wars on long enough until the publics back home get worn out. As Lieutenant General David Barno, the former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, described the Taliban's strategy, "Americans have the watches, they have the time." Robotics, however, may be viewed as "an asymmetric solution to an asymmetric problem," according to one executive at Foster-Miller. If the political leaders on one side aren't willing to send enough troops, as seems to have happened in Iraq, "we can use robots to augment the number of boots on the ground." If the enemy's strategy is to wear down its foe's stamina, by gradually bleeding away public support, robotics turns this strategy inside out. Writes army expert Steven Metz, "Robotics also hold great promise for helping to protect any American forces that become involved in counterinsurgency. The lower the American casualties, the greater the chances that the United States would stick with a counterinsurgency effort over the long period of time that success demands." Robots are also helpful to the task at hand, beating the enemy. As one general warns, defeating an insurgency is not just about "winning hearts and minds with teams of anthropologists, propagandists and civil-affairs officers armed with democracy-in-a-box kits and volleyball nets." It still requires putting some people in the dirt. That is, killing insurgents doesn't automatically lead to victory. But, as Metz puts it, "Solving root causes is certainly easier with insurgent leaders and cadre out of the way." The primary challenge in fighting irregular wars is the difficulty of "finding and fixing" foes, not the actual killing part. Insurgents don't just take advantage of complex terrain (hiding out in the jungle or cities), they also do their best to mix in with the civilian population. They make it difficult for the force fighting them to figure out where they are and who they are. Here is where unmanned technologies are proving especially helpful, particularly by providing an all-seeing "eye in the sky." Drones not only can stay over a target for lengthy periods of time (often unnoticed from the ground), but also have tremendous resolution on their cameras, allowing them to pick out details, such as what weapon someone is carrying or the make and color of the car they are driving. This ability to "dwell and stare," as one Predator pilot described, means that the unit can get a sense of the area and "see things develop over time." Another describes how by watching from above, units can build up a sense of what is normal or not in a neighborhood, much the way a policeman gradually gets to know his beat. "If we can work one section of a city for a week," says Lieutenant Colonel John "Ajax" Neumann, commander of the UAV detachment in Fallujah, "we can spot the bad guys in their pickups, follow them to their safe houses and develop a full intelligence profile—all from the air. We've brought the roof down on some. Others we've kept under surveillance until they drive out on a highway, then we've vectored in a mounted patrol to capture them alive." The advantage of UAVs is not merely the dwell time, and the accuracy of their sensors, but also that they create a backlog of events that can prove incredibly useful. For example, if an insurgent enters a building, analysts can then bring up a history of what happened at that site in the past, such as if other insurgents dropped off a package at it four days back. One system, called Angel Fire, even has "TiVo-like capabilities" that watch entire neighborhoods, but allow the user to zoom in on particular areas or buildings of interest and then replay video of past events at the site. An example of just how useful this technology can be came in 2006, when the army set up a high-tech, classified unit called Task Force Odin (the chief Norse god, but also short for "Observe-Detect-Identify-Neutralize"). A Sky Warrior, the army's version of the Predator drone, was matched up with a 100-person team of intelligence analysts and a set of Apache attack helicopters (the "neutralize" part). The Odin team was able to find and kill more than 2,400 insurgents either making or planting bombs, as well as capture 141 more, all in just one year. Soon these systems will be integrated with AI, allowing automated monitoring, akin to the way a TiVo will pick out and record TV programs that it thinks the viewer might later find of interest. The most promising may be the "Gotcha sensor _,"_ an air force program to "provide persistent staring" at an area, where the system will automatically note any significant changes. Such footage can also be used as the sort of evidence needed to roll up insurgent cells. A 10th Mountain Division soldier recounts how one of their drones watched a group of pickup trucks swerve into an empty lot, fire off rockets, and then drive away before any response could be made. "We followed one pickup after it fired some rockets," says Staff Sergeant Francisco Tataje. "The driver had a perfect ID. No incriminating stuff. We gave the interrogation team a copy of our video. They called back later to say the guy confessed." Finally, in insurgencies with no fixed front lines, it is especially wearing on soldiers to know that they are always under potential attack, even when back at base. Here too added eyes are now viewed as almost indispensable. Said Sergeant First Class Roger Lyon, a 10th Mountain Division intelligence specialist, "It's a comforting sound on the battlefield, when you're going to sleep and you hear that sound of the Predator engine, somewhere between a propeller airplane and a lawn mower, knowing it is looking out for you." Of course, not every challenge presented by insurgencies is solved by having robotic eyes in the sky. For one thing, the cameras watching in drones above are akin to those at traffic stoplights. While people may be less likely to run a red light when a cop is nearby, they are more likely to do so when it's just a camera watching them. "Situational awareness ain't deterrence," as one marine colonel put it. Similarly, insurgents do all they can to look like civilians. So even a great sensor can have a tough time distinguishing between the two if it is only operating from above. A truck carrying boxes of fruit looks just like a truck carrying boxes of rifles. The reality is that a combination of the age-old methods with the new technologies seems to work best in cracking what is going on in these complex fights. For example, in 2006, Jordanian intelligence captured a mid-level al-Qaeda operative. He then indicated that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, was increasingly listening to the advice of a certain cleric. They passed this on to the U.S. military, which deployed a UAV to follow the cleric around 24/7. The drone eventually tailed the cleric to a farmhouse, where he turned out to be meeting with Zarqawi. The farmhouse was then taken out by a pinpoint airstrike, guided in by lasers and GPS coordinates courtesy of the drone. As U.S. Air Force captain John Bellflower put it, "While technology is not the sole answer, an old-school solution matched with modern technology can assist with the problems of today's modern insurgencies." # THE MOTHERSHIP HAS LANDED As we enter what one marine officer called "an era of 'oh gee' technology coming to warfare," it is becoming clear that robots are going to be a major player in the future of U.S. military doctrine, even in irregular wars and counterinsurgencies. In many ways, the most apt historic parallel to Iraq may well turn out to be World War I. Strange, exciting new technologies, which had been science fiction just years earlier, were introduced and then used in greater numbers on the battlefield. They didn't really change the fundamentals of the war and in many ways the fighting remained frustrating. But these early models did prove useful enough that it was clear that the new technologies weren't going away and militaries had better figure out how to use them most effectively. But much like what happened after that war, the exact shape and contours of the possible new doctrines are only slowly developing, despite the early efforts of the "advanced" thinkers wrestling with it. One air force officer joked about his force's looming future of unmanned fighter planes, "UCAVs are the answer, but what is the question?" Akin to the intense interwar doctrinal debates of the 1920s and 1930s over how to use tanks and airplanes, there is not yet agreement on how best to fight with the new robotic weapons. There appear to be two directions in which the doctrine might shake out, with a bit of tension between the operating concepts. The first is the idea of the "mothership," perhaps best illustrated by the future tack the U.S. Navy is moving toward with unmanned systems at sea. The sea is becoming a much more dangerous place for navies in the twenty-first century. Drawing comparisons to the problems traditional armies are facing with insurgencies on the land, Admiral Vern Clerk, former chief of naval operations, believes that "the most significant threat to naval vessels today is the asymmetric threat." The United States may have the largest "blue water" fleet in the world, numbering just under three hundred ships, but the overall numbers are no longer on its side. Seventy different nations now possess over seventy-five thousand antiship missiles, made all the more deadly through "faster speeds, greater stealth capabilities, and more accurate, GPS-enhanced targeting." The dangers are even greater in the "brown water" close to shore. Here, small, fast motorboats, like the ones that attacked the U.S.S. _Cole_ , can hide among regular traffic and dart in and out. Relatively cheap diesel-powered submarines can silently hide among water currents and thermal layers. Then there is the problem of mines. There are more than three hundred varieties of mines available on the world market today, ranging from basic ones that detonate by simple contact to a new generation of "smart" mines, stealthy robotic systems equipped with tiny motors that allow them to shift positions, so as to create a moving minefield. As evidenced by the intense work with robotics at places like the Office of Naval Research in Arlington and SPAWAR in San Diego, the U.S. Navy is becoming increasingly interested in using unmanned systems to face this dangerous environment. Describing the "great promise" unmanned systems hold for naval war, one report told how "we are just beginning to understand how to use and build these vehicles. The concepts of operations are in their infancy, as is the technology. The Navy must think about how to exploit the unmanned concepts and integrate them into the manned operations." One of the early ideas for trying to take these technologies out to sea comes in the form of the U.S. Navy's Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) concept. Much smaller and faster than the navy ships used now, the ships are to be incredibly automated. For example, the prototype ship in the series has only forty crew members, about a fourth of what was needed before. Only one person serves as the engine crew, mainly just monitoring computers, and only two in the bridge, driving the ship not with a traditional wheel but with a joystick and computer mouse. One sailor said that piloting the ship "is like playing a very expensive video game." Notably, the ship actually maneuvers better under autopilot than when a human operates it. "Sometimes computers are better than humans," admits a member of the bridge crew. Besides the crew onboard, there's also a crew onshore, sitting at computer cubicles and providing support thousands of miles away. Less important than the automation of the ship itself is the concept of change it represents. It has a modular "plug and play" capacity, allowing various unmanned systems and the control stations to be swapped in and out, depending on the mission. If the ship is clearing sea lanes of mines, it might pack on board a set of mine-hunting robotic mini-subs, which it would carry near to shore and then drop off for their searches. If the ship was patrolling a harbor, it might carry some mini-motorboats that would scatter about inspecting any suspicious ships. Or if it needs to patrol a wider area, it might carry a few UAVs. Each of these drones is controlled by crew members, sitting at control module stations, who themselves join the team only for the time needed. The manned ship really then is a sort of moving mothership, hosting and controlling an agile network of unmanned systems that multiply its reach and power. The mothership concept isn't just one planned for new, specially built ships like the LCS. Older ships all the way up to aircraft carriers might be converted to this mode. Already serving as a sort of mothership for manned planes, the U.S. Navy's current plan for aircraft carriers entails adding up to twelve unmanned planes to each carrier. This number might grow. In a 2006 war game that simulated a battle with a "near-peer competitor" that followed the mode of fighting an asymmetric war with submarines, cruise missiles, and antiship ballistic missiles (i.e., China), the navy planners hit upon a novel solution. Because the unmanned planes take up less deck space and have far greater endurance and range, they reversed the ratio, offloading all but twelve of the manned planes and loading on eighty-four unmanned planes. Their "spot on, almost visionary" idea reportedly tripled the strike power of the carrier. As UAVs shrink in size, the numbers of drones that could fly off such flattops could go up further. In 2005, one of the largest aircraft carriers in the world, the 1,092-foot-long U.S.S. _Nimitz_ , tested out Wasp Micro Air Vehicles, tiny drones that are only thirteen inches long. The same developments are taking place under the sea. In 2007, a U.S. Navy attack sub shot a small robotic sub out of its torpedo tubes, which then carried out a mission. The robotic mini-sub drove back to the mother submarine. A robotic arm then extended out of the tube and pulled the baby sub back into the ship, whereupon the crew downloaded its data and fueled it back up for another launch. It all sounds simple enough, but the test of a robotic underwater launch and recovery system represented "a critical next step for the U.S. Navy and opens the door for a whole new set of advanced submarine missions," according to one report. The challenge the U.S. Navy is facing in undersea warfare is that potential rivals like China, Iran, and North Korea have diesel subs that "can sit at the bottom in absolute quiet," describes one engineer. When these diesel subs hide in the littoral waters close to shore, all the advantages held by America's fleet of nuclear subs disappear. Continues the expert, "You aren't going to risk a billion-dollar nuclear sub in the littoral." Unmanned systems, particularly those snuck in by a fellow submarine, "turn the asymmetry around by doing [with unmanned craft] what no human would do." For example, sonar waves are the traditional way to find foes under the sea. But these active sensors are akin to using a flashlight in the dark. They help you find what you are looking for, but also let everyone nearby know exactly where you are. Manned submarines instead usually quietly listen for their foes, waiting for them to make a noise first. By contrast, unmanned systems can be sent out on missions and blast out their sonar, actively searching for the diesel subs hiding below, without giving away where the mothership is hiding. Having its own fleet of tiny subs also multiplies the reach of a submarine. For example, a mother submarine able to send out just a dozen tiny subs can search a grid the size of the entire Persian Gulf in just over a day. A submarine that can launch a UAV that can fly in and out of the water like the Cormorant extends its reach even farther. Such capabilities will lead to new operating concepts. One naval officer talked about how the robotic mini-subs would be like the unmanned "whiskers" used in the 1990s science fiction TV show _SeaQuest DSV._ (Basically, imagine a crappy version of _Star Trek_ , set underwater in a futuristic submarine instead of a spaceship, with a dolphin instead of a Vulcan as the alien crew member, and you get _SeaQuest_.) "They would act as 'force multipliers,' taking care of programmable tasks and freeing up manned warships to take on more complex ones. And they could be sent on the riskiest missions, to help keep sailors and Marines out of harm's way." The robotic sub could be sent in to clear minefields from below, lurk around enemy harbors, or track enemy subs as they leave port. The U.S.S. _Jimmy Carter_ , one of the navy's Seawolf class subs, reportedly even has tiny robotic drones that can launch underwater and tap into "the under-sea fiber-optic cables that carry most of the world's data." By pushing its robotic "eyes," "ears," "whiskers," and "teeth" farther away from the body, the mothership doesn't even have to be a warship itself. For example, with foreign nations increasingly unwilling to host U.S. bases ashore, the navy is moving to a doctrinal concept of "sea basing." These would be large container ships that act like a floating harbor. Such ships, though, are slow, ungainly, and certainly not stealthy, hence vulnerable to attack. So the navy is developing a plan to protect them called Sea Sentry. The sea base would not just provide a supply station for visiting ships and troops ashore, but would also host its own protective screen of unmanned boats, drones, and mini-subs. Similar plans are being developed for other vulnerable targets at sea, such as big merchant ships, oil tankers, and even private oil rigs. The concept of the mothership is not limited to the sea. For example, one firm in Ohio has fitted out a propeller-powered C-130 cargo plane so that it can not only launch UAVs, but also recover them in the air. The drones fly in and out of the cargo bay in the back, turning the plane into an aircraft carrier that is actually airborne. Such motherships will entail a significant doctrinal shift in how militaries fight. One report described its effect at sea as being as big a transformation as the shift to aircraft carriers, projecting it would be the biggest "fork in the road" for the U.S. Navy in the twenty-first century. Naval war doctrine, for example, has long been influenced by the thinking of the American admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914). Mahan didn't have a distinguished career at sea (he reputedly would get seasick even in a pond), but in 1890 he wrote a book called _The Influence of Sea Power on History_ , which soon changed the history of war at sea. Navies, Mahan argued, were what shaped whether a nation became great or not (an argument of obvious appeal to any sailor). In turn, the battles that mattered were the big showdowns of fleets at sea, "cataclysmic clashes of capital ships concentrated in deep blue water." Mahan's prescriptions for war quickly became the doctrine of the U.S. Navy, guiding Teddy Roosevelt to build a "Great White Fleet" of battleships at the turn of the twentieth century and shaping the strategy that the navy used to fight the great battles in the Pacific in World War II. Analysts still describe it as "the touchstone for U.S. naval force planning" and note how it is still cited in nearly every speech by senior admirals, even a century after its publication. The future of war at sea, however, bodes to look less and less like that which Mahan envisaged. With the new asymmetric threats and unmanned responses, the U.S. Navy of the twenty-first century is not planning for confrontations that only take place between two fleets, made up of the biggest ships, concentrated together into one place. Even more so, the places where ships fight won't only be the blue waters far from shore. Instead, these battles are predicted to take place closer to shore. The ships involved won't be "concentrated" together like Mahan wanted into one fleet, but rather be made up of many tiny constellations of smaller, often unmanned systems, linked back to their host "mother" ships. These, in turn, might be much smaller than Mahan's capital ships of the past (one navy officer, an aircraft carrier man, joked that the LCS really stood for "little crappy ship"). With Mahan's vision looking less and less applicable to modern wars and technology, a new "advanced" thinker on twenty-first-century naval war doctrine is coming into vogue. The only twist is that he was born just fourteen years after Mahan. Sir Julian Stafford Corbett (1854-1922) was a British novelist turned naval historian. Notably, Corbett was a friend and ally of naval reformer Admiral John "Jackie" Fisher, who introduced such new developments as dreadnoughts, submarines, and aircraft carriers into the Royal Navy. While he and Mahan lived in the same era, Corbett took a completely different tack toward war at sea. They both saw the sea as a critical chokepoint to a nation's survival, but Corbett thought that the idea of concentrating all your ships together in the hope of one big battle was "a kind of shibboleth" that would do more harm than good. The principle of concentration, he described, is "a truism—no one would dispute it. As a canon of practical strategy, it is untrue." In his masterwork on naval war doctrine, modestly titled _Some Principles of Maritime Strategy_ , Corbett described how the idea of putting all one's ships together into one place didn't induce all enemies into one big battle. Only the foe that thought it would win such a big battle would enter it. Any other sensible foe would just avoid the big battle and disperse to attack the other places where the strong fleet was not (something borne out later by the Germans in World War II). Moreover, the more a fleet concentrated in one place, the harder it would be to keep its location concealed. So the only thing that Mahan's big fleet doctrine accomplishes in an asymmetric war, Corbett felt, is to make the enemy's job easier. Instead, argued Corbett, the fleet should spread out and focus on protecting shipping lanes, blockading supply routes, and generally menacing the enemy at as many locales as possible. Concentrations of a few battleships weren't the way to go. Rather, much like the British Royal Navy policed the world's oceans during the 1700s and 1800s, it was better to have a large number of tiny constellations of mixed ships, large and small, each able to operate independently. In short, a doctrine far more apt for today's robotic motherships. Even more shocking at the time, but now clearly "advanced," Corbett emphasized that the navy should not just think about operations in the blue waters in the middle of the ocean, but also about how it could play a role in supporting operations on land. Describes one biographer, "Well before it was fashionable, he stressed the interrelationship between navies and armies." This seems much more attuned to the role of the U.S. Navy today, which must figure out not merely how to beat an enemy fleet and protect shipping lanes, but also aid the fight on the land (it carried out over half of the fifteen thousand airstrikes during the 2003 invasion of Iraq). Mahan won the first round in the twentieth century, but Corbett's doctrine may well come true through twenty-first-century technology. It is not shocking, then, that many current "advanced" military thinkers are huge fans of Corbett's and articles about him are proliferating in U.S. Navy journals; amusingly, despite the fact that he was an army officer, Robert Bateman even entered a 2007 U.S. Navy writing contest with an article extolling Corbett's vision. # SWARMING THE FUTURE The concept of motherships comes with a certain built-in irony. It entails a dispersion, rather than a concentration, of firepower. But the power of decision is still highly centralized and concentrated. Like the spokes in a wheel, the various unmanned systems may be far more spread out, but they are always linked back to the persons sitting inside the mothership. With unmanned systems, it becomes a top-down, "point and click" model of war, where it is always clear who is in charge. General Ronald Keys, the air force chief of air combat, describes a typical scenario that might take place: "An [enemy] air defense system pops up, and I click on a UCAS icon and drag it over and click. The UCAS throttles over and jams it, blows it up, or whatever." This philosophy of unmanned war is very mechanical, almost Newtonian, and certainly not one in which the robots will have much autonomy. It is not, however, the only possible direction that we might see doctrines of war move in, much as there were multiple choices on how to use tanks and airplanes after World War I. Places like DARPA, ONR, and the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab are also looking at "biological systems inspiration" for how robot doctrine might take advantage of their growing autonomy. As one analyst explains, "If you look at nature's most efficient predators, most of them don't hunt by themselves. They hunt in packs. They hunt in groups. And the military is hoping their robots can do the same." The main doctrinal concept that is emerging from these programs is "swarming." This idea takes its name from how insects like bees and ants work together in groups, but other parallels in nature are how birds flock or wolves hunt in a pack. Rather than being centrally controlled, swarms are made up of highly mobile, individually autonomous parts. They each decide what to do on their own, but somehow still manage to organize themselves into highly effective groups. After the hunt is done, they then disperse. Individually, each part is weak, but the overall effect of the swarm can be powerful. Swarming is not just something that happens in nature. In war, it is actually akin to how the Parthians, Huns, Mongols, and other mass armies of horsemen would fight. They would spread out over vast areas until they found the foe, and then encircle them, usually wiping them out by firing huge numbers of arrows into the foe's huddled army, until it broke and ran. Similarly, the Germans organized their U-boats into "wolfpacks" during the Battle of the Atlantic in World War II. Each submarine would individually scour the ocean for convoys of merchant ships to attack. Once one U-boat found the convoy, all the others would converge, first pecking away at the defenses, and then, as more and more U-boats arrived on the scene, eventually overwhelming them. And it's a style of fighting that is pretty effective. In one study of historic battles going all the way back to the wars of Alexander the Great, the side using swarm tactics won 61 percent of the battles. Notably, 40 percent of these victories were battles that took place in cities. Perhaps because of this historic success of urban swarms, this same style of fighting is increasingly used by insurgents in today's asymmetric wars. Whether it's the _Black Hawk Down_ battle in Somalia (1993), the battles of Grozny in Chechnya (1994, 1996), or the battles of Baghdad (2003, 2004) and Fallujah (2004), the usual mode is that insurgents hide out in small, dispersed bands, until they think they can overwhelm some exposed unit of the enemy force. The various bands, each of which often has its own commander, then come together from various directions and try to encircle, isolate, and overwhelm the enemy unit. This echoes T. E. Lawrence's (better known as Lawrence of Arabia) account of how his Arab raiders in World War I used their mobility, speed, and surprise to become "an influence, a thing invulnerable, intangible, without front or back, drifting about like a gas." Swarms are made up of independent parts, whether it's buzzing bees or insurgents with AK-47s, that have no one central leader or controller. So the self-organization of these groupings is key to how the whole works. The beauty of the swarm, and why it is so appealing to military thinkers for unmanned war, is how it can perform incredibly complex tasks by each part's following incredibly simple rules. A good example of this is a flock of birds. Hundreds of birds can move together almost as if they have a single bird in charge, speeding in one direction, then turning in unison and flying off in a different direction and speed, without any bird bumping into the other. They don't just use this for what one can think of as tactical operations, but also at the strategic level, with flocks migrating in unison over thousands of miles. As one army colonel asked, "Obviously the birds lack published doctrine and are not receiving instructions from their flight leader, so how can they accomplish the kind of self-organization necessary for flocking?" The answer actually comes from a researcher, Craig Reynolds, who built a program for what he called "boids," artificial birds. As an army report on the experience described, all the boids needed to do to organize themselves together as a flock was for each individual boid to follow three simple rules: "1. Separation: Don't get too close to any object, including other boids. 2. Alignment: Try to match the speed and direction of nearby boids. 3. Cohesion: Head for the perceived center of mass of the boids in your immediate neighborhood." This basic boid system worked so well that it was also used in the movie _Batman Returns_ , to create the realistic-looking bat sequences. From simple rules then emerge complex behaviors. There are many other examples of how complex, self-organizing systems work outside of nature. One is how big cities like New York never run out of food, despite the fact that no one is in charge of creating a master plan for moving food into and around the city. Another is the odd phenomenon known as "the wisdom of crowds," where a mass of relatively uninformed people tend to make smarter decisions in the aggregate than better-informed individuals do on their own. This explains how the index of the stock market beats almost every professional stock picker. Roboticists are now using these same approaches to get relatively unsophisticated robots to carry out very sophisticated tasks. James McLurkin, Swarm Project manager at iRobot, describes how bees and ants helped inspire his team. "We don't want to copy their behavior, but want to look at a working system that basically recruits workers to different sites." The only limit is that the individual parts in the swarm have to be able to stay in contact with at least some of the other parts. This allows them to relay information across the system on where each part is and where the swarm should form or head to. The U.S. military hopes to do this by building what it calls "an unassailable wireless 'Internet in the sky.' " Basically, it plans to take the kind of wireless network you might use at Starbucks and make it global by beaming it off of satellites, so a robot anywhere in the world could hook into and share information instantaneously. Of course, others think that this will make U.S. military doctrine inherently vulnerable to computer hacking, or even worse. As one military researcher put it, "They should just go ahead and call it Skynet." Just as the birds and the boids follow very simple rules to carry out very complex operations, so would an unmanned swarm in war. Each system would be given a few operating orders and let loose, each robot acting on its own, but also in collaboration with all the others. The direction of the swarm could be roughly guided by giving the robots a series of objectives ranked in priority, such as a list of targets given point value rankings. Just as a bird might have preferences between eating a bug or a Saltine cracker, taking out an enemy tank might be more useful than taking out an enemy outhouse. The swarm would then follow Napoleon's simple credo about what works best in war: "March to the sound of the guns." The Santa Fe Institute carried out a study on "Proliferated Autonomous Weapons," or PRAWNs, which shows how this concept might work in robotic warfare (Lockheed Martin has a similar program on robot swarms funded by DARPA, called the "Wolves of War"). Very basic unmanned weapons would use simple sensors to find targets, an automatic targeting recognition algorithm to identify them, and easy communications like radio and infrared (as the scientists thought the military's idea of using only the Internet would be too easy to jam) to pass on information about what the other robots in the swarm are seeing and doing. The robots would be given simple rules to follow, which mimic those birds use to flock or ants use to forage for food. As the PRAWNs spread around in an almost random search, they would broadcast to the group any enemy targets they find. Swarms would then form to attack the targets. But each individual robot would have knowledge of how many fellow robots were attacking the same target. So if there were already too many PRAWNs attacking one target, the other robot shrimpies would move on to search for new targets. Much as ants have different types working in their swarms (soldier ants and worker ants), the individual PRAWNs might also carry different weapons or sensors, allowing them to match themselves to the needs of the overall swarm. While each PRAWN would be very simple, and almost dumb (indeed, their AI would be less than the systems already on the market today), the sum of their swarm would be far more effective than any single system. Why drive a single SWORDS or PackBot into a building, room by room, to see if an enemy is hiding there, when a soldier could let loose a swarm of tiny robots that would scramble out and automatically search on their own? Similarly, a system of basic drones using this doctrine could efficiently cover a wide geographic area. Without any controls from below, they would loiter in the sky, spreading out to cover great distances, but converge whenever one drone in the swarm finds a target. They might conduct active searches or just wait for an enemy to reveal itself by emitting radar or shooting off a rocket. This task is simple enough for a swarm, but proved incredibly difficult for the U.S. military during the "SCUD hunt" of the first Gulf War and the Israeli military during its search for Hezbollah rocket sites in 2006, as they lacked the swarm's ability to cover wide areas efficiently. Or a swarm might be loosed on an area where the targets are already known, such as bunker complexes or communications nodes. Rather than a controller back in a mothership furiously trying to point and click at which target to hit, which has been taken out and so doesn't need any more drones to go after it, and which targets were missed and therefore need more attention, the autonomous swarm would just figure it all out on its own. Swarm tactics go beyond just a basic bum rush, where every system charges at the enemy from one direction. They might act as a "cloud," arriving into battle in one mass and then splitting up to envelop the target or targets from various directions. As Clausewitz described such a tactic in guerrilla campaigns, the systems would become "a dark and menacing cloud out of which a bolt of lightning may strike at any time." Or the swarm might work as a "vapor," covering a wide area, but never fully congealing in one place. The pace of the attacks can also vary, which further complicates the tactics a swarm might present an enemy with. The systems might converge on a target all at once. Describes Naval War College expert John Arquilla, "My vision of the future is a lot of small robots, capable of attacking an enemy force from all directions simultaneously. And the point would be to overload the defense of the target." Or they might "pulse" the target, attacking, dispersing, and reattacking again and again, aiming to wear the defenses down. They might even draw inspiration from how the Indians in Hollywood westerns would attack a wagon train, circling around and around the target, firing at it from a distance, until some opening or weakness is found. Much like being surrounded by bees, the experience of fighting against swarms may also prove incredibly frustrating and even psychologically debilitating. As Arniss Mangolds, a vice president of Foster-Miller, puts it, "When you see one robot coming down, it's interesting and even if it has a weapon on it, maybe it's a little scary and you give it a little respect.... But if you're standing somewhere and see ten robots coming at you, it's scary." Ten machine-gun-armed robots headed your way is fearsome enough. But with the simple rules guiding them and the simpler, cheaper robots that they require, there is no limit on the size of swarms. iRobot has already run programs with swarms sized up to ten thousand, while one DARPA researcher describes swarms that eventually could reach the size of "zillions and zillions of robots." # MOM AGAINST THE BEES Swarms are thus the conceptual opposite of motherships, despite both using robotics. Swarms are decentralized in control, but concentrate firepower, while motherships are centralized but disperse firepower. If you imagine a system of motherships laid out on a big operational map, it would look like a series of hubs, each with spokes coming out of them. Like checkers pieces, each of these mothership hubs could be moved around the map by a commander, much as each of their tiny robotic spokes could be pointed and clicked into place by the people sitting inside the motherships. With swarms, the map would instead look like a mesh-work of nodes. It would almost appear like drawing lines between the stars in the galaxy or drawing a "map" of all the sites in the Internet. Every tiny node would be linked together with every other node, either directly or indirectly. Where the linkages cluster together most is where the action is, but these clusters could rapidly shift and move. Every doctrine has its advantages and disadvantages. The mothership style of operations has very specific roles for specific units, as well as central lines of communication. Chop off one limb and the task might not get done. By contrast, self-organizing entities like swarms come with built-in redundancies. Swarms are made up of a multitude of units, each acting in parallel, so that there is no one chain of command, communications link, or supply line to chop. Attacking a swarm is akin to going after bees with a sword. Similarly, swarms are constantly acting, reacting, and adapting to the situation. So they have a feature of "perpetual novelty" built in; it is really hard to predict exactly what they will do next, which can be a very good thing in war. The disadvantages of swarm systems are almost the inverse. In war, "not all novelty is desirable," says retired army officer Thomas Adams. Swarms may be unpredictable to the enemy, but they are also not exactly controllable, which can lead to unexpected results for your side as well. Instead of being able to "point and click" and get the immediate action desired, a swarm takes the action on its own, which may not always be exactly where and when the commander wants it. Nothing happens in a swarm directly, but rather through the complex relationships among the parts. So swarms are also almost "nonunderstandable" in how they get a task done. Adams explains, "Complex adaptive systems are a swamp of intersecting logic. Instead of A causing B, which in turn causes C, A indirectly causes everything else and everything else indirectly causes A." The human commander's job won't be the kind of detailed point and click with a swarm. Rather, it is almost like what Gandhi said when he was sitting on the side of the road and a crowd of people went by: "There go my people. I must get up and follow them, for I am their leader!" The commander's job will be to set the right goals and objectives. They may even place a few limits on such things as the "radius of cooperation" of the units (to prevent the entire swarm from acting like kids' soccer teams, which tend to "beehive," with all the kids chasing the ball when a few should stay back and guard the goal). Then, other than perhaps parceling out reserves and updating the point values on each of the targets to reflect changing needs, the human commanders would, as Naval War College expert John Arquilla describes, "Basically stay the hell out of the way of the swarm." This type of truly "decentralized decision making," says one marine general, "flies in the face of the American way of war....But it works." Whether it is motherships, swarms, or some other concept of organizing for war that we haven't yet seen, it is still unclear what doctrines the U.S. military will ultimately choose to organize its robots around. In turn, it is also unclear which one will prove to be the best. Indeed, the choices may mix and mingle. Some envision that the concepts of swarms and motherships could be blended, with the human commanders inserting themselves at the points where swarms start to cluster. It wouldn't be the same as the direct control of the mothership's hub and spoke system, but it would still be a flexible way to make sure the leader was influencing what's going on at the major point of action. Whatever doctrine prevails, it is clear that the American military is getting ready for a battlefield where it sends out fewer humans and more robots. And so, just as the technologies and modes of wars are changing, so are the theories of how to fight them. Thinking about what robot doctrine to use in warfare will not be viewed as "advanced" for much longer. **[TWELVE]** **ROBOTS THAT DON'T LIKE APPLE PI : HOW THE U.S . COULD LOSE THE UNMANNED REVOLUTION** _Technology is a double-edged sword._ _—_ GENERAL GEORGE CASEY, U.S. Army chief of staff "Sorry, sir, but we can't export to China and we can't answer any questions." Stayne Hoff has been working in the defense aerospace industry for over twenty years, mostly managing small technology businesses. In 2006, his work took him to the Singapore Air Show. While the six-day event features everything from aerobatic flying demonstrations to academic conferences, the "show" is really about buying and selling weapons. It is Asia's largest annual arms bazaar, where nearly every defense firm in the world touts its new weapons for sale, from Russian cargo jets the size of buildings to tiny handheld missiles. The tiny corner booth that Hoff managed for his firm, A.V. Inc. of Simi Valley, California, was quite modest compared to the huge displays put on by the industry giants. For instance, Boeing had a specially built two-story building nearby, just to house its media center. But Hoff 's booth generated an almost constant flow of government buyers and arms dealers, dropping by to check out his company's wares. The reason for all the buzz was the Raven drone on display, a five-foot-long UAV, costing only $35,000, that had proven to be incredibly popular among the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. "[Air] shows are nice because everybody who is anybody goes," says Hoff. Over the course of the show, he guesses that he talked to more than two dozen government ministers and generals, who all asked for demonstrations of the Raven in their own countries. One visitor, however, kept coming back again and again. Wearing the red-and-green uniform of the People's Liberation Army of China, he kept asking Hoff all-too-specific questions about such things as the range and flight time of his drone. Hoff would decline to answer each time, but the visitor was undaunted. As Hoff recalls, "We've had Russians and Chinese and even an Israeli with a Taiwan nametag ask us about the details. They know I can't say much, but they keep trying." # NEWTON'S LAW OF WAR The triumphal belief that the United States is uniquely suited to succeed in a world of modern technology is not just limited to the crowd that surrounded Cebrowski and Rumsfeld in the Bush-era Pentagon. Joe Nye, the former dean of the Kennedy School of Government, and William Owens, a former navy admiral, both of whom served in senior positions in Bill Clinton's Pentagon, write that "knowledge, more than ever before, is power. The one country that can best lead the information revolution will be more powerful than any other. For the foreseeable future, that country is the United States." A U.S. Army War College report on the future of war similarly argued that America's advantage in both battle and technology would not be fleeting. "The ability to accept and capitalize on emerging technology will be a determinant of success in future armed conflict. No military is better at this than the American, in large part because no culture is better at it than the American." Many feel this makes America a unique sort of great power. Technology was not just America's pathway to power, but has entered into American cultural consciousness like no other great power in history. Only in American history did inventors, scientists, and technologic entrepreneurs like Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, and Bill Gates become cultural icons, while the whole system of industrialized technology found its origin in the United States. The result, argue such optimists as George and Meredith Friedman in _The Future of War: Power, Technology and American World Dominance in the Twenty-first Century,_ is that "America is by its nature a technological nation." The U.S. Army report similarly concurred, "Technology is part of how Americans see themselves, to reach for it is instinctive. This works to the advantage of the American military." Unfortunately, history also tells a different story. The powers that adapt a revolutionary military technology frequently get cocky and overly confident. And their revolutionary technologies inevitably diffuse. Rather than permanent power, a version of Newton's laws of physics instead usually applies to war. For every revolution in military technology, there is an equal and opposite reaction. As powerful as any advantage is at the start of an RMA, it is eventually countered. Even more, the first to invent or take advantage of some revolutionary new weapon or doctrine in war tends to come out behind in the final calculus. Indeed, in the more than four thousand years of war there are very few examples of militaries that stayed on top throughout an RMA. The British navy's transition from sail to steam is about the only one that historians all agree on in the modern age. The problem for "first movers" is that, while they benefit from their early use of the technology, they have to pay heavily for its development. They also have to commit early to a certain form or design of the technology, as well as to certain organizations, strategies, and tactics. But they often have to do this before they know which one will work best. By comparison, their competition can "free-ride" on the early costs, copy what already works, and focus all their energy and resources solely on improving upon what the first mover does. Motivation also weighs heavily. As historian Max Boot explains, "The longer you are on top, the more natural it seems, and the less thinkable it is that anyone will displace you. Complacency can seep in, especially if, like the United States, you enjoy power without peer or precedent." By contrast, coming in second place is the ultimate spur to action. Powers that feel beaten down or defeated, like Japan after Commodore Perry's intimidating visit in the nineteenth century or Germany after World War I, tend to be more open to making the necessary, but frequently painful, organizational shake-ups and to taking risks that those states already on top think they can avoid. A classic military example of this phenomenon is how the Turks' early adoption of gunpowder failed to prevent them from becoming the "sick man of Europe." We've already seen how the French and the British pioneered the use of tanks but never made the essential doctrinal adjustments the Germans did to capitalize on the new technology. But when a class at the U.S. Naval Academy wrestled with this issue in 2007, they found that video games and computers made the point far better. Companies like Wang or Atari may have been the first out of the gate and dominated the market when they were born, but none of the young officers used them now. The early market leaders had already been swept aside by new competitors. RMAs should come with the standard warnings given to investors looking at mutual funds: "Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future performance." This view from the perspective of history is not unique. Concern about America's future advantage in new technologies like robotics gets repeated in all sorts of quarters. James Lasswell of the U.S. Marines' emerging technology division laments how "most of the things we do will soon be in the hands of everyone else." Half a world away, a former Pakistani army general (whose perspective is particularly notable in that he helped train the Taliban in the 1990s) says, "These major advances will not remain the sole monopoly of the U.S. Other major powers, over a period of time, will catch up." Such opinions square with how most science fiction writers see the world of technology evolving for America. Orson Scott Card of _Ender's Game_ fame worries that in all our focus on "an enemy that uses asymmetrical technology against us," the United States is missing that its present advantage may prove quickly fleeting. "We have not abolished the constant back-and-forth of military technology, we have only temporarily rushed ahead of the curve; it will bounce back." When it comes to the new unmanned technologies, the bounce-back may be even quicker than previous RMA reversals in history. Despite the billions of dollars the Pentagon has invested in engineering and AI research and development, robots are not like aircraft carriers, spacecraft, or atomic energy, which required a massive industrial complex, not only to build but to operate. Once developed, robotic technology is often cheap and mass producible. In turn, adversaries used to have to steal technology in order to copy it. Today, they need only go to a show like the one in Singapore, or even buy the commercial version off the Internet. Army War College professor Steven Metz predicts, "We will see if not identical technologies, then parallel technologies being developed, particularly because of the off-the-shelf nature of this all. We've reached the point where the bad guys don't need to develop it; instead they can just buy it. For example, people think that because North Korea is a closed society that it can't do things like information technologies. But all they need to gain that is a briefcase with $2 million and a ticket to Singapore." The robotics revolution is only just now under way, but already a looming reality is becoming clear. The United States is making immense use of these systems in its war efforts, but it is certainly not the only player in the game. As of 2008, Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, the industry trade group, had over fourteen hundred corporate members in fifty nations. A survey of government-related research found that forty-two countries were at work on military robotics. A typical example was in 2008, when Iran's official news agency announced that its researchers had just finished a robot (a SWORDS knockoff) "programmed for blasting opponents' positions." Perhaps the best proof of the spread, though, comes at the air shows, where new military technologies are introduced to the world. While Stayne Hoff 's unmanned product was one of the hits of the 2006 Singapore show, he soon had serious competition. The 2007 Dubai Air Show featured the unmanned military wares companies and expert speakers from the United States, as well as from Belarus, Denmark, Sweden, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. At the Paris Air Show later that year, 552 different types of drones and other unmanned systems were marketed to defense buyers. Not only do U.S. military robotics developers and makers face huge competition, but many think that they are already behind the field in certain areas. For example, one DARPA survey of military robotics scientists found that Japan and Europe are ahead of America in legged robot research. Warned one scientist, "The small U.S. humanoid robot community is at risk of being overwhelmed by foreign research, development and commercialization." Another worries that DARPA might one day be accused of having "failed in its assigned mission to prevent technological surprise." # A STRATEGIC TOUR OF ROBOTS U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Dave Sonntag's job is not only to figure out who is working on what new technologies, but also to evaluate how good they are. Unlike most officers, Sonntag didn't join the military after high school or college, but after a career in business, first working as an environmental consultant. However, he explains, "The consultant business was feast or famine. I was young, married, and had lots of loans. Plus, the air force lured me with the dangle of paying for my PhD." Thus, Sonntag's military career started by taking him back to school, which fit perfectly with his boyhood love for science and science fiction. Sonntag also credits his father, himself a PhD. "I still remember the smell of benzene as I would nap in a hammock in his lab, in the early sixties, and then running some of the equipment in his lab in the seventies. What a trip! Nowadays, I get crap at work from the Safety Nazis for showing my kids how to extract DNA from lunch meats." Once his training in both the sciences and the military was complete, the air force sent Sonntag out to jobs at the Air Force Research Lab, working as a toxicologist, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, analyzing science and technology futures. Today, his career has taken him to Tokyo, where he serves as deputy director for the Asian Office of Aerospace Research and Development. He describes his role as "the new Asian GNR [genetics, nanotech, and robotics] guy for the Air Force." Sonntag's mission is essentially to ensure that the United States stays aware of new technologies in Asia. His office works to keep track of everything interesting that is going on in the sciences in Asia ("interesting" translated as anything that is potentially useful in war), as well as try to make sure that the United States has a stake in it. _"_ My job here is to look out 20-30 years and invest in what is today's sci-fi. We invest small seed money in stuff we think might have promise.... Basically it's like prospecting." When he first was sent to Japan, Sonntag tells how he wondered, "Why the hell do we have an office in Japan? It's expensive. It's tough on the family." But now he describes it as "essential" to his job. About a third of all the world's industrial robots are in Japan. These raw numbers aside, the best visual evidence of Japan's knack for robots comes at the "Big Sight" complex in Tokyo. A massive convention center with ten major halls, it is the host of IREX, the International Robotics Exhibition. Held since 1973, the convention now has some one thousand booths of robot exhibitors that range from factory robots to "life assistance" robots (nursebots). The receptionist who greets the more than one hundred thousand people who visit IREX is Actroid, a humanoid robot modeled after a sexy local newscaster. Japan's success with robotics and AI comes from a long history of strong government support. In 1981, the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry launched an $850 million program to foster development of AI software and hardware, while today it plans to replace about 15 percent of its workforce with robotics over the next twenty years. Typically, explains Sonntag, the countries that have the most interest in robotics have either a security need to limit casualties or a rapidly aging population base. Japan falls into the "sweet spot" of both. Its birth rate is the second lowest in the world (only Hong Kong's is lower), so the population is both aging and shrinking but still faces a dangerous region. By contrast, the United States and Europe have faced slowing population growth, and the accompanying need for young workers, by opening their borders to greater numbers of immigrants. But Japan, with a population that is 99 percent ethnically pure Japanese, has decided to go the technologic route, with robots used for everything from farming and construction to nursing and elder care. Because of this commitment to robotics, some even believe that Japan has been undervalued in global power projections. One of the most vehement is an Indian professor of business and global leadership, Prabhu Guptara. "It is now fashionable to talk of the 21st century as if it will be the 'Asian Century'—with China being touted as the coming power, economically and militarily. Given that I am Indian, it will hardly be a surprise to find that I am not among the fans of this theory regarding the future. But you may be surprised to find me only a little more sanguine about India—and putting my money instead on Japan." Guptara tells how his views on Japan changed after he attended the 2005 World Expo in Aichi, Japan, which hosted some twenty-two million people and put the Japanese robotics trend on full display. "My choice may be particularly surprising, given that Japan's economy has been dragging for the last 25 or more years, in spite of everything that the Japanese government has tried. So why am I now putting my money on Japan?... It is because of robots!" Dave Sonntag agrees. "Japan is top-notch in robotics. . . . They have not even begun to realize their strategic potentials." But Japan is not the only locale for this kind of work. When we spoke, Sonntag was just back from "making the rounds of several Korean GNR labs." The South Korean robotics industry has grown by 40 percent a year since 2003, while South Korea already has the best IT infrastructure in the world, including the world's highest percentage of homes linked into high-speed Internet (80 percent), as well as the world's first nationwide wireless Internet service. It is so far ahead of the United States that companies like Microsoft test out their products in Korea first, before they release them back home. Korea's push into robotics has been very much promoted and supported by its government, which sees the technologies as a key to future economic competitiveness and power. The South Korean government announced in 2007 plans to "put a robot in every household by 2020" and created a government-supported Center for Intelligent Robots that groups together more than a thousand scientists. Financed by the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) and the Defense Ministry, Korean robotics research ranges from home cleaner robots to a prototype automated combat robot shaped like a large dog. South Korea's robotics vision will culminate with two "robot theme parks," sponsored by the Commerce Ministry. Scheduled to open in 2013 at a total cost of $1.6 billion, the parks will allow visitors to interact with robots, as well as give Korean robotics companies locations to test and launch new products. Describes the ministry, "The two cities will be developed as Meccas for the country's robot industry, while having amusement park areas, exhibition halls and stadiums where robots can compete in various events." While many other nations like Singapore, Malaysia, and even Thailand are at work on these new technologies, Sonntag also has to keep an eye on that particular concern of the Pentagon, China. It's not a good-news story from his perch. "The Chinese are just kicking our butts" while "the U.S. is sitting on its thumb." He tells, for example, how China will soon be ahead of the United States in the production of nanotechnologies, describing this as part of a larger trend that will shortly extend into many other science and technology sectors. China's recent economic rise was originally fueled by cheap, relatively unskilled labor producing low-technology goods like toys. But China is now the world's largest user of the Internet, with twice as many broadband users as the United States, and has many of the world's most advanced R&D facilities and high-technology factories. IBM, one of the very first computer companies, actually sold its computer division to a Chinese company in 2005. As the saying goes, in the twenty-first century, "the geeks shall inherit the earth." So where these geeks increasingly live means a great deal. In this, China's huge population base gives it a massive numeric advantage. Half of China's students graduate in the sciences or engineering (compared to 13 percent in the United States), but this literally translates into millions more skilled Chinese added each year to their workforce. Former ambassador Chas Freeman, co-chair of the United States-China Policy Foundation, says, "This means that they, not Americans, will own and control the intellectual property and 'killer apps' that power it and its evolving technology. We will be paying royalties as we try to catch up with them." Lying behind China's approach has not just been its raw numbers of scientists and engineers, but also an openness to ideas and technology from abroad. Freeman explains that "much of the momentum for China's success stems from its emulating the past receptivity of the United States to foreigners and their ideas. Much of our loss of preeminence stems from our new propensity for closing our ears and our borders to ideas and people that are strange to us." Like what happened in the other technology sectors, many of the early Chinese robots appear to be knockoffs of foreign designs. For example, in 2006, the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing released Rong Cheng, the Chinese version of a "beauty robot" so popular in Japan. The robot can speak in multiple dialects, respond to over a thousand words and phrases, and even dance. Sadly, Rong Cheng is not all that attractive or lifelike, looking like a cheap department store mannequin with a wig glued on. But at a cost of only $37,500, it's hard to expect perfection from your robot beauty queen. Chinese robot designs, however, are rapidly catching up in their ingenuity and range of innovation. One presentation on Chinese robots, for example, included everything from a robot waiter to a robot chimpanzee made by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Chinese roboticists appear to be particularly focused on the biomimetic and AI realm. Besides robot monkeys, the "Institute of Robot" at Beijing University had built what the _People's Daily_ calls a "bionic fish." A five-foot-long robot shaped like a fish, the system can swim underwater with automatic navigation. Reportedly, it has only been used in environmental and underwater archaeology research, but Pentagon observers are quick to note that this is exactly how the U.S. Navy's UUVs also got their start. Another example of innovative Chinese work in AI and robotics is a "cyberglove" built at the Robotics Institute at Jiao Tong University in Shanghai. The device is a robotic hand that uses artificial intelligence to learn how to move. It will reportedly combine the dexterity of a human hand with the pinpoint accuracy and strength of a machine, making possible "the perfect artificial limb." Just as China's growing Internet presence gives it new capabilities in information warfare (the Chinese army has set up a "cyberwarfare" program staffed by some six thousand paid hackers), this growing unmanned research and commercial sector creates new potential in the military domain. Starting in 2005, for instance, the Chinese air force began to replace its older 1960s-model fighter planes with newer, more technologically advanced types. While the obvious concern in U.S. Air Force circles was how it would handle flying against the newer, improved Chinese fighter planes, others began to grow curious about what had happened to the older planes. Many in the Pentagon believe that instead of destroying or mothballing them, the Chinese military is converting its "retired fighter aircraft into UAVs, with numbers potentially in the hundreds." While the older converted drones might prove easy for U.S. fighters to shoot down in a potential war, at a certain point the tyranny of numbers would weigh in. Eventually, U.S. planes would run out of missiles and have to cede the air to the drones, at least until they could go rearm. More broadly, many are growing concerned that at their present rate of growth and advancement, Chinese robotics could have quality as well as quantity on their side in any future robot wars. A RAND report dourly advised that "the U.S. and its military must include in its planning for possible military conflict the possibility that China may be more advanced technologically and militarily in 2020." Sonntag worries whether America's military and political leaders will heed such warnings. The challenge with important occurrences in science and technology, he explains, "is getting the strategic guys to understand it. It's now only the very geeky guys who get it." It's not just a matter of "how to translate geek speak." Even within the military intelligence world, the analysis of other countries' science and technology is "very ill-informed" and "stove piped," he says. "We really don't have a good feel for what the trends are." More broadly among senior policymakers and military leadership, "There is little global awareness of what's going on." # NO COUNTRY LEFT BEHIND? "Technology is like 'magic shoes' on the feet of mankind, and after the spring has been wound tightly by commercial interests, people can only dance along with the shoes, whirling rapidly in time to the beat that they set." This passage comes from a book called _Unrestricted Warfare_. Originally forwarded to me by Lieutenant Colonel Sonntag, it was written by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, two senior colonels in the Chinese military, and published by the People's Liberation Army Literature and Arts Publishing House. It is known as one of the most influential books shaping the views of the next generation of Chinese military leaders. The book even received the official blessing of a highlighted review in the Communist Party youth league's newspaper. _Unrestricted Warfare_ is essentially a strategic guidebook to twenty-first-century war. Its focus is how countries like China might defeat the United States in a war of high technology, despite the apparent American lead in weapons. What is notable is that the Chinese officers don't just focus on seeking out American vulnerabilities and widening the scope of conflict, the sort of "asymmetric" approach to war that many think is the only way to defeat the United States. They also argue that foes will be able to defeat America at its own high-technology game. Qiao and Wang argue that America suffers from an odd combination of being uniquely addicted to technology, but also unable to truly exploit it. "However, this is not a strong point of the Americans, who are slaves to technology in their thinking. The Americans invariably halt their thinking at the boundary where technology has not yet reached." Moreover, they go on to describe how the United States may be ahead now, but this will not last for long. "Technology is useful, however, because Americans do not do a good job of anticipating technology trends." Part of this confidence comes from the fact that Qiao and Wang are great believers in the imminence of an RMA, but they see the key elements of it emerging from the commercial sector, where China is surging forward. "The new concept of weapons will cause ordinary people and military men alike to be greatly astonished at the fact that commonplace things that are close to them can also become weapons with which to engage in war." They go on to add, "We believe that some morning people will awake to discover with surprise that quite a few gentle and kind things have begun to have offensive and lethal characteristics." At face value, the Chinese officers' prediction seems off base. After all, the American advantage in war technologies doesn't just stem from its massive defense budget. From Thomas Edison to Bill Gates, it has traditionally been the home of commercial innovation and invention. Even in this latest revolution, Americans invented key enablers like fiber optics and the Internet. And why should this trend not continue? While the United States only has 4 percent of the world's population, it spends almost 50 percent of the world's R&D funding. Yet these Chinese army officers aren't alone in predicting America's loss of its advantages in this arena. Indeed, the U.S. Navy agrees with them. In 2006, the navy's official journal published a warning that "the United States is headed for the 'perfect storm' when it comes to how it deals with defense technology. Only if changes are made now, can the U.S. avoid the loss of its technological superiority." One of the major challenges to America's success in a world of high technology is that the same education system that once took its military and economy to the top is now falling behind. Only 54 percent of America's high school students perform at even a basic level in math and science. And these are by American standards. When matched against international students, American high school students came in twenty-second in the world in basic math and science and twenty-fourth when they had to apply their skills to real-world problems. Norman Augustine is a former chair of the National Academies, the U.S.'s official science advisory organization, as well as a former CEO in the defense aerospace industry. As he explains, it isn't that American kids are dumb. Rather, our education system is making them dumber. "The longer students are exposed to our K-12 education system, the worse they do—particularly in the critical areas of math and science." Indeed, while U.S. fourth graders come in at the top eightieth percentile in the world in science, by the time they reach the twelfth grade they have fallen to the bottom fifth percentile. To paraphrase the failed Bush education reform policy, which worsened the problem by emphasizing rote memorization, nearly every American child is being left behind. As Bill Gates puts it, "When I compare our high schools to what I see when I'm traveling abroad, I'm terrified for our workforce of tomorrow." The traditional retort to rising worries about America's education system is that while our high schools may suck, we have great universities. Unfortunately, when it comes to math and science skills, so key to designing, building, and using new technologies, this may no longer be the case. These high schools feed fewer kids with either skills or interests in science and math into U.S. universities. The universities are then graduating fewer and fewer. This is starting to create a "futile cycle," in the words of Princeton University president Shirley Tilghman. There are fewer and fewer American teachers and professors with science and mathematics skills to inspire, supervise, and mentor the next generation of American engineers and inventors. These problems at the university level then feed back into high schools, which rounds the futile cycle. Erskine Bowles, president of the University of North Carolina system (which has 183,000 students at its various campuses), put it this way in 2006. "In the past four years, our 15 schools of education at the University of North Carolina turned out a grand total of three physics teachers. Three." In the past, America made up for such a gap by hosting foreign students and researchers in its universities, who would then frequently stay in the United States for the long term. New post-9/11 visa policies are making it harder for these visitors to both come and stay. Those foreign researchers who do come are more frequently returning to much better job prospects back home. The impact is being severely felt on "the vitality and quality of the U.S. research enterprise," stated National Academy of Sciences president Bruce Alberts. "This research, in turn, underlies national security and the health and welfare of both our economy and society." With American scientists not being replenished in sufficient numbers, some worry the whole system could fall behind. As the National Science Board warned, "If action is not taken to change these trends, we could reach 2020 and find that the ability of U.S. research and education institutions to regenerate has been damaged and that their preeminence has been lost to other areas of the world." The globalization of the world economy is also hammering the U.S. technology establishment. While American workers remain talented, they also are comparatively expensive. In Vietnam, twenty assembly-line workers can be hired for the price of one in the United States. In India, six engineers earn the equivalent of one in the United States. And in China, five chemists can be employed for the salary of one in the United States. These pay gaps are made even worse by a U.S. health care system that acts like a massive anchor attached to American industry. General Motors, for example, was once the epitome of American industrial might in peace and war. During World War II, its automobile plants were converted to manufacture tens of thousands of tanks, trucks, and planes. Today, it has junk bond status and had to reduce its U.S. workforce by a third. The reason is not just that GM too long expected to sell ugly fuel-guzzlers, but also that it spends more on health care than it does for the steel that goes into its cars. Even a seemingly successful American firm like Starbucks has to spend more on health care than it does on coffee. It is no surprise then that companies, even the most technological, are outsourcing their business outside the United States. The result is a hammer blow to U.S. technology development and manufacturing, especially in the commercial sector that Qiao and Wang describe as so important to taking full advantage of this RMA. America's trade balance in high-tech goods and services went from a positive $50 billion in 1996 to negative $50 billion in 2006, while only three out of the top ten companies granted patents for new products and inventions were American. And it bodes to get worse. More than three-fourths of the new R&D facilities planned worldwide will be located in either China or India. With the huge amount of "civilian off-the-shelf " technologies used in military robotics, these trends actually create a massive dependence on foreign manufacturers to supply America's next generation of weapons. This dependence has many worried beyond lost market share. Technology security expert Richard Clarke is concerned that the U.S.'s complete reliance on technology made elsewhere makes it far easier for foes to hack or hijack systems, including being able to slip "back doors" in. "There is massive industrial espionage.... China already has the ability to lace technology it is building for us with Trojan horses and time bombs. Most if not all the computer systems running the Internet, phones, power grid, and robots were built in China." In turn, others note that the location of manufacturing elsewhere makes it easier for competitors to copy and build their own cloned systems. iRobot engineers tell how they have already seen cloned copies of both their Roomba vacuum cleaner and the PackBot military robot. Indeed, they once angrily confronted a group of Singaporean military officers who were showing off what appeared to be a clone of a PackBot at a demonstration. Stayne Hoff similarly says a good sign a buyer just wants to clone a drone is "when they only want to buy one." The sum total of these education and economic trends is moving the U.S. security system in a scary direction, warns Rusty Miller of the defense firm General Dynamics. "If the U.S. doesn't wake up and pay attention, we're going to get smoked." # MONEYBALL AND THE CULTURE WARS William "Billy" Beane was a first-round pick by the New York Mets in the 1980 baseball draft. Beane's career, however, didn't take off the way either he or the Mets planned. He played only in 148 games as a reserve outfielder, hitting just three home runs. Off the field, Beane met with far more success, and in 1997 he became general manager of the Oakland A's. The A's soon became a perennial playoff team, despite the fact that they came from a small market and couldn't afford a large player payroll. In 2006, for example, the A's ranked twenty-first out of the thirty baseball teams in salaries, but had the fifth best record. In essence, Beane's team paid only a fourth of what big-money teams like the New York Yankees had to pay for each win. The secret to Beane's success is that he refused to let baseball's culture and traditions get in the way of how he did business. Other teams still selected players based on popular measures that came out of the nineteenth century (typically using only very basic statistics like stolen bases, RBIs, and batting average). Beane and his team of evaluators used a modern, technical method of evaluation, called "sabermetrics" (or the "Moneyball way," after Beane was profiled in a book entitled _Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game_ ). For example, even though it went completely against the conventional wisdom of baseball, the mathematical data showed that avoiding an out has far more impact on a team's chances of winning than getting a hit. Despite the proof, others wouldn't change. Beane's success came not just from his willingness to eschew the traditional ways of doing business, but also from how, despite all the data to the contrary, his competitors continued to cling to the old ways and old baseball culture, even if it meant fewer wins for their teams and could ultimately cost them their jobs. Beane's experience illustrates how, even in the most competitive marketplaces, new ideas still have trouble supplanting old doctrines. This especially happens with new technologies. Just because something new and better is discovered doesn't always mean it is adopted. For instance, I typed this book out on a keyboard laid out in the traditional QWERTY manner, which 99 percent of the computers in the world use. Yet this layout actually dates back to 1873, when it was first developed to make typists go _slower_ , so as not to jam their mechanical typewriters. In the time since, numerous new keyboard layouts have been invented that would speed typing by as much as 95 percent. Yet companies and customers alike resist them, as QWERTY is the way it has always been, even if it is nowhere near the best. War is certainly a far different beast than typing or baseball (other than when a Red Sox fan shows up in the bleachers at Yankee Stadium), but the military is also a highly competitive field that can still be quite resistant to change. Indeed, as one British colonel put it, "In no profession is the dread of innovation so great as in the army." So, ironically, even though militaries often generate great change, they have trouble adjusting to it. Throughout history, even the most brilliant military minds have often failed to adapt well to new technologies. Napoleon may have conquered most of Europe, but he turned down Robert Fulton's offer to make France both submarines and steam-ships. At the very start of the American Civil War, the Union army was offered the breech-loading repeater rifle, which could fire seven shots quickly instead of just one. But its makers couldn't even get a hearing, let alone a sale; it wasn't until President Lincoln himself tried out the weapon that the rifles were bought, years into the war, and then only for cavalry. The same thing happened with machine guns. Americans like Richard Gatling and Hiram Maxim may have invented the rapid-firing gun that would revolutionize warfare, but officers in the U.S. Army at the time refused to use them. Indeed, Custer could have had four Gatling guns with him at the Battle of Little Bighorn, which would have mowed down the Indians at his "Last Stand." Instead, Custer left them behind at the base as he felt machine guns had no value in combat and would only slow him down. Militaries resist change, even when it might help them win wars, for many reasons. The experience of combat is unique, so the latest generation tends to feel a special kinship with the generations before it and doesn't want to veer too far from what they did in the past. For instance, the ancient Greeks so honored the ideals of war that Homer wrote about in the _Iliad_ that they shunned the use of technologies like siege engines. If it wasn't good enough for their heroes like Achilles or Ulysses, then it wasn't good enough for them. Change can also become wrapped up in turf battles and other bureaucratic intransigence. Those vested in the current system, or whose talents and training might become outdated by new technologies, will fight any change that threatens to make them obsolete or out of work, or in any way harms their prestige. Most important, the stakes are so high in war that militaries place an immense value on going into battle with something that has already proven its worth in the past. When the U.S. Army began to talk about replacing horses with tanks just prior to World War II, cavalry officers argued that horses had four thousand years of experience at war, while tanks had only a few years at the end of World War I. As late as 1938, General Hamilton Hawkins lamented the "foolish and unjustified discarding of horses" and blamed the "sheep-like rush to mechanization and motorization without clear thinking or any apparent ability to visualize what takes place on the field of maneuver or the battlefield." Even with mechanized vehicles clearly proving themselves in World War II, the U.S. Army didn't dissolve its last horse unit until three years into the war. Many think that the same sort of cultural resistance to change may hamper U.S. military adaptation to unmanned systems, even if it is one of the early originators of the technology. Dr. Russ Richards is the director of the Project Alpha program on military unmanned systems at the Joint Forces Command. "The greatest hurdle," he says, "is likely to be overcoming military culture." The many delays that occurred in the use of drones are a prime example of how military culture is perhaps weighing in against the curve. Andrew Krepinevich, a former Defense Department analyst who is now executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, jokes that the reason the air force resisted systems like the unmanned fighter plane is that "no fighter pilot is ever going to pick up a girl at a bar by saying he flies a U.A.V....Fighter pilots don't want to be replaced." The same goes even for pilots beyond fighter aces. One A-10 Warthog pilot, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, said fliers' biggest fear—being shot down—has been replaced by a fear of being ordered to fly a drone from a ground-based cubicle. "It's like being a pilot for nerds. Where is the sense of adventure, the sense of danger?...Let's put it this way: I don't think they're going to make any movies about guys who fly Predators." These are jokes, of course, but they have a real underpinning to them. The U.S. Air Force's professional identity is very much wrapped up in the idea of piloting planes, and fighter planes at that. Indeed, over half of the air force's generals are fighter pilots, as has been every single air force chief of staff but one since 1982. So being a fighter pilot is not just in the air force leadership's organizational DNA, it is also seen as the pathway to advancing in the ranks. Given this, it is no surprise then that the air force long stymied the development and use of drones, letting DARPA and the intelligence agencies take the lead instead. Even once the air force started to buy and use drones (largely because of the competition from these other agencies), this sort of cultural resistance has played out in very real organizational actions. The early Predator pilots in the air force, for instance, were paid less than regular pilots, didn't get any credit in their career advancement for their flight hours, and were otherwise generally shunned. As one air force helicopter pilot joked, "I was happy when drones came in. It meant that we were no longer at the bottom of the totem pole." While this attitude has slowly changed as drones have proven their worth in combat, the air force still holds on dearly to its identity as a force of fighter aces dogfighting against enemy fighter planes in the sky, despite the fact that it hasn't happened for years. "Today's Air Force clings to a fight-the-Soviets (or at least the Chinese) model with greater passion than yesteryear's Army clung to the horse cavalry," concluded one military analyst. One young air force officer, just months out of the academy, tells how, despite the fact that drone pilots have seen far more combat action than jet fighter pilots over the last decade, "It's seen as this geeky thing to do." The result is that the force will still sometimes put pilots' career interests ahead of military efficiency, especially when those making the decisions are fighter jocks themselves. For example, many believe that the air force canceled its combat drone, Boeing's X-45, before it could even be tested, in order to keep it from competing with its manned fighter jet of the future, the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF, a program now $38 billion over its original budget, and twenty-seven months past its schedule). One designer recalls, "The reason that was given was that we were expected to be simply too good in key areas and that we would have caused massive disruption to the efforts to 'keep . . . JSF sold.' If we had flown and things like survivability had been evenly assessed on a small scale and Congress had gotten ahold of the data, JSF would have been in serious trouble." Military cultural resistance also jibes with problems of technological "lock-in." This is where change is resisted because of the costs sunk in the old technology, such as the large investment in infrastructure supporting it. Lock-in, for example, is why so many corporate and political interests are fighting the shift away from gas-guzzling cars. This mix of organizational culture and past investment is why militaries will go to great lengths to keep their old systems relevant and old institutions intact. Cavalry forces were so desperate to keep horses relevant when machine guns and engines entered twentieth-century warfare that they even tried out "battle chariots," which were basically machine guns mounted on the kind of chariots once used by ancient armies. Today's equivalent is the development of a two-seat version of the Air Force's F-22 Raptor (which costs some $360 million per plane, when you count the research and development). A sell of the idea described how the copilot is there to supervise an accompanying UAV that would be sent to strike guarded targets and engage enemy planes in any dogfights, as the drone could "perform high-speed aerobatics that would render a human pilot unconscious." It's an interesting concept, but it begs the question of what the human fighter pilot would do. Akin to the baseball managers who couldn't adapt to change like Billy Beane, such cultural resistance may prove another reason why the U.S. military could fall behind others in future wars, despite its massive investments in technologies. As General Eric Shinseki, the former U.S. Army chief of staff, once admonished his own service, "If you dislike change, you're going to dislike irrelevance even more." It is not a good sign then that the last time Shinseki made such a warning against the general opinion—that the invasion of Iraq would be costly—he was summarily fired by then secretary of defense Rumsfeld. # BIGGER IS NOT ALWAYS BETTER: THE DEFENSE-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX On the cover of _Life_ magazine in April 1957 is a picture of "The Flying Blue Brothers." It shows two smiling brothers, blond and buzz-cut, sitting in the cockpit of a tiny propeller plane. The article inside tells the tale of Neal, twenty-one, and Linden, twenty, two brothers who had taken time off from Yale University to pilot their Piper Tri-Pacer alone across the Andes. Their adventures included "cavorting with headhunters in the Amazon, trying to right their crashed plane on a mountain ice shelf, and later, lounging on Ipanema Beach with a comely brunette." The Blue brothers (no relation to the Jake and Elwood of _The Blues Brothers_ fame) went on to lead an equally colorful business career, running a cocoa-and-banana plantation in Nicaragua, and then investing in an assortment of companies that included a German streetcar manufacturer, natural-gas wells in Canada, and ranchland just outside the Telluride, Colorado, ski resort. In 1986, they bought General Atomics, a nuclear-power research company, from Chevron for $50 million. Around the same time, a small company called Leading Systems built a prototype of an unmanned drone that could fly great distances for long periods of time. They called it Amber. The Pentagon had no interest in UAVs and so the company went out of business in 1990. The Blues' firm, General Atomics, bought up the assets of the failed company, including Amber. Despite the fact that the drone had no buyers, the Blues and General Atomics believed in the technology. The company renamed the Amber drone and began production even though there was no set buyer. In a sense, General Atomics took the _Field of Dreams_ approach to defense contracting that iRobot did with UGVs: "If you build it, they will come." The CIA soon came shopping and the drones, now called by the more fearsome-sounding "Predator," saw action in the Balkans. And the rest is robot history. The story of the Blues and General Atomics is a classic story of how an industry upstart can shake up the system. This small-company approach to contracting carries over to other parts of General Atomics. The company is headquartered in an office district just outside San Diego. There, it builds Predators at a pace of almost fifty a month. "It's like a California speed shop where they hand-build hot rods," says Glenn Buchan, an analyst at the RAND defense research group. General Atomics can assemble such sophisticated weapons systems so quickly because it places great value on simplicity. The drones' bodies are made of a honeycomb of graphite, paper, and other materials and then literally baked in an oven. Propeller-powered engines may not have been sexy, but the early-model Predator drones used props because they were more efficient and cost less. As _BusinessWeek_ wrote of the Blues' success, "The development of the smaller, cheaper plane shows how even in an age of $300 billion Pentagon budgets [note: now double that], nimble entrepreneurs can shake up the Establishment." The challenge for the United States is that stories like that of the Blues and Predator, where smart, innovative systems are designed at low costs, are all too rare. The U.S. military is by far the biggest designer and purchaser of weapons in the world. But it is also the most inefficient. As David Walker, the head of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), puts it, "We're number 1 in the world in military capabilities. But on the business side, the Defense Department gets a D-minus, giving them the benefit of the doubt. If they were a business, they wouldn't be in business." The Department of Justice once found that as much as 5 percent of the government's annual budget is lost to old-fashioned fraud and theft, most of it in the defense realm. This is not helped by the fact that the Pentagon's own rules and laws for how it should buy weapons are "routinely broken," as one report in _Defense News_ put it. One 2007 study of 131 Pentagon purchases found that 117 did not meet federal regulation standards. The Pentagon's own inspector general also reported that not one person had been fired or otherwise held accountable for these violations. This lumbering process is also heavily undermined by being "hierarchical and top down," as one former army colonel, who now runs a robotics firm, put it. The Pentagon will almost always invest in systems that have bureaucratic and political champions, but not always those that are most efficient or that the troops in the field are finding most useful. One striking example is how the army's massive FCS program originally didn't include the smaller types of robotics, the very types that soldiers were requesting to have in the field. There is also a Pentagon phenomenon known as "requirements creep." The decision on what to buy and the requirements of what must go into the systems are too frequently made by those least familiar with new technology. Bruce Jette, who has been the point man inside much of the U.S. Army's robotics efforts, likens the current process to how horse cavalry officers were the ones who helped decide the required specifications for the early military automobiles. They originally demanded that the cars come with saddle seats and reins. Some ninety years later, the Pentagon's acquisition office once mandated that small ground robots come equipped with an onboard fire extinguisher, oil change, and trailer hitch. Jette points out, "The thing is 30 pounds and electric!" Whenever any new weapon is contemplated, the military often adds wave after wave of new requirements, gradually creeping the original concept outward. It builds in new design mandates, asks for various improvements and additions, forgetting that each new addition means another delay in delivery (and for robots, at least, forgetting that the systems were meant to be expendable). In turn, the makers are often only too happy to go along with what transforms into a process of gold-plating, as adding more bells, more whistles, and more design time means more money. These sorts of problems are rife in U.S. military robotics today. The MDARS (Mobile Detection Assessment Response System) is a golf-cart-sized robot that was planned as a cheap sentry at Pentagon warehouses and bases. It is now fifty times more expensive than originally projected. The air force's unmanned bomber design is already projecting out at more than $2 billion a plane, roughly three times the original $737 million cost of the B-2 bomber it is to replace. These costs weigh not just in dollars and cents. The more expensive the systems are, the fewer can be bought. The U.S. military becomes more heavily invested in those limited numbers of systems, and becomes less likely to change course and develop or buy alternative systems, even if they turn out to be better. The costs also change what doctrines can be used in battle, as the smaller number makes the military less likely to endanger systems in risky operations. Many worry this is defeating the whole purpose of unmanned systems. "We become prisoners of our very expensive purchases," explains Ralph Peters. He worries that the United States might potentially lose some future war because of what he calls "quantitative incompetence." Norm Augustine even jokes, all too seriously, that if the present trend continues, "In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one tactical aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy, three and one half days per week, except for the leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day." Closely linked is a "bigger is better" mentality that has taken hold in American defense contracting. As Pierre Chao at the Center for Strategic and International Studies explains, it would be a "strategic mistake" not to have a massive amount of competition in the military robotics marketplace. "If you think it is a young technology, that the Orville and Wilbur Wrights of the 21st century are running around in the UAV marketplace, then as messy as it makes the environment, it is far more strategically important to have lots of players, different patrons behind those players, and to keep stimulating the useful competition of ideas." And yet U.S. military acquisitions, even in the field of robotics, are increasingly dominated by an ever smaller number of huge defense contractors, driving down competition. From 1986 to 2006, for example, the number of Pentagon prime contractors that could compete on major programs went from twenty to six. The result? "Only the dinosaurs were allowed" to bid on such major programs as the army's FCS, laments one robotics firm executive. These major defense firms do very well for their shareholders, beating the S&P 500 in six of the last ten years. But besides limiting competition, the bigger companies tend to bring a risk-averse approach to the business side of war. In its planning, General Atomics tries to take a twenty-year look into the future. As Neal Blue puts it, "The future belongs to those people who will be thinking out of the box and delivering systems based on the technologies of the future." By contrast, the old-school firms typically wait to be called upon, rather than pushing forward new ideas for the future. When I interviewed an executive at one of the largest U.S. defense firms about how his company strategized about which new military technologies to research and develop, based on their sense of the various changes in war and technology, he replied that they didn't. "We just work on what the Pentagon tells us." The big firms think less like _Field of Dreams_ and more like _Waiting for Godot_. This passive mentality also makes them less attractive destinations for the brightest scientists and engineers. The megadefense firms find it tough to compete with the Silicon Valley trendsetters (who, because of their lack of lobbying efforts, rarely do well in Pentagon competitions) in terms of prestige and pay scale. Even among scientists who want to do defense work, the bigger firms are seen as offering less freedom to experiment and innovate. The bigger firms tend not to be at the cutting edge of change, but they make up for it by wielding far more influence in the halls of Congress and the Pentagon, which gives them greater power to exact costs, even when they fail at the job. Cost overruns happen in any business, but in defense contracting it has become the norm. In 2008, the GAO found that the Pentagon's major weapons acquisition programs were a combined $295 billion over budget and behind schedule by an average of twenty-one months. Yet even when their projects fall behind, most major contractors still get their performance bonuses, because it is viewed as career suicide to cross them. The F-22, for example, came in at close to triple its original price, but 91 percent of the performance bonus, about $850 million, was paid out to its makers. The "bigger is better" mentality is not just about the influence of the largest firms. "Larger companies trend towards larger vehicles with all the bells and whistles," explains one robotics firm executive, who had previously worked with one of the major defense contractors. The reason is not just one of traditional gold-plating and requirements creep, but also financial margins. He recounts submitting an affordable military ground robot design to his bosses. Instead of being praised, he was told that "the profit margin is just too small for a sub $1 million vehicle." Because it was perceived as too small to be worth selling, he was told either to figure out how to make it bigger (and thus increase the profit margins), or to "load on million-dollar sensors" that the firm had already developed for other weapons. This kind of thinking similarly led the UCAS to evolve from a small, quick, and disposable attack drone into its current $43 million design the size of a bus. Such a skewed industry of war could prove to be America's undoing in the future of war. Sums up retired marine Bing West, "There is no comparison to how we do things so irrationally." # FIGHT THE FUTURE History tells us that only rarely can a nation stay ahead in an RMA. For the United States in the robotics revolution, the challenges include the many other nations proving to be just as savvy in these new technologies, an education and economic system that threatens to sap its competitiveness, potential resistance to change within its military culture, and a balky defense-industrial complex. History need not repeat itself, however. As one military journal put it, the United States has definitely made its mistakes, but has ultimately been "more often smart than stupid." It is also the same country that produced people like Stayne Hoff, Dave Sonntag, Billy Beane, and the Blue brothers. For all the various factors that may challenge the United States in this revolution of technologies, it is also in the traditions of America, and its military, to be flexible and experiment with change. Before World War II, for example, the U.S. Navy built a number of different classes of aircraft carriers, as it didn't know which type would be best for the new technology of warplanes at sea. By contrast, the British navy tried out only one class, which unfortunately for them proved wrong. A return to this American tradition of experiments and design contests also will rebuild competition in the U.S. defense-industrial space. Indeed, the recent U.S. difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan may act to dispel conceit and help overcome resistance to any needed changes. The parallel here is how the Boston Red Sox, the definitive big-market, tradition-bound team, eventually got tired of losing and decided to copy Billy Beane's approach of following a new path. A year later, they won their first World Series in eighty-six years. Likewise, America may well be a nation uniquely fascinated with technology, as the optimists claim, but they undervalue that this stems from the traditional importance America has placed on education and learning. Scientists turned founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin thus would agree with a lesson that futurist Arie de Geus has for countries today. "The ability to learn faster than your competition may be the only sustainable competitive advantage." The U.S. education system may now be "left behind," but it is not a permanent lost cause. It revitalized itself after Sputnik and can do so once again. In turn, there is nothing to prevent the U.S. military itself, and especially its system of professional education and research centers, from being what change-management expert Peter Senge called a "learning organization," open to new ideas, including even the thinking of others. This is how you stay ahead, especially in a revolution. "While learning from experience is good, learning from others' experience is even better," says General James Mattis, now in charge of developing many of the new American concepts of war at the U.S. Joint Forces Command. Most of all, whether the United States avoids a repeat of so many other nations' leader-to-loser experience will depend on whether it eschews the arrogance that dogged most past losers. It must recognize that change is afoot, and not merely one that will only be to America's benefit. **[THIRTEEN]** **OPEN-SOURCE WARFARE: COLLEGE KIDS, TERRORISTS, AND OTHER NEW USERS OF ROBOTS AT WAR** _If I can imagine it, what would a totally dedicated, well-educated individual do, especially if they have a Timothy McVeigh personality?_ _—_ GREG BEAR In the summer of 2005, Sam Bell set out to buy a military-grade robotic drone. As a subsequent article about his experience described, "It was an unusual shopping expedition for a private citizen, much less a 22-year-old only a few months removed from his political science and philosophy studies at Swarthmore College. But, ever since graduation, and even while in school, Bell had been working to do what the U.S. government and the United Nations had so far failed to: stop the genocide in Darfur." Bell got into the military robotics business after he and two other Swarthmore students, Mark Hanis and Andrew Sniderman (whose previous college activities included running for student council and playing for the school golf team), decided they wanted to do something to help in Darfur. They formed a group called the Genocide Intervention Network (GI-Net), whose goal was to bring attention to the ongoing killings in Darfur and help raise money for the undermanned and underfunded peacekeeping force deployed there. That a bunch of students could raise money for a military force was a seemingly absurd concept, but the idea caught on. Within a year, GI-Net had raised almost half a million dollars from individual donations, as well as the proceeds from charity events like a movie showing of _Hotel Rwanda_ and a "battle of the bands." The problem was that the students didn't know how to spend the money. The African governments that actually had sent peacekeepers to Darfur wouldn't just take it, and in any event, the students were also worried about it being misspent. Operating from his dorm room, Sniderman then e-mailed over a hundred private military firms. He asked if they were willing to be hired out by the students to send troops to Sudan. He also made sure to change his voice-mail greeting to "something more serious and somber...something you'd want your business partners to hear." As he later recounted, "Within 36 hours, I got dozens of replies. Most were saying, 'We've never done anything like that, but we'd love to work with you.' " The idea of college students hiring a private army didn't sit well with many of their funders (plus, the Sudanese government wouldn't have allowed the firms in anyway), so the group hit upon another way of hiring a military force. They could rent a private military firm's drone, which could monitor the refugee camps in Darfur from the air and report on any attacks on civilians. Sam Bell then put on his only suit and went to the Washington offices of Evergreen International, an aviation contractor. The firm's executives were enthusiastic about the business opportunity and described a plan for leasing the students four new UAVs, which would be remotely operated from back in the United States but fly over Darfur. It seemed a great idea until Evergreen presented Bell with the price tag: $22 million a year. The college student then asked "if the firm had any options for shoppers on a tighter budget." Evergreen then offered an older-model UAV for far less. Fortunately for GI-Net, the students ran the idea past an actual expert. "He said, one, a sandstorm could knock the UAV out; two, it could get shot down; and three, if either of those things happened, the Sudanese government could get a hold of it and take hold of its technology," Hanis explains. "So it turned out the UAV wasn't such a good idea." Ultimately, the students at GI-Net ended up using their funds not on renting military robots from a private firm, but on aid to refugee families in Darfur. But this strange episode illustrates just how vast the changes are in who can now gain access to advanced military technologies such as robots. Warfare is going "open source." # HYBRID WAR Historian Max Boot observes that "technology is both the great separator and the great equalizer in military affairs." The United States may be the most powerful nation-state in history, largely because of its technology. And yet this superpower hasn't always been able to turn that power into victories. Instead, groups that aren't even states have been able to frustrate and flummox it by using low-cost, low-tech weapons like car bombs or IEDs. Even more, such groups can utilize many of the same high technologies that a superpower like the United States spent billions of dollars to develop. The investments to create satellite navigation and the Internet may have originally come out of DARPA, but now any terrorist group can pinpoint targets with GPS devices they buy off Amazon.com. Perhaps the best illustration of what these changes bring to conflict is Hezbollah, one of the most innovative groups at war today. A largely Shiite organization, it began in 1985 as a radical religious movement in Lebanon. The group has since morphed into a multitude of identities and forms. It is simultaneously a paramilitary organization (able to mobilize as many as ten-thousand fighters), political party (holding fourteen seats in the parliament), media conglomerate (operating its own TV, radio, and Internet networks), and development and aid organization (funding its own system of hospitals, clinics, and schools, as well as a welfare program for much of south Lebanon). In the summer of 2006, Hezbollah militants kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. Frustrated by the rise of the group, the Israeli military launched a massive retaliatory strike, designed both to teach Hezbollah a lesson and force it to return the kidnapped troops. It didn't seem an even fight. One side was a state, which had the most advanced and professional military in the region and had never lost a war. The other wasn't even a state and the financial resources it possessed to spend on weapons and troops (from its own fund-raising and aid from Iran) were only 1 percent of Israel's defense budget. "There are many who belittled the enemy as primitive," said Major General Udi Shani, director of the intelligence branch in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Yet Israel soon found itself unable to defeat Hezbollah, the first time the nation's military had failed to smash an Arab foe in its history. By the time that the thirty-four-day war ended with a cease-fire, Israel had lost over 120 troops killed and nearly 500 wounded, as well as another 43 civilians killed and 4,262 injured by the rockets and missiles that Hezbollah fired into Israeli cities. Israel was unable to get back its soldiers and its military chief of staff was forced to resign. By contrast, Hezbollah held a parade at which more than a million supporters showed up to cheer what its leader called "a divine and strategic victory." The tiny nonstate actor was able to accomplish what the combined militaries of all the Arab states (which had soundly lost to Israel in 1948, 1967, and again in 1973) couldn't by figuring out how to fight what U.S. Marine General James Mattis has called a "hybrid war." Hezbollah is quite amorphous in its structure. It blends political, religious, economic, and military power. When it came time for actual combat, it could spread its fighters out into decentralized units, which could swarm around in attack, but disperse and disappear whenever Israel's military tried to pin them down in the field. Most important, the group was able to meld classic guerrilla tactics, conventional-war savvy, and the latest high technology. Israel may have been one of the first states to develop and use drones in war, but that didn't prevent it from becoming the first state to be attacked by nonstate drones. While Israel flew scores of drones in its attacks over Lebanon, Hezbollah also flew at least three Mirsad (Arabic for "ambush") drones into Israel, each carrying a payload of about twenty-two pounds of explosives, packed with ball bearings to make them even more deadly. While Israeli jets and drones circled above Lebanon looking for targets to strike, hidden Hezbollah rockets, many of which were fired either by remote or automated timer controls, rained down on Israeli cities. Frustrated, the Israelis then launched their ground forces into southern Lebanon. The thinking was that if they couldn't destroy the rockets from the air, they could control the territory from which the rockets were being fired, pushing the threat beyond range of Israeli cities. Here too, the nonstate force proved stunningly innovative. According to Israeli media reports, not only was Hezbollah "able to hack into the Israeli Army's computer systems prior to the attack," but it also cracked into the army's radio systems (which are similar to the ones used by U.S. soldiers). Notably, the group's Internet attacks on Israel originally appeared to come from a small South Texas cable company, a suburban Virginia cable provider, and Web-hosting servers in Delhi, Montreal, Brooklyn, and New Jersey. But these all had actually been "hijacked" by Hezbollah hackers. Described an article on the strategy, "In the cyberterrorism trade it is known as 'whack-a-mole'—just like the old carnival game, Hezbollah sites pop up, get whacked down and then pop up again somewhere else on the World Wide Web." The group even infiltrated the Israeli cell phone network, eavesdropping on phone calls made to home by Israel's military commanders and soldiers in the field, to get their radio code names and other personal information. As a report after the war noted, "The intelligence data provided Hezbollah fighters with critical tactical information about the intentions, status and whereabouts of Israeli ground forces." Armed with this information, the Hezbollah fighters were able to stymie the Israeli attacking forces. Hezbollah showed that nonstate actors not only can figure out asymmetric strategies to nullify a state's massive advantage of force and size, but can even beat states at their own high-technology game. As retired U.S. Army officer Ralph Peters commented, "All contempt for terrorists set aside, we need to recognize that Hezbollah has prepared itself better for a war against military superiority than any other military organization of our time.... If David didn't kill Goliath this time, he certainly gave the big guy a headache." # NO STATE? NO SHOES? NO PROBLEM The use of unmanned systems isn't just limited to large-scale organizations like Hezbollah, which, while not a state, certainly controls a sizable chunk of real estate. The infamous private military firm Blackwater, for example, added an unmanned section to its business in 2007, seeking to rent out drones and even unmanned blimps for reconnaissance and surveillance jobs. Indeed, one U.S. Special Forces soldier expected a growing "corporate use" of unmanned systems by private military and corporate intelligence-gathering firms, even coining the term "robot mercenaries" for it. In turn, many humanitarian groups have talked about actually following through on the plans first hatched by the Swarthmore students and "getting our own UAVs," as one executive at a human rights organization put it. Perhaps the best illustration of how the bar is being lowered for groups seeking to develop or use such sophisticated systems comes in the form of "Team Gray," one of the competitors in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. Gray Insurance is a family-owned insurance company from Metairie, Louisiana, just outside New Orleans. As Eric Gray, who owns the firm along with his brother and dad, explained, the firm's entry into robotics came on a lark. "I read an article in _Popular Science_ about last year's race and then threw the magazine in the back of my office. Later on, my brother came over and read the article, and he yelled over to me, 'Hey did you read about this race?' And I said, 'Yeah,' and he said, 'You wanna try it?' And I said, 'Yeah, heck, let's give it a try.' " The Grays didn't have PhDs in robotics, billion-dollar military labs backing them, or even much familiarity with computers. Instead, they brought in the head of their insurance company's ten-person IT department for guidance on what to do. He then went out and bought some of the various parts and components described in the magazine article. They got their ruggedized computer, for example, at a boat show. The Grays then began reading up on video game programming, thinking that programming a robot car to drive through the real-world course had many parallels with "navigating an animated monster through a virtual world." Everything was loaded into a Ford Escape Hybrid SUV, which they called Kat 5, after the category 5 Hurricane Katrina that hit their hometown just a few months before the race. When it came time for the race to see who could design the best future automated military vehicle, Team Gray's entry lined up beside robots made by some of the world's most prestigious universities and companies. Kat 5 then not only finished the racecourse (recall that no robot contestant had even been able to go more than a few miles the year before), but came in fourth out of the 195 contestants, just thirty-seven minutes behind Sebastian Thrun's Stanley robot. Said Eric Gray, who spent only $650,000 to make a robot that the Pentagon and nearly every top research university had been unable to build just a year before, "It's a beautiful thing when people are ignorant that something is impossible." Kids in dorm rooms, militant Middle Eastern groups, and insurance companies don't seem to have much in common, but they are all part of a much larger phenomenon, the early stages of a new global redistribution of power. One of the factors that led to the rise of the nation-state in past centuries was its ability to mobilize and organize mass numbers of soldiers that it could use to beat down the other forms of government (dukedoms, city-states, tribes, and so on). The need to support such a standing army in turn led to the need to create a state government's bureaucracy and tax structure. As the historian Charles Tilly famously said about the rise of states, "War made the state and the state made war." If the past RMAs were associated with helping to spur on the centralized forms of state governments (such as how the gunpowder revolution helped lead to the rise of colonial empires), this one is taking place in a period where power is becoming decentralized, flatter, and increasingly nongovernmental. Today, nonstate actors are increasingly the ones with power, resources, and decision-making authority. In economic and trade matters, the some sixty thousand multinational companies in the world today clearly wield economic influence beyond the control of any one state. Likewise, individual donors have proven to be far more influential in fighting global diseases like AIDS than governments. And the militaries and police of many nations, such as Lebanon where Hezbollah is based, actually have less control over what goes on within their borders than the various paramilitary and warlord groups. Security analyst John Robb calls this the rise of "open-source warfare." Much like an open-source software code like Linux is available to anyone and everyone to use and improve upon, so too is conflict being opened up to any organization with the will to go to war and a deadly entrepreneurial spirit. The growing use of unmanned systems is thus wrapped within a larger political phenomenon going on in twenty-first-century politics. War no longer involves mass numbers of citizen soldiers clashing on designated fields of battle. Nor is it being carried out exclusively by states. So, in a sense, we are witnessing the linked breakdown of two of the longest-held monopolies in war and politics. History may look back at this period as notable for the simultaneous loss of the state's roughly 400-year-old monopoly over which groups could go to war and humankind's loss of its roughly 5,000-year-old monopoly over who could fight in these wars. That these monopolies are ending does not mean that the state is disappearing anytime soon, nor human soldiers for that matter. It does mean, however, that state militaries have new competition on the battlefield, competition that will also have the most advanced technologies in war, including unmanned systems. Some of these nonstate actors will buy their unmanned weapons off the open market. As journalist Noah Shachtman says of military robots, "The actual physical hardware is cheap and the software will get out." This means that such systems will inevitably end up in the hands of groups that we'd rather not see having such technology. For as the saying goes, "There are no friends in the weapons business, only contracts." Other actors may not buy their systems on the open market, but get them off the black market, including even by outright theft. "A robot out of sight in Afghanistan is a sale item at the marketplace in the morning" is how one U.S. Army robotics expert put it (recalling the Raven drones that ended up in Iraqi insurgent hands as well). And still others may just do like the Grays and build their own systems, perhaps even better than the ones that state militaries might have. The outcome is that the range of groups using such sophisticated weapons systems will continue to proliferate, with military robotics popping up in the most unexpected places. In 2004, for example, French troops deployed to the Ivory Coast, their former colony in West Africa, to help police a cease-fire between the government and local rebels. The French forces came in without any air defenses, thinking they had little to fear when deploying into the 157th poorest nation in the world. On November 4, 2004, two Israeli-made Aerostar drones circled above their base, scouting out targets and establishing their GPS coordinates. A few hours later, Russian-made Sukhoi jet fighters screamed in, dropping bombs, which killed nine French soldiers and one U.S. aid worker. It turned out that the tiny country had hired the services of an Israeli private military firm to run its intelligence-gathering and a group of ex-Red Army Belarusian pilots to become its air force. "State, nonstate, air, land, sea. . . . We have to count on every other actor having them. We can't assume that the U.S. will always have a big technology advantage," warns Noah Shachtman. # OSAMA BOT LADEN? TERRORISTS AND TECHNOLOGY Perhaps it is the whole cave-dwelling, robe-wearing lifestyle, but there is a prevalent assumption that terrorist groups like al-Qaeda aren't all that interested in technology. As Lieutenant General Lance Smith, deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, put it, "One of the reasons we're having difficulty getting Osama bin Laden and the other leadership of Al Qaeda is because they recognize that technology is not their friend.... Many of our enemies have learned that the way to fight us is to not use technology." Like many assumptions about terrorism, this could not be more wrong. In the years since 9/11, al-Qaeda has evolved from a highly centralized group, which planned all its operations out of a few sites in Afghanistan, into a global movement, with cells spread around the world. In this transformation, technology has been essential to holding the group together, as well as expanding its numbers. As a 2006 study of the group, entitled "High-Tech Terror: Al-Qaeda's Use of New Technology," laid out, technologies are essential to the group for everything from finding and radicalizing new recruits, collecting and moving funds, passing on training and expertise, and communicating attack plans. Web pages like the Al-Hesbah Discussion Forum "offer news on Iraq, links to videos from conflict zones, where jihad is fought, photos of martyrs, and religious arguments for the justification of waging jihad. There are even postings of job openings in jihad." Other radical sites host chat rooms, online magazines, and downloads for cell phone videos of the latest propaganda, which all can also be passed on to your friends. There is even a site where one can pledge allegiance to Osama bin Laden by filling out an online form. Terrorists are also using new technologies to recruit in even more novel and inventive ways. This includes a thriving video game industry targeting Muslim youths, which focuses on the themes of waging violence. In the popular game _Ummah Defense_ , for example, a virtual warrior has the vicarious thrill of taking on the American military, Israeli settlers, and, of course, "killer robots." With unmanned systems, these technologies move from the propaganda and recruit indoctrination of virtual reality to real-world operations. One al-Qaeda- linked Web site, for example, has already offered recruits the chance to remotely detonate an IED in Iraq while sitting at their home computer, the terrorist parallel to the drone pilots in Nevada. In turn, al-Qaeda explored the use of a UAV to assassinate President Bush at the 2001 G-8 summit in Italy. "Sooner or later we're going to see a Cessna programmed to fly into a building," warns navy rear admiral Chris Parry. Unmanned systems lower the bar for who can deal out damage, while multiplying the potential destruction they can cause. The toughest terrorists to stop are those with no concern for their lives, in that normal defenses and deterrence won't work. Fortunately, those people with such a death instinct are rare. Robert Finkelstein pioneered a DARPA-supported project on what he describes as the coming "intersection of robotics and terrorist groups, particularly looking at robots as platforms for WMD." He explains, "We may be in the 'golden age' of suicide bombers, but that may not always be the case. In any way, there may be groups in which not everyone wants to seek the seventy-two virgins right now [referring to the extremist recruiting propaganda that martyrs are greeted in heaven by seventy-two virgins]." If a would-be terrorist isn't willing to strap on a vest filled with explosives or fly a plane into a building, the new robotic systems mean that they can now accomplish their goals remotely or automatically and still live to fight another day. As one security analyst described, "You can be a wimp, but still be a terrorist." This change is immense. The number of attacks can be multiplied, as suicidal terrorists used to come with an expiration date. In turn, even when attacks fail, captured machines don't provide as good intelligence as a captured terrorist; if you torture a robot with a waterboard, only sparks come out. Simultaneously, unmanned systems offer capabilities and possibilities beyond the normal limits that terrorists face. One analyst described that a robot in terrorist hands is "a suicide bomber on steroids, basically." Traditional barriers like fences and walls can be more easily breached when drivers don't care if they die or can fly over them. It is hard enough for Secret Service agents to protect a president from those in the line of sight, such as the audience at a speech; imagine how difficult it gets when the assassin might be miles or cities away, doing it all remotely. Robert Finkelstein believes, "Robots could be very attractive [to terrorists], and are available right now. You could fly stuff into the White House very easily from roofs just six blocks away. . . . I'm actually very surprised it hasn't happened yet." Even worse, unmanned systems are, as a 2006 air force study concluded, "an ideal platform" for deploying such weapons of mass destruction as biological or chemical weapons; the analogy here is the use of drones in agriculture as crop dusters, just in this case the pilot doesn't want to be anywhere near what he is "dusting." Much as American military drones over Iraq are flown from Nevada, so too can unmanned systems give terrorists who might not be able to get inside the United States reach and access that they didn't have before. Most of the U.S. government's focus on preventing WMD attacks on the American homeland has been to defend against the threat of intercontinental ballistic missiles, with over $54 billion spent on the National Missile Defense program so far. But such missiles are only in the hands of a few states (not even Iran or North Korea have them yet) and therefore any attack would have to involve either the leaders in those states becoming suicidal or terrorists' being able to seize an existing missile (like a Russian or Chinese missile base), get the launch codes, and know how to use them. By contrast, "do it yourself" kits are making robots accessible to just about anyone, including systems with capabilities that were just a few years ago considered military grade. Chris Anderson, an editor at _Wired_ magazine, even hosts a Web site called _DIY-Drones_ in which he shows how to build systems comparable to U.S. tactical systems but at a fraction of the cost, including a drone that can fly for an hour, uses GPS directions and text messaging controls, but costs only $1,000. Amateur builders have even made drones that can fly immense distances with pinpoint accuracy. In 2003, for example, a group of model plane enthusiasts launched a homemade drone called the "Spirit of Butt's Farm." Designed by a seventy-seven-year-old blind man, the drone was sophisticated enough to fly itself across the Atlantic Ocean. One group's hobby might be another's weapon. As with nonstate organizations, terrorist groups may even have an advantage when it comes to high technology, in that they can free-ride off of the investments that states and industry made in developing them. The sum total of al-Qaeda's financial resources is thought to be roughly what the U.S. military spends in one hour in Iraq. But in 2006, when its forces wanted to target a British army base outside Basra in Iraq, al-Qaeda didn't have to invent rockets that go into space or build expensive reconnaissance satellites that could take photos of the Earth. Instead, its operatives went onto the Internet (which al-Qaeda also didn't have to pay to develop) and downloaded images of the base from Google Earth. The footage was so detailed that they were able to sight their mortars to target the soft-skinned tents in the base, rather than harder-to-damage buildings. # THE PERILS OF A BAD HAIR DAY When we think of the terrorist risks that emanate from unmanned systems, robotics expert Robert Finkelstein advises that we shouldn't just look at organizations like al-Qaeda. "They can make a lone actor like Timothy McVeigh even more scary." He describes a scenario in which "a few amateurs could shut down Manhattan with relative ease." (Given that my publisher is based in Manhattan, we decided to leave the details out of the book.) _Washington Post_ technology reporter Joel Garreau similarly writes, "One bright but embittered loner or one dissident grad student intent on martyrdom could—in a decent biological lab for example—unleash more death than ever dreamed of in nuclear scenarios. It could even be done by accident." In political theory, noted philosophers like Thomas Hobbes argued that individuals have always had to grant their obedience to governments because it was only by banding together and obeying some leader that people could protect themselves. Otherwise, life would be "nasty, brutish and short," as he famously described a world without governments. But most people forget the rest of the deal that Hobbes laid out. "The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long and no longer than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them." As a variety of scientists and analysts look at such new technologies as robotics, AI and nanotech, they are finding that massive power will no longer be held only by states. Nor will it even be limited to nonstate organizations like Hezbollah or al-Qaeda. It is also within the reach of individuals. The playing field is changing for Hobbes's sovereign. Even the eternal optimist Ray Kurzweil believes that with the barriers to entry being lowered for violence, we could see the rise of superempowered individuals who literally hold humanity's future in their hands. New technologies are allowing individuals with creativity to push the limits of what is possible. He points out how Sergey Brin and Larry Page were just two Stanford kids with a creative idea that turned into Google, a mechanism that makes it easy for anyone to search almost all the world's knowledge. However, their $100 billion idea is "also empowering for those who are destructive." Information on how to build your own remote bomb or the genetic code for the 1918 flu bug are as searchable as the latest news on Britney Spears. Kurzweil describes the looming period in human history that we are entering, just before his hoped-for Singularity: "It feels like all ten billion of us are standing in a room up to our knees in flammable fluid, waiting for someone—anyone—to light a match." Kurzweil thinks we have enough fire extinguishers to avoid going up in flames before the Singularity arrives, but others aren't so certain. Bill Joy, the so-called father of the Internet, for example, fears what he calls "KMD," individuals who wield knowledge-enabled mass destruction. "It is no exaggeration to say that we are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation states, on to a surprising and terrible empowerment of individuals." The science fiction writers concur. "Single individual mass destruction" is the biggest dilemma we have to worry about with our new technologies, warns Greg Bear. He notes that many high school labs now have greater sophistication and capability than the Pentagon's top research labs did in the cold war. Vernor Vinge, the computer scientist turned award-winning novelist, agrees: "Historically, warfare has pushed technologies. We are in a situation now, if certain technologies become cheap enough, it's not just countries that can do terrible things to millions of people, but criminal gangs can do terrible things to millions of people. What if for 50 dollars you buy something that could destroy everybody in a country? Then, basically, anybody who's having a bad hair day is a threat to national survival." # NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH: TECHNOLOGY FIGHTS BACK The science-minded folks are not the only people, however, worrying about the changes these new technologies may bring to the terrorism trade. One special operations officer describes how much of the future of counterterrorism will be about hunting down such super-empowered individuals. "The future is manhunting." In these manhunts, unmanned and automated technology may prove to be a key factor; that is, robots are not just a new tool for terrorists, but also one of Kurzweil's "fire extinguishers" that might help stop them from burning the world down. Just as Hezbollah used these new technologies to step up its attacks on Israeli cities, Israel has since responded by deploying its own layers of automated defenses, on land and in the air. One of the more notable includes the Skyshield, an automated machine-gun system a lot like R2-D2 in Baghdad, that shoots down missiles and rockets that fly across the border. States besieged by terrorists, however, can't depend solely on such a last line of defense. They also must invest in prevention. Here too automated systems are proving useful. One of the paradoxes of security screening at places like airports and railroad stations, for example, is that it is incredibly important, but also mind-numbingly boring. So, oddly, we have this most crucial job in countering terrorists performed by workers with little training, who are paid barely over minimum wage. As with other dull, dangerous, and dirty jobs, automated systems are coming into favor as a potential solution. Screening is beginning to be streamlined via such technologies as high-frequency radio scanners, which can automatically spot concealed weapons. Reminding many of the technology imagined in movies like Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1990 flick _Total Recall_ , the real-world version is a sort of automatic X-ray scan. It detects the radio waves that reflect off every material and automatically searches a person's body or luggage for any incriminating objects. Because every material reflects waves in its own unique pattern, the automated scanners can spot not only hidden handguns and knives, but also nonmetal weapons and explosives. The real breakthrough in counterterrorism may come from combining automated and artificial intelligence systems with our broader network of surveillance. In Britain, for example, there are more than 4.6 million cameras watching public areas, from cameras that monitor traffic jams and deter robberies at ATMs to specially designed cameras that watch over all of London's subway stations. As a result, the average Briton appears on cameras as many as three hundred times a day. Similarly, huge numbers of cameras already cover most U.S. cities. Chicago, for example, has some 2,250, covering every one of its key sites and streets. "Cameras are the equivalent of hundreds of sets of eyes," describes Chicago mayor Richard Daley. "They're the next best thing to having police officers stationed at every potential trouble spot." When terrorists struck the London subway system on July 7, 2005, killing fifty-two and wounding over seven hundred, the existing camera systems proved quite useful. The entire operation was captured on film, from the terrorists scoping out the targets days before to the very last seconds of them entering the station to carry out their attack. This allowed investigators to quickly figure out what had happened. Yet the systems had no preventive or reactive effect; the attacks still occurred, while the cameras could only record. As Robert Finkelstein explains, "They could only use the videos to backtrack what happened. With machine intelligence you could have intervened earlier." Integrating surveillance systems with artificial intelligence is the next step in the technology war on terrorists. Instead of having a policeman on every corner or a person monitoring each and every camera, new automated programs are being developed that will be able to make sense of what they see. For example, AI programs would filter the surveillance footage instead of a human, and automatically alert the police whenever any camera in the system spots something suspicious, such as someone leaving a package on a train platform or parking a car in an emergency zone and walking away. It could even take automated actions, such as shutting down access or throwing up security barriers. The advantage of such counterterror technology is not only that "machines don't get tired or need to take a coffee break," explains one engineer, but also that they can tap into memory and processing power far better than human security guards. They can pick out patterns (such as a truck that circled the building eight months ago is now parked in front of the lobby) or anomalies (like a person wearing a long jacket into a subway station in July) that might elude someone trying to watch an entire building or subway station on multiple TV screens at once. They can even scan crowds for the faces of terrorists in a database. The Securics company, for example, has built systems for the U.S. Special Operations Command and DARPA as part of the agency's Human ID at a Distance program, which can scan and identify faces from as far as two hundred feet away. Other programs will meld artificial intelligence with the latest research on biometrics. They might, for example, detect if someone is carrying a hidden item, like a bomb, under their clothes by seeing how their walking gait is altered. Such programs won't just be useful in capturing would-be terrorists immediately before they strike, but also in tracking down anyone in the system. As anyone recalls from the game _Where's Waldo?_ , it is wickedly hard to find someone in a crowd, even if they are wearing a goofy red-striped sweater (which surely hid Waldo's suicide bomb vest). Imagine that crowd is the size of an entire city. With the facial recognition systems combined across an entire network, programs can automatically scan every camera in the system, checking for that person not only at that moment but also in all the data saved over past days and weeks. This will allow police to instantly locate persons of interest and everywhere they have been in the city. Once a system is automated, it need not rely only on visual cues to track and detect terrorists. This is where "data mining" comes in. Every person leaves behind a "paper trail" of their life's activities. These are now mostly digital records that range from credit card purchases and bank statements to cell phone calls and e-mails. Data mining gathers and analyzes all this information to detect patterns, trends, and anomalies. This practice of machines' connecting the dots in a person's life to find bigger patterns comes out of the corporate world. One of the biggest data-mining efforts to date is actually at Wal-Mart, which has gathered some 460 terabytes of information from customers on its mainframe servers in its Bentonville, Arkansas, headquarters (to put that into context, about double all the data on the entire Internet in 2004). Wal-Mart uses the information to track its customers' buying habits and preferences, and then employs AI to anticipate their future wants and needs. Its data mining, for example, detected that customers tend to stockpile strawberry Pop-Tarts whenever a severe weather warning is made in the media. So Wal-Mart's supply system automatically responds to any announcement of bad weather by sending additional truckloads of Pop-Tarts to stores in the expected pathway. Big Brother is not far behind the Big Greeter. In the national security realm, the extent of data mining crossed with AI is classified, but thought to be extensive. The most notable and controversial program disclosed in the public was a $200 million DARPA program created in 2002 called Total Information Awareness. TIA sought to create a huge database for pretty much every sort of information that the government could gather about American citizens and visitors. TIA turned out to be TMI (too much information) and both conservatives and liberals in Congress objected to the massive civil liberties concerns it raised. It was supposedly defunded just a year later, with the office behind it publicly closed. Far from being completely shut down, however, the Total Information Awareness program instead appears to have been broken into several components, which go under less menacing names like "Baseball" and "Topsail." Says one report, "Very quietly, the core of TIA survives." The data gathered in such programs is immense. For example, the Department of Homeland Security's Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement program, ADVISE for short, is reported to have gathered some one quadrillion pieces of data that range from financial records to CNN news stories. These can then be matched against U.S. intelligence and law enforcement records and AI software sifts through it for connections and patterns. Or, as one report described, the computers are "identifying that it is a needle that needs to be found in the haystack, and then finding it." Analysts hope that adding machine intelligence to data mining will not only allow terrorists to be tracked down by their digital paper trails, but also give counterterrorism efforts the ability to project into the future, predicting and stopping attacks before they happen. The Knowledge Aided Retrieval in Activity Context, or KARNAC (a tribute to Johnny Carson's comic soothsayer "Carnac the Magnificent"), works by combining data mining with software that mimics the types of things that good human intelligence analysts are supposed to do. With a huge database and processing power, the machine is able to filter through information that ranges from criminal records to what people are searching for on the Internet and piece together patterns and trends that otherwise would not appear to be connected on their own. Then, just like a human agent working at the CIA or FBI, it can "track leads, form hypotheses, and narrow outcomes." A teenager who downloads death metal music, starts searching online for the building maps of shopping malls and how-to guides for making bombs? The system connects the dots and sends a policeman to talk with his parents, before everyone wonders how such a nice boy could blaze away at holiday shoppers. # IT BECAME NECESSARY TO DESTROY THE VILLAGE IN ORDER TO SAVE IT Through these types of technologies, many science fiction writers envision how the "war on terrorism" might ultimately be won. In movies such as Steven Spielberg's _Minority Report_ , police are constantly tracking everyone's movement on ubiquitous cameras and able to intervene before a crime even occurs, while S. M. Stirling's book _Conquistador_ points to a future where terrorists can get only halfway through their plots before the authorities catch on. Reality won't necessarily work out that way (and even in _Minority Report_ , the system fails in the end). Such counterterrorist technologies are expensive. They also rely on government agencies that don't like to share information, as well as businesses locked in competition over who can control the most information, to set aside their differences and kindly open up all their most closely guarded databases. And, as the maker of KARNAC admits, it "cannot guarantee the software will work 100% wrinkle-free." Even if these "wrinkles" get ironed out, the smartest of counterterrorist AI will still be at the mercy of the information that goes into the systems. As the computer programming adage warns, "Garbage in, garbage out." If an informant, for instance, claims that he knows about a secret WMD facility and no one thinks it worthwhile to also add into the system that he is a known liar (as failed to happen with "Curveball," the Iraqi defector whose false claims ultimately became part of Colin Powell's speech to the UN on the eve of the Iraq war), the system will produce the wrong conclusions. In turn, just when the state might get ahead of the game, terrorists can be anticipated to react and learn. A program like KARNAC, for example, is great for linking together indicators that might otherwise be missed on the behavior of existing suspects or "persons of interest." But it will face a tougher test when the attackers are what are known as "clean-skins" (operatives with no prior history, who otherwise lead normal lives), or when terrorists figure out how to trigger false or misleading patterns that could divert attention from real threats. Having a human spy on the inside of a terror cell will still prove far more useful than an AI trying to read the tea leaves from airline tickets, van rentals, and e-mail traffic. The back-and-forth of these new technologies in terrorism and counterterrorism then comes full circle to the new challenges for the state. The technologies don't just potentially change the balance of power in society between states and nonstate groups, as in the battle between Israel and Hezbollah, but also between states and citizens. Civil liberties, especially those of privacy, will be under a whole new level of pressure in a world where every step is actually monitored, tracked, and recorded. The opponents of these systems worry about an "Orwellian mass surveillance system," as Wikipedia described TIA, while the makers retort that the possibility of another large-scale terrorist attack "is more terrifying than losing one's privacy." Our brave new world of technologies then could bring back under question the original, fundamental balance between citizen and state. Hobbes's so-called social contract between citizens and their governments wasn't just that people give their loyalty in exchange for the protections from war and violence that only the state could provide. It also required that the state respect people's rights, granting each citizen a sort of bubble around them to lead their own lives. Such new technologies, though, imperil as never before the ability of states to deliver on both parts of the deal. On one hand, the state's monopoly on protection and violence is challenged by nonstate groups, terrorist networks, and even individuals, all empowered with dangerous new technologies. On the other hand, the only way to beat such new dangers may be to counter them with even newer, more invasive technologies. But these, in turn, undermine each person's sense of protection and privacy from the state itself. In short, by protecting the individual from technology, do we destroy our very concept of the individual with technology? **[FOURTEEN]** **LOSERS AND LUDDITES: THE CHANGING BATTLEFIELDS ROBOTS WILL FIGHT ON AND THE NEW ELECTRONIC SPARKS OF WAR** _Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal._ _—_ ALBERT EINSTEIN "Increasingly, we live in a world where the Flintstones meet the Jetsons—and the Flintstones don't much like it." Ralph Peters grew up in the coal-mining districts of Pennsylvania. "I am a miner's son, and my father was a self-made man who unmade himself in my youth." As a young man, Peters enlisted in the army as a private, and spent the next ten years on the front lines of the cold war in Germany working in military intelligence. A brilliant thinker, he soon rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. In 1998, Peters retired from the army to give himself more freedom for writing. He'd already published a book and a few articles while in uniform, but wanted to do more. Plus, his blunt style had also made further advancement less than likely; he was riling up too many senior officers by publicly raising uncomfortable conclusions about where war was headed and how the U.S. Army was failing to adjust. Peters soon had his payback. Over the next decade, he became one of the most notable and sought-after experts on modern warfare. He wrote six books on military affairs and became a commentator on PBS, FOX News, and CNN, while also writing both a weekly newspaper and magazine column. In a challenge back at the senior officers who had tuned him out while in uniform, Peters went on to publish more articles in _Parameters_ , the army's most prestigious journal, than any writer in its history. As retired major general Barry McCaffrey describes, Peters is "simply one of the most creative and stimulating writers on national security we have produced in the post-WWII era." Peters is also quite a force in the field of fiction, having written eight political thrillers. His first novel was a cold war spy story set in the former West Germany. His subsequent novels have gone on to include more contemporary settings of terrorism and failed states, and he's built up quite a sizable fan base among military readers. As if this wasn't enough, Peters also writes a series of historical detective novels set in the Civil War under the pseudonym Owen Parry. It is perhaps because of this breadth of experience, analysis, and imagination that Peters is an apt resource for understanding where war, and its future causes, is headed, and not just because his latest book is titled _Wars of Blood and Faith: The Conflicts That Will Shape the Twenty-first Century_. # WARRIORS RISING Ralph Peters sees two trends converging to spark wars in the coming century, on whose battlefield unmanned systems will increasingly fight. The first is the rise of "a new warrior class." "Ours is the age of barbarians with microchips, of zealots who cannily exploit the civilized world's rules in their attempts to destroy it," he explains. "We are learning that many human beings prefer certainty, no matter how oppressive and primitive, to the risks and responsibilities of freedom." From warlords who arm children to terrorists who blow up school buses, the nature of who is waging modern-day conflict is shifting away from only professional armies. "The soldiers of the United States Army are brilliantly prepared to defeat other soldiers. Unfortunately, the enemies we are likely to face through the rest of this decade and beyond will not be 'soldiers,' with the disciplined modernity that term conveys." Rather, Peters believes, much of war will be driven by a shift back to "warriors," a twenty-first-century update of the "barbarians" from past eras. Today's barbarian warriors are not Vikings or Huns, but the modern-day warlords, terrorists, insurgents, et al., who are habituated to violence but don't have any sort of professional training or organization. "Unlike soldiers, warriors do not play by our rules, do not respect treaties, and do not obey orders they do not like.... The warrior is back, as brutal as ever and distinctly better-armed." Harvard professor Michael Ignatieff describes the trend similarly to Peters, but uses the more academic moniker "postmodern warriors" to describe the takeover of war by "the barefoot boys with Kalashnikovs, the paramilitaries in wraparound sunglasses, the turbaned zealots of the Taliban who checked their prayer mats next to their guns." That modern-day warriors don't follow the old rules of war is not just a matter of simple evil. Debbie Stothard, an expert on refugees, witnessed an episode in Thailand where a group of child soldiers led by two twelve-year-old twin brothers held an entire hospital hostage. "These are people who have not had access to a good education and for whom violence is a way of life. It never occurs to them that mounting a siege on a hospital is actually wrong. They have not lived in a world where detaining someone with force is actually unacceptable. It's as though they came from a different planet." This new "warrior" trend is emerging because so many are not sharing in the prosperity of globalization, and conflict entrepreneurs are rising to take advantage. Peters offers a sketch that could describe any number of the modern-day warlords, from Foday Sankoh, the failed commercial photographer whose use of child soldiers to seize diamond mines left more than two hundred thousand dead in Sierra Leone, to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian petty criminal turned leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. "The archetype of the new warrior class is a male who has no stake in peace, a loser with little education, no legal earning power, no abiding attractiveness to women and no future. With gun in hand and the spittle of nationalist ideology dripping from his mouth, today's warrior murders those who once slighted him, seizes the women who avoided him, and plunders that which he would never otherwise have possessed." This trend then builds upon itself. "The longer the fighting continues, the more irredeemable this warrior becomes. And as society's preparatory structures such as schools, formal worship systems, communities, and families are disrupted, young males who might otherwise have led productive lives are drawn into the warrior milieu. These form a second pool. For these boys and young men, deprived of education and orientation, the company of warriors provides a powerful behavioral framework." A prototypical example of this follow-on generation of warriors is L., the kind of child soldier I met during my research for my last book. In his village in the eastern jungles of Sierra Leone, L.'s home was attacked and plundered by rebels when he was ten years old. The rebels didn't have any political agenda; they were just working on behalf of a warlord whose only goal was controlling local diamond mines. After the villagers were lined up, L.'s mother and father were butchered in front of him and he was taken away by the warriors, many of whom were children just a few years older than him. He was later beaten, drugged, and forced to kill other prisoners, at the risk of being killed himself. Over time, though, the new lifestyle and the copious drugs helped give L. a new identity. He took on a new "fighting name," got tattoos that inculcated him into the group, and regularly went out on raiding missions, much like the one that first brought him into the fold of war. His greatest prize was his AK-47 Kalashnikov assault rifle, able to fire six hundred bullets per minute. He proudly described how he'd learned to disassemble it and put it back together all by himself in a matter of minutes. With this gun, L. was not a scared ten-year-old boy but a fearsome warrior. If war in the twentieth century was about "ambitious winner-states" like Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan, seeking to gain their "rightful place in the sun," tells Peters, war in the twenty-first century will also be driven by the "losers" and those like L., whom they take advantage of. The reservoir of conflict lies not in the "gilded crust of humanity," but in the "vast 'loser' populations in failed states and regions." This then links to the second trend, the amazing world of change we are living through. It is equally dazzling and disruptive, replete with new technologies that are both enabling and threatening. Tells Peters, "We live in the most dynamic age in human history.... [But] we have this illusion that technology will solve human problems." The massive changes may aid some, but will also feed much of global conflict. History supports his contention. For example, the printing press revolutionized human awareness and knowledge, but it also sparked the bloody conflicts of the Reformation that culminated in the Thirty Years' War, which left nearly a third of Europe dead. Today we are living through its modern parallel. "The Internet is the greatest tool for spreading knowledge and hatred since the invention of movable type." Robotics have an even greater potential for both good and ill. And from this conflict emerges, tells Peters. There will be battles because of change and battles to resist change. "The root causes of conflict in the 21st century are humanity's default positions.... In times of crisis, when humans have to ask the fundamental question of 'Who am I?' they fall back on the defaults, conflicts of blood and belief. . . . When I look at the 21st century, this age of miraculous technology, I see a paradox. This age of technology will also see a return to atavistic violence." # POVERTY SUCKS The citizens of the First World are living through what may be the most prosperous generation in human history. There are all sorts of facts and figures to show this, but perhaps the extent of our prosperity may be best demonstrated by our eating patterns. Each year, Americans spend over half a trillion dollars at supermarkets and another half a trillion eating out at restaurants (about half at fast-food chains). Even with this, Americans throw away almost 50 percent of all the food in our nation ready for harvest. The extent of our affluence is seemingly unimaginable, especially to the vast majority of the world for which it is not a reality. Our culture treats "competitive eating" as a sport, while 1.3 billion people in the developing world live in poverty. One hundred twenty-seven million Americans are "obese," the polite way of saying "so fat as to be dangerous to themselves," while half a billion people in the developing world are "chronically malnourished," the nice way of saying "starving." Nineteen billion dollars a year is spent in the United States for tap water that has been repackaged as "bottled water," while more than 1.3 billion people in the developing world lack access to clean water. We may be living through Charles Dickens's proverbial "best of times," but most of the world is still suffering as if it were "the worst of times." This disparity points to a series of changes that are crucial to understanding poverty's link to technology and war in the twenty-first century. As Dickens's _A Tale of Two Cities_ told, poverty and social inequality have always driven rage and rebellion. The vast majority of the world's people have always been poor and there has always been a tiny majority living the good life. However, the situation now is exacerbated by unprecedented population growth. In the last fifty years, the world population has grown more than the sum total of all the births in the previous four _million_ years of human history. And this trend is only continuing. The United Nations projects that the world's population will roughly double again in the next fifty years. This trend has been driven by the odd combination of technology and human nature that Peters finds so simultaneously interesting and disturbing. Technologies have increased public health, sanitation, and disease control, driving up birth rates in a span of a few years. But societies need generations to adjust. They don't change their attitudes and practices toward such things as ideal family size or consumption in just a few years. Demographics is destiny. But the issue is not just one of raw numbers, but also of where and how these numbers are distributed. We are now in the midst of the largest generation of youth in human history, but 90 percent of the world's youth under the age of fifteen live in developing countries. Over the next four decades, it is projected that 99 percent of the world's population growth will take place in the developing world, which is the part least prepared to feed, clothe, educate, and employ three billion more people. Such a great demographic shift is incredibly worrisome. Research shows that when the age balance in a population shifts out of whack (when there are too many young males as compared to old fogies), violent outbreaks, ranging from wars to terrorism, become far more common. This process is known as "coalitional aggression." Young men are considered psychologically more aggressive and naturally compete for social and material resources in all societies. When they outnumber other generations, there are inevitably more losers than winners among the youth in this process. Plus, the typical stabilizing influences of elders are diluted by the overall mass of youth. The system of social stability basically becomes overloaded by too many hormone-filled kids with too few life prospects. These lost youths are more easily harnessed into activities that can lead to conflict. For example, demagogues, warlords, criminals, and violent religious fanatics all find it easier to recruit when a large population of angry, listless young men fills the streets. Riots and other social crises are also more likely. In a sense, it is conflict caused from the bottom up, rather than the top down (a top-down example would be the traditional mode of a government leader planning for war). It seems far too simple an explanation of violence, except that the facts back it up. The pattern has held true across history, from wars in ancient Greece to recent societal breakdowns in Rwanda, Yugoslavia, and the Congo. Most worrisome is that the trend is particularly pronounced in the Muslim world (over half the population in such fragile states as Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Pakistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen falls into this pattern) as well as China, perhaps presaging even worse instability to come. This would be bad enough. But, unlike in the past, the brunt of today's socioeconomic problems is falling hardest on the youngest segments of the population. Unprecedented numbers of children around the world are undereducated, malnourished, marginalized, and disaffected. A quarter of all the world's youth survive on less than a dollar a day. As many as 250 million children live on the street; 211 million children must work to feed themselves and their families. As one report concludes, "These poor, young billions are moving into huge, urban ghettos around the world that have no public health facilities and are a breeding ground for disease, are often ungovernable, and provide little hope for their denizens." With more people, there is also less to go around. To paraphrase the famous rapper Biggie Smalls, "Mo' People, Mo' Problems." This is not just about the world running out of oil, something many worry is happening as production rates fall by 7 percent annually, despite booming demand. Population growth in Sudan, for example, led to water shortages and a competition over grazing lands, which then sparked the slaughter in Darfur that has left over 250,000 dead. "Resource scarcity will be a direct cause of confrontation, conflict, and war. The struggle to maintain access to critical resources will spark local and regional conflicts that will evolve into the most frequent conventional wars of the next century," explains Peters. "Today, the notion of resource wars leads the Westerner to think immediately of oil, but water will be the fundamental need of some states, anti-states, and peoples. We envision a need to preserve rainforests, but expanding populations will increasingly create regional shortages of food—especially when nature turns fickle. We are entering the century of 'not enough,' and we will bleed for things we previously could buy." More people also means more environmental degradation, thus also overwhelming the planet's ability to cope. This creates a feedback loop, which worsens the problem of scarcity. Then add in the effect of global warming. Whether you believe the cause is man-made carbon dioxide or unicorn farts, it is without dispute that the warming of the Earth will make life more difficult for many. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that the current pace of global warming will bring water scarcity to between 1.1 and 3.2 billion people over the next few decades, and create food shortages for an additional 200 to 600 million. As if this wasn't bad enough, while some parts of the globe will be parched for water, others may suffer instead from too much of it. Some 100 million people will face the annual risk of floods from rising sea levels, and destructive megastorms like Hurricane Katrina will also become more common, as ocean temperature is the "fuel" for hurricanes. Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, summed it up this way: "Unchecked climate change will be an environmental and economic catastrophe, but above all it will be a human tragedy." # FEEDING THE BEAST There is another fundamental difference from the poverty of the past. The socioeconomic woes are not merely getting worse, but now those losing out are more keenly aware of it. As Ralph Peters succinctly puts it, "Now the ignorant know what's going on, and so there is less bliss." The have-nots may be living in the same squalor as their great-great-great-grandparents, but they now do have a television set or Internet connection that allows them to see that it is not that way for everyone. Experts sometimes talk about the "digital divide," that certain information technologies like the Internet are not being spread around the globe at equal rates. The real divide may instead come from its solution: the more people are connected, the more what separates us becomes visible. The same holds for the cliché of the "borderless world." Our global economy depends on a free-flowing system of trade, travel, and communication, but it also binds us all together to our greater danger. An outbreak of war or disease in one part of the globe reverberates across the system as never before. Even more, the shared networks give our new century's warriors and warlords a newfound ability to reach out and touch someone. These new losers may be based in some urban slum or mountain hideout, but they can now organize, plan attacks, or share inspirational propaganda with recruits thousands of miles away. All these various dark trends combine to set the stage for even more conflict. In some cases, a local government might just collapse from the overwhelming demands placed on it to provide sufficient food, health care, education, security, and prosperity to more mouths amid tougher circumstances. The CIA today counts some fifty countries that have "stateless zones," where the local government has lost all effectiveness or simply given up. Falling behind in the new world of technology could make it harder for these zones to come back, as well as potentially add to their number. Describes one U.S.-government-funded report, "Extreme losers in the information revolution could become 'failed states.' Such failed states could become breeding grounds for terrorists, who could threaten vital U.S. interests." A government's inability to control its territory and provide what its people want or need then opens up a vacuum. And politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Warrior groups move into such vacuums and seize local control, a scenario played out again and again with groups like the Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Tamil Tigers. In turn, groups with a more global agenda see these local vacuums as the perfect places to base their transnational operations. Of the fifty "stateless zones," twenty-five of them host terrorist groups. Al-Qaeda's movement of its training camps from the ungoverned spaces of Sudan to Afghanistan to Iraq to Pakistan is a prime example. The simultaneous rise of connection and chaos also points out the differences among us, differences that can be exploited in a climate of desperation and anger. Indeed, of the twenty-five ongoing conflicts at the end of 2007, all of them involved a civil war along ethnic or sectarian lines. In some situations, it may appear that there was some traditional ethnic grievance that erupted into a civil war. Or, simply enough, in an ever more tense world, as the Malaysian foreign minister described, "It has become increasingly difficult to live together peacefully amongst people of different creeds and religions." # THE HOT ZONE "Hell is other people," said the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It may not be that fortunate, then, that in 2007 something striking happened to life on planet Earth. For the first time in our species' history, over half of humankind lived clustered together in cities. Almost all the population growth over the last few decades has taken place not merely in cities, but in developing-world cities. The results have been staggering, especially to the cities themselves. Nearly every major city in the poorest parts of the globe has multiplied in size by a factor of ten. Many have grown by even more. Cities like Dhaka in Bangladesh, Kinshasa in the Congo, or Lagos in Nigeria are about forty times larger than they were in 1950. For modern-day conflict levels, this news is mixed at best. As Ralph Peters darkly tells, "The city—capstone of human organization—is growing, changing, producing fantastic wealth... and rotting." The impact he sees on war is best described in the title he gave to a landmark article for the U.S. Army's journal, "Our Soldiers, Their Cities." Peters recounts that, centuries ago, warrior cultures rampaged from distant hinterlands and dark forests, every so often pouncing on isolated towns and settlements. Today, the cities are the homes for his new warrior class, "the new forests, where magic and unreason rule." That is, in history, rebellion and conflict usually started in the rural regions and spread to the city only if successful. Peters sees the reverse being the trend of the twenty-first century. "Cities are now the center of rebellion . . . because the city is dehumanizing, breaking down traditional values and connections." And for the young citizens of this place, "Habituated to violence, with no stake in civic order . . . there is only rage." Peters sees cities as the coming battlefields, where warriors will be at home and professional soldiers increasingly ill at ease. "The future of warfare lies in the streets, the sewers, high-rise buildings, industrial parks, and the sprawl of houses, shacks, and shelters that form the broken cities of our world." This description could be applied equally to Mogadishu, Grozny, Fallujah, Freetown, or Gaza. Peters is a soldier, who was publicly listed as an adviser to the McCain 2008 campaign. By contrast, Mike Davis is an urban theorist, who tends to tilt Marxist. Unfortunately, the one thing the two see eye to eye on is this future of the city. Davis made his name with a detailed study of Los Angeles's history and social geography entitled _City of Quartz_ , which predicted the return of urban unrest. A little more than a year later, his forecast came true with the 1992 riots; soon after, Davis was awarded a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant. In his research since, Davis runs a thread that connects the ganglands of South L.A. to the shantytowns of Cape Town to the urban blight of Cairo. All suggest that something disturbing is happening on a global level—the rise of "megaslums." In city after city on continent after continent, "shanty-towns and squatter communities merge in continuous belts of informal housing and poverty, usually on the urban periphery." In short, explains Davis, the population trends have us on the pathway to, as one of his books is entitled, a _Planet of Slums_. These "megaslums" house literally millions of young, urban poor, where the losers of globalization and the new warriors are concentrated together in shanties and high-rises. Adding fuel to the fire are "the diverse religious, ethnic, and political movements competing for the souls of the new urban poor." These range from Hindu fundamentalism in the slums of Mumbai, Islamist movements in Casablanca, Pentecostalists in San Salvador, and revolutionary populists in Caracas. These megaslums, really just "stinking mountains of shit," are "volcanoes waiting to erupt." Cities are the new hotspots for conflict. Sometimes this violence may have a crossover with crime, but the outcome is often the same. For example, in the favelas (the urban squatter settlements of Brazil) more than fifty thousand people are killed a year and even Brazilian army troops (who replaced the outgunned police) have given up trying to patrol them. In just one neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, ten times as many youths were killed over the last ten years as in the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the same period. It's perhaps disturbing to hear this coming from an urban planner, but Davis sees the same future as Peters the ex-soldier as well as the cyberpunks of science fiction. "The 'feral, failed cities' of the Third World—especially their slum outskirts—will be the distinctive battlespace of the twenty-first century." # "AMERICAN TERMINATORS VS . DRUG-DEALING SERIAL-KILLER GUERRILLAS" The folks in the U.S. military agree with these dark predictions. According to Dave Ozolek, the executive director of the Joint Forces Command's Joint Futures Lab, the city will be a focus of U.S. military efforts for some time to come. Urban zones are "where the fight is, that's where the enemy is, that is where the center of gravity for the whole operation is." The problem is that fighting in cities is as tough as it gets. As opposed to the traditional open field of battle or even a jungle or forest, a city is extremely complex because of its multidimensional terrain. An enemy can fight from the sewer, the street, or from a building, and each one of these can be turned into a bunker. Being shot at from any direction not only makes life more dangerous, but also takes a far greater psychological toll on soldiers. As retired major general Robert Scales writes, "The array of threats from multiple dimensions has a debilitating effect on soldiers; it further hastens the disintegration process that haunts all military units locked in close combat operations." The famous _Black Hawk Down_ battle in Mogadishu in 1993 is a prototypical example of how tough it is to fight in an urban zone. A team of 123 elite U.S. soldiers went into a landscape of slums to snatch a cadre of warlord leaders, the type of "manhunt" described by the special operations officer as the future of conflict. But before they could get back to base, they were surrounded by thousands of local paramilitaries, aka Peters's "warriors," most of whom were teenagers hopped up on the stimulant khat (khat feels a bit like drinking fifteen espressos). Being shot at from all directions, the soldiers got lost in the confusing back streets and alleyways, and ultimately were lucky to escape with eighteen killed and seventy-three wounded. Even then, the public outcry over the loss was enough to end the entire operation in Somalia. Fighting in the messy, confusing slums and alleyways accentuates enemy strengths and American weaknesses. Explains Peters, the U.S. military may hope for "gallant struggles in green fields," but "the likeliest battlefields are cityscapes where human waste goes undisposed, the air is appalling and mankind is rotting." The simple reason is that "it's a no-brainer for the enemy. It's the turf they know. . . . It's the Sherwood Forest to their Robin Hood." Peters then ticks off recent urban battlefields from Mogadishu in 1993 to Sadr City in 2004, and cites another reason that urban battlefields are so enticing to anyone thinking of fighting against American troops. "Now the U.S. has a pattern of losing in cities." The U.S. response is a massive refocus on "combat in cities." Six hundred million dollars of DARPA's budget is dedicated to technology useful for urban battles. One article on DARPA's work in the use of robots in war was even entitled "Baghdad 2025: The Pentagon Solution to a Planet of Slums." As it explained, "A host of unmanned vehicles [is] also being readied for surveillance and combat in these future 'hot-zones,' while all sorts of lethal enhancements are in various stages of development to enable American troops to more effectively kick down the doors of the poor in 2025." Beyond the already discussed use of robots to cut down on American casualties, which are usually higher in urban zones, unmanned systems are being called upon to help take away local warriors' home-field advantage. Urbanscape, for example, is a DARPA program "to make the foreign city as 'familiar as the soldier's backyard.' " The system uses drones and unmanned ground robots to fan out across a city, map it, take pictures of every building and street, and then crunch all the data together with AI, so that a soldier on patrol can have an up-to-date 3-D map, replete with high-resolution images of just what's around the corner. Combining the maps with recent or live video from drones allows the system to update for what would be otherwise confusing changes in the landscape. A similar program tested out during Hurricane Katrina, for example, allowed rescue helicopters to find people stranded in neighborhoods that had been flooded. As if that wasn't enough, another DARPA effort seeks to solve one more "pressing need in urban warfare: seeing inside buildings." Carried by robots and soldiers, the VisiBuilding technology's goal is to build the interior layouts of buildings and sewer systems, as well as searches to "find anomalous quantities of materials" (such as explosive chemicals) and "locate people within the building." The hope is to pair these technologies with AI to "digitize" entire cities. Akin to the massive virtual worlds in such venues as Second Life, a usable cityscape would be built of any urban battle zone, detailed down to the blueprints and individual occupants of each building. A fleet of unmanned robotic sensors and systems (ranging from spy satellites to tiny insect UAVs peering into buildings) would continually update the virtual version of the city with real-world footage and information. Imagine the video game _Sim City_ crossed with Google Earth. It would give soldiers the ability to zoom into any neighborhood or even individual structure to see what is going on in real time. According to one report, "You have continuous coverage, around corners and through walls. You would never, for example, lose those mortar bombers who got out of their car and ran away." By sending in robots that navigate the new urban battlefield, DARPA is hoping to completely rewrite the script of _Black Hawk Down_. According to DARPA's director, Dr. Anthony J. Tether, it will give U.S. forces "unprecedented awareness that enables them to shape and control [a] conflict as it unfolds." Some, though, doubt that it will work out the way the military hopes. Peters, for instance, thinks robots have their role, and that the urban warfare trends will drive their use, but we should not expect too much. "There is a uniquely American pursuit of the grail, that technology will solve all human problems, that we can have bloodless wars. Our faith in technology is actually a vulnerability that hinders us from winning wars.... How on earth can technology solve the problems of a Liberia, a Rwanda, a Sudan, a Congo? The domain of war is still one of flesh and blood." # RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINES Unfortunately, Richard Clarke has been ignored before. Over his thirty-year career, the silver-haired Clarke served in nearly every major government post related to security and terrorism. He was President Reagan's assistant secretary of state for intelligence, coordinated diplomacy to support the first Gulf War for President Bush Sr., and served as the first ever counterterrorism coordinator for the National Security Council during the Clinton administration, a position he also held in the first year of Bush Jr.'s administration. As expert as Ralph Peters is on war, Richard Clarke is his counterpart on terrorism. Starting in January 2001, Clarke sent the new national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, a series of memos warning about the growing threat from a terrorist group called al-Qaeda. He argued that the Bush administration "urgently" needed to act against something it was mistakenly viewing as a "narrow, little terrorist issue." Clarke was viewed as an alarmist and disregarded. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz even told Clarke that he was wasting everyone's time: "You give bin Laden too much credit." History records who was right just a few months later on 9/11. But politics mattered more than accepting responsibility and, two weeks after that, Clarke, not the leaders who ignored him, lost his job. Today, Richard Clarke is worried about something new. "Something very fundamental is happening in technology today." A friend of futurist Ray Kurzweil, Clarke is well aware of the various new technologies that are already here or rapidly on their way. Indeed, he was one of the early proponents of the arming of the Predator drone back in 2001, hoping that it could be used against bin Laden in time. Yet where Kurzweil only sees positives, Clarke's views fall closer to the dystopian visions of Ralph Peters. But beyond the new warriors fueled by poverty and hate, Clarke sees the danger signs of another violent backlash brewing that will spur even more conflict. "It has many causes. Fear of machines, fear of technology, fear of the unknown," Clarke explains. "It's even simple math phobia for many. It's very uncomfortable for adults to know that they have to call in their grandchildren to help them do something as simple as set the time on their VCR [already dating himself]. It is fueled by a resentment of people who know that they don't know enough.... It will also be a religious problem, some opposition will [even] come from the Christian right. They are already asking questions like, 'Are we playing God? Is this God's will?' " Finally, Clarke sees anger brewing among those left economically disadvantaged by the technology. "There will be a real digital divide—people who don't have the skill sets to compete anymore." This opposition is just starting to crystallize, but at its essence is a fundamental sense of being overwhelmed by change. "When they look around, they see real questions about genetics, AI, robotics. . . . They see a technologic horizon rushing at them, see a radical change for the nature of society." Ultimately, Clarke thinks some of those most concerned about the next wave of technology may act out in violence. "They won't [use violence] if they succeed politically, but that's not likely. They won't be able to stop the various changes they so fear. There's too many reasons for this technology for them to be able to suppress it.... So, ultimately, they will lose in the political arena. Some in the fringe, just as they blew up abortion clinics and shot doctors, will try to act violently to slow it down." He believes this violence will last "a long time, because this technology will come in waves. We really do have a political problem." As to whether Washington is listening to him this time, Clarke is "dubious." He explains that two problems are blinding policymakers to the threat of a new breed of violence that will brew from those so opposed to technologic change that they would take up arms to stop it. Part of the problem is that things like robotics, AI, and genetic engineering may be threatening to some, but still sound more like science fiction to policymakers who simply are not well aware of the revolutions happening in scientific research. "You go in and explain there is this problem with technology and they just don't get it. . . . There is no sense in our political establishment of what's going on." The second is the combination of human nature and American politics. "We tend to be a society that waits for disaster to happen. We don't focus our attention on it until after the fact. I'm cynical. I know the way our political system works. We waited until 9/11 before we bothered with al-Qaeda." # NED AND TED'S BIG ADVENTURE As Ralph Peters explained, the future bodes for more conflict in the parts of the world that are not sharing in prosperity. This is in turn driving a move to robotics, to try to help militaries fight better in the dank, dark urban slums. But what Clarke worries about is a feedback loop, that new technologies like robotics will actually create more losers, more anger, and more conflict. At a basic level, the Pentagon's vision of surrounding and infesting a city with tiny robotic sensors that are constantly buzzing carries a massive downside. Instead of creating universal observation, it may create universal irritation. It may be like poking an urban hornet's nest with a robotic stick. This may be especially heightened by the varying cultural attitudes toward privacy that can spark conflict. For example, during the Iraq war, insurgent recruiting propaganda falsely claimed that U.S. forces were using night vision equipment to peer into family homes and see what Iraqi women looked like under their clothes. It may seem a silly accusation, but the very first protests against U.S. troops in the restive town of Fallujah actually were sparked by just this confusion in 2003. The protests soon devolved into street fighting that left seventeen dead and helped make the city a hotbed of resistance. With the new plan, this propaganda wouldn't be fiction; the unmanned systems actually would be peering into homes. But at a broader level, the robotics revolution may add even more "losers" on a global scale to the billions already not sharing in globalization's bounty. Every revolution in technology has its winners and losers. The telegraph was great for news junkies, but bad for the Pony Express riders. The same will be true with robotics. Numerous professions have already been displaced by very simple robotics, from automobile factory workers to maids, and this will continue as robotics gets more and more capable each year. As the trend plays out, robots won't just be doing blue-collar work, but also service and even white-collar jobs. And for each job they eliminate, there will be one more person competing for the remaining jobs. It's the robot version of outsourcing, just that your job is being shipped to a piece of faceless hardware, rather than some textile worker in Bangkok or engineer in Bangalore. If history is any guide, many will speak out against what they see as a technology-caused injustice and some might translate their anger into violence. In the early 1800s, textile workers in England began to realize that steam engines and factory machines were starting to put them out to pasture. A social movement soon arose, called the Luddites after a mythical character named Ned Ludd, who had supposedly smashed up two mechanical looms in a fit of rage. By 1811, the Luddites began to organize. Their gatherings, always taking place in the city, usually culminated in street riots, "machine breaking" (copying Ludd's accomplishment, they would invade factories and smash up property), and pitched street battles with British army units. By 1812, there were more British troops fighting Luddites inside England than fighting Napoleon's troops on mainland Europe. The movement was ultimately crushed in 1813, with a government crackdown that culminated with the execution of seventeen Luddite leaders and the expulsion of many more to the penal colonies in Australia. Since then, "Luddite" has come to describe anyone generally opposed to technological change. But many like Clarke fear that the new forms of technology such as robotics and AI will spur their rise again as a violent social movement. Tom Erhard is a retired air force officer, who works on the Pentagon's "20XX" program exploring long-range political futures over the course of the first half of the twenty-first century. Akin to Clarke, he particularly worries about resurgent Luddite trends. Moreover, he thinks that our current version might be worse than the rage against the machines of the past centuries, as robotics and AI will polarize society as never before. "It goes to the last frontier of what it means to be human, the ability to think." The uses and roles of robots "will be a moral battlefield," says iRobot founder Rod Brooks. Many will be highly resistant to these new technologies, many will be uncomfortable with how far they are penetrating society, and some will even see them as threatening to their very values. People got worked up enough about abortion clinics and images in Danish cartoons to kill; it is not a stretch to think they might do the same over some aspect of robots. If this is the case, then many neo-Luddites will also see those that build and use these new technologies as something to be feared, and even stopped at all costs. The first of these violent neo-Luddites was Theodore John Kaczynski, better known as the "Unabomber." Kaczynski started out as a brilliant mathematician, with a Harvard PhD, but soon ended up in a cabin in Montana mailing pipe bombs to researchers, scientists, and other people linked to the computer industry. At first the explosives were too poorly made to hurt anyone severely. But, much like what happened with IEDs in Iraq, they got better. Ultimately, three people would be killed and twenty-three people wounded by the mysterious bomber. The FBI had great difficulty figuring out who was sending the bombs, and the only clue was that some of the bomb parts had "FC" inscribed on them. For a time, they thought it stood for "Fuck Computers," but it later turned out to be short for "Freedom Club," what Kaczynski called his movement of one (Unabomber was the FBI's name for their unknown suspect). In 1995, the still unknown bomber promised that the group would stop its terror attacks if the major media published the FC view of the world, entitled "Industrial Society and Its Future." After great debate, the Justice Department authorized the _New York Times_ and the _Washington Post_ to publish it for public safety reasons. The porn magazine _Penthouse_ also bravely offered to publish the 35,000-word treatise (so that customers would purchase it, for once, "just for the articles"), but was turned down. The _Unabomber Manifesto_ , as it became more commonly known, explained that the reason for the attacks was that humankind was slowly but surely choosing to become "pets" of its machines. "As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. . . . People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide." And thus, the manifesto argued, "We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. . . . Its object will be to overthrow not governments but the economic and technological basis of the present society." Kaczynski would soon be turned in by his own brother, and sentenced to life in prison. But Clarke and many others worry that he was only a harbinger of worse to come. Indeed, he has already had a copycat in Italy, known as the "Italian Unabomber." More broadly, Kaczynski had a legion of admirers that ranged from the environmental Earth Liberation Front to various anarchist groups. Noting the wide variety of groups that might find reason to be angry about new technologies like AI and robotics, Richard Clarke warns that one of his biggest fears about the brewing neo-Ludditism is the "huge potential for strange bedfellows here, linked up by their common opposition. I would not be surprised to see violent Islamic extremists finding common cause with the Christian far right, for example." So we may see our governments struggling not just against a growing mass of angry outsiders who are not sharing in the bounty of globalization and technology, but also against more actors like the Unabomber, neo-Luddites who reject the change itself. Such groups may even connect, aid, and inspire each other, working together in "polyglot networks" of opposition to a future they hate. But tension might also be created at a larger level than just small groups of angry men. The coming century is bringing cultures, societies, and religions into contact at a scale and pace as never before, and in many cases these values can clash and even offend. "Amid galaxies of shining technologies there is a struggle to redefine human meaning.... Half the world is looking for God anew, and the other half is behaving as though no god exists," says Ralph Peters. And into this mix, we inject a new technology. And not just any technology, but one that raises some truly fundamental questions about everything from what is right or wrong in war to what it means to be a human. Computer scientist Hugo de Garis even worries that someday the conflict between those who see technologic progress with robotics as part of humankind's broader destiny and those who find the idea of such a future threatening to their very identity and values could escalate to a major ideological dispute on the level of the duels between fascism and democracy or capitalism and communism. "Since the stake is so high (namely whether the human species survives or not) the passion levels will be high. . . . We have thus all the makings of a major war. About 200 million people died for political reasons in the 20th century (wars, purges, genocides, etc.) using 20th century weapons. Extrapolating up the graph until the late 21st century, with 21st century weapons, we arrive at billions of dead—gigadeaths." Hopefully, such fears remain in the distant future. But in trying to figure out just what might spark the wars in which robots will fight in the coming years and decades, we are taken full circle, from humanity to technology and back again. Humans remain the driver of wars, even in a world filled with robots that fight them. As Ralph Peters sums up, "The great paradox of this hi-tech age is that its security problems arise from the human heart and soul, domains which remain opaque to technology (and to those who worship it)." **[FIFTEEN]** **THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WARBOTS** _Warfare is about changing the enemy's mind._ —RALPH PETERS "Human versus robot? How will that play? . . . The psychology of all this will be important, especially on the side of the people without the high tech." Eliot Cohen is the director of the strategic studies program at Johns Hopkins University. If there is a Washington "defense establishment," Cohen is one of the key opinion leaders within it, especially among its right wing. Described by one media report as "the most influential neocon in academe," Cohen gained much media attention right before the 2003 Iraq invasion, when President Bush showed up at a public event holding Cohen's book _Supreme Command_. No one is sure if Bush actually read the weighty tome, but the choice was symbolic, as Cohen argued in the book for civilian leaders to exert their influence over military matters. Soon after our interview in his Dupont Circle professor's office in late 2006, Cohen was named counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to serve as her one-man think tank and intellectual sounding board. Looking the part of a defense intellectual straight out of Hollywood casting, even down to sporting a mean red bow tie, Cohen believes that human psychology will be a key determinant of robots' impact on war. Having also written the book _Military Misfortunes_ (a study of miscalculation and defeat in war, which maybe Bush should have also read), Cohen strongly believes that human motivation has usually been the key to victory or defeat. Whether it was Napoleon's army at Waterloo, the kaiser's army at the end of World War I, or Saddam's forces in 1991 and again in 2003, the side that loses a war usually does so because its military hits a psychological breaking point, a time "at which a majority or a disabling minority [of soldiers] refused to go on." Cohen tells that we don't yet have a full understanding of how people will be psychologically affected by robotic fighting systems, but he thinks there may be lessons from the past. "Its closest parallel may be the effect of strategic bombing. The foe just gets defiant, but also depressed over time." But, says Cohen, there will be a new twist. Unlike the intermittent raids of bombers over Tokyo or Berlin during World War II, the fact that the systems are unmanned, as well as able to operate for days or weeks on end, will give them a psychological punch as never before. "They [the side facing robots] will feel like they are always being watched, that they face a nonhuman foe that is relentless." Overall, concludes Cohen, the trend should be of great benefit to America, especially against the terrorists and insurgents it faces in what he describes as the current "Fourth World War" (he counts the cold war as the third great global conflict). "It plays to our strength. The thing that scares people is our technology." Cohen is by no means alone in his belief in the psychological power of unmanned systems among the political establishment. The _Washington Times_ , for example, reported that a great benefit of robotic systems is that "unmanned weapons tend to demoralize an enemy." It described that "while soldiers will fight against their enemy if they have a chance to kill the attacker even against all odds, being killed by a remote-controlled machine is dispiriting." This same conviction extends beyond the D.C. Beltway. For example, Ed Godere, part of the Foster-Miller team behind the SWORDS, believes that "the psychological effects will be significant." He predicts that it will cause "an almost helpless feeling" among anyone unlucky enough to see a robotic machine gun coming at them. Many troops in the field agree. Army staff sergeant Scott Smith says that "without even having to fire the weapons . . . it's total shock and awe." # FIRST CONTACT In 1532, Atahuallpa was emperor of the Tawantinsuyu, better known to us as the Incan empire. Located in what is now Peru, Atahuallpa's domain was the largest and richest of the empires in lands not yet reached by European explorers. Life was just getting good for Atahuallpa. He had beaten his brother in a civil war for the throne and was on his way back to his capital. Only a quick detour was needed to check out a tiny band of strange visitors that had just entered his lands. A proud and cruel king (he had just forced his defeated brother to watch his children be hacked to death), and at the head of a battle-hardened army of eighty-thousand warriors, Atahuallpa believed he had little to fear. Atahuallpa and his army soon reached the encampment of the visitors, who invited the emperor to a peace ceremony. Carried in on a litter borne by the highest nobles of his court, and accompanied by a personal guard of four-thousand men, Atahuallpa entered the small courtyard where the visitors were camped. A delegation greeted him. One of the visitors, a man wearing brown robes, offered him a gift and told him, through a translator, that this "book" supposedly carried the word of God. Never having seen such a thing before, and believing himself to be a representative of the gods, the emperor shook the gift and, when no noise came out, indifferently tossed it to the ground. He asked, "Why doesn't it speak to me?" The man in brown cried out with anger when the packet of papers hit the dirt and gave a signal of some sort. Soon after, the air filled with a massive explosion and dozens of men ran in from the buildings that surrounded the courtyard. They were wearing seemingly invincible suits of metal that turned back the points of arrows and spears. They wielded strangely sharp, unbreakable metallic weapons that cut through flesh with ease, and, even more frightening, pointed sticks that spat lethal flames. Most terrifying, though, were the strange creatures that also charged out, which had four legs like a beast, but the upper body of a human warrior. There were only 168 of these new visitors, but as they charged at the emperor and his 4,000 men, the effect was paralyzing. Atahuallpa's guard was quickly chased away or slaughtered. The highest nobility of his kingdom were killed at his feet. When none were left to hold up his litter, the emperor was captured. Seventy-six thousand of Atahuallpa's warriors were waiting in the fields just outside the town, and milled about, wondering what to do when they heard the strange noises and then saw their noblemen running for their lives. Twenty-seven of the man-beasts then emerged from the square and put the entire army to flight. It wasn't so much of a battle as a massacre; it ended only after the visitors gave up killing the fleeing Incan warriors when their arms grew too weary. The captured emperor then offered the visitors a ransom to set him free, enough gold to fill a room twenty-two feet long, seventeen feet wide, and eight feet high. The visitors agreed. But after these strange, fearsome men had their gold, they reneged. They executed Atahuallpa and took over his empire. As the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke of _2001: A Space Odyssey_ fame once observed, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Nowhere is this more true than in war. Time and again, warring sides have used new technologies not only to kill more efficiently than their foe, but also to dazzle them into submission. The case of Atahuallpa, unlucky enough to become emperor just before the arrival of Francisco Pizarro and his tiny band of Spanish conquistadors, is a powerful example of just how shocking and powerful new weapons of war can be. Cannon, armor, swords, muskets, and horses were particularly devastating to the Inca as they lived in a time when communication was difficult and information was hard to come by. This was not merely their first contact with such weapons, but they had never even conceptualized the very possibility of such fearsome technologies before. Yet even in our information-saturated world, the use of new weapons technologies can still have a powerful psychological effect. For example, an elite Iraqi Republican Guard colonel explains that the reason he felt his forces gave up so quickly during the 2003 invasion was that "U.S. military technology is beyond belief." He described how American air power, able to strike with constant, pinpoint precision, whether in day or at night, took his unit by surprise, made it feel like any sort of organized resistance was impossible, and ultimately collapsed their spirit. As Atahuallpa could have foretold, the new generation of unmanned systems already have had such a psychological effect on the minds of adversaries, specifically in sowing alarm and confusion. Marines in 2004, for instance, told how insurgents feared what they believed to be an all-seeing eye in the sky. They should fear it, explained a UAV operator, as he watched a suspected insurgent pickup truck race under a carport at a safe house. "With all the dust they kick up, how could we miss them?" Troops are also finding that encountering a strange new, unmanned weapon conveys more than merely a psychological punch. War-game testing has found that foes tend to focus on "such an unusual technology" as the SWORDS; it is such a center of attention that this can be taken advantage of. One team was facing a group of hostage takers holed up in a building. So they sent a SWORDS to drive up to the front. While the hostage takers gathered on one side of the building to watch the odd little lawn mower with a machine gun track forward, a special forces team went around the back of the building and ambushed them from behind. Another strange psychological lesson came from a real-world hostage crisis in Milford, Connecticut. A gunman wouldn't let police come anywhere near him, because he thought they might try to surprise and overpower him. But he was willing to let the police send a robot to carry in a phone. As the hostage crisis dragged on, the police called him and offered to send him and the hostages some drinks. The gunman agreed, but again, wouldn't let any human come near, as it might be a trick. Thinking robots more trustworthy than the fuzz, he agreed again to let the robot bring in the drinks. Of course, robots can have tricks up their sleeves as well. The robot delivered coffee that had been laced with knockout drops and, as the gunman fell asleep, the crisis ended with no one getting hurt. The obvious problem is that what is "unusual" wears off and such tricks only work so many times. While it was too late for Atahuallpa, the Incas did grow accustomed to the Spanish weapons. Just three years later, the dead emperors' generals launched a surprise uprising that evolved into an insurgency that lasted for years. Similarly, the Iraqis soon adjusted to the American ability to launch pinpoint airstrikes, and learned that the easy answer is not to mass troops in open terrain. Word travels fast, people adjust, and the psychological power of something new and different wears off quickly. # THE "CREEP " FACTOR AND THE UNCANNY VALLEY David Hanson, a former employee at Disney's Imagineering Lab, makes robots that "creep people out." Hanson's robots look like machines from the neck down, but have incredibly realistic heads. Their lifelike "skin" is made using a material Hanson invented called Frubber. His "Hubo Einstein" robot, for example, has a mechanical body, but the head and face of Albert Einstein. One scientist described it as "spookily cool... a giant step forward." Hanson is also "an avant-garde artist" who puts together art shows. In the long line of artists doing self-portraits, for one show he made a robot modeled on himself. Only his self-portrait was a "large homeless robot figure in a box." His intent was to use a robot to take viewers out of their "comfort zone." Hanson is proud that his robots pose "an identity challenge to the human being.... If you make it perfectly realistic, you trigger this body-snatcher fear in some people," he tells. "Making realistic robots is going to polarize the market, if you will. You will have some people who love it and some people who will really be disturbed." Inspired by Brian Aldiss's short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long" (the basis for the Steven Spielberg film _AI_ ), Hanson is currently at work on robotic "supertoys." He explains that these robots will have evolving personalities and grow up with the child. Looking a little like robotic versions of the Oompa-Loompas from Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, Hanson's robots are two feet tall and have cartoonish faces. The name he gave the first of these new robots is Zeno, the same name as his eighteen-month-old son. Hanson sees his work as "changing the expectations of machines," and he ultimately hopes that the "social robotics" field will become so much bigger than the military robotics industry that "market forces will shape things toward friendlier robots." This remains to be seen. But his work clearly illustrates how robots can be designed to influence the "attitudes, feelings, emotions, and ultimately the behavior" of those who see them. This quote tellingly comes not from Hanson or a science journal. It is the Pentagon's definition of psychological operations. History is filled with all sorts of ways that weapons and uniforms can be designed to create some sort of psychological reaction among the foe. For example, the famed British Redcoats of the Revolutionary War era wore that color so that blood wouldn't show up on their uniforms from a distance. Among their units were grenadiers, especially tall soldiers, who wore huge peaked hats to make them look even taller. The effect of seeing them on the battlefield was akin to watching a line of giants marching toward you, whom your bullets seemed not to hit. The difference between the Redcoats' psychological effect and those of the conquistadors is the difference between fright and fear. As Sigmund Freud explained, fright is the state one falls into "when confronted by a situation [for] which we are unprepared," akin to what the Incas felt when seeing guns for the first time. Fright, though, can wear off quickly as one grows accustomed. Fear, by contrast, comes from "a definite object of which one is afraid." It is something you can see and even understand, but it still evokes a state of terror that causes dread or panic. The patriots knew the Redcoats were men, but it didn't make them any less fearsome. Current robots on the battlefield tend to have a totally utilitarian look, but it still gives them some psychological punch. Foster-Miller's SWORDS robot, for example, got its design from just mounting a machine gun on top of an older robot's chassis. Even then, as one magazine quipped, the SWORDS "makes _Robocop_ look like Officer Friendly." Strategic thinker Eliot Cohen thinks such an unintentional effect is all well and good, but something more may have to be done. "We will have to figure out how to maximize the psychological impact of it [a robot]. We will have to think not merely in terms of costs and benefits and how to get steel on target, but much more. How it gets that angry insurgent from being eager to fight to thinking that there is no point in it, there is no chance to win against a relentless foe." If not all robots are going to look like Disney-Pixar's cute and cuddly WALL-E (though one of the British army's robots is a dead ringer), the first and easiest step to fearing up a robot is to equip it with effectors that can play a role in psyching out the enemy. If history is any guide, we can anticipate that this won't just be about giving them a scary look, as with the Redcoats, but also a scary sound. The ancient Chinese set off fireworks to spook enemies' horses, while the Nazis mounted sirens on the wings of their Stuka dive bombers during World War II; often the high-pitched noise of the diving plane created even more chaos among the troops on the ground than the bomb itself. The sound that the U.S. military will use to put chills down enemy soldiers' spines most likely will come from the real experts, Hollywood. The military has long used Hollywood special effects for psychological operations. During the 2004 battle of Fallujah, for example, the marines set up loudspeakers around the city and broadcast the sinister laughter of the alien from the _Predator_ movie. They were hoping to spook out the insurgents, as well as drown out the sermons that the insurgents broadcast back at them from each of the city's mosque towers. The noise was so constant that a marine joked that the siege should be called "Lala-Fallujah" (after the famous alternative rock concert festival Lollapalooza). Given that the marines' new ground systems like the Gladiator come with their own loudspeakers, there's nothing to prevent them from doing the same with their robots, to create a more mobile fear factory. Of course, there are always downsides to these kinds of operations. After hearing the Predator's evil laugh one too many times, a marine scout team on the front lines radioed back to base to tell them the noise was having more of a psychological effect on them than on the enemy. "That's not funny anymore. You keep that shit up and we're coming back in." The same kind of turn to Hollywood will likely take place with the overall design of unmanned systems. Says military robots pioneer Robert Finkelstein, if you want to truly have a psychological effect, "Make 'em look like Frankenstein's monster. Or make them look like creatures from _Star Wars. . . ._ Make 'em hideous." Scientists at one military robotics firm similarly report how the military inquired if they could make a system that looked like "the hunter-killer robot of _Terminator_ ." Not much of a sci-fi buff, Eliot Cohen suggests that we instead turn to nature, that "we exploit the basic human fear of bugs." Whatever the inspiration, as Finkelstein concludes, there are "infinite possibilities" of how the looks and design of systems might be manipulated to heighten an enemy's fear. One day, specializing in scary designs "might even be a profession." But as David Hanson's work illustrates, the creepiest robots of all may be the ones that look mostly human. He notes that the reactions to his robots vary. "Some people take it as a thrill, some think it is neat.... Others find it just creepy and threatening." He explains that different parts of the brain deal with social relations versus identifying objects. So when the human brain sees "an object acting as a human, it sets off natural alarms, so to speak." Hanson is tapping into a phenomenon called the "uncanny valley." Researchers are finding that the more human attributes a machine has in design, the more people's connection seems to increase. As Hiroshi Ishiguro, the maker of such humanoid robots as the sexy Repliee android, explains, "The keyboard and the monitor are primitive. My brain was not designed to watch a display and my fingers were not designed to type on a keyboard. My body is best suited for communicating with other humans. The ideal medium for communicating with a computer is a humanoid robot, which is, of course, basically a computer with a humanlike interface." But this doesn't mean that we are entirely comfortable with ever more life-like robots. "People's empathy increases until a sudden point at which the machine seems like the living dead, like a frightening imposter." This is the "uncanny valley," when the appearance of a robot is close to a human but not close enough. At this point, a robot's look is most disturbing. The end of the "valley," when the fear goes away, is when the robot becomes so human in its appearance that it's hard to tell the difference. So the relative length of the "valley" is the space at which robots freak you out. Explains AI expert and psychologist Robert Epstein, "If a human can't tell it isn't human, no worry.... Humans are also okay with it if it doesn't look like a human at all, like Johnny 5 [the robot from the movie _Short Circuit_ that looks a bit like a PackBot]." It's that part in the middle of the uncanny valley that is so disturbing. "It's like interacting with a corpse, a moving corpse. It makes you uncomfortable." # THE OTHER SIDE Psychologists like Epstein, however, are discovering that an encounter with a robot, whether it's a sexy android, a machine-gun-carrying lawn mower, or even one that seems straight out of _Night of the Living Dead_ , is not just straight "shock and awe." "It's not just that a certain type of machine or robot makes us uncomfortable. It very much depends on who we are." Just like with those early guns and armor and the Incas, the effect greatly depends on one's prior experience with similar technology. "The more familiar with technology, the shallower the uncanny valley; the less familiar, the greater the effect." David Hanson similarly described that for people seeing his lifelike robots, "If they are not used to robots, the negative reaction is more likely." Age also can be a factor. Oddly, children up to the age of roughly three years care the least about a robot's appearance. They accept almost any bizarre look matter-of-factly, good news for the robot-nanny industry. But around the age of four years, appearance becomes highly important to a child, with a wide "valley" that doesn't tend to go away until the teenage years are over. Ishiguro, the maker of the Repliee, first witnessed this aspect of the valley with his original version of the android, which was shaped to look like his four-year-old daughter. "When my daughter first saw her android she began to cry." But as an iRobot scientist tells, "The uncanny valley is definitely cultural as well. . . . The Japanese will put up with a robot that even freaks me out, but they are totally comfortable with that." Messaging across cultures has always been difficult, especially in war. In World War II, General Curtis LeMay ordered American bombers to use firebombs on Japanese cities, with the intent to terrorize the Japanese public into a realization that continuing the war was futile. The raids killed hundreds of thousands, but many in Japan instead interpreted the "message" as that it was dangerous to surrender unconditionally to an enemy willing to drop flaming napalm on civilians living in wooden houses. The United States tried similar messaging with its bombing during Vietnam, this time influenced by mathematical models and strategic game theory. As army colonel H. R. McMaster explains, such approaches proved "fundamentally flawed.... The strategy ignored the uncertainty of war and the unpredictable psychology of an activity that involves killing, death, and destruction. Human sacrifice in war evokes strong emotions, creating a dynamic that defies systems analysis quantification." In short, the message you think you are sending is not always the one that the other side actually receives. This same phenomenon may be playing out with unmanned systems as well. Much in line with his sense that robotics can help the U.S. military push its enemies' psychological buttons, Eliot Cohen describes his belief of what an insurgent in Iraq thinks about such systems. "They are likely asking, 'What tricks are the Americans going to pull out of their bag next?' " The troops who currently use unmanned systems are also generally hopeful about the psychological effect their robotics might be having on the other side in Iraq. As one drone pilot explains, "I think that it will discourage them more than anything. I know that if I was out on a future battlefield risking my life, my emotions would be out of whack knowing that I could be killed and the only damage I could inflict was to a robot. For today's battlefield, the UAV is used largely as a deterrent. AI forces ['Anti-Iraqi,' the official term at the time for insurgents] know we are out there. They know they are constantly being watched. The fear of being caught in the act keeps a lot of would-be insurgents out of the fight." Concluded one air force officer, "It must be daunting to an Iraqi or to an al-Qaeda seeing all our machines. It makes me think of the human guys in the opening to the _Terminator_ movies, hiding out in the bunkers and caves." The irony is, of course, that the humans in that movie were the side the audience was supposed to root for, and who overcame their fears to beat back the machines. So while there is no way to formally test this proposition out, in the summer of 2006 I was connected with two Iraqi insurgents by a trusted intermediary. Both of them were Sunnis, who were opposed to the U.S. presence in their homeland and had decided to join the insurgency. Notably, one was a former engineering student. Even with this background, he described the various unmanned systems his American foes were using as a bit bewildering. "I didn't really imagine that military industry reached such levels of imagination." It may have been a bit of posturing, but the two also discussed how they were not all that intimidated by the technologies, as some of the strategists like Cohen and others might have hoped. "It is not really a matter of how sophisticated you [ _sic_ ] weapons are," one told. Instead, they expressed a confidence that they would find ways to adapt and take advantage of the technologies soon themselves. Sounding almost like an Iraqi version of Ray Kurzweil, the former engineer expressed his sense that this trend would likely continue, as "the modern age is also marked by increasing trends towards automation." What they expressed in the limited interviews I was able to carry out squared very much with what other experts with far more experience with insurgents have found. Nir Rosen is a reporter and the author of _In the Belly of the Green Bird_ , a study of the early days of the Iraq insurgency. Born in New York City, but having learned to speak Arabic with an Iraqi accent in his youth, Nir was able to gain the trust of local civilians and insurgents in a way that few other journalists could. Indeed, he was the only Western journalist to spend time inside Fallujah among the insurgents before the major battles there in 2004. When we spoke in 2006, Rosen was just back from Somalia, having gained a meeting with the armed Islamist faction that had taken over Mogadishu. Rosen told how during his time in Fallujah, the insurgents were "definitely aware of UAVs and other American technology, but not always aware of their full capabilities. They wouldn't understand the things they could and could not do." He described how they would sometimes give the systems credit for things not yet technologically possible, while other times make simple mistakes in underestimating what was possible decades ago. As far as the supposed psychological effect, Rosen responded that "you have to remember that insurgents only have their own weapons, whereas they are fighting a force of F-16s [fighter jets] to tanks, up-armored Humvees to platoons of troops in helmets, flak vests, knee pads, boots, etc.... For insurgents, it already feels like they are fighting robots of a sort." Rosen sensed that fighting more and more unmanned systems would "not be a huge quantum leap" to the insurgent psychology. "With things like F-16s, it's not like they are fighting face-to-face now anyway." Instead, he saw that what seemed like an overreliance on these systems is even backfiring psychologically on the Americans. "In their rhetoric, they'll make fun of the Americans for not being man enough to fight face-to-face." Ultimately, though, he felt the insurgents in the field would understand why the United States was using them and may even follow suit with whatever technology they could. "They will adapt very readily. . . . It's just about achieving your ends." So, at least within the psychological war of ideas, unmanned systems may not convey the messages we desire. Instead, they may send rather undesirable and unintended signals about our intentions and even our character. For instance, unmanned systems are intended to reduce casualties. But as Peter Feaver, a Duke University professor turned Bush administration National Security Council adviser, asks, "What is Osama bin Laden's fundamental premise if not the belief that killing some Americans will drive our country to its knees?" Indeed, robots' very rationale of limiting human risks runs counter to the local values in many of the most important theaters of the war against terrorist groups. As one marine general explained, in places like Afghanistan, especially among the Pashtu tribes in the mountainous south, "Courage is the coin of the realm." Showing personal bravery, which you cannot do with a robot, builds trust and alliance in a way that money or power never can. Finally, the systems are hoped to limit the number of "boots on the ground." But the effect can send an unintended message, blunting the psychological and even tactical effects of defeat on a foe. As Bevin Alexander, the author of _How Wars Are Won_ , explains, "Victory comes from human beings moving into enemy territory and taking charge." Otherwise, you repeat the experience of the Sunni Triangle in Iraq. The future hotbed of rebellion wasn't occupied until weeks after Baghdad fell in 2003, and local would-be insurgents instead got the signal that they had never been defeated. Rami Khouri is well placed to evaluate the effect of our new technologies in the particularly important area of the Middle East. The director of the Issam Fares Institute of Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, Khouri is also the editor-at-large of the Beirut-based _Daily Star_ newspaper. When we spoke in 2006, the electricity in his Beirut home was still cutting in and out, the effect of the Israeli bombardment (coordinated by a near-constant flyover of Israeli UAVs) during the war between Israel and Hezbollah. Khouri described how it felt to be on the receiving end of unmanned targeting and an all-seeing eye in the sky. The kind of depression that Cohen had hypothesized was certainly present, as the normally ebullient Khouri fretted over whether he would have enough food for the week ahead if the electricity went out again. But so was the defiance. Khouri is a leading voice of moderation in the region and is so much of an admirer of the United States that he is an avid baseball fan. Yet even he described how, instead of cowing the populace, these sorts of attacks were reinforcing the position of radical groups like Hezbollah. The use of such technologies was "spurring mass identity politics.... The new combination of Islamist, Arab nationalist and resistance mentality is seen as an antidote to the technology discrepancy." Instead of receiving a message that they were overmatched, "it is enhancing the spirit of defiance." Khouri explained how both the Hezbollah fighters in the field and the broader Lebanese populace saw that "the enemy is using machines to fight from afar. Your defiance in the face of it shows your heroism, your humanity.... Steadfastness is the new watchword. Take the beating and keep fighting back." As an Arab moderate, Khouri was not happy about such reactions. But then again, he was also not happy about having spent the last few weeks watching UAVs fly over as his city was bombed. Indeed, he talked about how the unmanned drones somehow made him "even more angry" than the manned F-16s. Khouri's explanation of how those on the ground viewed unmanned systems in the Lebanon war was very much like the reactions of the insurgents in Iraq. Rather than creating just fear, fright, and depression, such systems were also unintentionally sending messages of weakness, and even vulnerability. As he concluded, "The average person sees it as just another sign of coldhearted, cruel Israelis and Americans, who are also cowards because they send out machines to fight us, . . . that they don't want to fight us like real men, but are afraid to fight. So we just have to kill a few of their soldiers to defeat them." # THE EVIL EMPIRE When people talk about the psychological war of ideas that takes place in conflict, they are often not talking merely about the effects on the field of battle, but also among the broader populace. Geopolitics is not a popularity contest, but it is dangerous to disregard international public opinion to such a degree as to assist the recruitment and growth of radical, anti-American groups. If you lose your credibility and reputation, you alienate your allies, reinforce your foes, and shoot your own ideas and policies in the foot. General David Petraeus, the commander in Iraq, once described these aspects as 80 percent of the fight Unfortunately, by most metrics, the United States is losing this war. In a few short years, America went from being viewed as the beacon on the hill of freedom, Coca-Cola, and blue jeans that won the cold war to the dark home of Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, and orange jumpsuits. Already at the bottom of a deep hole, we can't afford to dig much deeper. Hence, former assistant secretary of defense Larry Korb argues, "Unless you are refighting some form of World War II, your warfighting must include some part of trying to sway people. . . . If the U.S. doesn't handle robotics right, it will undermine [our] moral standing, and the U.S. can't be a global leader without such standing." John Pike of the Global Security organization concurs. "This [the robotics revolution] opens up great vistas, some quite pleasant, others quite nightmarish. On the one hand, this could make our flesh-and-blood soldiers so hard to get to that traditional war—a match of relatively evenly matched peers—could become a thing of the past. But this might also rob us of our humanity. We could be the ones that wind up looking like _Terminators_ in the world's eyes." Noah Shachtman sums it up with another sci-fi reference. "The optics of the situation could look really freaking bad. It makes us look like the Evil Empire [from _Star Wars_ ] and the other guys like the Rebel Alliance, defending themselves versus robot invaders." A concern is that the uncanny valley may also have a cultural distance to it, as it is widened by a lack of familiarity with technology. When much of the Christian world was burning down libraries during the Dark Ages, the Muslim world was the home and protector of much of modern science and mathematics, flourishing in places like Córdoba and the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. But today, the popular penetration of science in the Muslim world has been stifled by a combination of backward-looking fundamentalists who fear anything new and corrupt regimes that look at science as simply something to buy but not understand. Spending on science and technology in the region is 17 percent of the global average, with the region falling behind not just the West, but also the poorest states in Africa and Asia. The region's media doesn't help much either. As an example, rather than celebrating the only two Muslims to have won a Nobel Prize in the sciences, a show on Al Jazeera in 2006 described that they should be shunned, as the Nobel Prize "encourages heresy. It encourages attacks against the heritage, and encourages those who scorn their people and their culture." The show went on to describe the world's highest scientific honor as a part of a conspiracy stemming from "the Elders of Zion." Given this kind of message, it's not surprising that the journal _Nature_ lamented that science in the region lacks "a cultural base." As a result, differing interpretations of the technology certainly could reinforce an already growing chasm. Retired Pakistani lieutenant general Talat Masood is uniquely qualified to assess both the technology and the gaps in understanding that could play out on the "street" in the Muslim world. Masood, who served in the Pakistani army for thirty-nine years, including as the man in charge of military technologies, characterizes the region's impression of American strategy and doctrine as that of "distant war." That is, the United States has a great willingness to use force, but only if it can do it from afar with high technology, limiting as much as possible its human exposure on the ground. Masood, whose former colleagues trained up the Taliban in the 1990s, described the technology that the U.S. military was using as "amazing," but also as causing "great anger" in the region. "This type of warfare seldom involves distinct front lines. Fighting has taken place in a confusing mix of friend and adversary, usually directed from afar with occasional failure in communications systems bringing death and destruction to civilians. There is a lack of understanding by the U.S. of the human realities and a marked insensitivity about the casualties of the opponent, and at times even of their own forces. Implications of the RMA are thus broad and profound and a frequent cause of creating a major rift between the U.S. and the Islamic world." Similarly, he described how people in the region felt that "distance warfare, due to its relative safety, acts as a ready incentive for the U.S. to use military force in pursuing its foreign policy objectives." But this comes at a cost, he found. "Overreliance on the military instrument has brought under sharp scrutiny the great values and political principles of the U.S. that many in the Islamic world admired and respected.... The advent of 'distance warfare' has profound implications for the battlefield and for America's global strategy. It is fast transforming the relationship with its allies in the Islamic world. Undoubtedly, the U.S. has been able to militarily overwhelm its adversaries, but in every case, whether it is Afghanistan or Iraq, it has vastly complicated the prerequisite of building the structures of peace." In short, warned Masood, "The concept of 'shock and awe' could drive moderate and uncommitted civilians toward anti-Americanism." Other regional observers agreed strongly with this view. As a security expert in Qatar summed up, "How you conduct war is important. It gives you dignity or not." Their reactions also appeared to confirm a sense that America was coming across as a menace, using its high technology to pick on the little guy. As one Pakistani observer commented on a 2006 Predator strike that just missed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, "The mythology surrounding Mr. Zawahiri's ability to survive all attempts to capture or kill him will dramatically enhance his political power to raise funds, along with his moral suasion to rally dormant cells of al-Qaeda followers around the world." Even pop culture in the region echoes the experts. In 2007, for instance, one of the most popular songs in Pakistan, where there are as many as ten Predator strikes a month, was "Chacha Wardi Lahnda Kyo Nahen?" ("Uncle, Lose the Uniform Why Don't You?"). The song was played at street protests and even became a popular ringtone for cell phones. Its lyrics give a hint at how what Masood described as America's "distance war" is being portrayed: "America's heartless terrorism, Killing people like insects, But honor does not fear power." Someone who has started to give credence to the unintended psychological consequences of using robots in war is Mubashar Jawed "M.J." Akbar. Akbar is an Indian Muslim who is the founding editor of the _Asian Age_ , India's first global news daily. He is the author of eight books, including most notably _In the Shade of Swords_ , which came out just before the Iraq war and warned America not to underestimate the brewing anger in the region. Also a columnist read by millions in newspapers across South Asia and the Middle East, Akbar mixes smart analysis with a finger on the pulse of the region. Akbar expects the future media coverage in his region of robotic systems to be "frightful." He explains, "It will be like when tanks were first used in World War I. When they were introduced, they were described like a weapon of horror, like a large monster, not a weapon.... It will excite lots of references to movie horrors. It will be seen as evil, by the way." Indeed, given regional distrust of America, if any mistakes do occur, "then the region will assume you meant for it to happen." In talking about the Israeli use of UAVs, Rami Khouri in Lebanon had observed that "the general reaction is of an evil, brutal enemy that will use any means to accomplish its goals. Some might say, 'It's too tough. Just give up.' But for a lot of people it will spark a greater desire to fight back." M.J., living in South Asia, sees a similar message going out from American use of unmanned systems to the broader Muslim world. "It will be seen as American cowardice. In war terms, if you are not willing to sacrifice blood, you are essentially a coward." He continues, "These systems will show the pathway to your defeat unintentionally. They create a subtext that shows that you don't want to die. . . . That all we need to win is to frighten them." Clearly, conflicts in places like Iraq and Afghanistan are bringing together combatants with vastly different understandings of war, the role of the warrior, and the meaning of sacrifice. One side looks at war instrumentally, as a means to an end, while the other sees it metaphysically, placing great meaning on the very act of dying for a cause. It is for this reason that completely different interpretations are made of the same act. A person who blows himself up can either be a martyr and _shaheed_ or a murderer and fanatic. There is no in-between. Unmanned systems take this collision of human psychologies to the next level. They are the ultimate means of avoiding sacrifice. But what seems so logical and reasonable to the side using them may strike other societies as weak and contemptible. Using robots in war can create fear, but also unintentionally reveal it. It is this link that leads Akbar to conclude that another unintentional effect must be watched out for. The greater the use of unmanned systems, the more likely it will motivate terrorist strikes at America's homeland. "It will be seen as a sign of American unwillingness to face death. Therefore, new ways to hit America will have to be devised.... The rest of the world is learning that the only way to defeat America is to bleed her on both ends. The [American] public responds to casualties and to bleeding of the treasury, so if something goes on long enough they get tired." Disturbingly, I heard the same conclusion time and again from other regional experts. Speaking from his experience in Iraq, Nir Rosen expects that the continuing trend will "encourage terrorism," maybe especially among those not fighting that way now. As he explains, it is important to understand that in places in Iraq, not every fighter is an al-Qaeda terrorist intent on attacking the United States. "The insurgents are defending their area and focusing on troops they see as occupiers. But if they can't kill soldiers on the battlefield, they will have to do it somewhere else." He predicts that the more we take American soldiers off the battlefields, the more it will "drive them to hit back home." Rami Khouri similarly anticipates that for many in the Middle East, the sense will be, "If they play by these rules, which are completely unequal, then we'll play by our own rules.... Whether it's in the U.S., the U.K., or Malaysia." As the United States uses more unmanned systems, terrorists "will find much more devious ways to cause panic and harm. They'll say, 'If they are going to use these machines, we should get some chemicals and use them.' Put them in air-conditioning ducts in shopping centers or university dorms.... They might go after soft targets, shopping centers, sports stadiums, and so forth." The same observers are all realistic, however. They see terrorism occurring regardless of unmanned systems. Moreover, they see that same sort of adaptation that the Iraqi insurgent hinted to me. Despite all the expected negative coverage such systems might receive in the region's press and public opinion, they anticipate there will be a quick willingness to gain and use them as well. As Akbar explains, "When they first come out, the very first reaction from the defense establishment will be, 'Where can we order these fucking things?' " Indeed, Akbar (like many of the other regional experts I spoke with) believes that nongovernmental groups like insurgents and terrorists will also be quite willing to use them. Indeed, they will have their own ready explanation, to bolster their own psychological operations. "In fact, they will likely cite a verse in the Koran that you do not start jihad until you have the latest weapons, armor, and steeds." This quote in the Koran reads, "Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know. Whatever ye shall spend in the cause of Allah, shall be repaid unto you, and ye shall not be treated unjustly." As Akbar explains, "The 'steeds of war' is translated today as 'the best equipment.' . . . Basically, it tells that you should not go unprepared into war. Valor is good, but not enough.... Even David had a stone." Or, as Rami Khouri in Beirut puts it, "The response to drones is to get your own drones. They are just tools of war. Every tool generates a counterreaction." # DO ROBOT SOLDIERS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? As both sides of a conflict then begin to use unmanned systems more and more, a larger question of psychology comes to the fore. For all the differences in war through the ages, human psychology has always been at its center. Napoleon said, "In war, moral considerations account for three-quarters, the actual balance of forces only for the other quarter." What happens when that three-quarters is replaced by something else? What happens when the forces feel no fear, no fright, no anger, no shock, no awe, or any other elements of human psychology, but are guided only by a software of 0s and 1s? The effect on future history will be immense. Imagine how different the world would be today if at the battle of Hastings, the English hadn't lost heart when their king was killed, or if at Waterloo, Napoleon's Old Guard hadn't grown weary of war and instead fought to the last machine. The historian John Keegan wrote that "the study of battle is therefore always a study of fear and usually of courage; always of leadership, usually of obedience; always of compulsion, sometimes insubordination; always of anxiety, sometimes of elation or catharsis; always of uncertainty and doubt, misinformation and misapprehension, usually also of faith and sometimes of vision; always of violence, sometimes also of cruelty, self-sacrifice, compassion; above all it is always a study of solidarity and usually of disintegration—for it is towards the disintegration of human groups that battle is directed. It is necessarily a social and psychological study." This was the truth of the last five thousand years of war. A human army needed some "vision, a dream, a nightmare, or some mixture of the three if it is to be electrified into headlong advance." A robot just needs an electric charge. **[SIXTEEN]** **YOU TUBE WAR : THE PUBLIC AND ITS UNMANNED WARS** _Wars are a human phenomenon, arising from human needs for human purposes. This makes intimate human participation at some level critical, or the entire exercise becomes pointless._ _—_ COLONEL THOMAS K . ADAMS, U.S. Army "We'll have more Kosovos and less Iraqs." Larry Korb is another one of those deans of Washington's defense policy establishment. A former navy flight officer, he served as assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration. Now he is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank. In between, Korb has seen presidential administrations, and their wars, come and go. And, having written twenty books and over one hundred articles and made almost a thousand TV news show appearances, he has also helped shape how the American media and public understand these wars. In 2007, I asked Korb about what he thought was the most important overlooked issue in Washington defense circles. He answered, "Robotics and all this unmanned stuff. What are the effects? Will it make war more likely? And all sorts of questions like that. People need to think about this." Korb is a great supporter of unmanned systems for a very simple reason. "They save lives." But he worries about their effect on the perceptions and psychologies of war, not merely abroad, but also at home. As more and more unmanned systems are used, he sees this issue playing out in two ways, both of which he fears will make war more likely. "It will further disconnect the military from society. People are more likely to support the use of force as long as they view it as costless." Even more, a new kind of voyeurism allowed by the new technologies will make the public more susceptible to false selling of how easy a potential war will be. "There will be more marketing of wars. More 'shock and awe' talk to defray discussion of the costs." Korb is equally troubled by the effect that such technologies have on how the leadership might look at war and its costs. "It will make people think, 'Gee, warfare is easy.' Remember all the claims of a 'cakewalk' in Iraq and how the Afghan model would apply? The whole idea that all it took to win a war was 'three men and a satellite phone' [mocking the network-centric crowd]? Well, their thinking is that if they can get the army to be as technologically dominant as the other services, we'll solve for these problems." He feels that the current body politic in D.C. has been "chastened by Iraq." But he worries about "when you get a new generation of policymakers." Technology like unmanned systems can be seductive, feeding overconfidence that can lead nations into wars for which they aren't ready. "Leaders without experience tend to forget about the other side, that it can adapt. They tend to think of the other side as static and fall into a technology trap." This is what Korb means when he predicts "more Kosovos and less Iraqs." As unmanned systems become more and more prevalent, we'll be more likely to use force, but also see the bar raised on anything that exposes human troops to dangers. Echoing the Pakistani general's description of distance war, Korb envisions a future where the United States is more willing to fight, but only from afar, where it is more willing to punish via war, but less to face the costs of war. # THE PASSIVE PUBLIC Immanuel Kant's 1795 book _Perpetual Peace_ first expressed the idea that democracies are superior to all other forms of government because they are inherently more peaceful and less aggressive. This "democratic peace" argument (which some two centuries later both presidents Clinton and Bush Jr. cited) is founded on the belief that democracies have a built-in connection between their foreign policy and domestic politics that other systems of government lack. When the people share a voice in any decision, including whether to go to war, they are supposed to choose more wisely than some king or potentate. As one Pentagon official explains, this sense of shared participation and ownership is the key aspect in making the right decisions on when to start and end wars. "The Army belongs to the American population, and not the President or Congress." Colonel R. D. Hooker Jr. is an Iraq veteran and the commander of an army airborne brigade. As he explains, the people and their military in the field should be linked in two ways. The first is the direct stake that the public has in its government's policies. "War is much more than strategy and policy because it is visceral and personal. . . . Its victories and defeats, joys and sorrows, highs and depressions are expressed fundamentally through a collective sense of exhilaration or despair. For the combatants, war means the prospect of death or wounds and a loss of friends and comrades that is scarcely less tragic." Because it is their blood personally invested, citizen soldiers, as well as their fathers, mothers, uncles, and cousins who vote, combine to dissuade leaders from foreign misadventures and ill-planned aggression. The second link is supposed to come indirectly from a democracy's free media, which widens the impact of those personal investments of blood and risk to the public at large. As Colonel Hooker explains, "Society is an intimate participant [in war] too, through the bulletins and statements of political leaders, through the lens of an omnipresent media, and in the homes of the families and the communities where they live. Here, the safe return or death in action of a loved one, magnified thousands of times, resonates powerfully and far afield." It may not be your son or daughter at risk in a particular battle, but you're supposed to care because they are part of your community, and it might just be someone you know the next time. So the media's effect in a free system is not merely a report on a war's outcome, as if reporting on a sporting event. Unlike a spectator merely watching a game, the public's perceptions of events on distant battlefields creates pressures on elected leaders, which can determine when the game begins or ends and even whether another game is played the next week. Too much pressure can translate into an elected leader trying to interfere in ongoing operations, as bad an idea as the owner or fans calling in the plays for a coach to run. But as Korb and Hooker explain, too little public pressure may even be worse. It's the equivalent of no one even caring about the game or its outcome. War becomes the WNBA. Many worry that this democratic ideal is under siege. The American military has been at war for the last eight years in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, but other than at the airport perhaps, the American nation has not. With the ending of the draft after Vietnam, most American families no longer have to think about whether their husband, wife, son, or daughter would be at risk if the military is sent to war. By comparison, during World War II 12.2 million men, just under 10 percent of the American populace, served in the military; the equivalent of almost 30 million today. The military is also far less representative of the broad populace than it was in past generations. Flags once flew on nearly every street, marking which houses had sons off at war. Now, with the end of the draft, entire neighborhoods can lack even a passing link to the military. This disconnection is even more pronounced among the elite that dominate the business, the media, and the politics of both parties. At the time of the Iraq invasion vote, for example, less than 1 percent of all Ivy League university graduates were enlisted in the military and only 1 out of 635 senators and representatives had a child that might be sent into harm's way. By the start of the twenty-first century, even the financial costs on the home front were displaced. Industry didn't need to retool its factories and families didn't even need to ration fuel or food, or even show their faith in the war effort by purchasing bonds (instead, taxes were lowered for the top 1 percent of citizens). Government leaders were at a loss for how to motivate the public to show support for the war effort. When asked what citizens could do to share in the risks and sacrifices of the soldiers in the field, the message sent from the commander in chief in the White House was "Go shopping." As one article in _American Conservative_ magazine put it, "Rather than summoning Americans to rally to their country, he [Bush] validated conspicuous consumption as the core function of 21st-century citizenship." The outcome is a public that became more disinvested in and delinked from its foreign policy than ever before in a democracy. With this trend already in place, many worry that unmanned technologies may well snip the last remaining threads of connection. The increasing use of robotics may be motivated by saving lives, but by doing so, it does affect the way the public views and perceives war. In turn, it will also affect wars' processes and outcomes, perhaps even transforming that public into the equivalent of sports fans watching war, rather than citizens sharing in its importance. # CHANGE THE CHANNEL Josiah Bunting is a former major general in the army. After he retired from service, he became superintendent at the Virginia Military Institute and then head of the Guggenheim Foundation. Bunting is concerned that the American public is turning into "passive" observers of their country at war, and that the new trends of unmanned systems threaten to make it worse. He compares the situation to the book _1984_ by George Orwell, "where every 20 or 30 pages there is some oblique reference to 'the war' but it has no bearing on life." For Bunting, the costs of this disconnect are immense. First, anything that takes away the public's investment and involvement in a war also takes away any sense of unity for a nation. Instead of a nation mobilized and united behind its men and women in the field, you get the reverse. With robotics, instead of Rosie the Riveter pitching in to support her husband abroad, you just get a rivet that no one cares about. Even worse, any public passivity about war only increases the likelihood of bad policy, and more lost wars. "It makes it easier for leaders to stick in 'stay the course mode' when things aren't going well." He explains, "The war just becomes bad news, akin to a TV show that you get tired of and want to end. . . . Why [should a leader] change if failure doesn't matter?" Jun Ho Choi is a student who works on two-legged humanoid robots at the University of Michigan. Choi would seem to have little in common with an army major general, and yet he has the very same concerns about the public disengagement from war that his robotic systems might bring. "This may be a positive way to improve the military, but I do not believe this is a positive way to improve our lives.... I am worried about people becoming less serious about war since robots are fighting. We might end up having war every day." Bunting and Choi are pointing to the first of those concerns laid out by Washington expert Larry Korb. Unmanned systems may lessen the terrible costs of war, but in so doing, they will make it easier for leaders to go to war. Indeed, people with widely divergent worldviews come together on this point. "They [unmanned systems] lower the threshold for going to war. They make it easier, make war more palatable." "Anything that makes it morally and ethically easier to wage war is not necessarily a good thing." The first quote is from a human rights expert, whose job entailed trying to shut down the prison at Guantánamo Bay; the second is from a special operations officer just back from hunting terrorists to lock up there. Unmanned systems represent the ultimate break between the public and its military. With no draft, no need for congressional approval (the last formal declaration of war was in 1941), no tax or war bonds, and now the knowledge that the Americans at risk are mainly just American machines, the already lowering bars to war may well hit the ground. A leader needn't carry out the kind of consensus building that is normally needed before a war, and doesn't even need to unite the country behind the effort. Describes one air force officer none too happy with this trend, "Taking the human factor out of warfare cheapens the expense of combat and would lead to more conflict. Furthermore, that uniquely human concept of chivalry on the battlefield helps separate us from the beasts." But the technologies don't just merely remove human risk, they also record all they see, and in so doing reshape the public's link to war. The Iraq war is literally the first war where you could download video of combat off the Web; as of 2007, there were over seven thousand video clips of combat footage from Iraq on YouTube.com alone. Much of this footage was captured by various drones and unmanned sensors and then posted online. Some of the videos were official, but many were not. This trend could be viewed as a positive development that builds greater connections between the war front and home front, allowing the public to see as never before what is going on in battle. But so much visibility is not all that it seems. Inevitably, the ability to download the latest snippets of combat footage to home computers turns war into a sort of entertainment, or "war porn," as soldiers call it. Clips of particularly interesting combat footage, such as an insurgent blown up by a UAV, are forwarded to friends, family, and colleagues with titles like "Watch this!," much the same way an impressive soccer goal or amusing clip of a nerdy kid dancing in his basement gets e-mailed around the Internet. Comments and jokes are attached, and some are even set to music. A typical example was a clip of people's bodies being blown up into the air by a Predator strike set to Sugar Ray's song "I Just Want to Fly." War then becomes, as one security analyst described, "A global spectator sport for those not involved in it." More broadly, it engages the public in a whole new way, but can fool many into thinking they now have a true sense of what is going on in the conflict. It has a paradoxical effect, a widening of the gap between our perceptions and war's realities. To make another sports parallel, it's like the difference between watching an NBA game on television, with the tiny figures on the screen, and seeing it in person, where the players really are seven feet, scream, sweat, and smell, and playing in the game yourself and knowing what it actually feels like to have KG knock you down and dunk on your head. Even worse, such clips don't show the whole game, but are merely just the bastardized ESPN _SportsCenter_ version of it. The context, the strategy, the training, the tactics, and so on all just become slam dunks and smart bombs. War porn also tends to hide another hard truth about battle. Most viewers have an instinctive aversion to watching a clip of a battle where the person in the clip might be someone they know or a fellow American; such clips tend to get banned from U.S.-based host sites. But many are perfectly happy to watch clips of anonymous enemy deaths, even just to see if the machines fighting in Iraq are as "sick" as those fighting in the _Transformers_ movie, as one student put it to me. To a public with less at risk, wars take on what analyst Christopher Coker called "the pleasure of a spectacle with the added thrill that it is real for someone but not the spectator." The public's link to its wars transforms from connection into merely a kind of voyeurism. # ROBOT CHICKENHAWKS Such changed connections don't just make a public less likely to wield its veto power over its elected leaders. As former Pentagon official Larry Korb reminded, technology also alters the calculations of the leaders themselves. Nations often go to war because of overconfidence, which makes perfect sense; few leaders choose to go into a conflict thinking they will lose. Technology can play a big role in feeding overconfidence; new weapons and capabilities breed new perceptions, as well as misperceptions, about what might now be possible in a war. Today's new technologies like robotics are particularly liable to feed this. They are perceived as helping the offensive side in a war more than the defense, plus they are advancing at an exponential pace. The difference of just a few years or even months of research and deployment can create vast differences in such technologies' capabilities, creating a sort of "use it or lose it" mentality among leaders. Finally, as one roboticist explains, a vicious circle is generated. Scientists and companies often overstate how great a new technology is in order to get governments to buy it. But "if we believe the hype, it will probably increase the frequency of tactical engagements." James Der Derian is an expert at Brown University on new modes of war. He believes that the combination of these factors may mean that robotics will "lower the threshold for violence." They create a dangerous mixture: a public veto over leaders now gone missing, and technologies that seem to offer leaders spectacular results with few lives lost. It can be very seductive. "If one can argue that such new technologies will offer less harm to us and them, then it is more likely that we'll reach for them early, rather than spending weeks and months slogging at diplomacy." When faced with a dispute or crisis, policymakers have typically looked at force as the "option of last resort." Now unmanned systems might help the option move up the list, with each step making war more likely. That leaves us back at Korb's scenario of "more Kosovos, less Iraqs." While avoiding the mistakes of Iraq certainly sounds like a positive result, the other side of the trade-off would not be without its problems. Lowering the bar to more and more unmanned strikes from afar would most resemble the so-called cruise missile diplomacy of the 1990s. They may result in fewer troops stuck on the ground (a lesson that many have taken away from Iraq), but, like the strikes against al-Qaeda camps in Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998, or the Kosovo war, they are military endeavors without any true sense of a commitment, lash-outs that yield incomplete victories at best. As one report in an army journal tells, such operations "feel good for a time, but accomplish little." They involve the country in a problem, but do not resolve it. Even worse, Korb may be wrong and the dynamic could yield not "less Iraqs," but even more. It was the lure of an easy preemptive action that got the United States into such trouble in Iraq in the first place. Describes one robotics scientist of his creations, "The military thinks that it will allow them to nip things in the bud, deal with the bad guys earlier and easier, rather than having to get into a big-ass war. But the most likely thing that will happen is that we'll be throwing a bunch of high tech against the usual urban guerrillas.... It will stem the tide [of U.S. casualties], but it won't give us some asymmetric advantage." Thus, robots may entail a dark irony. By seeming to lower the human costs of war, they may seduce us into more wars. # WAR, NOT WAR Whether it's watching wars from afar, or sending robots into harm's way instead of fellow citizens, robotics offer the public and their leaders the lure of riskless warfare. All the potential gains of war would come without the costs, and even be mildly entertaining. It's a heady enticement, and not just for evil warmongers. The world watched the horrors of Bosnia, Rwanda, and the Congo, but did little, mainly because the public didn't know or care enough, and the perceived costs of doing something truly effective just seemed too high. Substitute in unmanned systems and the calculus might be changed. Indeed, imagine all the horrible genocides and crimes against humanity that could be ended, if only the barriers to war were lowered. Getting tired of some dictator massacring his people? Send in the bots and sit back and watch his troops get taken down. One private military company executive even slickly pitched a quick and easy technologic solution to the genocide in Darfur as a simple matter of "Janjaweed be gone!," as if an intervention into an African civil war was just a problem of scrubbing away the bad guys. Yet wars never turn out to be that way. It's in their very nature to be complex, messy, and unpredictable. And this will remain the case even as unmanned systems substitute for more and more humans. But imagine if this was not the case, that such fantasies were actually to come true. Even such a seemingly positive outcome of truly cheap and costless unmanned wars should give us pause. By cutting the already tenuous link between the public and its foreign and defense policy, the whole idea of a democratic process and citizenship is perverted. When a citizenry has no sense of sacrifice or even the prospect of sacrifice, the decision to deal out violence becomes just like any other policy decision, like whether to raise the bridge tolls. Instead of widespread engagement and debate over the most important decision a government can make, where blood might be shed, even if only on the other side, you just get popular indifference. When technology disengages the public and instead turns war into something merely to be watched, and not weighed with great seriousness, the checks and balances that undergird democracy go by the wayside. This could well mean the end of the idea of a democratic peace, which supposedly sets our foreign policy decision-making apart from that of potentates and emirs. Wars without costs can undermine the morality of even "good" wars. When a nation decides to go to war, it is not just deciding to break stuff in some foreign land. As one philosopher put it, the very decision is "a reflection of the moral character of the community who decides." Without public debate and support and without risking troops, though, the decision of war may only reflect a nation that just doesn't give a damn. Even if the nation acts on a just cause, such as the motivation to stop genocide, war can be viewed as merely an act of selfish charity. One side has the wealth to afford high technologies and the other does not. The only message of "moral character" a nation sends out is that it alone gets the right to stop bad things, but only at the time and place of its choosing, and most important, only if the costs are low enough. While the people on the ground being saved may well be grateful, even they will see a crude calculation taking place that cheapens their lives. As Kosovars darkly joked during the 1998 war, in which NATO was willing to bomb to stop their massacre, but only as long as it didn't have to risk its own pilots below fifteen thousand feet, "The life of one NATO soldier is worth 20,000 Kosovars." With unmanned systems, this bare minimum is reduced to zero. Wars, even the best of them, lose their virtue. They instead become like playing God from afar, just with unmanned weapons substituting for thunderbolts. This also makes it easier to start playing God when you shouldn't, for causes that may not be so just. The danger of these new technologies is that leaders can, as professor Christopher Coker argues, "become so intoxicated by the idea of precise, risk-free warfare that we believe what we want to believe. Unfortunately we may slip down the slope and find ourselves using violence with impunity, having lost our capacity for critical judgments. We may no longer be inclined to pay attention to the details of the ethical questions which all wars (even the most ethical) raise." Some question whether such wars without risk are even war. If one side is empowered and the other is not, it becomes more like a police action, with the public at home watching the military version of _Cops_ via their video clips. But war is not some police action, where a bad guy is chased down the street in his underwear. As retired marine officer Bing West put it, in the final calculus, "making war is the act of killing until the opposition accepts the terms of surrender rather than accepts more destruction." Paul Fussell is perhaps best suited to sum up this question of how a public engages with unmanned war. In 1943, at the age of nineteen, Fussell was drafted into the U.S. Army. The next year, he was sent to France as part of the 103rd Infantry Division, arriving just after the Normandy invasion. In the fighting that followed, he was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart. After the war, he went back to school and became a noted author and cultural historian. Having experienced it himself, Fussell is perhaps the literary world's greatest living critic of how war can be glorified and romanticized, both by governments and pop culture. His book on this issue, _The Great War and Modern Memory_ , was named by Modern Library as one of the twentieth century's one hundred best nonfiction books. Now eighty-seven years old, Fussell is as brutally honest as his topic. War (or, as he once ironically called it, "The Bloody Game") "is forced travel, no good food, sleeping in the dirt, death and maiming." Fussell believes that the true horrors of combat are never fully acknowledged by the public and its political leaders during a war and are then ignored by the authors who write the histories, only after the killing is done. "And so I tried to cut away parts of it—tell them what a trench smelt like and what dead GIs smelt like and so forth." He tells, for example, of the time his unit killed "weeping, surrendering Germans," or of the morning he woke up to find himself surrounded by dozens of dead bodies. "If darkness had mercifully hidden them from us, dawn disclosed them with staring open eyes and greenish white faces." Today, Fussell worries about what all these amazing new technologies will mean for the next generation of war and the public's connection to it. "If there is no risk, no cost, then it isn't war as we think of it. If you are going to have a war, you've got to involve people and their bodies. There's no other way." Fussell rails against this trend and what it portends. But he admits that he's a bit of a pessimist and questions whether his efforts will do any good. "In the end," he laments, "people will support the next war because the TV tells them to." **[SEVENTEEN]** **CHANGING THE EXPERIENCE OF WAR AND THE WARRIOR** _The introduction of every new technology changes society, and how society looks at itself._ _—_ ILLAH NOURBAKHSH When American forces swept up the remnants of the Saddam Hussein regime in the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq invasion, Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam's two sons, were among the most wanted men in the country. Qusay was the quiet one. Trusted more by his father, he had been put in charge of the Republican Guard defense of Baghdad, which he planned to ring with bunkers and ambush sites. Uday was the wild one. A bit off-kilter by even his family's odd standards, he was renowned for his fondness for fast cars, women, and violence (Uday would personally torture Iraqi Olympic athletes who didn't perform well in games). He was put in charge of the Saddam Fedayeen (Men of Saddam), the regime's paramilitary force. Uday's masterful plan to defend Iraq was to try to re-create the movie _Black Hawk Down_ , by having the Fedayeen fight the Americans from pickup trucks and buses. Neither's plan worked out. Qusay's Republican Guard defenses either melted away or were swept aside, while Uday's strategy had two fatal flaws. First, that wasn't exactly what happened in either the movie or reality. Second, in this war, the U.S. soldiers had tanks with them. (If war was a card game, tanks would trump buses.) While dad hid out in a dirt pit behind a family friend's farm outside Tikrit, the two sons sought refuge in a villa in the city of Mosul. But a tipster passed on their whereabouts to U.S. military forces. When soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division entered the first floor of the building, they were met by a hail of bullets. The two brothers had barricaded themselves on the second level. The soldiers pulled back and called for backup. More than two-hundred troops and a range of vehicles and helicopters then rushed to the scene and a full-fledged firefight broke out. Soldiers peppered the mansion with their M-16 rifles and rocket launchers. Gunners standing in Humvees pasted the walls with .50-caliber machine guns. Apache helicopters launched missiles that turned the mansion's façade into Swiss cheese. The scene filled with smoke, fire, and explosions. All the while, a remote-controlled drone circled overhead, silently watching, coordinating the attack. After two hours of free-for-all shooting, the order was given to cease fire. The soldiers picked their way through the rubble to find the two brothers' bodies, riddled with bullets. No one was exactly certain when they had died. It could have been in the first minute, it could have been in the second hour. Master Sergeant Kelly Tyler, the spokesperson for the 101st Airborne, expressed the official position on the results of the "battle," "The 101st kicks ass." More than four hundred miles away, the scene was also chaotic, but in a far different way. The operator of the drone flying over the villa was at a base in Qatar. He was amazed by the footage that he was watching. News of the ongoing battle spread through the command center and soon over forty off-duty soldiers had crowded into the small control room. Many brought in snacks. They squirmed to get the best view of the battle playing out on the flat-panel screen. Cheers would erupt every time there was a particularly big explosion. As one of the soldiers later described his experience during the battle, "It was like a Super Bowl party in there." General Robert E. Lee once wrote, "It is good that we find war so horrible, or else we would become fond of it." The new technologies of war are changing the experience of war itself. # GOING TO WAR? The phrase "going to war" has long had a double meaning. It signified not just the start of hostilities between two nations, but also the start of an arduous journey for their soldiers leaving home. A soldier who went to war might be gone for years before they returned to their loved ones, if they were so lucky to even make it back. Indeed, in the _Odyssey_ , one of the founding books of Western literature, Odysseus goes to war for ten years, and then needs a journey lasting another decade before he finds his way home. Going off to war, though, meant more than just being disconnected from loved ones. It also was defined by the great dangers that greeted soldiers at their destination. Whether it was Odysseus arriving before the walls of Troy or my grandfather heading off to fight the Japanese in the Pacific, when a soldier went off to war, he arrived at a place where killing took place. Things changed slightly with each new technology; a soldier in one of Julius Caesar's legions was certainly exposed to far more danger at a closer distance than a B-52 bomber pilot flying above the Vietnamese jungle. But the essence of their destination was the same. War was a place of such dangers that warriors had to reasonably expect that they might never return home. For the first time in history, however, the experience of "going to war" is changing at a much deeper level. Gary Fabricius's experience in the Iraq war is as good an illustration as any. Colonel Gary Fabricius graduated from the Air Force Academy in 1984 and joined the service as a pilot. The young officer, who took the call sign of "Fabs," advanced up the ranks, eventually piloting F-15 fighter jets, the premier fighter plane in the world at the time. In 2002, he was promoted to squadron command. There was only one catch: he would be commanding the first Predator drone squadron. As a self-described "fighter jock," Fabricius recalls that he was "kicking, screaming, clawing, and scratching" to stay in F-15s. Indeed, instead of celebrating his promotion, a fellow fighter pilot told Fabs, "Jeez, I'm sorry." UAVs were just for taking pictures and the pilots who flew them were considered "second-class citizens," just "playing video games." Fabricius headed off to his new command in Nevada, not wholly happy with where his career had taken him. "But after a month, I became a believer." Fabricius describes how the Predator unit was not some "remote control flight club" and instead soon became "a combat-effective squadron." His unit went from merely gathering information viewed only by the senior leadership as "neat to see" to carrying out thousands of important missions, everywhere from Iraq to Afghanistan, despite the fact that his pilots never left Nevada. He was part of the first UAV air combat mission, in which the drones were armed with Stinger missiles, so that they could try to ambush Iraqi fighter jets. In battles like Fallujah, his unit didn't just take out enemy targets, but also beamed vital real-time information to marines on the ground that saved lives, such as warning them of a sniper on a rooftop waiting to ambush them. His unit even helped catch Saddam Hussein. "You could see him climbing out of the hole. It was pretty exciting." Today, when Fabricius sees his old F-15 mates, he asks them how many combat missions they have flown, how many targets they have taken out in the war, or how many American lives they have saved. Most can only answer "zero." In a way, Fabricius's experience was a "historic first," as he explains. It wasn't just that he had "a God's eye view to the battlefield," but that he is part of the first generation to go to war without actually going to war. Fabricius is representative of a new generation of warriors who could be termed "cubicle warriors." The term takes its inspiration from the cubicle, the now standard office workplace filled with computers and ergonomic furniture that has become a fixture of pop culture, from _Fight Club_ to _The Office,_ as well as science fiction, where in movies like _The Matrix_ it is a metaphor for technology's increasing control over daily life. The concept isn't meant as a mockery, as most soldiers' workstations certainly don't have the ubiquitous knickknacks, pictures of pets, or "Hang in There" kitty posters that decorate many office cubicles. Rather, just as more people's experience in modern industry has shifted from the fields and factory floors to the "cube," the location of fighting has shifted for many soldiers from the battle space to _Office Space_. For a new generation, "going to war" doesn't mean shipping off to some dank foxhole in a foreign land to dodge bullets. Instead, it is a daily commute in your Toyota Camry to sit behind a computer screen and drag a mouse. Their location doesn't limit the violence that cubicle warriors deal out, though. Fabricius's unit may not have been in Iraq, but its base just outside Las Vegas is where most of the combat action in the air force takes place today. As one drone pilot describes, "If you want to pull the trigger and take out bad guys, you fly a Predator." As such, they take their jobs seriously. Like Fabricius, they all had experience flying other planes like F-15s or A-10s (this policy is soon to change, however), and they even come to work wearing a flight suit. One officer recalls that the action felt so intense that one time, when his drone thousands of miles away was about to crash, he instinctively reached for the ejection seat. Fabricius's squadron flies under what is known as a "remote split operation." The drones fly out of bases located in the war zone, but the pilots are actually sitting at control stations in a complex of trailers in Nevada. These are linked by fiber optic cables to Europe. There, a satellite dish beams their information and communications out to the drones. Because they are not bound to any one plane, the pilots can "swing" from flying a drone over Iraq one day to a different one flying over Afghanistan the next. For the first time, the limitations of geography are taken out of the war that a soldier goes off to experience. Air force pilots have long been mocked by troops in the field for leading cushy lives in war, safely flying above the fight and then returning each night to their bases behind the lines, which have good chow, warm showers, and a nearby bar. But even in this scenario, a pilot who went to war could never be accused of living the sort of life they led back home. For example, in his classic book _A Lonely Kind of War_ , Marshall Harrison tells what it was like to fly Forward Air Controller missions in Vietnam, the precursor to the types of roles carried out by drones today. He recounts exchanging the humdrum of "a wife, three children, and a well-mortgaged home in the Virginia suburbs" for a base "with sagging tents and rain-rotted hootches . . . a strong miasma of burning feces . . . hordes of mosquitoes." The same difference goes for the risks that pilots had to take. While their exposure to danger might be at greater distances and shorter duration than for soldiers on the front lines, the expectation of peril was ever-present. At one point, for example, Harrison had to land his plane, under enemy fire, on a dirt road deep in Cambodia to help rescue a reconnaissance team. As such, even back at base, there was no mistaking that he was at war; it was literally in the air. Tells Harrison, "You could almost smell the excess testosterone." The experience for drone pilots is a bit different. They work the same hours as if they were in a war zone, usually seven days a week, twelve hours a day, with the unit split into two shifts. But, says Colonel Charlie Lyon, commander of the 57th Operations Group at Nellis, "At the end of the duty day, you walk out of the deployment and walk back into the rest of life in America." A 1940s army pamphlet given to new recruits in World War II explained what it was like to experience war: "YOU'LL BE SCARED. You'll be frightened at the uncertainty, at the thought of being killed." By contrast, described one Predator pilot, "Most of the time, I get to fight the war, and go home and see the wife and kids at night." Another talked about flying missions in Afghanistan, and then getting home in time to watch reruns of the TV sitcom _Friends_. This changing experience leads some to question whether these cubicle warriors can even claim to have gone to war. One special operations officer, just back from Iraq, says, "You have some guy sitting at Nellis and he's taking his kid to soccer. It's a strange dichotomy to war. He's disconnected from the enemy he's fighting.... A warrior has to assume physical risk." When I directly asked him if he thought a Predator pilot was at war, he replied, "No, he doesn't meet my definition." It was the exposure to risk that defined whether he respected someone as a fellow combatant, including even enemies who violated all the other rules of war. "If you see it through their eyes, you can understand what they think. Even AMZ [Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, whom the operative had helped hunt down] was right there hanging his balls out on the battlefield in terms of personal risk, leading his men in combat." Throughout history, as each new technology has pushed soldiers farther and farther away from their foes, many lamented the effect it would have for warriors and their values. When Hiero, the ancient king of Syracuse, hired the great Archimedes to build him a catapult, the king was said to have cried when he saw the result. The catapult was so powerful that Hiero mourned that the age of warriors was surely over, replaced by the age of engineers. Similarly, using a gun was once seen as cowardly. As one commentator in the 1400s complained, "so many brave and valiant men" were being killed by "cowards and shirkers who would not dare to look in the face the men they bring down from a distance with their wretched bullets." This leads some, like AI expert Robert Epstein, to claim that "fighting by remote is no different than fighting with a knife in hand-to-hand combat is from shooting someone with a rifle. You are still fighting." The fact is, however, that while technology may not have ended the warrior's trade, it certainly has affected our definition of the attributes soldiers must have when they go to war, most especially that ultimate value that so defines a soldier, courage in the face of danger. In the days of swordplay, individual ferocity often carried the day in battle (think Mel Gibson in _Braveheart_ ), and so it was an attribute that was greatly admired. With the invention of gunpowder and forces lining up in battle to fight each other, the ultimate value became steadfastness under fire; courage now meant standing in the line with "passive disdain," as bullets came flying at you (think Mel Gibson in _The Patriot_ ). But when the machine gun entered war, this old definition of courage became ineffective if not insane (think Mel Gibson in _Lethal Weapon_ , or on a Malibu highway). As a French general commented after the battle of Verdun in 1916, "Three men and a machine gun can stop a battalion of heroes." But the underlying essence of war stayed the same. As T. R. Fehrenbach wrote in _This Kind of War_ , "The real function of an army is to fight and that a soldier's destiny—which few escape—is to suffer, and if need be, to die." Whether it was from a sword point up close or a machine-gun bullet fired from afar, none of the previous revolutionary technologies in history changed the fundamental fact that going to war meant facing risk. A soldier then needed to hold tight to that special value, which would allow them to face these dangers and still do what needed to be done. As Lord Moran writes in _The Anatomy of Courage_ , "The mysterious quality we call 'courage' is will-power, self-sacrifice, call it what you will, that inspires men to hold their ground when every instinct calls upon them to run away." The courage of a warrior, then, is about victory over fear. It is not about the absence of fear. By removing warriors completely from risk and fear, unmanned systems create the first complete break in the ancient connection that defines warriors and their soldierly values. If you are sitting at a computer's controls, with no real danger other than carpal tunnel syndrome, your experience of war is not merely distanced from risk, as with previous technologies, but now fully disconnected from it. And thus these new warriors are disconnected from the old meanings of courage as well. As one described his experience in the Iraq war, fought from a cubicle in Qatar, "It's like a video game. It can get a little bloodthirsty. But it's fucking cool." Not everyone is fighting from the cubicles, of course, which creates two different tracks in the once shared experience of going to war. One group of Shadow drone pilots reflected on what it's like to be at war when you don't really face any danger but can watch others who still do. "Every now and then, you're like, 'Man, these guys are really taking fire!' You just want to get out there and help them," states Sergeant William Coleman. At the same time, he explains, "You've got to be thankful for the situation you're in, because you're not under hostile fire every day.... People are really getting hurt. They're dying every day." "Yeah, war is hell," concurs his copilot, army specialist Jonathan Whitaker. Notably, the two soldiers relax from the stress of virtual war by playing video game versions of war in their off hours. "I won the last game," says Coleman. " _Medal of Honor_ , we were playing and I walked away with that one." With these changing experiences, many worry that the age-old soldierly virtues of loyalty, bravery, courage, and sacrifice are under threat. Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge, who commanded the British military forces during the Iraq war, even describes unmanned systems as part of a move toward "virtueless war," a result of remote soldiers' no longer having any "emotional connectivity with the battlespace." Analyst Chris Gray similarly says that "war is not just in transition, it is in crisis." # THE VIRTUAL BAND OF BROTHERS? UNIT COHESION IN A CHAT ROOM _From this day to the ending of the world,_ _But we in it shall be remembered—_ _We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;_ _For he to-day that sheds his blood with me_ _Shall be my brother._ It was supposedly with these words, touched up a bit courtesy of William Shakespeare, that Henry V inspired his men before the battle of Agincourt in 1415. His phrase "band of brothers" captures the unique bond between men who fight and even die together. Over five centuries later, it was the title of _Band of Brothers_ , Stephen E. Ambrose's classic history of the men who made up a World War II American infantry company in the 101st Airborne Division, and the close attachments that built between them as they battled across Europe. The men of Easy Company shared in the training, the dangers, the losses, the laughs, the risks, and finally, the sense of triumph, mixed with guilty relief, at the end of the war. Decades after the war is over, the men in the unit still feel closer bonds with fellow soldiers they have not seen for years than with their best friends from civilian life, and sometimes even their families. This brotherhood of arms has long been one of the integral parts of military culture and the experience of war. It is why the most hard-ass marine sergeant can tell his unit something tender like, "We're a family. I'm your father and mother," and truly mean it from the bottom of his steely heart. While recent U.S. Army recruitment advertisements talked of an "Army of One," the reality is that solitude and self-sufficiency are not the typical experience of war. Instead, the combination of close proximity, harsh conditions, distance from home, and shared dangers and losses forges uniquely tight bonds between men (and increasingly women) who often have nothing else in common. Military researchers call these bonds "unit cohesion." It's not something that can exactly be measured, but unit cohesion is best described as the sort of chemistry that builds within a unit, which in turn allows it to act as a team. As Major Ralph E. McDonald summarizes, "Cohesion requires trusting each other and anticipating each other's needs." Most believe that cohesion doesn't just make soldiers fight better together, but even is what gives them the courage to stay in the fight. The nineteenth-century French military writer Ardant du Picq described it as "mutual surveillance," telling how individually most men are secret cowards, but when trained together as a unit, they become transformed; their fear of letting each other down matters more than their fear of the enemy's bullets and bayonets. Other studies of soldiers in World War II found the same truths of combat, that the sense of responsibility a soldier had for his close comrades mattered far more than any lofty ideals of patriotism. Compare such notions to the new experiences of warriors fighting from afar. Marine veteran Bing West, for example, talked about an incident that took place just outside Fallujah, Iraq, in 2005. A group of insurgents was sighted by a Pioneer drone, flown by operators sitting at a base in the Persian Gulf. It was unarmed, so a second, armed Predator drone, operated by pilots back in Nevada, arrived on the scene. The coordinates were passed, the target identified, and the enemy was taken out. None of the operators actually risked themselves, nor did they ever physically meet. Indeed, they never even spoke to each other by radio or phone. Instead, they carried out the entire operation by texting each other in an Internet chat room. "Make no mistake, this war is being fought on chat," declares an air force lieutenant colonel who coordinates such attacks every day. As new communications technologies spread across society, we are seeing a change in how people organize themselves in their new office cubicles and whether they bond or not. It was once a mantra of business, for example, that workers had to be located together in the same place and organized into categories with strict boundaries to get the maximum efficiency. Indeed, this belief, as popularized by Peter Drucker, the "founding father of the study of management," was considered so essential to America's business success in the twentieth century that Drucker was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush in 2002. But when we look at corporate life at the turn of the twenty-first century, it is increasingly taking place in the same sort of distributed operations that characterize the military's "reachback" operations of war via chat rooms. As a federal government study of corporate change found, people are increasingly carrying out their work, and even their social discussions, via e-mail, rather than in the hallways, the cafeteria, or conference rooms. "The only sound is the click-clack of keyboards as email flies back and forth." Carrying out work or even war via an Internet chat room, where no one ever meets, may seem completely odd to anyone who grew up in the last twenty centuries. But it is not so unusual for the "MySpace Generation" that is leading change in the twenty-first century. As _BusinessWeek_ describes the generation moving into the workforce and the military today, "They live online. They buy online. They play online. Their power is growing." Indeed, in 2007, the social networking site MySpace was the most trafficked Web site on the entire Internet. It isn't only perfectly natural for today's youth to feel more comfortable communicating via the Internet, but many also have far more virtual "friends," whom they have never met, than they do real ones. The effect of such changes on the traditional principles of unit cohesion are obviously immense. Even drone squadron commander Gary Fabricius acknowledges there was a huge difference between deploying out to a region to fight together versus staying back home and fighting via computer screen. "You gain that trust and focus from living and breathing the operation together. With reachback operations, you lose that camaraderie." Marine general James Mattis, who was the overall commander in Fallujah at the time when chat-room-coordinated strikes came into being, feels similarly. "Computers by their nature are isolating. They build walls. The nature of war is immutable: you need trust and connection." While virtual hookups allow teams to form and work together across great distances, they are not producing the same sorts of bonds. Soldiers working and fighting together via a wireless signal or fiber optic cable may be connected, but not emotionally or psychologically. The teams they are supposedly part of may be quickly connected, but they are just as easily disconnected. No real bonds form and unit cohesion becomes ephemeral. It's much like most of the "friendships" that youth make via online social networking. They may list hundreds of "friends," but very few are actual relationships built of mutual respect and trust. Instead they are more like superficial social groupings, or as _Washington Post_ technology reporter Joel Garreau puts it, "skittering like water bugs on the surface of life." Without sharing the experiences of war, soldiers can't develop that same sense of trust. And with that, units and soldiers look at each other differently. One U.S. Marine officer says that he detests the virtual linkages, because "op-con [operational control] isn't real without 'hand-con,' a handshake. All the wire diagrams you see are nearly irrelevant in today's environment.... If you don't have trust, all these units just become chess pieces on a board." In lieu of this trust and cohesion, many of today's warriors are experiencing other problems endemic to the Internet. Just as you can never be sure online whether that sexy blond cheerleader is actually a 350-pound welder from Milwaukee, something similar happens in military chat rooms. "Ninety percent of the time you don't know who you are talking to," says Gary Fabricius. "The beauty of it is that anyone can sign in and ask for information or mission help. But the danger is that anyone can sign in and ask for information or mission help." This can create a free-for-all, which sometimes throws military hierarchy into a tailspin. "Staff Sergeant Smithy will be on one side badgering a lieutenant colonel flying the Predator. Pretty soon they each start getting testy." Ultimately, the e-mail traffic grew so problematic in the chat rooms that Fabricius had to lay down some rules of proper chat-room behavior for soldiers at war. No e-mailing in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, no exclamations!!!!, and no emoticons (☹). Setting military chat-room etiquette reduced the tension and let information flow a bit more smoothly. But still, Fabricius says, "I hate it. You lose something. You can't tell the emotions. You lose the sense of urgency." Lieutenant Colonel Norman Mims of the army's 11th Signal Brigade says that "what's funny about using Microsoft Chat is that everybody has to choose an icon to represent themselves. Some of these guys haven't bothered, so the program assigns them one. We'll be in the middle of a battle and a bunch of field artillery colonels will come online in the form of these big-breasted blondes. We've got a few space aliens, too." One general even went by the chat-room handle of "YKYMF," short for Bruce Willis's famous line from _Die Hard_ of "Yipee-ki-aye! Motherfucker." Such problems of identity, when soldiers can't meet face-to-face, aren't just amusing, but can create confusion on what to do in battle. One Predator drone pilot, for instance, recalls how it was often difficult "to tell if it was a private or a colonel" asking for his drone to perform a certain mission. The distanced anonymity of the chat rooms made it such that "everyone thinks they have a vote." Another problem is that even the best technology cannot bridge the divide of being in two different locales. Being there virtually only allows so much communication. Describes one air force officer, "Textual communications accounts for 30 percent of what I need. So we use shorthand, but so much is lost." He describes how a Predator might be flown over Afghanistan while the pilots are in Nevada, and the end users of the data might be anywhere from Iraq to Tampa (CENTCOM headquarters) or California (where an air force intelligence unit is located). "You fly by the target and I type for you to turn around. You may not want to or want to know why and we get into a chat-room pissing contest. And by then it's too late. If we could just talk face-to-face, where body stance and seriousness are so clear, it would take a few seconds." One special forces officer recounts all sorts of "chat-room failures," when cubicle warriors fighting from afar were teamed with his unit on the ground. They ranged from relatively minor screwups, such as when there were two enemy trucks "and confusion led the UAV to follow the wrong vehicle," to a more serious incident. His team was deployed on a mission inside Afghanistan, when the operator (based in Nevada) pulled the UAV out because of bad weather. This decision left his team "in the lurch," alone inside enemy territory. From his vantage point on the ground, it was "a bogus weather call," as the sky was clear. (Note: I interviewed some drone operators and commanders about his claims, and they pointed out the likelihood of high winds or looming weather changes that the soldier couldn't see from the ground.) Such disagreements have long characterized the frequently rocky relationships between those experiencing war on the front lines and those either behind or above the fight. But this incident illustrated three important new pressure points that unmanned systems introduce. To the soldier in the midst of battle, the drone pilots weren't just bearing less risk, but no risk at all. Moreover, he saw them as valuing the safety of a machine over his men's lives. Finally, he didn't see it as a fellow warrior making the call, but "some guy sitting in Vegas rushing to take his kids out to a soccer game or go hit the slots.... [Two years later] I still want to be able to stick my finger in his chest to explain how we do business." # FOR THE LOVE OF A ROBOT The EOD soldier carried a box into the robot repair facility at Camp Victory, Iraq. "Can you fix it?" he asked, with tears welling in his eyes. Inside the box was a pile of broken parts. It was the remains of "Scooby-Doo," the team's PackBot, which had been blown up by an IED. On the side of Scooby's "head" was a series of handwritten hash marks, showing the number of missions that the little robot had gone on. All told, Scooby had hunted down and defused eighteen IEDs and one car bomb, dangerous missions that had saved multiple human lives. "This has been a really great robot," the soldier told Master Sergeant Ted Bogosh, the marine in charge of the repair yard. Unfortunately, the robot could not be repaired. The news left the soldier "very upset." He didn't want a new robot but "wanted Scooby-Doo back." At a certain level, robots are just sophisticated lawn mowers, can openers, or coffee grinders. As Carnegie Mellon robotics professor Red Whitaker puts it, "I don't get happy about robots or feel sorry for robots. They are not like little old ladies or puppies. They are just machines." Indeed, says Whitaker, for a person to develop any care, concern, love, or hate toward a machine makes no sense. "They certainly don't have the same feelings for you." And yet while new technologies are breaking down the traditional soldierly bonds, entirely new bonds are being created in unmanned wars. People, including the most hardened soldiers, are projecting all sorts of thoughts, feelings, and emotions onto their new machines, creating a whole new side to the experience of war. An affinity for a robot often begins when the person working with it notices some sort of "quirk," something about the way it moves, a person or animal it looks like, whatever. "You start to associate personalities with each of them," says Mark Del Giorno, vice president at General Dynamics Robotic Systems. Of course, these quirks often have nothing to do with what is causing it. "The 'personality' comes from, say, the steering being a little loose." Pretty soon, it feels natural for the person to give the robot a name, just like they would another living thing, but not what they would do for most machines. The Roomba is really just a sophisticated vacuum cleaner. Vacuums are not a machine that people tend to give names or ascribe personalities to. And yet iRobot has found that 60 percent of Roomba owners have given names to their robot vacuums. As the tale of Scooby-Doo illustrates, the same thing is happening in the military. But it's not just a matter of nicknames. As Joel Garreau explains, the continued evolution of human-robot interaction is leading many robot operators to do things like "award 'battlefield promotions' and 'Purple Hearts' [medals] to their machines. . . . One unit in the 737th Ordnance Company, for instance, called their EOD bot Sgt. Talon; Sgt. Talon, in fact, got promoted to Staff Sergeant and received three Purple Hearts." Soldiers are not just doing this as a joke, but because they are truly bonding with these machines. Paul Varian, a chief warrant officer who served three tours in Iraq, recounts that his unit's robot was nicknamed "Frankenstein," as it had been made up of parts from other blown-up robots. But after going into battle with the team, Frankenstein was promoted to private first class and even given an EOD badge, "a coveted honor" among the small fraternity of men willing to defuse bombs. "It was a big deal. He was part of our team, one of us. He did feel like family." Just like the Roomba owners, these soldiers know that their robots are not alive and that the machines couldn't care less whether they get promoted. The robots did what they were supposed to; it's like awarding a medal to a popcorn maker for cooking corn kernels. And yet these soldiers are experiencing some of the most searing and emotionally stressful events possible, with something they would prefer not to see as just an inanimate object. They realize they might not be alive without this machine, so they would rather not view it that way. To view the robot that fought with them, and even saved their lives, as just a "thing" is almost an insult to their own experience. So they grow to refer and even relate to their robot almost like they would with one of their human buddies. Soldiers who work with damaged robots notice these attachments the most. Jose Ferreira described working at the repair yard in Baghdad as less like being a mechanic in a garage and more like being a doctor in an emergency room. "I wish you all could be here and experience the satisfaction in knowing you saved someone's life today. I wish you could see the fear in their eyes when they first walk in knowing that they could walk out with no robot. I wish you could see the smiles and feel the hugs and handshakes after they leave our shop knowing that their 'little Timmy' is ALIVE. Alive and well to go down range one more time." Ironically, these sorts of close human bonds with machines sometimes work against the very rationale for why robots were put on the battlefield in the first place. Unmanned systems are supposed to lower the risks for humans. But as soldiers bond with their machines, they begin to worry about them. Just as a human team would "leave no man behind," for instance, the same sometimes goes for their robot buddies. When one robot was knocked out of action in Iraq, an EOD soldier ran fifty meters, all the while being shot at by an enemy machine gun, to "rescue it." This effect even plays out on robot design. Mark Tilden, a robotics physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, once built an ingenious robot for clearing minefields, modeled after a stick insect. It would walk though a minefield, intentionally stepping on any land mines that it found with one of its feet. Then it would right itself and crawl on, blowing up land mines until it was literally down to the last leg. When the system was put through military tests, it worked just as designed, but the army colonel in charge "blew a fuse," recounts Tilden. Describing the tests as "inhuman," the officer ordered them be stopped. "The Colonel could not stand the pathos of watching the burned, scarred, and crippled machine drag itself forward on its last leg." Humans have a natural inclination to "anthropomorphize," to give human characteristics to something that is not human. Indeed, we are hardwired that way. In our brains are clusters of nerve cells called mirror neurons. These neurons fire when we recognize the object we are looking at as alive and deserving of empathy; that is, what we "mirror" ourselves onto. When scientists at the University of California-San Diego studied the brain scans of people looking at a robot, they found that their mirror neurons were firing. That is, the people had much the same brain activity that they would have as if they were interacting with a real person, even though the rest of their brain knew that it was just a machine. Our machine creations are not just "neutral" objects to us. We not only tend to view them as having their own personalities, but also feel that they deserve some form of emotional attention and engagement. For instance, students majoring in computer science should know more than the rest of us that a computer is just a machine. And yet 83 percent of them describe their computers as having "agency," having their own intentions and making independent decisions (such as knowing when to crash or not for maximum effect). Robots are often modeled in their designs after living things, so this tendency to "mirror" and empathize with our machines goes even further. For example, in a study of Sony AIBO "owners," people who had bought the tiny robotic dog, 75 percent regarded their AIBO as something more than just a machine. Almost half, 48 percent, thought that their AIBO robot had "a life-like essence." If a robot is perceived as more than just a machine, then the way the person acts and communicates with it also changes. But it also affects how they think that the robot acts and communicates with them. Sixty percent of the owners thought their AIBO could express its "mental state," 42 percent thought that AIBO engaged in intentional behavior, and 38 percent affirmed that AIBO had "feelings." As one even described, "My dog [the AIBO robot] would get angry when my boyfriend would talk to him." Fifty-nine percent of the owners described themselves as having a social bond with their robot, with many even considering the machine a part of the family. Said one owner, "Oh yeah, I love Spaz [the robot's name], I tell him that all the time. . . . When I first bought him I was fascinated by the technology. Since then I feel I care about him as a pal, not as a cool piece of technology." And this is for a tiny robot that doesn't look all that lifelike, is unable to speak, and comes with little AI. As robotic systems get more advanced, these trends may go even further. Researchers are also noticing a sort of generational split when it comes to these ideas of a machine being "alive" or having "feelings." Before the 1990s, computers and robots tended to be viewed as merely devices, machines used to do things. As computers grew more advanced and, even more so, children began to be confronted with toys that could speak and video game characters that reacted to their moves at younger ages, perceptions have begun to change. Remember, the generation becoming soldiers now is the same one that as kids became fascinated with Tamagotchi. If you are too old to recall this, Tamagotchi was the super-popular toy that came out in 1996. It was essentially a small, colorful egg with an LCD screen and some buttons. The "fun" of it was that Tamagotchi acted like a small child; you would have to feed it, play with it, and even give it virtual shots in a medical emergency. Based on how you treated it, Tamagotchi would either get happy or sad, or even get sick and "die." As toys like these took off and children began to use computers at younger and younger ages, researchers began to notice some "ambiguity" among children as to whether computers were alive or not. As one child said in a study, a robotic toy was "alive the way insects are alive, but not the way people are alive." Indeed, this line of what is alive or not has grown so fuzzy that visitors to Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park in Orlando have even started to complain that the real-life biological animals "were not realistic" compared to the animatronic ones. With humans bonding with robots even without designers trying, roboticists are now trying to take advantage of this natural proclivity. Their goal is to create "social robots" that have emotions, or rather the semblance of emotions, in order to make it easier for humans to interact with them. That is, the human-machine interface might be smoothed out by machines that mimic human behaviors, including even having what seems like an emotional response and attachment to the person. This echoes back to the work done by David Hanson and his Zeno, the little boy robot designed to grow up with his son. "To live among people, robots need to handle complex social tasks," says Junichi Takeno, a Japanese researcher building robots that react to different human key words with feigned expressions of happiness, sadness, urgency, fear, and even anger. "Robots will need to work with emotions, to understand and eventually feel them." Building such bots makes perfect sense for a robotic toy, but why would the military want a weapon to have social skills? An M-16 never needed to learn how to play nice, so why should a SWORDS packing an M-16? The answer is that just as soldiers who trust each other fight better together, so do humans and their robots work more efficiently when there is a bond. Chemistry matters, even if it is a completely faux one. In one study of operating unmanned combat drones, human operators interacted with AI programs that were given two different "personalities." One AI had a humanlike voice and mannerisms and would greet the human by saying, "Hey [whatever their name was], we did an awesome job—great working with you!" or with a joke. The other would say, in a monotone voice: "Hello." These differences in personality continued through the missions. The personable AI would not just advise the human agents about a mission, but also try to inspire them, saying such things as, "Here is the last known target. Let's finish this!" The other AI would just say, "Pay attention, high priority." It paid off, and the personable AI-human team finished the tasks faster. In robotic warfare, nice AIs finish first. The outcome points to a whole new kind of wartime cohesion in unmanned war as well as a new irony. As Peter Kahn, one of the world's leading experts on human-robot interaction, explains, "Let's say you design robots to be team members in the military. That might increase the ability to engage effectively with the robot. But then it may be a little hard to think of a robot team member as a disposable unit. . . . It's not going to go great to have your Robo-buddy blown up." Kahn believes that ultimately the military may want robots with "a slightly aversive personality." In other words, robots that are social, but just annoying enough so that fellow soldiers won't feel bad when they get blown up. # CHANGING THE DEFINITIONS In his memoir _Soldiering_ , Colonel Henry Cole of the U.S. Army looked back on his experience in the military. He recalls that it was seeing his uncle, drafted into the war effort, coming home on his first leave that made him want to join the military. Cole's uncle was a rail-thin eighteen-year-old boy and his uniform didn't fit. His overcoat smelled, as its cloth was made from a horse blanket. "But he was somebody," Cole recalls. "He was a solider." A half century later in 2005, Nathaniel Fick explained what led him to leave the fast track of an Ivy League education and join the Marine Corps, consciously choosing a life in which death, as he titled his memoir, was always just _One Bullet Away_. "Being a Marine was not about earning money for graduate school or learning a skill; it was a rite of passage in a society becoming so soft and homogenous that the very concept was often sneered at." Joining the military and heading off to war has long been viewed as a transformative act. It wraps together a deliberate choice of self-sacrifice, taking on a new identity, and adhering to a new code of behavior, conduct, and honor. This experience changes how a person looks at the world and how the world looks at that person. As technology changes what it means to "go to war," how soldiers experience battle, and the bonds they build, we must question whether the memoirs of our current and future digital warriors will convey that same sense of powerful transformation. The soldiers who watched the last stand of Saddam's sons, Gary Fabricius and his squadron, and all the others fighting via chat rooms and unmanned systems were certainly at war, but they experienced it in a far different way than Cole, Fick, or any previous generation. And we can expect that their future memoirs and histories will likely read quite differently as well. A U.S. Marine summed it up this way: "We joined the military to become warriors. But that definition is changing." **[EIGHTEEN]** **COMMAND AND CONTROL... ALT-DELETE: NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND THEIR EFFECT ON LEADERSHIP** _I can no longer obey; I have tasted command, and I cannot give it up._ —NAPOLEON BONAPARTE "You are watching the most violent actions that man carries out, but you are not there. It's antiseptic. It's not as potent an emotion as being on the battlefield. You may get angry at seeing one of our guys get killed, but then it's on to the next mission." Colonel Michael Downs entered the air force out of Texas A&M University. I first met the avid "Aggie" football fan when we shared a cubicle in an office inside the bowels of the Pentagon. Since he was an air force officer, the Pentagon in its infinite wisdom had assigned Downs responsibility for the landmine issue in the Balkans. The next time I saw him he was out in the Middle East, serving in a more traditional air force role as one of the key planners of the air operations for the early stages of the Iraq war, for which he was awarded the Bronze Star. Downs then shifted over to Beale Air Force Base, located about forty miles north of Sacramento, California. Unlike most air bases, which are named after pilots, Beale is named in honor of the man who founded the Army Camel Corps in the 1840s. Given such an iconoclastic legacy, it is perhaps appropriate that today Beale is the home of the 9th Reconnaissance Wing, a unit that hosts much of the air force's unmanned operations, as well as the 548th Intelligence Group, which helps analyze the information gathered by America's fleet of unmanned drones. Downs's job at Beale as director of operations was to help lead and coordinate the high-altitude unmanned operations that took place around the globe. He sees "a strong future" in unmanned systems. "They are becoming a staple of what we do." Trained as an intelligence officer, he appreciates how much they help with what is perhaps the most difficult task in modern-day war: simply locating the enemy. "We continue to make incredible progress on the kinetic part of war, to where our biggest challenge is no longer destroying targets, it's finding them." During the 2006 operation that killed al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, "It took over six hundred hours of surveillance work for roughly ten minutes of bomb-dropping work." Downs wants to make clear that those fighting from places like Beale are not some stereotype of "emotionless automatons who are detached from the impact of their work." Instead, his pride in the men and women on his team shines through again and again. "They care deeply about what they do, why they do it, and give of themselves greatly for our country. They are consummate professionals." Rather, Downs is growing concerned about how their leaders like himself will face the unfamiliar challenges that unmanned, distance warfare presents. # THE WAR AT HOME The units like the one Downs led at Beale are not merely fighting from afar, but doing so 24/7, over long periods of time. "Maintaining the acute concentration and focus necessary for combat operations is difficult if you are doing the same thing every single day, day in and day out, for three, four, or six years in a row." He describes the challenge of keeping a "razor-sharp focus, consistently." A commander has to be sure to continually reinforce the criticality of the mission to his troops, "so that they have the mental and emotional sense that they are in the battle space that they're looking at." Downs continues, "You try to give your team the context, make sure they link what they are doing here in the States to the broader cause, to see the importance of it, so six months in you don't have people with their jaws on the keyboards.... I would tell my folks that when they stepped into our mission vans, that they were leaving California and stepping into Iraq or Afghanistan." Downs thinks that unmanned war, "while you can't compare it to the experience on the ground," also comes with a great deal of psychological stress and emotional connections, perhaps more than people might think that a so-called cubicle warrior would experience. He recalls an instance in which the crew of an unarmed Predator drone could only watch from above as insurgents killed a team of U.S. Special Forces operators. "It was tough on the young kids.... I worry about the young airmen. They don't have the same life experience and support systems. They just go home and internalize it." Downs's worry was later reinforced by a staff sergeant at another air base, who helps oversee the support of drone crews and mission planners. She similarly raised the issue of what the servicemen and -women under her care were experiencing, even while fighting from afar. "What angers me is that as a service, we are not doing a good job on PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]. People are watching horrible scenes, it's affecting people. Yet we have _no_ systematic process on how we take care of our people." Another novel command challenge emerged from what is widely perceived as the greatest perk of distant war: fighting without leaving home. "Conducting continual combat operations from home station presents a unique set of stresses and challenges that we've not had to face until recently." Downs is a married father of three children, who has deployed out on operations to dangerous places in the Middle East and the Balkans multiple times. So he knows the risks of an actual deployment to a combat zone and the accompanying heartache that comes from leaving loved ones behind. Yet, he explains, leaders are also starting to learn that commanding reachback operations at home comes with new issues that raise all sorts of leadership questions. "When you are deployed, the mission is your only job. When you are at home you still have the mission, but all the extras, plus the family." His unit may have been at home base, but it operated on a wartime schedule, conducting missions 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. There are no weekends or holidays, and the pace can be grueling for the men and women he commands. Yet, while the war may be on, none of the pressures of the home front disappear. "You are at war, but at the same time you have Mom at home saying the toilet needs to be fixed. You need to be ready to execute combat missions, where lives are at stake, but still have church activities to go to, kids that need to be taken to the hospital, soccer practices, et cetera." Also, because they are fighting within a battle space physically located half a world away, the units adhere to a different time zone. Evening in Afghanistan is afternoon in Iraq is early morning in California. As the singer James Taylor might put it, for an unmanned unit, "It's war o'clock somewhere." Explains Downs, "Even when you are off, you're out of sync with your family." This aspect of balancing fighting and family creates an almost psychological disconnect in how the units have to operate. "You see Americans killed in front of your eyes and then have to go to a PTA meeting." Gary Fabricius, our Predator squadron commander, similarly cited this as perhaps the most surprising challenge of his early experience with unmanned war. "You are going to war for twelve hours, shooting weapons at targets, directing kills on enemy combatants, and then you get in the car, drive home, and within twenty minutes you are sitting at the dinner table talking to your kids about their homework." With these different sorts of pressures, it is very tough for a leader to ensure his unit keeps its "battle rhythm" when it is still located at home. Says Downs, commanders particularly have to keep an eye out for young troops "burning the candle at both ends of the wick." This new generation of leaders like Downs is testing a variety of measures to try to help their forces operate at maximum efficiency and keep the two worlds separated. One is the banning of personal phone calls into the control rooms. When the soldiers are at war, they are kept in a communications bubble. Another idea is for reachback units to operate like many professional sports teams do before big games. Just like a football team before the Super Bowl, a unit rotating onto assignment might be sequestered at a hotel or barracks on base, isolated from their families during operations. This would create a bit more of a distinction between war time and home time, thinks Downs, as well as "keep them fresher and give more focus." Ultimately, Downs feels that the stakes of being at war still overwhelm what would seem to be the virtual nature of fighting it from home. I once asked him if it would ever be possible for warriors fighting unmanned wars from afar to leave their work back at the office, just like other professions can do. He paused for a half minute in silent reflection. He then responded, "You don't really switch it off." # TACTICAL GENERALS The four-star general proudly recounts how he had spent "two hours watching footage" beamed to his office. Sitting behind a live feed of video from a Predator drone, he saw the two insurgent leaders sneak into a compound of houses. Then he waited as other insurgents entered and exited the compound, openly carrying weapons. He was now personally certain. Not only was the compound a legitimate target, but any civilians in the houses had to know that it was being used for war, what with all the armed men moving about. So, having personally checked out the situation, he gave the order to strike. But his role in the operation didn't end there; the general tells how he even decided what size bomb his pilots should drop on the compound. Much like Downs watching after his men and women at Beale, great generals also had to have an innate connection to the warriors fighting under their command. In his masterful history of men at war, _The Face of Battle_ , John Keegan wrote how "the personal bond between leader and follower lies at the root of all explanations of what does and does not happen in battle." In Keegan's view, the exemplar of this was Henry V at the battle of Agincourt, who so inspired his "band of brothers" by fighting in their midst. With the rise of each new communications technology, these connections between the soldiers in the field and those giving them battle orders began to be distanced. Generals were no longer at the same front lines as their men, but operated from command posts that moved farther back with each new technologic advance. And yet, describes analyst Chris Gray, the very same technologies also pushed a trend "towards centralization of command, and thus towards micromanagement." When telegraphs were introduced during the Crimean War (1853-56), generals back in England quickly figured out that they could now send in their daily plans to those on the front lines in Russia. And so they did. The advent of radio heightened this effect. Hitler, for instance, was notorious for issuing detailed orders to individual units fighting on the Eastern Front, cutting out the German army's entire command staff from the process of leading its troops in war. Even the U.S. military has suffered from this problem. During the 1975 _Mayagüez_ rescue attempt, considered the last battle of the Vietnam War, the commander on the scene received so much advice and so many orders from leaders back in D.C. that he eventually "just turned the radios off." These leaders never had access to systems like today's Global Command and Control System (GCCS). As one report describes, "GCCS—known as 'Geeks' to soldiers in the field—is the military's HAL 9000. It's an umbrella system that tracks every friendly tank, plane, ship, and soldier in the world in real time, plotting their positions as they move on a digital map. It can also show enemy locations gleaned from intelligence." When combined with the live video that various unmanned systems beam back, commanders are enabled by technology as never before. They are not just linked closer to the battlefield from greater distances, ending the separation of space, but the separation of time has also been ended. Commanders are not only able to transmit orders in real time to the lowest-level troops or systems in the field, but they can also see the action in real time. With a robotic system like a drone or SWORDS, that commander can see the exact same footage that the operator sees, at the exact same time, and even take over the decision to shoot. Many people, especially the Cebrowski-led network-centric warfare crowd, thought that this linking together of every soldier and system into a vast IT network would decentralize operations, that it would allow for greater initiative among the lower-level units in war. Actual experience with unmanned systems is so far proving the opposite. The new technologies have also enabled the old trends of command interference to reach new extremes of micromanagement. Too frequently, generals at a distance are now using information technology to interpose themselves into matters that used to be handled by those on the scene and at ranks far below them. One battalion commander in Iraq told how he had twelve stars' worth of generals (a four-star general, two three-star lieutenant generals, and a two-star major general) tell him where to position his units during a battle. An army special operations forces captain even had a brigadier general (four layers of command up) radio him while his team was in the midst of hunting down an Iraqi insurgent who had escaped during a raid. The general, watching live Predator video back at the command center in Baghdad, ordered the captain where to deploy not merely his unit, but his individual soldiers. "It's like crack for generals," says Chuck Kamps, a professor at the Air Command and Staff College. "It gives them unprecedented ability to meddle in mission commanders' jobs." Over the last few years, many analysts have discussed what marine general Charles Krulak called the rise of the "strategic corporal." This idea was meant to describe how new technology put far more destructive power (and thus influence over strategic outcomes) into the hands of younger, more junior troops. A twenty-year-old corporal could now call in airstrikes that a forty-year-old colonel used to decide in the past. But these technologies are also producing something new, which I call the "tactical general." While they are becoming more distanced from the battlefield, generals are becoming more involved in the real-time fighting of war. As retired army colonel Robert Killebrew explains, the technology available to today's senior commanders provides them with numerous "incentives to intervene tactically at the lowest levels." That a general, who can now see what is unfolding on the ground, would want to shape it directly makes perfect sense. All sorts of battles have been lost when a general's commands were misinterpreted or implemented wrongly by subordinates in the field. Who else better knows a commander's intent than the commander? What is more, a general who stays on top of the situation can rapidly adjust his original commands to any changes that happen in the midst of battle, rather than letting old plans be carried out despite already being passed by events. Unfortunately, unmanned systems are blurring the line between timely supervision and micromanagement. Retired air force lieutenant colonel Dan Kuehl points out that just because a general now can use a "5,000 mile long screwdriver" doesn't mean he should. One interviewee, for example, described how officers hundreds of miles away would instruct him onto which roads he should turn down during raids in Afghanistan. To the general who described spending two hours watching Predator footage of just one compound, this was time well spent. As the overall commander, he was going to be held accountable if the strike went awry. So if the technology allows, he believed that he should make sure it went exactly the way he wanted. But while this general was doing a job that normally would have been done by captains in the field, who was doing the general's job? These new technologies allowed him to make tactical decisions as never before. But the captains, majors, colonels, and so forth that he was cutting out of the chain could not, in turn, devote themselves to the big strategic and policy questions that the general would have been wrestling with instead. Moreover, "tactical generals" often overestimate how much they really know about what is happening on the ground. Operation Anaconda, the 2002 battle when the 10th Mountain Division took on Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in the Shah-i-Khot valley in Afghanistan, was one of the first battles in which generals back in the States could watch a battle play out live, beamed back to them by a Predator drone that flew above the fight. The danger, explains Major Louis Bello, the fire support coordinator for the 10th Mountain Division, is that the video tends to be "seductive," leading commanders to focus in on what the drone beamed back as if it were the whole story. "You get too focused on what you can see, and neglect what you can't see," Bello said. "And a lot of the time, what's happening elsewhere is more important." Jumping in and out of the tactical issue, rather than working it day to day, senior officers don't have the local context and also tend to interpose their assumptions onto the video they see. During the battle, for example, American commanders saw live video of al-Qaeda fighters moving across a mountain. Even though the footage was staring them in the face, the commanders thought they were seeing Americans, as that was who they expected to see there based on their original plans. Misunderstanding from afar can even be heightened by technology. During the 2003 Iraq invasion, for example, the overall commander, General Tommy Franks, reportedly became obsessed with the "Blue Force Tracker" map. This was a massive electronic display that showed the exact locations and status of every U.S. unit, as well as the Iraqi units facing them. The appearance of so much information proved deceptive, however. At one stage early in the fight, it looked to Franks like several units in the Army's V Corps were neither moving nor fighting. The tracking map showed no Iraqi units nearby and so Franks reportedly flew off the handle. He tracked down his land forces commander, who in his words was then made to eat "a shit sandwich." There was only one problem: General Franks was reportedly looking at the electronic map on the wrong scale. If he had just increased the map's resolution, he would have seen that while the American units may have looked like they were alone at the large scale in the map, they were in actuality locked in one of the toughest battles of the entire invasion, fighting against a swarm of Saddam Fedayeen teams. These small insurgent units were big enough to give the U.S. invasion fits, but not big enough to get their own logos on the high-tech map that the general far from battle was watching. Most of all, officers in the field lament what they call the "Mother may I?" syndrome that has come with these new technologies. Rather than relying on the judgment of their highly trained officers, generals increasingly want to inspect the situation for themselves. It's all fine if the enemy plays along and gives that general several hours to watch the video himself and decide which bomb to use. But sometimes matters aren't decided on a general's schedule. An air force officer in the Middle East described his ultimate frustration being when he had information that could have saved lives, but "it sat in someone's e-mail queue for six hours." Similarly, one Predator pilot complains, "It's the old story—by the time you have all the evidence, it's too late to affect the outcome." Ultimately, these problems put a new wrinkle on a venerable truism of war. As Napoleon once said, "One bad general is better than two good ones." The traditional concept of a military operation is a pyramid, with the strategic commander on top, the operational commanders next, and the tactical commanders on the bottom layer. With the new technologies, this structure isn't just being erased from above, with strategic and operational commanders now getting into the tactical commanders' business. It is also endangered from the sides. As one drone squadron officer explains, a major challenge in the command and control of reachback operations is their simultaneous location in multiple spaces. The drones may be flying over Iraq, but they are launched out of a base in the Persian Gulf, and flown by men sitting back in Nevada. At each of those locales, "each commander thinks he's in control of you." Even worse, the drones are a high-demand asset, for which everyone is clamoring. The results are "power struggles galore." As the operations are located around the world, it is not always clear whose orders take priority. The units instead would get "pulled in many directions because you are in virtual space. Am I at Nellis or am I at CENTAF [the air command in the Middle East]?" Moreover, by giving everybody in the command structure access to the Internet, the ability to watch what is going on and to weigh in on what the units should be ordered to do is not limited just to where a unit is physically or virtually located. During the Shah-i-Khot battle, for instance, video of the fighting was beamed from the Predators to bases and offices all over the world. Army major general Franklin "Buster" Hagenbeck, the commander of U.S. ground forces during the battle, recalls how "disruptive" this was, as officers all around the world now felt that "they were in a position to get involved in the battle." While his team was trying to actually fight the battle in Afghanistan, "people on other staffs at higher levels would call all the way down to my staff and get information and make suggestions." In the midst of battle, some officers back in the States even called in asking for information that they could plug into their own generals' daily briefings, pestering soldiers fighting "for details that they presumed their bosses would want to know." Each of these tasking orders is tough to ignore. Not only do they come in from senior leaders, who can make or break careers, but they also tend to come in on a "priority basis." The various generals around the world tend to use a logic that humorist Garrison Keillor cited in _Lake Wobegon Days_. Every single one of them, of course, thinks that they and their missions and orders must be the ones of "above average" importance. But not everyone actually is. This "flattening of the chain of command," says retired lieutenant general William Odom, causes "constipated communication channels" and "diarrhea of the email" that distracts troops from the mission at hand. At its worst, this pattern can lead to the battlefield version of too many cooks spoiling the meal. A marine officer recalls, for example, that during an operation in Afghanistan, he was sent wildly diverging orders by three different senior commanders. One told him to seize a town fifty miles away. Another told him to seize just the roadway outside of the town. And the third told him, "Don't do anything beyond patrol five miles around the base." The marine in this case ultimately chose "curtain number one" and seized the town. A veteran of the 1991 Gulf War, he felt confident enough to take the career risk of going with his gut. But the rise of virtual command from afar threatens to hollow out the experience of those who will be moving into these command roles in the future. Explains one Predator squadron commander, "You may have some general officer sitting behind four Toshiba big screens [TVs] with greater knowledge of the battlefield from the distance. And maybe it works the first time when they intervene and save the day. But my worry is what happens with the next generation. What happens when that lieutenant, who learns thinking the guys in the back are smarter, becomes a colonel or a general. He'll be making the decisions, but not have any experience." Some worry that the ability to reach into the battlefield could even prove tempting to those outside the military. Marine veteran Bing West expects that "in the near future . . . a president will say, 'Why do we need these twenty links in the chain of command?' " As West explains, the enhanced connections could certainly help the commander in chief become better informed about the true situation on the ground, but could prove catastrophic if civilian leaders are tempted to intervene, "trying to play soldier." Referring to how President Johnson often tried to influence air operations in Vietnam, Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne warned that "it'll be like taking LBJ all the way down into the foxhole." # DIGITALLY LEADING "You know what makes leadership?" asked Harry Truman. "It is the ability to get men to do what they don't want to do and like it." So the "techniques of leadership" that generals needed in the past were both physical and psychological. A general might lead by example, like Henry V, exposing themselves to danger at the head of a charge. Or they might inspire by appealing to soldiers' moral centers, by demonstrating what marine colonel Bryan McCoy calls "the passion of command." Or they even might try to play on soldiers' pride, such as how Patton would publicly embarrass his officers by cussing them out in front of their men, in order to try to spur all to action. These qualities are all in stark contrast to how science fiction portrays the generals of the future, as they use more and more unmanned systems. For example, a _Star Wars_ novel described a general commanding unmanned systems in a galaxy far, far away. He sees his role as only to make cold calculations of costs and benefits, as he moves robotic units around like a computerized game of chess. "Commanding an army of droids was more like playing a game than engaging in actual combat. [By comparison] living soldiers bled and died, had to be fed, experienced morale problems, knew fear and all the other emotions common to beings who could think." Such a general is fortunately still fiction but it is becoming clear that twenty-first-century generals will have to bring new skills to increasingly unmanned wars. When the U.S. Army War College studied what would make a good general in this new century, it found that new technologies are creating an environment "where the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war can at times be so compressed as to appear virtually as a single function." The downside of this "compression" is that it tempts officers to micromanage (the "tactical general" problem). However, officers who have what Clausewitz called the "eye of command," who can find the right balance, will achieve "simultaneous awareness" of what is going on at all the levels of war, and make the appropriate decisions. This isn't going to be easy. For one thing, all the information being collected, all the requests taking place in real time, and all the general "diarrhea of the email" threaten to flood officers with what the army study described as an "avalanche of data." Much like a corporate drone in his office cubicle, the twenty-first-century general will have to develop the ability to manage his in-box. Notes the report, "The strategic leader best adapted for the Information Age will be one with a retentive but discriminating mind, capable of separating the essential from that which is interesting and acting with confidence on his or her conclusions." Part of how this problem of information overload will likely be managed is developing a "knack for enlightened control." Generals will literally have the entire battle at their fingertips. They can watch nearly every single action and make every minute decision. But technology still cannot give them an infinite amount of time. At some point, the leader has to turn matters over their subordinates. The general who can figure out when to intervene and when to delegate down the chain of command, and even more, to empower their junior troops to act with initiative in the absence of micromanagement, will be far more successful than the general who doesn't trust their force to do anything without them. Good generals will also need the mental flexibility to lead a "learning organization" that can adapt to changing circumstances in something beyond just a top-down manner. They will not only have an open mind themselves, but also be willing to let their subordinates wrestle with new concepts and new technologies. Describes Colonel Paul Harig of the U.S. Army War College, "I speculate that the digital general some 35 years from now might not just communicate differently but will actually _think differently_ from his or her predecessors, because conceptual behavior itself is evolving during the Information Age." While a general may no longer have to be as fit a fighter as his troops, the way a Henry V was, the new technologies do impose certain physical requirements on commanders in wartime. For one thing, the U.S. military is finding that generals had better have "hands-on skill" at using a computer, something that once seemed an almost abhorrent concept to leaders. Writes an army report, "To the strategic commander of the Information Age, the laptop computer, or its successor, will be a natural extension of his mind, as familiar as the telephone, map, and binoculars. Aspiring future commanders who are not already computer literate take note." Another physical shift comes from wars being no longer limited by geography or time. While command has always been taxing, it is now becoming literally a 24/7 job. The kind of strength needed to wield a sword may no longer be required of generals. But they may now need the physical and psychological stamina of a twenty-two-year-old medical student on call in the ER. Some of these changes might seem immense, but they will not supplant many of the same qualities that made great generals in the past. For example, the idea of "enlightened control," giving just enough guidance to officers closer to the scene so that they can figure what to do best, is nothing new. The great Prussian generals of the nineteenth century were big believers in its equivalent. They called this _Führen durch Auftrag_ , "leading by task," as opposed to _Führen durch Befehl_ , "leading by orders." Their ideal was that the best general gave his officers the objective and then left it to them to figure out how best to achieve it. The most famous of these was before the 1864 Prussian invasion of the Danish province of Schleswig, where the commanding general so trusted his officers that the only order he supposedly issued was "On February 1st, I want to sleep in Schleswig." While this may be a bit too succinct for modern war, the example of General George Marshall, the overall commander of the U.S. Army during World War II, remains an apt model for twenty-first-century leaders. New inventions like the radio and teletype gave him an enhanced ability to instruct from afar, but Marshall's approach was to set the broad goals and agenda, have smart staff officers write up the details of the plan, but ensure that everything remained simple enough that a lieutenant in the field could understand and implement everything on their own. Similarly, marine general James Mattis's guidance to his troops before the 2003 invasion of Iraq was just as brief, understandable, and worthy. "Engage your brain before you engage your weapon." When the army surveyed almost five hundred generals and colonels about what traits officers would need in the twenty-first century, they identified such qualities as "flexibility," "adaptability," "political astuteness," "ability to conceptualize," "skill in resource management," and "caring leadership." As Colonel Harig of the War College put it, "In the end, it could be argued, all great commanders are the same. They adapt the technology of their times in a highly personal, reflective space where machines can extend, but never supplant, the human dimension of their leadership." # GENERAL 2 . 0 Every decision in a military operation, whether it is the corporal (or robot) in the field deciding whether to pull the trigger or General Eisenhower deciding whether to give the "go" for the D-Day invasion, can be broken down into four basic parts. Folks in the military call these the "OODA loop," short for "observe, orient, decide, and act." Information is gathered, the situation figured out, orders issued, and action taken. Then the whole OODA cycle begins again. The challenge is that technology is shrinking the time inside this decision cycle. Massive amounts of information are coming in faster, and decisions have to be made quicker as a result. This is what led, for example, to defense against mortars and rockets in Iraq being turned over to the R2-D2-like CRAM automated gun system. Humans just couldn't fit into the shorter OODA loop needed to shoot down rockets. This shortening of time in the decision cycle is working up the chain to the generals' level. Marine general James Cartwright, chief of the U.S. Strategic Command (the part of the military that controls the nukes), predicts that "the decision cycle of the future is not going to be minutes. The decision cycle of the future is going to be microseconds." And thus many think there may be one last, fundamental change in the role of commanders at war. As a 2002 army report posits, "The solution to this problem may come from automated systems that have enhanced artificial intelligence. Unmanned systems will capitalize on artificial intelligence technology gains to be able to assess operations and tactical situations and determine an appropriate course of action." If the first step of technology's effect on command and control is to force officers to learn how to lead troops fighting from home bases, and the second is to make generals have to figure out when to intervene directly in the battle or not, the final step may be figuring out just which command roles to leave to people and which to hand over to machines. The world is already awash with all sorts of computer systems that help us sift through information, and decide matters on our behalf. Your e-mail likely filters out junk mail that you don't need to read, while billions of dollars are traded on the stock market by AI systems that decide when to buy and sell based only on algorithms. The same sort of "expert systems" are gradually being introduced into the military. DARPA, for example, has created the Integrated Battle Command. The system gives military officers "decision aids"—AI that allows a commander to visualize and evaluate their plans, as well as predict the impact of a variety of effects. For example, the system helps a command team building a military operational plan to assess the various interactions that will take place in it, so that they can see how changing certain parameters might play out in direct and indirect ways so complex that a human would find them difficult to calculate. The next phase in the project is to build an AI that plans out an entire campaign. Similarly, "battle management" systems have been activated that provide advice on actions an enemy might take and potential countermoves, even drawing up the deployment and logistical plans for units to redeploy, as well as creating the command orders that an officer would have to issue. The military intelligence officer version of this is RAID (the Real-Time Adversarial Intelligence and Decision-making), an AI that scans a database of previous enemy actions within an area of operations to help "provide the commander with an estimate of his opponent's strategic objectives." The Israeli military is even fielding a "virtual battle management" AI. Its primary job is to support mission commanders, but it can take over in extreme situations, such as when the number of incoming targets overwhelms the human. The raw processing power and memory of such systems can offset the problems of information overload that so trouble human commanders. Because searching though data and then processing it takes too much time, human commanders without such aids have to pick out which data they want to look at and which to ignore. Not only does this inevitably lead them to skip the rest of the information that they don't have the time to cover, but humans also tend to give more weight in their decisions to the information they see first, even if it is not representative of the whole. The result is "satisficing." They tend to come out with a satisfactory answer, though not the optimal answer. One air force officer described how each morning he received a "three-inch-deep" folder of printouts with the previous night's intelligence data, which he could only skim through quickly before he had to start assigning missions. "A lot of data is falling on the floor." Emotions also can shape decisions, even the most major military ones. Recent neurological findings indicate that emotions drive our thought processes, including leaders' political decisions, to a greater extent than has been previously recognized. That is, our idealized concept of how decisions are made in war and politics—rationally weighing the evidence to decide how and when to act—does not tell the full story of how human leaders' brains actually work. Stephen Rosen is a Harvard professor who consults for senior leadership at the Pentagon. In his book _War and Human Nature_ , he describes how two under-rated factors have frequently shaped strategic choices in war. The first are powerful emotional experiences that leaders had in the past. These often steered their decisions, even decades afterward, including even decisions on whether to go to war. The second factor was how body chemistry affected one's state of mind. Those with high levels of testosterone, for instance, were more likely to exhibit aggressive behavior and risk-taking; Custer and Patton seem classic examples. By contrast, those with low levels of serotonin are more prone to depression and mood swings; Hitler and Lincoln both were known for such. As these examples show, emotions can shape a leader's decisions for both the better and the worse, so to pull emotions out of the equation could yield widely divergent results. Leaving aside that such artificial decision systems are how AIs invariably take over the world in movies like _The Terminator_ , machine intelligence may not be the perfect match for the human realm of war. "The history of human conflicts is littered with examples of how military forces achieved results that no algorithm would have predicted," tells an air force general. And he is right. It may seem just like a game of chess to some, but war doesn't have a finite set of possible actions and a quantifiable logic of zeros and ones. Instead, as one writer put it, "In war, as in life, spontaneity still prevails over programming." Even so, the Pentagon's work on such programs continues. Many think that the most likely result for future command and control is a parallel to the "warfighters' associate" concept of mixed teams of soldiers and robots fighting in the field. Their future commanders back at base will soon also have a staff that mixes advice from human officers as well as AI. Colonel James Lasswell of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab thinks that the various technological decision aids will likely evolve into an AI "alter ego" for the commander. A sort of artificial aide-de-camp, the technology would "automatically send and collate information for him to have at his beck and call." A real-world example of this under development now in DARPA is the "PETE" (Professional, Educated, Trained, and Empowered) virtual electronic assistant. PETE wouldn't just gather and collate information for the human commander but would also execute orders and even liaise with other commanders' virtual assistants, creating a network of PETEs. The developers envision a resulting split in how the team of a human commander and his AI commander's associate would handle the OODA loop; with each focusing on what they do best, PETE might perform as much as 90 percent of the Observe (gathering data), 70 percent of the Orient (making sense of the data), but maybe as little as 30 percent of the Decide, and 50 percent of the Action (issuing orders). Since the beginnings of war, leaders have described the responsibilities of command as feeling like the weight of the world was on their shoulders. Whether it's an officer like Mike Downs having to figure out how to support his team of cubicle warriors or a future general having to decide just how much to integrate the advice of a machine into his battle plans, unmanned systems are lifting some of these burdens of command, while adding many new ones. Machines may not yet be making command decisions in war, but they are certainly shaping them as never before. **[NINETEEN]** **WHO LET YOU IN THE WAR ? TECHNOLOGY AND THE NEW DEMOGRAPHICS OF CONFLICT** _How can I be a professional, if there is no profession?_ _—_ U.S. MILITARY OFFICER "Simplicity. These systems are extremely simple to operate. My friends back home always seem shocked. This field requires basic computer skills and an abundance of common sense. That's all." Joel Clark originally tried to join the army to become a helicopter mechanic. However, his high school transcript revealed a failed English class. In typical military logic, his lack of a love of Shakespeare made him unqualified to be a mechanic. The army recruiter, not wanting to lose a young man willing to serve his country, scrambled to find a military job that he was qualified for. He asked Joel if he wanted to become a "96 Uniform," army-speak for a robotic airplane pilot. It had never been part of Clark's life plans, "but the idea of running a robot spy plane sounded pretty rad." Plus, as Clark tells, he had a bigger goal in mind. "The only thing that I was concerned about when I got on the plane to basic training was making my father proud. Failing to graduate [high school] on time put a rift in our relationship, so my goal was to complete this task to the best of my ability, in order to regain his confidence in me." Clark's effort to serve his country and make his father proud took him to Fort Huachuca, a 125-year-old base in Arizona, ten miles from the Mexican border. Huachuca originally housed the cavalry units that hunted down the Apache warrior Geronimo. Today, it houses the U.S. Army's training school for unmanned aircraft pilots. Clark proved a quick study. Like most of Generation Y, he was a whiz at computers and video games, perhaps in part explaining his subpar English grades. It also helped that the controls of the robotic drones he was flying were similar to the ones in the Xbox and PlayStation video games that he continued to play during his downtime back in the barracks. After a few months of training, Clark was ready. He may not have been able to pass that pesky English class, but the army judged him qualified to fly combat missions and sent him off to "the big sandbox," what trainees call Iraq. "I love my job. I have done a lot with and for UAS [unmanned aerial systems]. The most rewarding experience I have had working with UAS would have to be the number of insurgents I have personally been responsible for the capture of. Nothing feels more rewarding than watching the final takedown of an insurgent after guiding troops to his position." Indeed, Clark proved so talented at using unmanned systems that upon his return from Iraq, he was posted back to the training school at Huachuca. Even though he is still an enlisted soldier, the twenty-year-old is now teaching the next wave of drone pilots. Joel Clark's experience illustrates how technology is changing not just how wars are fought, but also who is allowed to fight them. Of course, his amazing journey is not one that air force pilots find "rad." The idea that a nineteen-year-old enlisted high school dropout from the army can take over a job once limited to college-trained air force officers also shows how upsetting and controversial the changes can be. Clark may never step inside a cockpit going Mach 2 over enemy lines, but he is certainly on the front lines of a new kind of conflict. Military technology reporter Noah Shachtman describes this battle as a "military culture clash between teenaged videogamers and veteran flight jocks for control of the drones." # "GENERATION KILL" MEETS THE XBOX The soldier's profession is "more than just a job," as the saying goes. Those who serve in the realm of war not only are responsible for the safety and security of all the other professions out there, but they also form a special sort of fraternity. This comes not just from their shared risks and losses, but also because the military profession is uniquely set apart from the rest of society. It has its own training, its own schools, its own insignia and uniforms, its own housing and bases, and, most especially, its own professional codes. Indeed, the military is the only profession with its own system of laws and courts. Because of this unique professional identity a special forces officer will, for example, describe himself as having more in common with the enemy trying to kill him than with his own brother selling insurance back home. This singular professional identity is under siege, however. The military profession as we know it today really only came about with the rise of nation-states in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. With the rise of globalization in the twenty-first century, these old ideas of a nation-state and its uniformed military are transforming. Not only are governments losing the control they once had over things like their financial markets and trade, but global forces are also redefining how they look at security, something that used to be the sole province of a nation's military. The threats to security now range from terrorists and rogue states to global infectious disease. This, in turn, has the military profession both working with and competing against other agencies and professions, from Homeland Security and the CIA to the Border Patrol and FEMA, and even nongovernmental aid groups and the UN, when it is operating in peacekeeping and relief operations abroad. This describes the changing political environment. But technologic changes also affect the profession of war and how it sees itself, especially revolutionary technologies. For example, the longbow and then gunpowder helped end the age of chivalry and the accompanying monopoly of nobles over the warrior profession. It should not be all that shocking then that the latest technologies "will again revolutionize the way soldiers perceive themselves and are perceived by others," as military analyst Christopher Coker puts it. When "UAVs are piloted by rank-and-file soldiers who have powers once reserved for generals," as one report described, it cannot help but create some changes in military professional identity and culture. One impending change is the blurring line between the officer corps and the enlisted ranks. This division, which encompasses everything from pay scales to which bars on base a soldier can drink at, originally came about as a way to distinguish the aristocratic roles in the military (leading troops) from the "commoner" parts of the job (the digging, cooking, fighting, and dying). A similar division occurred around the same time in the industrial world between "management" and the "labor" of the assembly line. Today, the aristocracy has all but disappeared and the easy division of blue-collar versus white-collar jobs has blurred in most successful modern companies. Many think that technology trends may create the same breakdown of roles inside the military profession. "It might be necessary to consider whether the division of a service into enlisted personnel and commissioned officers makes sense in the 21st century," writes Steven Metz of the U.S. Army War College. Take, for example, the role of the pilot. The early pilots who first fought in World War I were almost all aristocrats (the most famous was Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen, a.k.a. "the Red Baron," the German ace who shot down eighty Allied planes, battled Snoopy, and still found time to make delicious microwavable frozen pizza). They saw themselves as "Knights of the Air," carrying on noble duels above the faceless thousands dying in the muddy trenches below. Since then, the job of pilot has been the domain of the officer corps. It was not just the honor and distinction that went with being a flyboy (and the cool leather jacket and scarf that made the ladies swoon), but also that the job required lengthy and arduous training. As retired air force general Hap Carr explains, to fly an F-15 fighter jet today, a pilot first has to qualify on a training plane such as a T-38. This takes about six months. Then they would be assigned to a training unit to learn the specifics of the F-15 and all the tactics they need to fight and fly in it. This takes another year. But still their training is not yet over. "After weapons system qualification, the pilots will be assigned to an operational unit. They will spend about a year as a 'new guy' and fly most of their missions as a wingman to a more experienced pilot." Before they even reach the peak of their profession, the service would have invested several years and well over $10 million in their training. This is why the force has not only limited the role to officers, but also requires an additional commitment of service time from anyone who wants to be a pilot. Compare that to the experience of an army UAV pilot like Private Joel Clark. His training at Huachuca involved four basic steps. First, trainees worked with a computer program (much like the old Microsoft _Flight Simulator_ computer game popular in the early 1980s) to get them familiar with the basic concepts of flight. Then they moved on to actually flying radio-controlled planes, although these are tiny models, much like the ones that hobbyists buzz about city parks. Once they racked up forty hours of flight time in the tiny models, they graduated to one-third-sized mockups of the Hunter UAV. After forty hours of this, they were ready for the real thing, needing another forty hours of spotless flight time with the full-sized remote plane to get their certificate and become eligible to fly it on a combat mission. That is all that is required for the bigger planes; a smaller drone like the Raven UAV can take under an hour to learn. As systems gain more autonomy, they will require less pilot interface and thus even less training for the men and women behind them. An air force colonel describes the force's planned training program for the next generation of drone pilots (who will mainly be enlisted, like Joel Clark in the army, rather than officers as most in the air force are now), "We'll get them a few rides in an airplane so they know what it feels like, but they won't actually know how to fly." While the obvious question is whether someone who doesn't actually know how to fly can even be considered a "pilot" in the first place, it demonstrates an underlying point. With these new technologies, younger and younger troops are taking on roles that had been previously limited to older troops with higher ranks. Indeed, rank often falls by the wayside in the military robotics community, much as it has in other high-technology organizations, like Google, which encourage collaboration rather than a strict hierarchy. But what works in Silicon Valley may not be comforting to the military profession's old guard. # MAD SKILLZ The setting is a Rotary Club luncheon at the Holiday Inn in Decatur, Alabama. The speaker is retired colonel Edward Ward, who serves as logistics chief of the military's Robotic Systems Joint Project Office. The crowd is dutifully impressed; Ward looks the part of a tough marine officer, from his camouflage uniform to his bald, shiny dome. He gives a full briefing on how and why the military is using robots and even lets the Rotarians drive two of the robots (a PackBot and Throwbot) around the conference room. Ward makes a special point to thank the parents in the group for contributing to the training of his troops. "Those PlayStation 2s really do the trick," he says. "I bought two hundred of them for training in Iraq. I have a feeling I'll be questioned about that one day." Later on, one Rotarian asks Ward if this meant that his grand-son, "glued to PlayStation-style video games morning to night," was actually ready for a career in the military. Ward replies, "Only if he can make it through this little thing we call 'boot camp.' " While video games are widely derided as a waste of time, they are actually incredibly influential, both in the economy and in the way they shape the soldiers of today and tomorrow. The game Halo 3, for example, made $170 million in just its first day of release, meaning more kids invested their time and money in playing it than what was spent on most summer movie blockbusters, as well as any book not beginning with the words "Harry Potter." And this is nowhere near the $2 billion spent over the lifetime of the John Madden NFL video game series. With kids today, "you are never far from the Madden crowd." The result is that while the younger enlisted troops are taking over more roles through robotics, they aren't coming into the military completely unprepared. Rather, argues one U.S. military journal, "The Army will draw on a generation of mind-nimble (not necessarily literate), finger-quick youth and their years of experience as heroes and killers in violent, virtually real interactive videos." The obvious benefit to the military is that its recruits come in already partially trained; because of all their time gaming online, young soldiers find it very easy to adapt to using unmanned systems. "The video game generation learns very quickly," tells retired admiral Joe Dyer of iRobot. The typical young PackBot operator just needs about a day and a half of training to get down the basics. Much like with their gaming, they then need only a few weeks after that to figure out all the moves and reach expert level. The idea that a kid who grew up playing video games is going to be better able to learn a system in which the controls are modeled after video games makes sense. But it would be beside the point if all that experience sitting with glazed eyes in front of _Super Mario_ and _Halo_ actually made that young soldier dumber, as many parents worry a childhood spent video gaming is doing to their kids. Yet recent research shows this may not be the case. In his book _Everything Bad Is Good for You_ , science writer Steven Johnson found that today's pop culture and video games are actually helping, not hindering, youngsters' mental and moral development. It is not just that more goes on in the latest video games or that they have better visual graphics. They engage the brain far more. For example, many of the most popular video games that young soldiers cite as their favorites growing up, like _Halo_ , may seem like a standard shoot-'em-up (formally known as a "first-person shooter" game). But they also have intricate plots and sophisticated challenges that play out over a series of stages that advance in complexity. To do well in these games, children's brains have to master balancing quick decisions and long-term strategy, much like in life. Dealing with all this complexity is stimulating and exercising the neural networks in kids' brains at younger ages than in previous generations, which may actually be making these kids smarter. Over the last few decades, psychologists have found that the average IQ in technologically advanced countries has gone up by a striking amount. This, in turn, has military analysts finding that the average young soldier is better equipped than their predecessor generations at dealing with complex situations. Describes Colonel Paul Harig of the Army War College, "It will be no surprise to one who has watched school-age children 'surf the net' that information technology has jolted our culture, promoting access to ideas and immediacy to events, leading to mastery of resources. Without leaving his room, a 12-year-old can 'cyberchat' or correspond worldwide with e-mail pals, download a computer game, compile references from university libraries for homework papers, or view a music video." This experience gives kids not just more smarts, but a certain mental flexibility that translates especially well in the complex fights of today's wars. As two retired marine officers describe what they saw in Iraq, "Battles are won by young enlisted men, not by generals poring over maps as in World War II." One air force colonel, who now commands a Predator squadron, thinks that the video game culture may even make his younger unmanned pilots better than those officers he served with while flying F-15s. The reason is that same sort of mental flexibility. Indeed, the average teenager today spends six and a half hours a day using media technology, but packs eight and a half hours of use into it, as they often are using more than one technology at a time. Having spent their youth online gaming, sipping Red Bull, and talking on their cell phones all at once, young drone pilots come to the unit with an ease at multitasking already wired into their DNA. "The younger airmen and women are better suited for the new technology.... These pilots are incredible at multitasking. They will sit there and watch all four of their screens at once, monitoring everything from the map to the weapons to fuel, while also peeking over at the pilot beside them's screen, to see what he is looking at. That comes from all those games. An older pilot like me was taught to go through the checklist one by one. He will look at each screen at a time." At another air force base, I was struck by how the younger, "Generation Y" airmen had as many as thirty-six different computer screens open at a time, allowing them to juggle from mission to mission. And many believe that the next generation will be even more attuned to the new technologies. As one air force officer who works with Predator and Global Hawk put it, "If you talk to my seven-year-old son, I bet he has a better understanding of UAVs than me." More junior soldiers may be making decisions that far more senior ones did in the past, and they may even come to the situation with better skills, IQ, and multitasking abilities. But it doesn't necessarily mean that they are better equipped for war mentally or emotionally. Describes one army major general, "The native creativity, innovativeness and initiative exhibited by these young men and women belie their woeful lack of psycho-social preparation." Regardless of all his years spent video gaming, the younger someone is, the less life experience he will have, and the less time he will have spent in training and education specifically designed for the unique and often extreme dilemmas of war. An eighteen-year-old private, who still might be in puberty, may be quicker or more nimble in their thinking at the tactical level. But they will also now be playing at the strategic level once reserved for the forty-year-old colonels. "How do you manage to train people with three to four years of experience to make decisions that normally would be made by someone with ten to fifteen years of experience?" asked one marine officer. Video games also reinforce what some have described as "an American tendency to think of war as a game, where someone wins and someone loses." The kids who play Madden may think they know football, but never will really understand the sport the way someone who plays on an actual team does. Similarly, argues Jeff Macgregor, that young video gamer, who first learned about war on the virtual field of battle, is more likely to see real war as something where you can "erase the pain given and taken, reduce the grunt and the struggle to the push of a button, eliminate the magnificent inconsistencies of the human heart and its capacity for courage or cowardice, and the game, the war, is no more than a fast twitch exercise—a battle fought without personal cost. It is cause without effect, a victory only for technology and opposable thumbs." As the air force colonel who led a Predator squadron explains, the younger troops flying drones may be more talented, but there is a cost: "The video game generation is worse at distorting the reality of it [war] from the virtual nature. They don't have that sense of what is really going on." He believes that the virtual nature of the games makes the consequences seem unreal. "It teaches you how to compartmentalize it." Because of this, he said, "I don't like my [own] kids playing those [violent] video games. We do the car ones instead." # THE OLD MAN'S WAR Graham Hawkes is a renowned engineer who has invented many notable manned and unmanned vehicles used in science and industry. For example, he designed the Deep Rover submersibles, which were featured in James Cameron's IMAX film _Aliens of the Deep_. Working independently of Foster-Miller, the British-born Hawkes also designed and built one of the very first robotic machine guns. The idea came to him after reading about a bloody police shootout in Philadelphia. Without any government funding, he set out to build a prototype. "When you have a radical idea, people's brains don't engage unless you actually make the thing. So I built it with my own money. I designed the system in 3D-CAD [a computer design program] and had some local machine shops fabricate the parts—without letting them know what I was doing." The prototype weighs twenty-seven pounds and as Graham tells, "it's perfect for urban warfare. Even in the heart of a battle, you can shoot from a safe place, like a sniper." The homemade system has not been as widely adopted as the SWORDS, but when Graham tested out the system, he learned how technology changes the age of who can fight in a whole new way. "Within three minutes, my 80-year-old father-in-law was as deadly as a 30-year-old army captain." This hints at another change in the military profession's demographics, at the opposite end from the younger gamers. The military of today is older and more mature than in the past. The average age of a soldier in Vietnam was twenty-two; today in Iraq it is twenty-seven. Fewer than one in ten enlisted troops back then were married; today it is one in three. Indeed, the Pentagon is now the largest day-care provider in the world, with over 1.6 million children, half under the age of six, attending its schools and preschools. The background to this is not just a shift away from the draft, but also a shift in health sciences. With all the advancements in health and physical training, life spans are becoming longer, as is the amount of time that a person can stay active in their field. In sports, for example, many athletes are now playing to ages unimagined even a decade ago, such as the baseball player Julio Franco, who has played to the age of fifty, almost twenty years past the point at which baseball players were once considered "over the hill." The military is thus beginning to take on a new demographic look, much like in professional sports. Younger kids, often near high school age, are being put into greater spotlight roles, but mixed with older and older vets. The future military doesn't just include space for the younger gamers; technology may also help keep the old fogies around a little longer. The prospect of leavening out the young video gamers with an older old guard appeals, especially to the senior set. Retired major general Robert Scales, the former head of the Army War College, writes that older soldiers might actually be better soldiers. "Social intelligence and diplomatic skills increase with age. Older soldiers are more stable in crisis situations, are less likely to be killed or wounded and are far more effective in performing the essential tasks that attend to close-in killing. Experience within special operations units also suggests that more mature soldiers are better suited for fighting in complex human environments." No one yet has a sense of where exactly this trend will end. "Sixty is the new forty," wrote Ralph Peters in an article for the _Armed Forces Journal_ , entitled "The Geezer Brigade." In science fiction, author Joe Scalzi (himself an army veteran) wrote of a future "Old Man's War," in which technology enabled seventy-five-year-olds to still fight in wars, using real technologies already in the works, like robotic exoskeletons and brain chip implants. Their unit is called "the Old Farts." Our image of a soldier, as well as the military's self-image, is likely a man with a ramrod-straight stance, a bone-crushing handshake, and a crisp salute. This image is increasingly hard to reconcile with a military whose members might be using either Clearasil or Viagra. This demographic change will play out in a variety of ways. For instance, the military has long discriminated based on physical attributes. If you had anything from poor eyesight to Rush Limbaugh's infamous "inoperable pilonidal cyst," the lump on his buttocks that helped him avoid the draft for Vietnam, you would be classified as 4-F, not eligible for military service. With changing technology needs, many of these limitations are no longer so relevant. Science might even turn our ideas of the required physical skills for war on their heads. As one analyst described, for certain military functions in the future, "having a strong bladder and big butt may be more useful physical attributes" than being able to do a hundred push-ups. Indeed, the two influential Chinese army predictors of future war, colonels Qiao and Wang, argued that "it is likely that a pasty-faced scholar wearing thick eyeglasses is better suited to be a modern soldier than is a strong young lowbrow with bulging biceps." It is unlikely that all traditional soldiers will be replaced by these new demographics. Rather, as Bush administration official Elliott Abrams and retired army officer Andrew Bacevich write, "Over time, the proportion of soldiers who spend their tours of duty staring at computer screens will continue to increase while the proportion of those expected as a matter of course to venture into harm's way will dwindle." This increasing division of the force into a different sort of structure will certainly open up new challenges. Describes one executive at Foster-Miller, "If you let the geeks wage war, you open up new vulnerabilities. If that computer craps out, and we know that it will, what next?" In turn, as the skills needed for part of the military change, that part may in turn have to change how it tries to be appealing as a career. Brigadier General Bruce Lawlor of the Army National Guard even thinks that "much of the military regimen" may need to be thrown out for certain units. "Innovators, intellectuals and highly skilled technicians [are not likely to] be impressed by the opportunity to wear hair 'high and tight' or do pushups and two-mile runs." Lawlor's concept is actually much in line with Vietnam veteran and science fiction author Joe Haldeman's vision of wars of the future. In his book _Forever Peace_ , wars are fought by a new class of military reservists, who never have to go off to war, but instead serve on a part-time basis, operating unmanned systems remotely. It is no mere fancy; the air force is already moving to this model in part, with a number of Predator squadrons being designated to be flown by reserve units that stay in the United States. The long-term consequences are huge. If the force is increasingly split between those sitting behind computers and those going out "in harm's way," the two parts may begin to have differing requirements and expectations. One part will take pride in its tough physical requirements and the aspects of personal bravery, modeling itself after the exploits and qualities of those who suffered through Valley Forge or stormed onto Normandy's beaches. The other part will see these requirements and parallels as foreign to their military experience, and even unnecessary in a new age of technology. How then does the military profession as a whole keep a unified ethos and identity? # SOLDIERS OF FORTRAN Over the last few decades, we have gradually seen the military's monopoly on war give way to the private market. From companies like Blackwater doing armed convoy escort jobs in Iraq (and shooting just a few civilians along the way) and CACI interrogators working at Abu Ghraib, to the outsourcing of the U.S. military supply chain to firms like Halliburton (for which it made over $20 billion in revenue, three times what the U.S. government paid for the entire 1991 Gulf War), private companies are operating in traditional military roles as never before. Indeed, in Iraq, there were more of these "corporate warriors" deployed than actual U.S. military troops _._ The shift toward unmanned systems appears to be taking this trend further and in new directions. For many, there appears to be nothing inherently military about the ability to punch a keyboard and move a joystick around. When an office drone sits in a cubicle driving robotic drones around, there is a striking convergence between military tasks and civilian life. As one report notes, "While these actions are principally motivated by a desire to save scarce defense dollars, there is also a tacit recognition that the growing sophistication of the technologies of war require the military to ever more frequently tap civilian expertise." Already, private contractors do much of the training for the military on how to pilot robotic systems. "We take these Army guys who don't know the front end of an airplane from the back, and we teach them from scratch all the aviation they need to make them pilots," explains Bill Hempel, who trains future drone pilots like Joel Clark at Fort Huachuca. The help of a contractor, though, also extends into operations. For example, when the army's 15th Military Intelligence Battalion deployed to the Balkans and then to Iraq early in the war, it was accompanied by a support team from Northrop Grumman. Having longer time with the machines, as well as not having the frequent turnover a military unit might go through as it rotates into an operation, the private contractors ironically became the military unit's "institutional memory." One contractor described how "certain soldiers were not as comfortable flying," and so the contractor would take over "on a regular basis," including "more than once a week in Iraq." By 2007, the army's armed Hunter drones flown out of a base in Tikrit, Iraq, were described as "government-owned, contractor-operated." The civilians at that location had taken over the flying as a formal policy. Another growing contractor role is ground crew for drones like the Predator and Global Hawk, the people who fuel the unmanned planes, load weapons, and fix whatever is broken. It seems like an uncontroversial task for civilians to take on, but it leads to an odd division of labor and risk. Because the planes actually fly from bases located inside the war zone, the civilian support staff is in more physical danger than the military pilots who fly them from back in Nevada, who are only in "virtual" danger. The growing use of what _Defense News_ described as "surrogate warriors" to run the military's digital systems generates the same sorts of concerns that surround the broader outsourcing of war to contractors like Blackwater, CACI, or Halliburton in Iraq. The most obvious distinction between a soldier and a contractor is that one serves the nation, while the other works for profit. Describes one army official of working with contractors in the unmanned world, "They have their heart at the right place, but they also know where the checkbook is." Another difficulty with military outsourcing has been the question of legal status and accountability. Such "corporate" or "surrogate warriors" are civilians, as they are not formally part of the military and its command structure. But they are not really noncombatants, as they are carrying out fundamentally military missions. The result is that the law has found it a confusing space to ensure both that contractors' rights are protected as well as that they are properly punished if they commit crimes in war. In Iraq, some contractors have been held in prison without any formal charges, while others have been reported to have committed crimes that ranged from prisoner abuse to joyride shooting at civilians, for which they went unpunished. This same question of status is going to be troubling for contractors working with unmanned military systems. Most contractors in these roles believe themselves to be civilians under the law, which gives them certain rights and protections, such as immunity from enemy attack. However, as one military lawyer put it, this is based on a confusion of "the nature of their status in conflict or the consequences that flow from it." As another report concurred, "Even though international law recognizes that civilian technicians are necessary in modern armies, it has always maintained that noncombatants' immunity from damage and harm was predicated upon their obligation to abstain from hostile acts. If they took action against a party's armed forces, they automatically lost immunity." It could be even worse for these contractors than now just being a legal target for the enemy to shoot at. One navy lawyer found that a civilian working with UAVs in wartime "could arguably be considered an 'illegal combatant' under the law of armed conflict." That is, they would have the same status and rights (or lack of rights) as the al-Qaeda detainees held at Guantánamo Bay. They wouldn't have the protections of a POW under the Geneva Conventions. If they were captured, they could even be prosecuted as a digital mercenary and shot. "Furthermore," added the lawyer, "the pervasive use of illegal combatants may have serious unintended consequences—such as our adversary conducting reprisals against civilian personnel, suspecting that others might be combatants." All of these dilemmas lead some observers to ask whether civilians should play at war in the first place. As the Italian thinker Machiavelli put it, when a person becomes a soldier, "he changes not only his clothing but adopts attitudes, manners, ways of speaking and becoming himself quite at odds with civilian life." This change is not just about getting a new hairstyle, but values like duty, honor, and sacrifice take on new meanings when in military service. Indeed, the essence of becoming a soldier is surrendering one's most basic rights as a citizen in order to serve all the citizenry, to "protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." The contractor just does a job. As Richard Holmes points out in _Acts of War: The Behavior of Men in Battle_ , "However much sociologists might argue that we live in an age of 'narrowing skill differentials,' where many of the soldier's tasks are growing ever closer to those of civilian contemporaries, it is an inescapable fact that the soldier's primary function, the use—or threatened use—of force, sets him apart from civilians. . . . [T] he fact remains that someone who joins an army, is both crossing a well-defined border within the fabric of society, and becoming a part of an organization which, in the last analysis, may require him to kill or be killed." When the fighting of wars, even those unmanned, becomes just another job, all this is lost. # "GENTLEMEN, WE CAN REBUILD HIM. WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY" In 2003, a land mine in Iraq blew off army major David Rozelle's right foot. Within six months, he was skiing in the Rockies. Within a year, he was back in Iraq commanding an armored cavalry unit. The next year, he competed in the aptly named "Ironman" Triathlon in Hawaii, completing the grueling race of 2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles of biking, and 26.2 miles of running. He was able to do all this because the army had fitted him with an artificial foot to replace the one he lost. Rozelle is stoically honest about how it feels. "At least once a day, I miss my foot, but it hasn't slowed me much." By 2008, more than thirty thousand American troops had been wounded in action in Iraq. Many of these injuries were the result of IEDs and other explosives that cause horrific shrapnel and burn damage to the human body. And yet, because of body armor, advances in medicine, and quicker evacuations, soldiers are surviving at a far greater rate than in any previous war, including at almost twice the rate as in Vietnam. But the rate of wounded who have lost a limb doubled as well. Over a thousand soldiers have lost a limb but survived, with nearly a quarter of these amputees having lost more than one limb. The result has been a crash program at DARPA to bring the latest robotic technology to bear. Instead of the wooden peg-legs or steel hooks of yesteryear, today's wounded warriors are increasingly equipped with electrically powered prostheses. These robotic limbs are programmed to do such things as automatically match the intended stride of the human or automatically bend whenever the body weight shifts. Akin to the advances in robotic interfaces described in chapter 3, these devices are also being wired directly into the patient's nerves. This allows the soldier to control their artificial limbs via thought as well as have signals wired back into their peripheral nervous system. Their limbs may be robotic, but they can "feel" a temperature change or vibration. As the navy's magazine _Proceedings_ writes, the new technologies are "as close to real limbs as those portrayed on such then fanciful 1970s science fiction shows as _The Six Million Dollar Man_ or _The Bionic Woman_." With robotic artificial limbs taking on such a science fiction quality, they are allowing soldiers not only to recover and lead productive lives, but even to go back to war, putting another twist on the new demographics of war. Some 40 percent of the soldiers who have received robotic limbs return to their old units. A DARPA scientist explains, "It's sort of the Luke Skywalker phenomenon. Luke loses his hand in the movie and then he goes and has an artificial one put on. And that of course is a very noble, admirable goal if we are asking individuals to put their lives on the line to defend our way of life." # ENHANCEMENTS Putting technology inside our bodies is not just for replacing limbs lost in battle. It is a growing trend in the civilian sector. Over a hundred thousand people born deaf each year are now able to hear through cochlear implants. These are devices that turn sound into electrical signals, which are then fed into the body through neural implants in the inner ear. More broadly, surgeries to implant computerized pacemakers, heart monitors, and even replace entire joints with metal devices have become almost a rite of passage. The hip replacement, for example, is what comes after you buy the midlife crisis convertible, but before you move into an "active living" retirement community. Describes iRobot's Rodney Brooks, "As us baby boomers get older and older, we're going to be looking for all sorts of replacement parts. We're going to become partially robotic. What's a robot, what's us, is starting to get a bit messy." History shows that technologies and procedures originally designed for replacing lost functionality are frequently applied beyond their original purpose. For example, the sixteenth-century French physician Ambroise Paré invented artificial teeth made of silver and gold for patients who lost their teeth due to the poor nutrition and hygiene of the era. It has since evolved into a status symbol for rappers. The first cosmetic surgery was in 1791 to fix a cleft lip. Today, more than eleven million cosmetic surgeries happen each year in the United States alone, ranging from breast augmentation to butt implants. While the full force is still a few decades out, a similar trend is already starting to appear with voluntary technologic implants. These don't merely replace something lost, but add something more. The Florida-based VeriChip company, for instance, has sold human-implantable radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips to over five thousand security, government, and industrial installations. Even the Baja Beach Club, one of Barcelona's hottest nightclubs, is a buyer. In 2006, the club implanted its VIP customers, including the entire cast of _Grand Hermano_ (the Spanish version of the reality show _Big Brother_ ), with the tiny microchips, so that they would not have to wait in line or need to carry cash or credit cards. The implants have also been used by the FN Herstal firearms company to make a gun that can only be fired by someone who has a matching computer chip buried in the flesh of their palm. Such new technologies being plugged into our bodies push beyond our human bodies' previous limits. The research on these "enhancements" or "augments" (termed after the race of empowered leaders in the _Star Trek_ world) is among military labs' most lavishly funded "deep" (i.e., long-term) projects. Describes one scientist about the new capabilities of robots, and how they in turn led him to add robotic enhancements to his body, "It makes me jealous. Why can't I sense the world in infrared? Why can't I see various things in ten dimensions? Even five dimensions I would be happy with." Technologic implants might be used to enhance our human capabilities in war in many ways. While the comic book crowd may focus on what it would be like to have soldiers with metallic bones and claws for hands like _Wolverine_ , a focus at DARPA has been on what it calls "AugCog," augmented cognition. This program aims to implant the memory chips that robots use inside the human body. The combination of augmented memory and the interface connections allowed by a jack could be powerful. It might just be the trick for our brains to catch up to the data overload problem. As Philip Kennedy, a leading brain interface expert tells, "Essentially we'll have a PDA and a cell phone in the brain. And I know this sounds like _The Matrix_ , but it is what it is." _The Matrix_ is an apt example for the possibilities of such a system in war. In one scene, the character Trinity downloads the knowledge needed to fly a helicopter in the midst of a battle. AugCog hopes to make this real. Even the fastest human reader in the world can only process about 50 bits of information per second, and their brain has terrible storage. The new robotic interfaces of jack connections (discussed in chapter 3) speed up the transfer rate to the equivalent of high bandwidth. Add a memory chip into the human body, as one scientist describes, and it will be like plugging in "the equivalent of a flash drive with massive memory that interacts with your brain." The combination allows what is called a giant up-load process (GULP), where someone could "take a book and gulp it down." # COMBAT EVOLVED Most such technologies are years and even decades off, but their impact could prove revolutionary at fundamental levels. Indeed in war, the frontiers opened up by such enhancements may even change the rules of the game. As Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian military thinker, emphasized, "All war presupposes human weakness and seeks to exploit it." By contrast, the integration of robotic technology with living flesh could help turn the human infantryman, who had been "the weakling of the battlefield," into what one former army general called a "supertroop." War becomes a mite different when the Master Chief from _Halo_ is made real. For example, if individual soldiers are now technologically "enhanced," a literal "Army of One" as the U.S. Army recruiting commercials used to claim, it is hard to see them being used and deployed as they were in the past. Instead of being bundled together in large units, the regular infantry would likely operate in very small units or even alone. Fewer soldiers would seem to be needed for the same tasks and a nation with technologically super-empowered soldiers might find it easier to strike quickly or covertly. Ultimately, we could see the very end of the GI. As one book described of a possible future of war, "The G.I., the stamped government issue interchangeable warrior, becomes obsolete when masses of men are no longer required to fight wars." And it is perhaps because of this potential that many soldiers find upsetting the prospect of such technologic changes to the inside of the human body. Many even express an unease far deeper than over the rise of unmanned machines in war. Describes one special forces officer of these plans, "I draw the line at screwing with your fucking body." From the perspectives of the researchers, such reluctance makes little sense. War is a dangerous place and striving to technologically solve human weaknesses within it seems quite reasonable. The better that soldier's performance, the more likely he returns home to his family. Enhancements also might be the only way that humans can keep up with their new robotic technologies, rather than being left in their silicon-coated dust. Still, that soldier's argument resonates strongly for a reason. The newness of such implants leads many to question their long-term consequences. Explains the officer, "Being a guinea pig doesn't settle well with me." And perhaps he should be concerned. The same science fiction stories that inspired DARPA to develop so many of these enhancements also usually reference a downside. For example, many credit William Gibson's 1981 short story "Johnny Mnemonic" as helping them to visualize the military applications of enhancements like jacks, memory chips, and robotic effector implants. Yet they always seem to ignore that Gibson set his story of a world of technologically enhanced humans against the backdrop of a raging epidemic, caused by that very same technology (he called it "Neural Attenuation Syndrome"). Gibson was writing science fiction, so while his imagined technology did come true, there is no reason to think that his imaginary disease has to as well. But, then again, the Pentagon's real-world record with things like the aboveground testing of atomic bombs, Agent Orange, and Gulf War syndrome certainly doesn't inspire the greatest confidence among the first generation of soldiers involved. These issues are usually set aside as "manageable" by those who support the implant programs; valid concerns, yes, but no reason to stop the work. However, they ignore another, deeper concern among the soldiers. The use of enhancements just doesn't seem to settle well with the self-concept of those who work so hard to hone their skills and bodies for war. If technology becomes the substitute, they argue, it devalues their efforts and identity. Many make a parallel to steroids. Soldiers note that performance enhancers may help athletes, but they are still widely banned in sports. Record-holding athletes like Olympic sprinters Ben Johnson and Marion Jones and famed baseball players like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens have been treated with more contempt than admiration by the public. The reason is not merely worries about the side effects, that fans really fret about the heart disease, shrunken testicles, and gynormous heads that steroid users frequently develop. Nor is it so much that the artificial enhancers are viewed as breaking the rules to get ahead. Instead, the problem that fans (and soldiers) have is that it is hard to figure out whether it was the person or the technology that deserves the credit. Few humans want to know that they mattered less, be it the fans' image of their hero or the soldier looking in the mirror. In 2007, the International Association of Athletics Federations (the global governing body for track and field events) preemptively banned athletes with machines in their bodies from competition. The spark was an Italian double-amputee sprinter who wanted to shift from the special events for disabled athletes to the real Olympic races. His prosthetic "cheetah legs" had more spring and less air resistance than human legs. So the officials viewed him not as a "disabled" athlete, but rather as unfairly "enabled" by technology. Described the IAAF spokesperson, "We need to separate emotion from the science. We all wish him well. The point here is what's going to happen in 10 years? What happens if it continues to evolve?" This same question can be asked of robotic enhancements in war. # RESISTANCE IS FUTILE The questions surrounding this looming wave of technologic tinkering with the human body are huge, and all the more so because their origin comes not from broad research at human betterment in general, but rather from military-funded attempts to create a better fighting machine. There will also emerge in security circles all sorts of "what if?" questions that used to be fodder for debate at science fiction conventions. For example, given how every other form of technology has been hacked and distorted, what are the consequences when enhancements inside the body are hacked? Can a soldier's technologic body part even "crash," and if so, how do they recover? Unlike a robot's operating system, the attached human body parts can't just simply reboot by flicking the "on-off " button. Much like the other changing demographics of war, the integration of technology also affects soldiers' sense of identity. Amputees using the early generations of these systems report that such implants come to "feel" as if the device were a part of them, an extension that almost replaces what was lost. But enhancements don't just replace a sense that has been lost, they add something new. R. J. Pinero, a science writer who also works on microprocessors, suspects that for a soldier of the future, artificial enhancements might feel a little bit like muscles do to steroid users. "You never quite get used to the implants.... The knowledge feels . . . foreign? Yeah, that's it. Fake. It's almost like sneaking out a cheat sheet during an exam, getting the answer you seek and then stowing it away before anyone catches you. You get the right answer, but you didn't really know it." And what happens to that soldier when the enhancements shut down, or are taken back by the military after their service has ended? It gives a whole new meaning to the idea of "deprogramming." If a person has been able to leap buildings, see in multiple spectrums, or download the Internet into their head, living without these robotic enhancements may not seem like going back to "normal." Leading an unenhanced life may feel like losing a sense, as being something less than before, much like Clark Kent must have felt after he stopped being Superman and got beat up in a bar. As we change technologically, we also change how we categorize ourselves. Indeed, when the writer William Gibson speculated on a world where humans used technology enhancements, such as in "Johnny Mnemonic" that so influenced the current research, he also predicted it would lead some people to start to identify themselves, as they now do by race and ethnicity, by something else. He called the new divisions "technicity," grouping people by technologic implants. Soldiers proudly distinguish themselves by their particular specialties, which result from lengthy training. When what had been human skills and capabilities become just plug-in technologies, as these real-world R&D projects hope will happen, a soldier might be distinguished only by what implant they had at the time. This seems a small point, but fundamentally screws with military culture and traditions. This leads to the most revolutionary and perhaps perilous aspect of where dabbling with the identity of war might take us. It affects not just how we look at ourselves, but how we look at each other. As opposed to unmanned systems, which change the capabilities of machines, technological enhancements are creating a new type of human species, the first time in twenty-five thousand years that we have more than one type among us. We already live in a world where people walk around with cell phones and iPods almost permanently plugged into their ears, and openly describe their addiction to their "Crack Berries." The human body, though, is not a simple machine into which you can just plug in new hardware. Our neural systems do not have USB ports like robots and computers do. Instead, researchers are finding that when technologies enter into us, our capabilities are not the only thing that changes. Our bodies do. Like software rewriting itself, the human body actually alters the biologic pathways of its neurons to accommodate and incorporate the new machines placed inside it. As such, humans truly do become something different, creating an even more revolutionary demographic change that looms in the decades ahead. That something different is "cybernetic organisms," or "cyborgs," creatures that have changed and enhanced their bodies' capabilities via technology. It is very exciting stuff until you realize we unenhanced humans are the equivalent of the Neanderthals, watching that first group of _Homo sapiens_ walk across the hill, strutting their better bodies and technology. If the trends hold, scientists believe that the next few decades will see a growing division of "natural" humans and those who are "enhanced" or "augmented." That those in the military will likely be among the first to get such enhanced powers adds new layers of complexity to civil-military relations. But the effects will ripple out further. As the technologies cross between the military and civilian worlds, some humans may decline the option of changing their bodies with technology. They will remain "natural" by choice (akin to the twenty-first-century version of the Amish). But many others will likely be left behind because of a lack of choice. In all likelihood, those that get the technologic capabilities first will be the rich and empowered. This is nothing new. Most of us don't seem all that concerned that the rich and powerful are able to afford cosmetic enhancements, like nose or boob jobs, that many poor cannot. But what about technologic enhancements that reshape our insides, like greater strength or intelligence? Such changes in the very nature of ourselves seem somehow more worrisome. The reason again goes to a deeper level. For hundreds of years, people have used cosmetic variations in skin pigment color to decide whether someone was "superior" or not. Countless conflicts resulted from tiny or even imagined differences. Maybe humanity will grow past this self-destructive weakness. Maybe no one will care about the differences created by such technologic enhancements, treating these new technologic differences as akin to whether someone has tattoos or not. But in order to reach that point we may also have to start to tinker with our very human psychology. Kevin Warwick is the British university researcher who first connected his body directly into a computer via a technologic implant. His goal was simply to enhance the level of interface with his robots. But he described himself as experiencing not only a physical upgrade, but also a psychological change. "One of the reactions I had to having the implant was a feeling of affinity with my computer. Once that becomes a permanent state, you're not really a human anymore, you're a cyborg. Your values and ethics would be bound to change, I think, and you would view un-augmented humans a little differently." Warwick uses humans' relations with cows to illustrate his point. He describes how humans share much in common with their fellow mammals, draw sustenance from them, even typically like them, as cows seem such nice, gentle creatures. But because of their lower intelligence and capabilities, humans don't consider themselves bound by the same laws or expectations when dealing with cows. Most people love their hamburgers and have no problem drinking milk from a cow that is essentially enslaved. While ardent animal rights activists may argue that it is wrong to eat meat and some even eschew milk, none argue that cows should have a vote in the presidential election. Warwick thinks that naturals should expect a similar regard from the technologically enhanced. Sounding much like the Borg he was a fan of, he says, "If you are not upgraded . . . you are going to be something of a subspecies." **[TWENTY]** **DIGITIZING THE LAWS OF WAR AND OTHER ISSUES OF (UN)HUMAN RIGHTS** _We risk continuing to fight a twenty-first-century conflict with twentieth-century rules._ _—_ JOHN REID _,_ British secretary of state for defence War is a special kind of hell. It is a space where killing is not only allowed but considered one's duty. That is why many believe that war is a place where no rules or laws apply. Or as the Roman philosopher Cicero put it (in a quote that has since been referenced in everything from Supreme Court rulings to _Star Trek_ episodes), "In times of war, the laws fall mute." And yet, all is not fair in love and war. For all its horrors, a dense set of rules defines what is right or wrong in battle. These rules find their origin in everything from the Bible to the Geneva Conventions. Such rules are certainly not always followed, but their very existence is what separates killing in war from murder and what distinguishes soldiers from criminals. Writes Michael Walzer, "War is still a rule-governed activity, a world of permissions and prohibitions—a moral world, therefore, in the midst of hell." Hugo Grotius, a seventeenth-century Dutch jurist, was the first to systematically organize these various rules into an international code of law. Grotius lived during two of the most savage and enduring wars that Europe has ever seen, the Eighty Years' War between his homeland and Spain and the Thirty Years' War between Catholics and Protestants across all of Europe. Revolted by what he witnessed, Grotius wrote a book entitled _De Jure Belli ac Pacis_ (On the Laws of War and Peace) in 1625, which laid out what is now known as "just war" theory. The conduct of war, argued Grotius, always had to comply with the natural laws of justice. They applied both to the act of going to war, _jus ad bellum_ , and how the war was fought, _jus in bello_. If either set of laws was broken, then the war was not legitimate. The two biggest rules to follow in _jus in bello_ are "proportionality" and "discrimination." Proportionality means that the suffering and devastation caused by the war can't outweigh whatever harm started it. If the other side started the war by stealing your cow, you can't nuke their capital city to get her back. Discrimination (in this case, the good kind) means that the sides must be able to distinguish combatants from civilians and respect the latter's immunity from harm. It even states that the sides must respect the difference between an opposing combatant that poses a mortal threat and one that doesn't. For example, it is not okay to shoot troops who are wounded or running away and, whenever possible, opposing troops must be given the opportunity to surrender. Grotius's book has since become the foundation of what we now think of as international law. Today, the rules that govern combatants and their conduct are known in military parlance as the Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC). Rather than an actual document that you could easily program a robot with, the LOAC is the collection of all the various written treaties, like the Geneva Conventions, domestic laws, and even the time-honored customs of war. Air force major David DiCenso explains, "Whether war is waged on the muddy fields of Verdun by shell-shocked infantry troops or a high-tech cyberspace battlefield, the rules and general principles of the LOAC remain applicable." It is this recognition of each other's humanity through the law that redeems war. If you follow these laws, war becomes not merely blowing up things, but, as Michael Walzer argued, "a rule-governed activity of equals, or victims, who despite their individual national or tribal allegiances, have the same human standing." # UNMANNED LEGAL CONFUSION The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is a unique institution in world politics. The group was founded by a Swiss businessman, Henry Dunant, who, like Grotius centuries earlier, was horrified by the suffering of soldiers he witnessed at the battle of Solferino in 1859. The organization he created is private and funded only by donations. At the same time, however, the group has sovereign status, as if it were a state government, and is the only body mentioned in international law documents like the Geneva Conventions as a controlling authority. That is, the ICRC is the only entity named by international law to provide an impartial and neutral voice on behalf of the laws of war themselves. It is essentially the repository and protector for international humanitarian law, _jus in bello_ , responsible for making sure that the laws remain respected and relevant. Among the two thousand employees of the ICRC is Peter Herby. Working out of ICRC's Geneva office, Herby is the head of the organization's Mines and Arms Unit, and has represented the ICRC at all arms-related negotiations since 1994. While Herby would love for the world to be at peace and end the use of all weapons, that is not his mission. Rather, he explains, his task is to help ICRC and all the various groups at war to "reconcile the necessities of war with the laws of humanity." The legality of weapons and their impact on soldiers and civilians are key areas of the ICRC's work. Herby has been most focused on the antipersonnel land mine over the last decade, a weapon that leaves a horrible legacy for civilians long after wars end. The ICRC realized it couldn't stop the harm of these weapons merely by treating the victims, and so it helped in the successful international effort in the 1990s to ban this weapon. But sometimes the ICRC is also concerned about the impact that new technologies might have on the conduct of war and the respect for international law. It has, for example, helped lead efforts to stop the research and use of lasers that blind soldiers. According to Herby, "There are four pillars of international humanitarian law on weapons." First, nations have a right to choose the methods and means of war, but this right is limited. They have to follow the rules. Second, weapons that cannot discriminate between civilian and military targets are prohibited. Third, weapons that cause unnecessary suffering are also prohibited. And, fourth, any weapons that the international community decides are abhorrent for some other reason are prohibited. This is a useful little clause, which can be applied to any weapon that might meet the other rules, but is just nasty or horrifying, such as chemical weapons and blinding lasers. The ICRC tells nations that they should carry out legal reviews during the R&D process to ensure that any new weapons meet these four pillars well before they are ever deployed. In fact, Herby reminds, states are legally obliged to do so under the Geneva Conventions. The group is also concerned about the lack of controls over what happens with these new weapons. International humanitarian law mandates that military weapons be used only by military actors (something ever more difficult with dual-use and "off the shelf" technologies), as well as a responsibility that the laws be respected not just by the makers, but also by any recipients of a sale or transfer. The ICRC thus has a strong position on weapons in general and how to ensure their legality. However, when it comes to the ICRC's position on where international law stands on robots and their uses in war, the discussion doesn't go very far. "We have no particular viewpoint or analysis to provide." The organization is certainly aware that technologies like the Predator or SWORDS exist now and realizes that there will be problems with these new unmanned systems. Herby tells how "with every major scientific revolution, the fruits will be put to hostile use, unless there is action." But robotics are viewed as just a little bit too futuristic for an organization that has as much on its plate as the ICRC today. It is stretched out over eighty countries, burdened with everything from ensuring detainee rights at Guantánamo Bay to pressuring nations to fulfill their pledges to end the use of land mines. Asks one of Herby's colleagues, "There is so much terrible going on these days, why waste time on something crazy like that?" The result is that, as important as the ICRC has been in shaping and guarding international law over the last century, it is not yet driving discussion on the most important weapons developments in this century. It is here that the laws truly "fall silent." In the hundreds of interviews for this book, not one robotics researcher, developer, program manager, or soldier using them in the field made a single reference to the ICRC, nor its all-important "four pillars" of international humanitarian law on weapons. That is, not a single organization, research lab, or company working on robotics today is formally linked up with ICRC or has in place the sort of reviews that Herby describes as necessary for new weapons. Indeed, the closest one gets to any such legal reviews are some limited efforts by robotics firms to make sure that they don't get sued by customers. iRobot, for instance, made sure that its new Warrior robot has a built in fail-safe control that automatically prevents the robot from running over people (researchers jokingly call it the "idiot protection device"). Instead, robotics makers and government agency clients alike tend to avoid the whole discussion of the ethical and legal reviews of these new weapons, mainly because it is too futuristic, too thorny, or would get in the way of business. As one engineer at iRobot described, "Our responsibility is that it works as requested, as described." This is not to beat up on ICRC for somehow not doing its job. As its four Nobel Peace Prizes and the literally tens of millions of soldiers and civilians who owe the group their lives can attest, it has done its job far better than its founder Henry Dunant could ever have imagined. Instead, as the embodiment of international law, the ICRC position on robotics, or rather absence of a position, is simply representative of the brewing breakdown between the laws of war and the reality of conflict in the twenty-first century. This disconnect reveals itself again and again. At a major conference in Washington, D.C., in 2007, for example, over one hundred international law experts, including several law school deans and heads of human rights groups, gathered to discuss the key questions they saw in "New Battlefields, Old Laws." Like at the conference on RMAs, not once did any of them even mention robotics or any other new technologies. At the same time, those actually working upon and with these new systems describe all sorts of confusion about and gaps in the laws that are supposed to guide them. As the former commander of a Predator squadron put it, "There is nothing set for this all rules-wise. Somebody needs to take time to look at these issues and figure them out." As an illustration of his uncertainty, he told how his men who flew the systems saw themselves as legal combatants, "but you are operating on home soil. It opens all sorts of questions. Are they valid targets walking around the streets of Las Vegas? Under the current rules they are." The same officer described debates over what sort of data is needed to designate a target as suitable to be shot at by a drone, and, in turn, who has the expertise and authority to decide. Equally, "What if they [the human operator of a UAV] hit the pickle button [that launches a weapon] and turn out to be wrong? Who is held accountable?" While the party line is that the process for determining legal accountability would be the same as if a manned pilot made such a mistake, the new technology complicates matters. At times it was unclear which chain of command the pilots fell under as they were conducting combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan but sitting in Nevada. Both the local commander in the United States and those using them out in the region wanted to control the assets. But he guessed it would be the reverse if something went wrong. "The most disturbing part," he concluded, "is that the needed laws and values typically can't keep up with such rapid change." This growing gap means that both weapons makers and users are prone to look at many of the current laws of war much like they look at the old laws that ban crossbows—as simply not useful to their daily jobs. It grows even more difficult as systems gain greater autonomy. The current "legal limbo," as one roboticist put it, becomes a legal vacuum. Explains Gordon Johnson of the U.S. Military Joint Forces Research Center, "The lawyers tell me there are no prohibitions against robots making life-or-death decisions." New technology has often moved faster than the laws of war. During World War I, for example, all sorts of new technologies, from airplanes dropping bombs to cannons shooting chemical weapons, were introduced before anyone agreed on the rules for their use. As to be expected, the warring sides sometimes took different interpretations. For example, the British and Americans felt that the new submarines should avoid targeting any civilian vessels and that they ought to surface and reveal themselves before an attack, to give their target a chance to surrender. The Germans, who relied on subs more in their war plans, took a completely different view, arguing that such a legal interpretation only put their side at a disadvantage. This lack of legal clarity even helped induce America to join the war; the submarine attacks on merchant ships that the Germans saw as justifiable were instead viewed as war crimes on the other side of the Atlantic. But while technologic change is speeding up exponentially, legal change remains glacial. Chemical weapons were first introduced in World War I, but they weren't fully banned until eighty-two years later. Even worse, if we look back at history, the biggest developments in law only came after some catastrophe. If one-third of central Europe's population hadn't been killed in the Thirty Years' War, Hugo Grotius probably wouldn't have written _On the Laws of War and Peace_. Or, if eleven million Jews, Roma, POWs, and political prisoners weren't killed in the Holocaust, there would be no 1949 Geneva Conventions. Regarding unmanned systems and the law, Army War College professor Steven Metz says, "There is no consensus yet on anything new and, unfortunately, I don't think we are due for a breakthrough until something terribly bad happens." # THE HUMAN RIGHTS ELEMENT "This new technology creates new pressure points for international law. . . . You will be trying to apply international law written for the Second World War to _Star Trek_ technology." Marc Garlasco is senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch, one of the world's leading human rights advocacy and research groups. If ICRC acts as the impartial voice on behalf of international laws, Human Rights Watch acts as the world's conscience on behalf of human rights. It has led efforts on everything from ending the recruitment of child soldiers to advocating for AIDS victims' rights. Garlasco is their resident expert on anything military-related. Tall and trim, he does not fit one's expectation of a granola-scarfing, Birkenstock-wearing human rights softie. Before joining Human Rights Watch, he served in the Pentagon as "chief of high-value targeting" during the Iraq war in 2003. His bio also notes that he led the "Battle Damage Assessment" teams during the 1998 airstrikes on Iraq and 1999 operations in Kosovo and participated "in over 50 interrogations as a subject matter expert." Also surprisingly for a human rights worker, Garlasco is a closet sci-fi geek. He tells how he even went to see Isaac Asimov give a lecture when he was a young boy. While it would make for a more inspirational story to say that hearing Asimov speak is what got him interested in human rights, Garlasco says he mainly remembers Asimov telling some questionable limericks. "Isaac Asimov was a bit of a dirty old man." "Technology can always be abused," says Garlasco. But he also adds that sometimes new technologies can help save lives and increase respect for human rights. He points to the development of precision-guided munitions (smart bombs) that allow far greater discrimination in targeting and save civilian lives as a result. Human Rights Watch's interest then "is not so much in the technology itself, but rather our interest is in the guidelines of its use. . . . What we want to know is now that I've got a nineteen-year-old kid with this weapon, does it increase the potential for abuse?" Like ICRC with international law, Human Rights Watch faces a problem of how to wrestle with all the various human rights problems of today. And like ICRC, the organization has taken no formal position nor issued any reports on the new technologies. "We've not yet had that internal debate." The reason is not for lack of awareness or even interest, as Garlasco is both fascinated and concerned by the issues of unmanned warfare. Just back from a field research mission to Lebanon, he recalls how Israeli drones were constantly overhead ("Being under a UAV scares the shit out of me"). "But it's just not a big piece of our pie. Say you have one researcher. Do you send them to conflict X or to check out this new technology that is not even developed yet?" This also has to do with how such organizations are funded. It is a whole lot easier to gain needed monies for staff and operations working on crises in the headlines than for investigations of weapons not yet on donors' radar screens. While his organization does not yet have a position on unmanned systems, Garlasco sees a fundamental change coming soon for human rights groups like his, as they try to shape the public debate on the use of weapons in war. He expects that "in ten to fifteen years," groups like Human Rights Watch will have to figure out how they are going to react to the introduction and use of "completely autonomous weapons systems." While he thinks the technology will easily make full autonomy possible, he feels it will prove incredibly challenging for both international law and the respect for human rights in war. "As _Human_ [emphasizing the word] Rights Watch, we want that human element. . . . The human has morality, has an empathetic response. The human has the capability to make complex decisions; they can draw on their humanity." By contrast, Garlasco explains, "You can't just download international law into a computer. The situations are complicated; it goes beyond black-and-white decisions." He explains how figuring out legitimate military targets is getting more difficult in war, especially as conflict actors increasingly fight in the midst of civilian areas like cities and even use civilians as cover. Citing examples he dealt with in his own career, he asks, if a tank is parked inside a schoolyard, is it legitimate to strike? How about if it is driving out of the village and a group of children catch a ride on top? Such questions are already hard for humans, and likely would be answered differently by different soldiers or lawyers, depending on the circumstances. Noting that people have defined al-Qaeda members as everything from "freedom fighters" and "terrorists" to "criminals" and "unlawful combatants," he explains, "It is not that you can't do it, but that not all the actors will agree on it." Even more, to delegate such a decision in war to a machine may be expecting too much of a system when the technology is still immature. In turn, it may be expecting too little of humans' responsibilities in war. Another fundamental premise of the human rights group, and for broader international law, is that soldiers in the field and the leaders who direct them must be held accountable for any violations of the laws of war. Unmanned systems, though, muddy the waters surrounding war crimes. "War crimes need both a violation _and_ intent," says Garlasco. "A machine has no capacity to want to kill civilians, it has no desires.... If they are incapable of intent, are they incapable of war crimes?" And if the machine is not responsible, who does the group seek to hold accountable, and where exactly do they draw the line? "Who do we go after, the manufacturer, the software engineer, the buyer, the user?" # MONDAY-MORNING QUARTERBACKING "It used to be a simple thing to fight a battle," explains marine general James Jones. "In a perfect world, a general would get up and say 'Follow me, men,' and everybody would say 'Aye Sir' and run off. But that's not the world anymore. Now you have to have a lawyer or a dozen. It's become very legalistic and very complex." Soldiers have an opposite fear from that of the lawyers and human rights workers, who worry about law going missing. They see the law increasingly impeding their missions and fret that the trend will worsen with the new technologies. They do not look forward to a world in which every single decision in war, down to every single shot fired, comes with a video record and computer database attached. As General Jones's comments illustrate, the U.S. military already puts an immense amount of time and effort into the legal side of warfighting. Every single command center and unit has a military lawyer (a JAG, short for judge advocate general) attached, whose job is to make sure that the missions comply with the laws of armed combat. These legal officers' influence can be powerful, some argue too powerful. For example, in the opening weeks of the operation in Afghanistan in 2001, a Predator drone spotted a convoy of pickup trucks that later turned out to have been carrying Taliban leader Mullah Omar. When asked why the Predator did not just blow up the suspected enemy vehicles, General Tommy Franks replied, "My JAG doesn't like this, so we're not going to fire." As more and more unmanned systems are used, many in the military are growing afraid of another sort of legal complexity, arising from the ability to "play back battles." Says retired marine officer James Lasswell, "The ability to backtrack on combat and then make legal judgments on it is a scary proposition.... I worry that it will yield what I call Monday morning quarterbacking." As with a football player on the field, decisions in war must be made in split seconds. But now people will be able to play them back in detail, picking apart judgment calls and mistakes. And, just as we sometimes sit in our Barcaloungers and blame the quarterback who throws a "dumb" pass that leads to an interception, we will also likely place the blame at the point of decision, even though all sorts of other factors may have caused that bad outcome (a slippery football, a terrible play sent in by the coach, the owner not paying for a good free-agent lineman to give enough time to throw, and, of course, the other team's actions). In a sense, soldiers worry they will get the worst of both worlds. Despite all the confusion among the experts about how to apply the laws of war to robotics, soldiers' every move will be second-guessed, with legal consequences. Air force major general Charles Dunlap worries that the situation could get even worse. He describes how "there is a legal and moral duty," as outlined in the LOAC, to "take all feasible precautions" to prevent civilian casualties. This legal understanding, he explains, becomes much more complex with unmanned systems and battle management AI that are growing more sophisticated, including allowing computer simulations and modeling before the actual fight. "What if a commander chooses a course of action outside the model that results in a higher number of civilian casualties?" On one hand, the commander ignored a duty to take feasible precautions. On the other hand, to punish any officer for this would be placing more legal trust in the judgment of the computer than in the human actually at war. Given this combination of advancing technology and thorny legal questions, many advise that soldiers had better get used to the growing presence of lawyers inside military operations. "We'll see far more lawyers, weighing the consequences, getting into estimating the probabilities of technology working or not, is it right or wrong," explains former naval officer and assistant secretary of defense Larry Korb. The "soldiers" who respect the laws of war might then be at a disadvantage to the "warriors" and criminals who do not. It is not merely that the laws and lawyers limit what they can do, but that the other side knows the limits, and will do everything possible to take advantage. During the Fallujah fighting in 2004, for example, insurgents knew U.S. forces were prohibited from shooting at ambulances, so they used them as taxis to carry about fighters and weapons. Such "lawfare," describes Major General Dunlap, is perhaps the ultimate misuse of international law, because it knowingly abuses it. "They are intent on manipulating our adherence to the rule of law." Ralph Peters is more blunt. "We approach war in terror of lawsuits and criminal charges. Our enemies are enthusiastic killers. Who has the psychological advantage?" # DEHUMANIZING WAR "The truth is, it wasn't all I thought it was cracked up to be. I mean, I thought killing somebody would be this life-changing experience. And then I did it, and I was like, 'All right, whatever.' . . . Killing people is like squashing an ant. I mean, you kill somebody and it's like 'All right, let's go get some pizza.' " Steven Green was a private in the 101st Airborne Division when he indifferently described what it felt like to kill an Iraqi to a _Washington Post_ reporter. Just a few weeks later, Green would allegedly plan out the rape and murder of a fourteen-year-old Iraqi girl, Abeer Qasim Hamza, with whom he had apparently become infatuated while doing checkpoint duty. The girl's parents and five-year-old sister were also killed in the attack, which Green reportedly tried to cover up as a raid on insurgents gone bad. Discharged from the military before the crime was discovered, Green was arrested by the FBI in 2006 and currently is awaiting trial, potentially facing the death penalty. But the damage was already done, not only to the civilians, but also to Green's own unit. Two of his fellow soldiers deployed to the same sector were later kidnapped, tortured, and beheaded. Accompanying the release of a gruesome video of the soldiers' bodies was a statement that it was "revenge for our sister who was dishonored by a soldier of the same brigade." That someone like Green is the exception to the rule among soldiers is without debate. But his story also illustrates another aspect of war. It is a dangerous and dirty space, in which bad apples do pop up, as in every other part of human society. Horrendous crimes do occur, only with the stakes far higher. Historian Stephen Ambrose notes, "When you put young people, eighteen, nineteen, or twenty years old, in a foreign country with weapons in their hands, sometimes terrible things happen that you wish never happened. This is a reality that stretches across time and across continents. It is a universal aspect of war, from the time of the ancient Greeks to the present." Just like any other crime, there are all sorts of causes of war crimes. Sometimes, atrocities occur because of a planned strategy or policy, like the Holocaust. Other times, they may result from individuals like Green (who reportedly had shown mental instability even before the murders), for whom war becomes both a backdrop and enabler for their aggressions. These are the relatively easy war crimes to explain. Hardest to rationalize are the ones like My Lai in Vietnam, when otherwise professional soldiers and units break down and become involved in unplanned war crimes. As David Perry, a professor of ethics at the Army War College, warns, "It is vitally important to recognize that atrocities are not committed by sadistic people only. Almost all of us are capable of barbarism. Even our most admirable soldiers—ones who would courageously give their lives for their buddies without hesitation, ones you'd gladly trust to baby-sit your kids—can be transformed into indiscriminate killers." War is both fueled and sustained by human emotions, by the passions of fear, hate, honor, pride, bravery, and, by necessity, anger. It might be anger at the enemy for previous wrongs or just anger that they have put you in the position of having to kill them in order to see your loved ones again. But anger is often what allows a soldier to do the terrible deeds necessary to accomplish a mission and return home. As the expert on military philosophy Nancy Sherman writes, "Anger is as much a part of war as weapons and armor." These same essential but raw emotions of war can also fuel the crimes of war, such that sometimes the anger trumps discipline and professionalism. A soldier's or even an entire unit's composure can be overcome in the heat of the moment. The spark can vary, but it is almost always the result of poor leadership, sustained stress at being in horrific conditions for extended periods, and, most often, some loss that drives soldiers over the edge, often when comrades are killed. Describes Captain Thomas Grassey, a professor of leadership and ethics at the Naval War College, "Situations where normal, good people are given power over others are fraught with dangers of inhumane, even sadistic treatment. ... More generally, being an American offers no one exception from the passions of battle, the desire for vengeance, the urge to dehumanize, the temptation of sadism, and the traps of irrationality and brutality." Technology is often described as a way to reduce war's costs and passions, and thus its crimes. The poet John Donne (of "No man is an island" fame), for example, told in 1621 how the invention of better cannons would help limit the cruelty and crimes of war, "and the great expence of bloud is avoyed." Yet the improvement of guns from the 1600s onward certainly didn't reduce the flow of "bloud" or end war crimes. However, many today hope that robotics just may well be the one technology that proves Donne right. As one retired army officer explained, "Warfare on some levels will never be moral, but it can be more moral." An army brigade commander in Iraq, for example, told how footage from a drone showed one of his troops guarding an enemy detainee. The soldier, not knowing the drone was overhead, gave a quick look to the right and left, to see if anyone was watching down the street, and then "gave the detainee a good, swift kick to the head." The officer recalls that everyone in the command post then turned and "looked at the old man [him] to see how he would react." While the omnipresence of cameras might mean more second-guessing along the lines of Monday morning quarterbacking, it also changes the context in which decisions about war, and also abuses in war, are made. That commander now knew about his soldier doing wrong and put a stop to it. Whereas a U.S. Army survey found that 45 percent of soldiers wouldn't report a fellow soldier they saw injuring or killing a civilian noncombatant, robots don't care about their buddies and always report what they see. At a broader level, any nation or would-be criminal pondering a war crime will know that, with so many machines around them recording data, they are more likely to be caught and cover-ups will be harder to pull off. Others argue that robots' effect will be felt less on the planned war crimes and more on the unplanned crimes, the crimes of rage. Military analyst Martin van Creveld once described that the best-disciplined army would be one that "behaves as if it were a single personality." Robots turn this human impossibility into technologic fact. They are not governed by passions of loss, anger, or revenge. And machines don't suffer from fatigue that can cloud judgment, nor do they have those unpredictable testosterone fluctuations that often drive eighteen-year-old boys to do things they might regret later in life. Not only are the robots themselves without emotion, but many also feel that unmanned systems remove anger and emotion from the humans behind them. As Clausewitz wrote, the stresses of battle can be overwhelming. "In the dreadful presence of suffering and danger, emotion can easily overwhelm intellectual conviction, and in this psychological fog it is . . . hard to form clear and complete insights." A remote operator, by contrast, isn't in the midst of combat and isn't watching their buddies die around them as their adrenaline spikes. As Robert Quinn at Foster-Miller says, "The big advantage of moving to armed robots is that you take the emotion, the fear factor out of the decision to shoot. . . . You are looking in the whites of their eyes but calm." With the humans not facing risk, they also have the ability to take their time, with a "slow, methodical approach" that can lessen the likelihood of civilians being killed. Marc Garlasco of Human Rights Watch told how "the single most distinguishing weapons I have seen in my career were Israeli UAVs." He described that, unlike jet fighters that had to swoop in fast and make decisions on what targets to bomb in a matter of seconds, the UAVs he observed during the 2006 Lebanon war could loiter over a potential target for minutes or even hours, and pick and choose what to strike or not. In Vietnam, an amazing fifty thousand rounds of ammunition were expended for every enemy killed. Robots, on the other hand, might "come closer to the motto of 'one shot, one kill.' " As a report on the SWORDS says, the operator "can coolly pick out targets as if playing a video game." But anyone who has played _The Sims_ or _Grand Theft Auto_ can support Chuck Klosterman's assertion that most people playing video games "are not a benevolent God." We do things in the virtual world that we would never do if we were there in person, such as ramming our car into an ice cream stand or seeing what happens when our avatar jumps off a skyscraper. Transferred to war, this could mean that the technology might well lessen the likelihood of anger-fueled rages, but also make some soldiers too calm, too unaffected by killing. A possible psychotic like Steven Green talked about the experience of killing someone as feeling the same for him as merely "squashing an ant." The true fear is that turning killing into merely the elimination of icons on a computer screen might make the experience feel the same way even for otherwise normal troops. As a young air force lieutenant described what it was like to coordinate unmanned airstrikes in Iraq, "It's like a video game, the ability to kill. Its like . . . [he pauses, searching for the right words] freaking cool." Many studies have shown how disconnecting a person, especially via distance, makes killing easier and abuses and atrocities more likely. An important one was by Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman, an army psychologist. In his book _On Killing_ , he explored both how soldiers are motivated to kill and how it affected them. He found that most people are not "natural born killers." Instead, humans have a natural instinct not to kill another human. Indeed, "trigger-pull" studies of earlier wars found that many soldiers never actually fired on the enemy in battle. But Grossman also found that this instinct isn't irresistible, and that military training and conditioning can overcome it. If the soldier, for example, can be conditioned to dehumanize their foe, to see them not as a person but as something else, they find it easier to kill. They might view them as subhuman (such as how we turn our enemies into the "Hun," "Jap," "Gook," or today's moniker in Iraq, "Haji") or nonhuman, a "target," as one former soldier put it, "that needs to be serviced." The other factor that enables killing, Grossman found, was distance. "The greater the distance, physical and emotional, from the enemy, the easier it is to kill them. Soldiers at close range or engaged in hand-to-hand combat exhibit a much higher resistance to killing, but at long range, the resistance to killing is much lower." For example, bomber crews carried out firebomb raids during World War II that literally burned alive hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children in cities like Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo. They carried out these missions with few qualms. If they had been asked to do the same face-to-face with a flame-thrower, the outcome likely would have been different, even with their conditioning to think of the Germans and Japanese as less than human. Many worry that both factors are especially enabled by the new technologies of unmanned systems. D. Keith Shurtleff is an army chaplain and the ethics instructor for the Soldier Support Institute at Fort Jackson in South Carolina. His concern is that "as war becomes safer and easier, as soldiers are removed from the horrors of war and see the enemy not as humans but as blips on a screen, there is a very real danger of losing the deterrent that such horrors provide." Participation via the virtual world also seems to affect not merely how people look at the target, but also how the person looks at themselves (why people in online communities, for example, take on identities and try out behavior they would never do in real life, be it wearing tattoos or sharing intimate personal information with strangers). Research shows that this sort of "externalization" allows something called "doubling." Otherwise nice and normal people create psychic doubles that carry out sometimes terrible acts that their normal identity would never do. An air force lieutenant colonel, for instance, who led a Predator operation noticed how the virtual setting could make it easy for the drone operators to forget that they were not gods from afar and that there are real humans on both ends. "You have guys running the UAV saying, 'Kill that one, don't kill that one.' " Each new technology, from the bow and arrow to the bomber plane, has moved soldiers farther and farther from their foes, so in some ways robots aren't creating an entirely new development. Yet unmanned systems have a more profound effect on "the impersonalization of battle," as military historian John Keegan called it. These weapons don't just create greater physical distance, but also a different sort of psychological distance and disconnection. The bomber pilot isn't just above their target, but seven thousand miles away. They don't share with their foes even those brief minutes of danger that give them a bond of mutuality. As robots gain more and more autonomy, emotions won't just be limited or changed, but taken completely out of the equation, with similar mixed results. While autonomous robots are less likely to commit unplanned rage-filled war crimes, they enable the type of deliberate war crimes that a professional soldier might refuse. A computer has no anger to make it lash out like at My Lai, but it also has no pity, no disgust, and no sense of guilt. It does whatever it is programmed to. Shooting a missile at a T-80 tank is just the same to a robot as shooting it at an eighty-year-old grandmother. Both are just a series of zeros and ones. # UN-MANSLAUGHTER Thirty-year-old Daraz Khan lived in the village of Lalazha in the south of Afghanistan. He wasn't rich or worldly, but he did have one thing going for him in life—he was the tallest man in town. It would prove to be his undoing. On the morning of February 4, 2002, Khan, whose nickname was "Tall Man," hiked with two friends to the top of a snowy mountain. They planned to collect scrap metal left over from past battles in the area between the Soviets and the mujahideen, and more recently between the Americans and the Taliban. The going rate was fifty cents for all the scrap metal that could be loaded on a camel's back. It didn't seem much, but that tiny amount was enough to make the ten-mile hike worthwhile. Around 3 P.M., as the men talked and picked through the wreckage, an explosion atomized the bluff on which they were standing. The explosion that killed Daraz Khan and his friends came from a Predator drone that had been quietly circling above. The drone's operators had first spotted the three men when they had suspiciously hiked into the area suspected to have al-Qaeda leaders hiding in it. The men were wearing robes, were at a suspected terrorist hideout, and, most important, one of them was much taller than the others, as bin Laden was thought to be. As best as could be determined from seven thousand miles away, these were the men whom the Predator was looking for. As Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke explained, "We're convinced that it was an appropriate target... [although] we do not yet know exactly who it was." Daraz's sixteen-year-old niece took a slightly different view: "Why did you do this? Why did you Americans kill Daraz? We have nothing, nothing, and you have taken from us our Daraz." Many wartime atrocities are not the result of deliberate policy, wanton cruelty, or fits of anger; they're just mistakes. They are equivalent to the crime of manslaughter, as compared to murder, in civilian law. Unmanned systems seem to offer several ways of reducing the mistakes and unintended costs of war. They have far better sensors and processing power, which creates a precision far better than humans could marshal on their own. Such exactness can lessen the number of mistakes made, as well as the number of civilians inadvertently killed. For example, even as recently as the 1999 Kosovo war, NATO pilots spotting for Serbian military targets on the ground had to fly over the suspected enemy position, then put their plane on autopilot while they wrote down the coordinates of the target on their lap with a grease pencil. They would then radio the coordinates back to base, where planners would try to figure out if there were too many civilians nearby. If not, the base would order an attack, usually made by another plane. That new plane, just arriving on the scene, would carry out the attack using the directions of the spotter plane, if they were still there, or the relayed coordinates. Each step was filled with potential for miscommunications and unintended errors. Plus, by the time a decision had been made, the situation on the ground might have changed—the military target might have moved or civilians might have entered the area. Compare this with a UAV that can fly over the target and send precise GPS coordinates and live video back to the operators. Add in the possibility of using an AI simulation to predict how many civilians might be killed, and it is easy to see how collateral damage can be greatly reduced by robotic precision. The unmanning of the operation also means that the robot can take risks that a human wouldn't otherwise, risks that might mean fewer mistakes. During that Kosovo campaign, for example, such a premium was placed on not losing any NATO pilots that planes were restricted from flying below fifteen thousand feet so that enemy fire couldn't hit them. In one case, NATO planes flying at this level bombed a convoy of vehicles, thinking it was Serbian tanks. It turned out to be a convoy of refugee buses. If the planes could have flown lower, or had the high-powered video camera of a drone instead of human eyes, this tragic mistake might have been avoided. The removal of risk also allows decisions to be made in a more deliberate manner than normally possible. Soldiers describe how one of the toughest aspects of fighting in cities is how you have to burst into a building and, in a matter of microseconds, figure out who is an enemy and who is a civilian and shoot the one that is the threat before they shoot you, all the while avoiding hitting any civilians. You can practice again and again, but you can never fully avoid the risk of making a terrible mistake in that split second, in a dark room, in the midst of battle. By contrast, a robot "gives you the ability to shoot second." It can enter the room and only shoot at someone who shoots first, without worrying that doing so puts a soldier's life at risk. As the case of Daraz Khan illustrates, however, mistakes and accidents remain just as much a part of war with unmanned systems, including in new ways. Unmanned systems allow a greater precision, giving the operator a view of what is going on that is far better than before. But sometimes this can prove false, and even breed an overconfidence that makes mistakes more likely. Khan appeared tall, but that was only because of who he was standing near when looking on a computer screen from seven thousand miles away. "Tall Man" Daraz was actually only five feet eleven inches, big for that impoverished area, but nowhere near bin Laden's reported height of six foot four inches. These unmanned cases of mistaken identity don't just cost civilian lives, but can even happen to friendly units. With the precision allowed by modern weapons, drones have more leeway than ever before to strike at targets when friendly troops are in the area. In the past, entire sectors would be boxed out on the map, indicating where airstrikes could happen and where they could not, with no strikes allowed anywhere near an area where friendly troops were. This new leeway can prove troublesome, though. In the mix of battle, and without clear "kill boxes," the front lines grow confusing, even for unmanned systems. During the 2006 Lebanon war, for example, an Israeli UAV opened fire on Israeli ground troops. The causes of these mistakes are often in great dispute. Sometimes the blame is placed on the humans behind the machines. In a U.S. airstrike in 2001, for example, twelve out of fourteen smart bombs inexplicably missed their target by a wide margin. It turned out the humans who had programmed the weapons' targeting back at the base had punched in the wrong coordinates. Other times, the data itself is bad. As we know from the case of Daraz Khan, as well as all that Iraqi WMD we found, our intelligence is sometimes flawed and unmanned attacks don't always get the right person. In 2005, U.S. officials said that on at least two occasions, "The Predator has been used to attack individuals mistakenly thought to be bin Laden." Garbage in, garbage out. The blowback from such mistakes is worsened. America's technology is viewed as almost magical, but much of the world also sees the United States through jaundiced eyes. When something goes wrong, the immediate assumption is not that a mistake occurred, but that it was planned malice. In 2006, for example, two Predator drones fired ten missiles into the Pakistani hamlet of Damadola. Their target was Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's deputy and one of the architects of the 9/11 attacks. Instead, as political analyst Mansoor Ijaz writes, "The attack killed 18 civilians and brought tens of thousands of protesters out onto Pakistan's streets calling for the ouster of President Pervez Musharraf and chanting 'Death to America' and 'Stop killing our children.' " Anyone whose computer has ever crashed knows that the human sitting at the keyboard is not always to blame. The system itself can be the problem. Robotics expert Robert Finkelstein expects that future tragedies "such as mistaking a civilian for a soldier, a tank for a truck—fratricide is another example—will occur, most likely from bugs in the software or improper design." A U.S. Navy captain agrees: "Inevitably, sooner or later, something is going to go wrong. Then who's responsible, the programmer, the whiz bang guy?" Unsurprisingly, many roboticists don't think they should be the ones held legally accountable if a robot they designed mistakenly kills a civilian, or that it should even be viewed as a crime. As a DARPA-funded roboticist disturbingly put it, "It depends on the situation. But if it happens too frequently, then it is just a product recall issue." # FREE FIRE Military roboticist Robert Finkelstein believes that the legal issues will get even thornier as machines gain more autonomy. "The big question for military law is how do we transition authority for lethal action to the machine? It might start limited, such as 'Kill in this zone only.' But that is still authorizing." For all the critiques that many people make of the U.S. military, it bends over backward to figure out when it's appropriate to engage the enemy and how to limit civilian casualties. For instance, in planning out what Iraqi targets to strike during the 2003 invasion, the Pentagon created a master list called the "joint target list." The only targets that made it onto this list were ones that had been approved by military lawyers and screened against another list, made with the help of the United Nations and other civilian groups, of sites that could not be targeted, such as schools, mosques, or cultural sites. The criteria for using the list also required that the area around the target be checked for any "environmentally dangerous facilities or civilian structure in the vicinity of the strike zone," as well as "can damage be avoided by using a different method to attack the target?" Finally, the list was also run against "collateral damage estimation methodology," computer simulation models that predicted whether civilians who lived nearby might be harmed during the attack. If a target was expected to cause such damage, but was still considered militarily necessary, then the strike mission to hit that target had to be specifically approved by the most senior civilian political leaders (the secretary of defense or the president), so that there was a clear chain of accountability. Notably, this approach is pretty much the exact opposite of how terrorists go about picking what to target; they try to find sites with high collateral damage that cause the most civilian harm possible. Seemingly, a similar sort of checklist could prove equally useful in creating rules of engagement for autonomous robots. An unmanned system might be programmed to go down a list of criteria to determine appropriate targets and when it is allowed to shoot. Much as the "joint target list" required command authorization when civilians were at risk, the robot might be programmed to require human input if any civilians were detected. An example of such a list at work might go as follows: "Is the target a Soviet-made T-80 tank? Identification confirmed. Is the target located in an authorized free-fire zone? Location confirmed. Are there any friendly units within a 200-meter radius? No friendlies detected. Are there any civilians within a 200-meter radius? No civilians detected. Weapons release authorized. No human command authority required." In 2007, the U.S. Army commissioned just such a study of how a "lethal autonomous system" could be built with an "ethical control and reasoning system . . . so that they fall within the bounds prescribed by the Laws of War and Rules of Engagement." Noting that human soldiers commit all sorts of war crimes both big and small (indeed, the report cited that 10 percent of U.S. soldiers in Iraq said they had mistreated noncombatants at some point), the study argued that lethal robots may not just be "able to be perfectly ethical in the battlefield," but that they will be more ethical "than human soldiers are capable of." Said the author of the report, "We could reduce man's inhumanity to man through technology." Such an "ethical" killing machine, though, may not prove so simple in the reality of war. Even if a robot has great software that follows all the various rules of engagement and is the rare device with absolutely no software or hardware failures or bugs, the very question of figuring out who is an enemy in the first place (that is, whether a target should even be considered for the list of screening questions) is extremely tough in modern war. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the U.S. military used what are known as "status-based" rules of engagement to decide whether a potential target was an enemy or not. If a person or facility was part of Saddam's military and paramilitary forces, then it was judged to be "declared enemy forces." As long as it met the qualifying questions of collateral damage, it was a legitimate target to destroy. As the fighting shifted from invasion to insurgency, though, and no one was part of Saddam's forces anymore, or even wore a uniform or insignia to proclaim themselves an enemy, this definition proved pretty useless. So the rules quickly shifted to a "conduct-based" system. The target could be attacked only if some "hostile act" or "hostile intent" was observed. Identifying an enemy target became essentially a judgment call, and not always an easy one at that. If an insurgent was shooting a gun at you, then the "hostile act" was pretty clear. If they were seen planting an IED, then their "intent" to cause harm was clear. But not every situation was so self-evident. A soldier might be shot at from a direction, but not know which house the shooter was in, or even whether the shooter was alone or part of a force ready to overwhelm him. Could he fire back in that general direction to try to cover himself, or did the shooter have to openly show himself and his weapon before the soldier could fire back? Or what about cases where a group of men thought to be insurgents were gathered in a room. Did the soldiers have to wait until they actually left to go plant IEDs to destroy the building, or was the belief that they might be planning an attack enough? Warrior groups are doing all they can to take advantage of these ambiguities, the kind of "lawfare" that the analysts were worried about. In Somalia, one Ranger recalled how a gunman shot at him with an AK-47 that was propped between the legs of two kneeling women, while four children sat on the gunman's back. The Somali warrior had literally created a living suit of noncombatant armor. Similarly, in the Lebanon war, Hezbollah hid rockets in farmhouses near the Israeli border. The farmers were paid to simply press a button that would remotely fire the rockets whenever they received a phone call from the group. It was also suspected that any farmers who refused to do so would be killed. The proper response for the Israelis was not obvious. Does the potential blackmail matter? Should they try to strike any farm's suspected rocket site before it fired at their cities (raising the question of how to find this out without engaging in some hostile act), or were they legally obligated to wait for the hidden rockets to be fired before they could strike the farms? Equally confusing was just if and when that farmer became a legitimate target. Did it happen when the rocket was first placed on his farm or when he pressed the button to fire the rocket? And when does he stop being a legitimate target to kill? Is it after he's pressed the button and gone back to farming, or does he stay a legitimate combatant for the rest of the war, even though his role in it is now done? Politicians, pundits, and lawyers can fill pages arguing these points. It is unreasonable to expect robots to find them any easier. Explains one engineer at iRobot, "A robot can't easily tell a good human from a bad human." Indeed, it has a hard time even distinguishing an apple from a tomato. As a result, mistakes and unintended casualties will continue to happen in war, even with unmanned systems. But the rules of war don't seem likely to catch up with them anytime soon. Instead, as one air force Predator pilot described, episodes like the one that mistakenly killed poor Daraz Khan have a dark reality. "What happens when things don't work out as they are supposed to? The attitude seems to be to still then kill them and let their gods sort them out." # ROBOT RIGHTS IN A PC WORLD In 2006, the British government commissioned a series of papers on key developments that would challenge it over the next twenty to fifty years. The papers looked at a wide range of emerging political, economic, and science issues, exploring everything from the rise of India and developments in nanotechnology to what global warming and the shifting Gulf Stream boded for Britain's weather and economy. "We're not in the business of predicting the future," explained Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser, "but we do need to explore the broadest range of different possibilities to help ensure government is prepared in the long-term and considers issues across the spectrum in its planning." When the reports were made public, however, the always lively British tabloids focused on one finding in particular. "Robots could demand legal rights," screamed the headlines. The British government's research had found that a "monumental shift" would happen when robots advance to the point of having artificial intelligence. Its conclusion wasn't just that this revolution would happen within twenty to fifty years, meaning the British government was also now officially supporting the idea of the Singularity, but that the rise of these machines would also revolutionize the way we think about citizenship. Intelligent robots could be deemed worthy of having many of the same rights and responsibilities as humans. If intelligent beings, even artificial ones, argued the report, were expected to serve in the military, in turn society would have its own responsibilities toward its "new digital citizens." Countries would be obliged to provide "full social benefits to them including income support, housing and possible robo-healthcare." The image of C3PO standing in line for welfare cheese seems a bit outlandish, but it does illustrate some of the odd but potentially real long-range legal questions that might come about as robots are used more widely, as well as become more intelligent. The International Bar Association, the professional group for lawyers around the world, has also begun wrestling with robot rights; in a mock trial in 2003, a lawyer defended the rights of a conscious computer against a corporation that sought to disconnect it. If we are destined to contend with the issues of robot intelligence and robot rights in civilian law, it is also likely we will have to do so in military law. For example, the laws of war deal not only with the treatment of civilians, but also that of fellow soldiers, banning torture and mandating that captured soldiers be treated well. So, as Robert Finkelstein asks about robots, "If they are given human level intelligence, will they be treated as humans? Why not?" Marc Garlasco of Human Rights Watch equally muses, "Will we ever get to the point where Human Rights Watch is advocating in a _Blade Runner_ scenario, where Human Rights Watch is standing up for a manufactured human machine? Does that mean Human Rights Watch becomes Human and Robotics Rights Watch?" There are two arguments for how and why we might start to care about how robots are treated, even in war. Interestingly, both aspects of robot rights are less about the robots themselves and more about the humans involved. First, as robots become more intelligent, and especially as they interact better with humans (having realistic-looking bodies, AI personalities, and so on), people will start to endow them with certain identities, giving them a persona or character. How we treat a robot won't turn so much on whether it is "alive" or even able to recognize its rights, but whether we endow the robot with something called "being-ness." We often talk about having respect for all living things, but actually we only endow them with certain rights or treatment standards the closer they seem to us. So, for example, most people don't like the idea of our evolutionary cousins the apes being tortured or even kept in captivity like pets, but no one thinks they have the right to vote. By contrast, domesticated mammals, like dogs or cats, are socially acceptable to "own," to keep in captivity as a "pet," and even to treat as a fashion accessory to tote about in your Gucci purse. Most people even accept their local government euthanizing stray cats and dogs, as the animal's social value for some reason depends on whether a person likes it enough to house it. But, as Michael Vick can attest, society definitely frowns upon torturing or killing our furry friends for sport, and aside from a few countries, most people abhor the idea of eating their pets for dinner. As you get farther down the list, society begins to look at species differently. Rats and mice may be fellow mammals, but it is still considered socially acceptable to poison or test mascara on them. By the time you get to insects, few care what is done to such living things; most households use chemical weapons in aerosol form to commit mass murder against them. With robots, psychologists are finding that people tend to put them into a space somewhere between an inanimate object and living machine. It is not alive or dead like an animal, but also not the same as a lawn mower or computer. The robot is something else; people see it as having what psychologists describe as a certain sense of "being." The more intelligent, social, and familiar it seems to us, the more we think it is somehow like us, and thus we view the robot as having more of that "being." And just as we differentiate in how we treat other living species, our sense of how nonliving machines should be treated is highly dependent on that level of "being" we grant them. To think of this another way, it somehow seems okay for a person to pound the keyboard of their computer in frustration when it crashes or to give their lawn mower a kick when it won't start. With robots, it equally seems okay to kick a PackBot or Roomba when it breaks. But to kick a robotic dog or punch an Actroid beauty robot in the mouth? That somehow doesn't seem right. And what about when C3PO was disassembled for scrap in _The Empire Strikes Back_ or when Arnold was lowered into the molten iron in _Terminator 2_? Even certain teenaged boys have been known to tear up at such heartbreaking moments. We know these are machines and they don't feel any pain, and yet we still don't think they should be treated this way. Basically, this sense that robots deserve better treatment than regular tools or machines will come about because of our own human psychological quirks and sense of self. The more they seem like us, the more worthy we will think them of our own expectations of treatment. Explains roboticist Daniel Wilson, "Humans are stupid. All robots are robots, but they will care differently about a humanoid robot versus a dog robot versus a robot that doesn't look like anything alive." The world that the TV show _Battlestar Galactica_ foresees doesn't seem all that absurd then; some robots are most likely to be treated just as vehicles, others like an animal or pet, and still others, likely the more intelligent, more humanoid-looking types, with a little bit more respect and protection (in the show, for example, captured humanoid robots are kept in jail cells, and there is a spirited debate on whether they have legal rights and whether they can be tortured). The second argument is that we need to regulate humans' behavior toward robots, not for their sake, but for humanity's sake. As Henrik Christensen, director of the Center for Robotics and Intelligent Machines at Georgia Tech, explains, robots present new pitfalls for humans' treatment of each other. "There will be people who can't distinguish that, so we need to have ethical rules to make sure we as humans interact with robots in an ethical manner, so we do not move our boundaries of what is acceptable." The argument, then, is that things like abuse or torture should be banned regardless of whether they're being committed on a human or a robot, to ensure that the very act remains a clear line that should not be crossed. Giving robots some sort of protection or rights would be primarily about preserving our own sense of right and wrong. This may seem odd or hypocritical, but it makes a certain kind of psychological sense. Many parents, for example, are content to spray a can of Raid on ants in their kitchen, but grow worried if they see their child in the backyard giggling as he burns ants with a magnifying glass. They don't care about the ants, but what the act signifies about little Timmy and his sense of right and wrong. This question of whether an unmanned system has rights or "being" seems very futuristic, and the British government didn't see it coming to the fore in civilian law for several decades. But military lawyers must already grapple with it. Take, for example, the right of self-defense, a time-honored principle in international law. If a ship or plane is attacked, even during peacetime, the crew has "the right to use all necessary means" to save itself, as well as punish the attacker, so that they don't attack again. Many nations even argue that an actual attack isn't required to activate this right. Merely the appearance of a hostile intent to attack is enough; for example, they argue that if a radar targets a plane, the pilot can fire first, rather than simply waiting to be blown out of the sky. This expanded right of self-defense was used by the United States in the Gulf of Tonkin incident prior to the Vietnam War, the air battles with the Libyans in the Gulf of Sidra in the 1980s, and during the decade of airstrikes from 1991 to 2002 while enforcing the "no-fly zone" against Iraq. This question gets fuzzy, though, when the "self " in self-defense is not a person but an unmanned system. Take the above incidents and substitute robotic drones for the planes piloted by humans. If an unmanned plane flying near the border of another nation is fired on, does it have the right to fire back at that nation's missile sites and the humans behind them, even in peacetime? What about the expanded interpretation, the right to respond to hostile intent, where the drone is just targeted by radar? Is the mere threat enough for the drone to fire first at the humans below? The answers depend on how wide the "self" in self-defense is defined. One side could say that the whole concept of self-defense under the law is based on the assumption that a human is inside. They don't see how an unliving plane that doesn't care about itself could have the human right of self-preservation, especially one that preemptively kicks in at the mere appearance of a threat. Others counter that, while no human in the plane was under threat, the machine is still an entity and, moreover, it is "national property" and so must be considered as representative of the people who sent it; it has the same rights as if a person were inside it. You may not be persuaded by this second argument, but the U.S. Air Force was. The interpretation of robot rights is official policy for unmanned reconnaissance flights over the Persian Gulf. # "THE REVOLUTION IN MILITARY LEGAL AFFAIRS" Any law's strength depends on its relevance. Yet today's major codes of international law in war, the Geneva Conventions, are so old that they almost qualify for Medicare. Dealing with digital warfare is a lot to expect of a treaty from 1949, when the average new house cost $7,450 and the most notable invention was the 45 rpm record. To put it another way, if the new technologies are creating a "revolution in military affairs," we may well need a "revolution in military legal affairs." Catching twentieth-century laws up to twenty-first-century conflict does not mean that the old rules have to be jettisoned completely. The Geneva Conventions codified some of the most important principles of international law, from the rights of soldiers taken prisoner to special protections that had to be given to civilians and the wounded. Just because such protocols are old makes them no less important today, and any design and use of unmanned systems must seek to uphold them. For example, it doesn't make sense to hold human pilots to different legal standards based solely on where they are located. As planes gained the capacity to fly at higher and higher speeds and altitudes, the laws of war didn't start to make exceptions for pilots flying a B-2 at six hundred miles an hour as opposed to flying a B-29 at three hundred miles per hour. If they deliberately or somehow negligently killed the wrong people, they were to be held accountable all the same. The same seems to be the most logical way for dealing with the remote operation of unmanned systems. If a driver runs over a little girl with his Humvee, it shouldn't matter whether he was physically located inside the vehicle or doing so from nine thousand miles away. The outcome, and thus the responsibility, is the same. The question should instead focus on whether the action was deliberate or an accident, and, if so, criminally negligent in some way. For the same legal reason, military unmanned systems should be operated by those serving in the military, not handed off to private contractors. Military courts and the laws of war are designed for dealing with the kind of life-or-death decisions that take place in war. Putting a civilian in the operator role, on the other hand might mean that a civilian court would be presented with questions for which it was simply not designed. How could a jury drawn from a pool of showgirls and casino employees be expected to wrestle with whether a Predator pilot in Las Vegas violated the rules of engagement during his UAV's classified operation over Kandahar? If control is limited to the old rule of "only military trigger pullers," describes one air force lawyer, this odd legal Pandora's box remains shut. In systems with more autonomy, the legal questions become stickier. In 2002, for example, an Air National Guard pilot in an F-16 saw flashing lights underneath him while flying over Afghanistan at twenty-three thousand feet and thought he was under fire from insurgents. Without getting required permission from his commanders, the pilot dropped a 500-pound laser-guided bomb on the lights. They instead turned out to be troops from Canada on a night training mission. Four were killed and eight wounded. In the hearings that followed, the pilot blamed the ubiquitous "fog of war" for his mistake. It didn't matter. The hearing concluded that he "flagrantly disregarded a direct order," "exercised a total lack of basic flight discipline," and "blatantly ignored the applicable rules of engagement." All the law cared about was that he dropped the bomb in violation of standing orders, and he was found guilty of dereliction of duty. Change this scenario to an unmanned system and military lawyers aren't sure what to do. Asks an air force officer, "If these same Canadian forces had been attacked by an autonomous UCAV, determining who is accountable proves difficult. Would accountability lie with the civilian software programmers who wrote the faulty target identification software, the UCAV squadron's Commanding Officer, or the Combatant Commander who authorized the operational use of the UCAV? Or are they collectively held responsible and accountable?" This is the main reason why military lawyers are so concerned about robots being armed and autonomous. As long as "the man is in the loop," traditional accountability can be ensured. Breaking this restriction opens up all sorts of new and seemingly irresolvable legal questions about accountability. For this reason, the international community may well decide that armed, autonomous robots meet Peter Herby and the ICRC's fourth and last "pillar"—a weapon that is simply too difficult and abhorrent to deal with. Like chemical weapons or blinding lasers, they would be banned in general, for no other reason than the world doesn't want them around. Yet there is nothing legally that presently says so. The law is simply silent on whether autonomous robots can be armed with lethal weapons. Even more worrisome, this concept of keeping the human in the loop is already being eroded by both policymakers and the technology itself, which are both rapidly moving toward pushing humans out of the loop. So we had better either enact a legal ban on such systems soon or start to develop some legal answers for how to deal with them. If we do make and use autonomous robots in war, which seems to be the path we're already on, it still doesn't mean that the law still has to stay silent. Just because ICRC's fourth pillar isn't applied, the other three pillars don't disappear as well. Nations may have a right to make and use armed robots, but this right is not unlimited. To meet the old legal standards, the systems have to be able to discriminate between civilian and military targets and can't cause any unnecessary suffering. Given all the problems that robots will face in guaranteeing this, it may then mean that robots legally could be armed, but only allowed the autonomous use of nonlethal weapons. That is, that very same robot might also carry lethal weapons, but be programmed such that only a human can authorize their use. Similarly, just as any human's right to self-defense is limited, so too should be a robot's. While military lawyers like to claim that a commander has the legal right to use "all necessary means" to defend their unit, even this right has limits in reality. For example, if a manned plane was targeted by radar and thought to be under threat, the crew can argue that they have the right to defend themselves and shoot a missile at the radar before it shoots them down first. But they can't honestly claim they have the right to drop a nuclear bomb on the radar. Context matters greatly. Robots have great difficulty interpreting context, and, at least until they match humans in intelligence, it simply doesn't make sense to interpret a machine as having the equivalent of a human's rights of self-defense. One air force officer noted the dangerous pathway that such legal interpretations take us down: "If a robot were programmed with this rule [of self-defense], it would not hesitate to employ a hugely disproportionate weapon in the defense of its unit, including a nuclear missile that could start a global conflagration." The same sensible limits need to be applied to the odd idea that the right of self-defense flows from the idea of property rights, as the air force is interpreting the law now. To use a parallel from civilian law, I certainly have the right to defend my house if someone invades it, but I can't preemptively shoot at them from across the street if I think they might want to rob it. Plus, when I am defending my property, there are certainly limits to how much force I can use. It is one thing to use a stun gun against someone who tries to steal my Roomba, another to shoot a Tomahawk missile at his hometown. This last example illustrates how, sometimes, we might find useful models for military law on robotics from other realms. For example, if a robot vacuum cleaner started sucking up infants as well as dust, because of some programming error or design flaw, we can be sure that the people who made the mistakes would be held liable. That same idea of product liability can be taken from civilian law and applied over to the laws of war. While a system may be autonomous, those who created it still hold some responsibility for its actions. Given the larger stakes of war crimes, though, the punishment shouldn't be a lawsuit, but criminal prosecution. If a programmer gets an entire village blown up by mistake, the proper punishment is not a monetary fine that the firm's insurance company will end up paying. Many researchers might balk at this idea and claim it will stand in the way of their work. But as Bill Joy sensibly notes, especially when the consequences are high, "Scientists and technologists must take clear responsibility for the consequences of their discoveries." Dr. Frankenstein should not get a free pass for his monster's work, just because he has a doctorate. The same concept could apply to unmanned systems that commit some war crime not because of manufacturer's defect, but because of some sort of misuse or failure to take proper precautions. Given the different ways that people are likely to classify robots as "beings" when it comes to expectations of rights we might grant them one day, the same concept might be flipped across to the responsibilities that come with using or owning them. For example, a dog is a living, breathing animal totally separate from a human. That doesn't mean, however, that the law is silent on the many legal questions that can arise from dogs' actions. As odd as it sounds, pet law might then be a useful resource in figuring out how to assess the accountability of autonomous systems. The owner of a pit bull may not be in total control of exactly what the dog does or even who the dog bites. The dog's autonomy as a "being" doesn't mean, however, that we just wave our hands and act as if there is no accountability if that dog mauls a little kid. Even if the pit bull's owner was gone at the time, they still might be criminally prosecuted if the dog was abused or trained (programmed) improperly, or because the owner showed some sort of negligence in putting a dangerous dog into a situation where it was easy for kids to get harmed. Like the dog owner, some future commander who deploys an autonomous robot may not always be in total control of their robot's every operation, but that does not necessarily break their chain of accountability. If it turns out that the commands or programs they authorized the robot to operate under somehow contributed to a violation of the laws of war or if their robot was deployed into a situation where a reasonable person could guess that harm would occur, even unintentionally, then it is proper to hold them responsible. Commanders have what is known as responsibility "by negation." Because they helped set the whole situation in process, commanders are equally responsible for what they didn't do to avoid a war crime as for what they might have done to cause it. Other parallel safeguards might be put in place to ease these laws' application. For example, just as a car or dog must have identification tags to allow authorities to figure out who the owner is, so too should there be clear ways to track the chain of design, manufacture, ownership, and use of unmanned systems. Akin to registration and licensing, there should be some sort of formal sign-off to clearly establish who is taking responsibility at each stage of the manufacture and deployment of an autonomous system. This should extend from the designer and maker, who attest that the robot works as claimed, to the commanders and officers in the field, who, before it is deployed, take responsibility for the actions of an autonomous robot on any particular operation. These ideas are not simply to figure out who to punish after something goes wrong with a robot. By establishing at the start who is ultimately responsible for getting things right, it might add a dose of deterrence into the system before things go wrong. If a programmer knows that they might be prosecuted for war crimes if their software code is missing a line, then they are more likely to double-check that code one more time. Or if a commander knows that they will be held accountable for whatever Megatron does when deployed into Fallujah, they might think twice about sending the system into situations where bad things are more likely to happen. # ROBOTIC DISCUSSIONS As political thinker Francis Fukuyama points out, "Science cannot by itself establish the ends to which it is put." Not merely scientists, but everyone from theologians (who helped create the first laws of war) to the human rights and arms control communities, must start looking at where the current technology curve is taking both our weapons and laws. These discussions and debates also need to be global, as the issues of robotics cross national lines. We may even one day see the need to set up an international body to help the world navigate the tough issues that surround robotics, much like the World Health Organization or the International Atomic Energy Agency. As the world starts to wrestle with the issues, some sort of consensus might emerge. One could be that ICRC's fourth pillar may eventually end up being applied to autonomous robots. There are all sorts of historic parallels for how the world has changed its collective mind on the acceptability of a weapon long after it was invented, from exploding "dum-dum" bullets and chemical weapons to antipersonnel land mines. The science fiction parallels are even more instructive. In various fictional universes of the future, from the sci-fi lite of _Star Wars_ to the true geekdom of the _Dune_ novels, a repeated storyline is how intelligent robots were widely used in war and then later on banned. Even if autonomous robots are not prohibited, consensus might be found on other aspects. The production and use of certain types or features of robots might be banned, such as ones not made of metal (which would be hard to detect and thus of most benefit to terrorist groups). Or we might see international agreements, along the lines of the cloning discussions, that limit robotic implants that serve no primary medical purpose. Many will argue against having any such discussions or creating new laws that act to restrict what can be done in war and research. As Steven Metz of the Army War College says, "You have to remember that many consider international law to be a form of asymmetric warfare, limiting our choices, tying us down." Yet history tells us that, time and again, the society that builds and stands by a rule of law is the one that ultimately prevails. There is a "bottom line" reason for why we should adhere to the laws of war, explains a U.S. Air Force general. "The more society adheres to ethical norms, democratic values, and individual rights, the more successful a warfighter that society will be." So as society begins to wrestle with the dilemmas and problems that robots present for the laws of war, the guidance of the last generation to ponder how to handle a revolutionary but also fearful new technology (in their case atomic power) might be instructive. As John F. Kennedy said in his inaugural address, "Let us never negotiate out of fear, but never fear to negotiate." **[TWENTY-ONE]** **A ROBOT REVOLT? TALKING ABOUT ROBOT ETHICS** _DYS ON : You're judging me on things I haven't even done yet. Jesus._ _How were we supposed to know?_ —TER MINATOR 2 : JUDGMENT DAY "Any machine could rebel, from a toaster to a Terminator, and so it's crucial to learn the common strengths and weaknesses of every robot enemy. Pity the fate of the ignorant when the robot masses decide to stop working and to start invading." Daniel Wilson's fascination with robots began when he was young. "As a kid, I fell in love with _Transformers_ , but all my parents could afford were crappy _Go-Bots_. Did I care? No. A robot is a robot." By the time Wilson hit middle school, "I fell in love again, this time with Vickie, a child star who played an android girl on the TV sitcom _Small Wonder_." Wilson went on to get a PhD in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University, and has worked on projects for Microsoft and Intel. While working on his doctorate, Wilson decided to try his hand at book writing. The result was _How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion_. Wilson's book was essentially a faux guide to robot revolt, based on real technology. It goes through all sorts of Hollywood scenarios of how robots might try to take over the Earth and then shows how a real roboticist would respond. Wilson is chock full of helpful advice for "when the robots inevitably come." He details the warning signs that one should look for to know whether your robot is planning a rebellion ("sudden lack of interest in menial labor" and "repetitive stabbing movements"), how to detect robot imposters ("Does your friend smell like a brand-new soccer ball?"), how to escape a robot chasing you (distract it by throwing decoys and obstacles in its path; "Just check twice before you toss the baby seat out of the window"), and a series of real-world technologies and tactics useful for fighting back against our future robot foes (from EMPs to radio-frequency pulse guns). Wilson doesn't really think that your Roomba is poised to suck your breath away while you sleep. As he explains, "I believe the chance of a Hollywood-style robot uprising happening is about as likely as a Hollywood-style King Kong attack on New York City." On the other hand, "Humans are designing plenty of all-too-real robots to do things like 'neutralize enemy combatants,' or 'increase troop survivability.' Is it just me, or does that sound suspiciously like 'KILL, KILL, KILL?' " # ROBO-FEAR Wilson originally wrote his book to "strike back at Hollywood," mocking its many inaccurate portrayals of both robots and the people who make them. Hollywood instead ate it up, and the young roboticist ended up selling the rights to Paramount, where it is presently being turned into a Mike Myers movie. Wilson's story, though, goes from amusing to odd when he mentions in an aside that he has lectured at the U.S. Military Academy and done work for the Northrop Grumman defense firm. Wilson's lighthearted take actually taps into a longer history of genuine fear over what our man-made creations might do to us one day. As far back as 1863, the English scholar Samuel Butler weighed in on the heated debate that Charles Darwin had opened about human evolution. In "Darwin Among the Machines," Butler argued that the scholars arguing over evolution should look forward rather than back. "Who will be man's successor? To which the answer is: We are ourselves creating our own successors. Man will become to the machine what the horse and dog are to man." Today, the concept of machines replacing humans at the top of the food chain is not limited to stories like _The Terminator_ or _Maximum Overdrive_ (the Stephen King movie in which eighteen-wheeler trucks conspire to take over the world, one truck stop at a time). As military robotics expert Robert Finkelstein projects, "within 20 years" the pairing of AI and robotics will reach a point of development where a machine "matches human capabilities. You [will] have endowed it with capabilities that will allow it to outperform humans. It can't stay static. It will be more than human, different than human. It will change at a pace that humans can't match." When technology reaches this point, "the rules change," says Finkelstein. "On Monday you control it, on Tuesday it is doing things you didn't anticipate, on Wednesday, God only knows. Is it a good thing or a bad thing, who knows? It could end up causing the end of humanity, or it could end war forever." Finkelstein is hardly the only scientist who talks so directly about robots taking over one day. Hans Moravec, director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, believes that "the robots will eventually succeed us: humans clearly face extinction." Eric Drexler, the engineer behind many of the basic concepts of nanotechnology, says that "our machines are evolving faster than we are. Within a few decades they seem likely to surpass us. Unless we learn to live with them in safety, our future will likely be both exciting and short." Freeman Dyson, the distinguished physicist and mathematician who helped jump-start the field of quantum mechanics (and inspired the character of Dyson in the _Terminator_ movies), states that "humanity looks to me like a magnificent beginning, but not the final word." His equally distinguished son, the science historian George Dyson, came to the same conclusion, but for different reasons. As he puts it, "In the game of life and evolution, there are three players at the table: human beings, nature and machines. I am firmly on the side of nature. But nature, I suspect, is on the side of the machines." Even inventor Ray Kurzweil of Singularity fame gives humanity "a 50 percent chance of survival." He adds, "But then, I've always been accused of being an optimist." Scientists' fears are not merely that machines will "surpass" humans and then peacefully, logically take over, as in Asimov's _I, Robot._ Instead, many believe that future AI might have some evil intent, or even worse. Marvin Minsky, who cofounded MIT's artificial intelligence lab, believes that we humans are so bad at writing computer software that it is all but inevitable that the first true AI we create will be "leapingly, screamingly insane." The refuseniks had concerns that the military might misuse their research. These scientists' concerns reach a whole new level. Some just accept it as an unavoidable consequence of their research that their creations will one day surpass humans and even order them about. Professor Hans Moravec observes, "Well, yeah, but I've decided that's inevitable and that it's no different from your children deciding that they don't need you. So I think that we should gracefully bow out—ha, ha, ha. . . . But I think we can have a pretty stable, self-policing system that supports us, though there would be some machines which were outside the system, which means became wild. I think we can co-exist comfortably and live in some style for a while at least." Others believe that we must take action now to stave off this kind of future. Bill Joy, the cofounder of Sun Microsystems, describes himself as having had an epiphany a few years ago about his role in humanity's future. "In designing software and microprocessors, I have never had the feeling I was designing an intelligent machine. The software and hardware is so fragile, and the capabilities of a machine to 'think' so clearly absent that, even as a possibility, this has always seemed very far in the future.... But now, with the prospect of human-level computing power in about 30 years, a new idea suggests itself: that I may be working to create tools which will enable the construction of technology that may replace our species. How do I feel about this? Very uncomfortable." # WHEN SHOULD WE SALUTE OUR ROBOT MASTERS? These fears of robot rebellion go back to the Karel Capek's very first use of the word "robot" in his play _R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)_. His choice of the word was deliberate, as he knew that the original "robotniks," the Czech serfs, had rebelled against their masters in 1848. This theme continued in science fiction, such as HAL in _2001_ , which kills its human crew and decides to take over, or A.M. of the Harlan Ellison story "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream." A.M. stood for "Allied Mastercomputer," as it was an AI designed for coordinating defenses, just like the real-world battle management systems of today. But the name Ellison gave to the computer was also a reference to Descartes' "I think, therefore I am." Once it evolves in thinking power, A.M. decides to launch a war, and torture the human survivors for sport. A machine takeover is generally imagined as following a path of evolution to revolution. Computers eventually develop to the equivalent of human intelligence ("strong AI") and then rapidly push past any attempts at human control. Ray Kurzweil explains how this would work. "As one strong AI immediately begets many strong AIs, the latter access their own design, understand and improve it, and thereby very rapidly evolve into a yet more capable, more intelligent AI, with the cycle repeating itself indefinitely. Each cycle not only creates a more intelligent AI, but takes less time than the cycle before it as is the nature of technological evolution. The premise is that once strong AI is achieved, it will immediately become a runaway phenomenon of rapidly escalating super-intelligence." Or as the AI Agent Smith says to his human adversary in _The Matrix_ , "Evolution, Morpheus, evolution, like the dinosaur. Look at that window. You had your time. The future is our world, Morpheus. The future is our time." This evolution turns into a revolution at the point at which machine intelligence starts to act on its own, beyond its human programmers' original intent. Many see this runaway as inevitable. As military robotics pioneer Robert Finkelstein describes, "The first thing it [true AI] likely does within nanoseconds is jump into the Internet, because of the access to unlimited computing resources. We won't be able to stop it. The military will only reach a point of concern when it fails to work like we want it to. But that is too late." Of course, many feel that the fears of a machine rebellion should stay put in the realms of humor and science fiction. Rod Brooks of iRobot, for example, says that a robot takeover "will never happen. Because there won't be any us (people) for them (pure robots) to take over from." His explanation is not merely that the idea is hogwash, but that there is also an ongoing convergence of human and machines through technologic implants and enhancements. By the time machines advance enough to reach the level of intelligence that those with fears of revolt think is necessary for the machines to want take over, people will be carrying about computers in their brains and bodies. That is, the future isn't one of machines separate from humans, plotting our demise. Rather, Brooks thinks it may instead yield a symbiosis of AI and humans. Others think that this still could yield conflict, pointing to the parallels in the _Dune_ series of novels, where such "enhanced" cyborgs and strong AI fight it out, with regular old humans caught in the middle. This debate among both scientists and science fiction will likely go on as long as robots are around, or until Skynet orders us meat puppets to shut up and get back to work. From my perspective of a security analyst, however, the only way to evaluate the actual viability of a robot revolt is to look at what exactly would be needed for machines to take over the world. Essentially, four conditions would have to be met. First, the machines would have to be independent, able to fuel, repair, and reproduce themselves without human help. Second, the machines would have to be more intelligent than humans, but have no positive human qualities (such as empathy or ethics). Third, they would, however, have to have a survival instinct, as well as some sort of interest and will to control their environment. And, fourth, humans would have to have no useful control interface into the machines' decision-making. They would have to have lost any ability to override, intervene, or even shape the machines' decisions and actions. Each of these seems a pretty high bar to cross, at least over the short term. For example, while many factories are becoming highly automated, they all still require humans to run, support, and power them. Second, the ability of machines to reach human-level intelligence may be likely someday, even soon, but it is not certain. In turn, there is a whole field, social robotics, at work on giving thinking machines the sort of positive human qualities like empathy or ethics that would undermine this scenario, even if strong AI was achieved. Third, most of the focus on military robotics is to use robots as a replacement for human losses, the very opposite of giving them any sort of survival instinct or will to control. Fourth, with so many people spun up about the fears of a robot takeover, the idea that no one would remember to build in any fail-safes is a bit of a stretch. Finally, the whole idea of a robot takeover rests on a massive assumption: that just when the robots are ready to take over humanity, their Microsoft Windows programs won't freeze up and crash. Of course, eventually a super-intelligent machine would figure out a way around each of these barriers. In the _Terminator_ storyline, for example, the Skynet computer is able to trick or manipulate humans into doing the sorts of things it needs (for example, e-mailing false commands to military units), as well as rewrite its own software. However, Rod Brooks makes perhaps the most important point on the question of seriously evaluating the fears. If it ever does happen, humanity will likely not be caught off guard, as in the movies. You don't get machines beyond control until you first go through the step of having machines with little control. So we should have some pretty good warning signs to look out for; that is, beyond Daniel Wilson's helpful suggestion to monitor your robot for any "repetitive stabbing movements." The whole issue of humankind losing control to machines may instead need to be looked at in another way. For all the fears of a world where robots rule with an iron fist, we already live in a world where machines rule humanity in another way. That is, the _Matrix_ that surrounds us is not some future realm where evil robots look at humans as a "virus" or "cattle." Rather, we're embedded in a matrix of technology that increasingly shapes how we live, work, communicate, and now fight. We are dependent on technology that most of us don't even understand. Why would machines ever need to plot a takeover when we already can't do anything without them? # ROBOT INSURANCE If any place should be concerned with a robot takeover, it is the red-light district. Few robotics firms issue press releases about their latest multimillion-dollar pornography contract. But just as pornography helped launch such common consumer products as digital cameras, instant messaging, Internet chat rooms, online purchasing, streaming video, and webcams, many experts in robotics believe that sex will drive many of the commercial advances in robotics, because, well, sex sells. On a number of occasions, I interviewed scientists about military robotic systems, who at the end would quietly ask whether I was also looking into the "robotic sex" sector. One dirty old scientist even described it as "something we all await with excitement." Henrik Christensen, a member of the Robotics Research Network ethics group, explains the simple rationale for why he thinks the robot sex industry will take off in the next decade. "People are [already] willing to have sex with inflatable dolls, so initially anything that moves will be an improvement." Christensen raises this not because he is excited about such a prospect, but because he is concerned about whether society is prepared for the ethical dilemmas that this trend will bring. For example, should limits be placed on the appearances of such robotic systems? Christiansen believes "it is only a matter of time" before sexbots are made to look like children. "Pedophiles may argue that those robots have a therapeutic purpose, while others would argue that they only feed into a dangerous fantasy." Likewise, what happens as robots become more sophisticated, and have self-learning mechanisms built into them? Are these the sorts of "experiences" we want intelligent machines learning from, and what will be the impact on how they then behave? Professor Ronald Arkin, a roboticist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has been one of the few scientists to go into depth on the various ethical issues looming from robotics advancement. To him, the issues—not just in sex, but in war—revolve around one key question: What are the boundaries, if any, between human-robot relationships? This question, he explains, lays open a series of ethical concerns that must be dealt with soon, perhaps even in a moral code developed by humans but embedded in our robots. "How intimate should a relationship be with an intelligent artifact?" "What authority are we going to delegate to these machines?" "Should a robot be able to mislead or manipulate human intelligence?" "What, if any, level of force is acceptable in physically managing humans by robotic systems?" "What is the role of lethality in the deployment of autonomous systems by the military?" But this is only to look at the issue of what robots should be programmed to do. Another ethical concern is the reverse: what humans should be allowed to do with robots. For example, what should be done with the massive amounts of data that robots will collect, data that will invariably be uploaded online and which might be used against people? Explains iRobot's Rod Brooks, "I am sure there will be new dilemmas, just as happens with every new technology. No one expected computers to bring so many concerns of privacy. Robotics will bring even more of the privacy concerns." The Los Angeles Police Department, for instance, is already planning to use drones that would circle over certain high-crime neighborhoods, recording all that happens. Other government agencies and even private companies are purchasing smaller drones able to land on windowsills and "perch and stare" at the humans inside. With all this observation, Andy Warhol's description of fame may then have to be reworked for the twenty-first century, tells IT security expert Phil Zimmerman. "In the future, we'll all have fifteen minutes of privacy." Indeed, when he talks about this aspect of the future of robotics, author Daniel Wilson goes from humorous to ominous. "That is what scares the shit out of me." # YOU'LL HAVE TO PRY THIS ROBOT OUT OF MY COLD, DEAD HANDS Given the depth and extent of problems that further advancement in robotics and AI might raise, from the machine-led destruction of humanity to the world learning that you are a thirty-two-year-old closet _Gilmore Girls_ fanatic, many think that the best ethical answer is to stop the research altogether. As Bill Joy argues, "The only realistic alternative I see is relinquishment: to limit development of the technologies that are too dangerous, by limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge." Proponents of relinquishment argue that it is not without precedent for people and countries to forgo researching or making certain technologies, even when they could yield great weapons. Most nations on the planet, for example, have chosen not to build nuclear weapons, even though it would offer them immense power, and all have agreed not to engage in biological weapons research anymore. Indeed, the situation with robotics and other unmanned technologies appears easier to resolve. Unlike the powerful states we faced during the Manhattan Project or the bioweapons research that took place during the cold war, argues Bill Joy, "We aren't at war, facing an implacable enemy that is threatening our civilization; we are driven, instead, by our habits, our desires, our economic system, and our competitive need to know." Yet this ignores that many do feel we are at war with an implacable foe, and that this sense of military need is driving much of the research. Moreover, good old-fashioned human nature also would get in the way of attempts at self-restraint. "We are curious as a species," observes Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, a Brazilian scientist whose research has linked a monkey's brain to a two-hundred-pound walking robot. "That is what drives science." It is not merely that humans just can't help themselves from experimenting with technology, but that constantly pushing the envelope is the very essence of science. As Albert Einstein famously said, "If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" Even if the world was able to come to an unlikely consensus to set up some sort of system to stop researchers from working on new technologies (like the "Turing Police," in William Gibson's novels, who hunted down anyone who worked on strong AI), there would still likely be work going on, just hidden away. There is just too much money to be made, and too many motivated actors, not just for military applications, but in everything from transportation and medicine to games and toys, to force robotics and AI research to stop anytime soon. As one analyst put it, "We would have to repeal capitalism and every visage of economic competition to stop this progression." The challenge grows even bigger as advanced technologies migrate from the research labs to the military to the open market. As one blogger describes, "We'll be chasing our fucking tails about Lego robotics sets and the kids _'CSI'_ DNA testing kits they're selling at Target." AI expert Robert Epstein draws a parallel to the problem of illegal computer file downloading. While the music and movie industries have tried everything from creating new laws and launching heavy-handed lawsuits against college students to a public relations "shaming" campaign, people still keep on downloading pirated music, movie clips, and TV shows. "No matter what we do, there will always be something happening outside of that. And it will be huge." # PLAN FOR SUCCESS (AND FAILURE) "You can't say it's not part of your plan that these things happened, because it's part of your de facto plan. It's the thing that's happening because you have no plan. . . . We own these tragedies. We might as well have intended for them to occur." William McDonough was writing about environmental issues, but his statement is frequently cited by those concerned about the future of the robotics field. It perfectly captures that while relinquishment may not be an option, there is no excuse for failing to plan ahead. As nanotech expert Eric Drexler puts it, "We've got to be pro-active, not just reactive." In facing this, "There are two levels of priority," tells Gianmarco Verruggio, of the Institute of Intelligent Systems for Automation. "We have to manage the ethics of the scientists making the robots and the artificial ethics inside the robots." On the human side, "managing" the ethics is hindered by the absence of professional codes or traditions that robotics scientists might look to when trying to figure out the ethical solution to a difficult science problem. Almost no technical schools require any sort of ethics classes and the robotics field certainly has nothing equivalent to the medical profession's Hippocratic oath. Even worse, the sort of twenty-first-century questions that people working with robots and AI care about aren't really dealt with in the broader fields of philosophy or ethics. There are few experts or resources for them to turn to, let alone any sort of consensus. Even if you were an inventor, funder, or developer who wanted to do the moral thing, as Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, explains, you wouldn't have any ready guides. "Ethicists have written at length about war, the environment, our duties towards the developing world; about doctor-patient relationships, euthanasia, and abortion; about the fairness of social redistribution, race and gender relations, civil rights, and many other things. Arguably, nothing humans do has such profound and wide-ranging consequences as technological revolutions. Technological revolutions can change the human condition and affect the lives of billions. Their consequences can be felt for hundreds if not thousands of years. Yet, on this topic, moral philosophers have had precious little to say." For many, the obvious guide would be to follow science fiction and simply mandate that all systems obey Isaac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics." Asimov's laws initially entailed three guidelines for machines. Law One is that "a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." Law Two states that "a robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law." And Law Three mandates that "a robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law." In later stories Asimov added the "Zeroth Law," above all the others. This states that "a robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm." There are only three problems with these laws. The first is that they are fiction. They are a plot device that Asimov made up to help drive his stories. Indeed, his tales almost always revolved around robots' following the laws but then going astray and the unintended consequences that result. An advertisement for the 2004 movie adaptation of Asimov's famous book _I, Robot_ put it best: "Rules were made to be broken." For example, in one of Asimov's stories, robots are made to follow the laws, but they are given a certain meaning of "human." Prefiguring what now goes on in real-world ethnic cleansing campaigns, the robots only recognize people of a certain group as "human." They follow the laws, but still carry out genocide. The second problem is that no technology can yet replicate Asimov's laws inside a machine. As Rodney Brooks puts it, "People ask me about whether our robots follow Asimov's laws. There is a simple reason [they don't]. I can't build Asimov's laws in them." Daniel Wilson is a bit more florid. "Asimov's rules are neat, but they are also bullshit. For example, they are in English. How the heck do you program that? " Finally, much of the funding for robotics research comes from the military. It explicitly wants robots that can kill, won't take orders from just any human, and don't care about their own lives. So much for Laws One, Two, and Three. While there is no Asimov-like code embedded in robots yet, it doesn't mean that many in the field believe that the design of robots should take place without some sort of guidelines. Indeed, just as they would for any other consumer product, Japan's Ministry of Trade and Industry has set up a series of rules for the design of office and home robots. Every robot must have sensors that prevent it from colliding with humans by accident, be made of softer materials at contact points, and have an emergency shutoff button. These rules came about only after Japanese authorities "realized during a robot exhibition that there are safety implications when people don't just look at robots but actually mingle with them." The rules in Japan parallel a growing concern among robot makers about the financial costs that would come from a robot screwing up. As one executive put it, "You don't want to tell your management 'We had a bad day yesterday; our system killed four civilians by accident.' " Thus, the most powerful incentives for building precautions into robot designs are now mainly coming from the marketplace. "There is a lot of push to make these things damn safe," says Rod Brooks. He goes on to detail the three different sensors put in his company's Roomba vacuum cleaner to make sure it doesn't fall down the stairs. "If you have a multipound robot crashing down the stairs, it can get pretty bad . . . and not just for the robot." While it is good that businesses are starting to think this way, it is certainly not enough. Any ethical codes and safeguards that come mainly from the fear of lawyers and lawsuits are certainly not going to be sufficient for civilian robots, let alone for robots in war. As science writer Robert Sawyer puts it, "Businesses are notoriously uninterested in fundamental safeguards—especially philosophic ones. A few quick examples: the tobacco industry, the automotive industry, the nuclear industry. Not one of these has said from the outset that fundamental safeguards are necessary, every one of them has resisted externally imposed safeguards, and none have accepted an absolute edict against ever causing harm to humans." With this huge gap in ethics, there is a growing sense in the robotics field that scientists will soon have to start to weigh the implications of their work and take seriously their moral responsibilities, particularly as their inventions shape humanity's future. As Bill Joy puts it, "We can't simply do our science and not worry about these ethical issues." # ROBOT RULES In the TV comedy _The Office_ , the witless character Dwight Schrute describes the perfect design for a robot. "I gave him a six-foot extension cord, so he can't chase us." In building real-world safeguards for robots, something a bit more complex will be needed. Many roboticists describe the need for an ethic of "design ahead," which tries to take into account all the various problems that might arise, and set up systems and controls to avoid them. There are a number of useful starting points for this design ethic. One is that the design of robots should be as predictable as possible (perhaps contrary to the growing interest in evolutionary designs). As Daniel Wilson puts it, "There is no sense in having any dangerous features . . . unless you want them." That is, the system should work the way it was originally designed to, all the time, rather than being able to change itself over time into something new, unexpected, and thus potentially dangerous. With machine autonomy growing, mechanisms that ensure a human can take control and shut down a robot must also be built in. But contrary to Asimov's original laws, which entail that any humans must be able to order about any robot they meet, the controls of real-world robots should be designed to ensure limits on their masters. In a world of hackers and the like, we should aim not merely for control, but also security, so that robots can't be easily hijacked or reprogrammed for wrongful or illegal use. Wherever possible, multiple redundancies should be built into any systems. "Redundancy can bring an exponential explosion of security," says Eric Drexler. He explains with an illustration. Imagine a suspension bridge, like the Golden Gate Bridge, which needs five cables to stay up. Each cable has an average risk of breaking one day per 365 days out of the year. If the designers of the bridge use one extra cable as backup (so, six total), the bridge would be expected to last ten years. If they add just five cables as insurance (ten total), enough of the bridge's cables shouldn't break in a million years. A little insurance goes a long way. Scientists are also starting to recognize that information itself carries risks. This goes for the design of systems (anything that might be dangerous should not be open-source, where anyone could potentially copy, build, and misuse it), as well as whatever information is collected by the systems (data should not be publicly sharable unless there is a compelling need). In turn, there must be some required mechanism that allows information on the robot's activity to be stored and collected by public authorities. That is, the only way to ensure accountability if something goes wrong with a system is for each and every robot to have a unique identifier, even something as simple as a bar code, as well as traceability to track the actions that the system took. In the long long term, some scientists even hope that an amended form of Asimov's behavior rules might be required in robots' software. This would mean robot makers have to look at design in a whole new way, not reactively trying to avoid lawsuits, but proactively trying to build in greater respect for the law and ethics. Georgia Tech's Ronald Arkin, for example, writes that autonomous systems in future wars might be endowed "with a 'conscience' that would reflect the rules of engagement, battlefield protocols such as the Geneva Conventions, and other doctrinal aspects that would perhaps make them more 'humane' soldiers than humans." Of course, while a machine may be guided by ethical rules, this does not make it an ethical being. Software codes are not a moral code; zeros and ones have no underlying moral meaning. The key in all this is that ethics apply not just to the machines but also to the people behind them. Scientists must start to conduct themselves by something equivalent to the guidelines that the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates laid out for future generations of doctors. "Make a habit of two things—to help, or at least to do no harm." Martin Rees, royal astronomer of the United Kingdom (a position that is like the top science adviser to the queen), calls for the implementation of the "precautionary principle." It isn't that scientists should stop their research work altogether if anything bad might happen, but rather that they must start to make a good-faith effort to prevent the potential bad effects that might come from their inventions. These kinds of guidelines won't arise overnight, but many scientists note that there already are models of how they might come about in high-tech fields. In the 1980s, for example, there was huge consternation over the Human Genome Project. Geneticists knew that their research could save literally millions of lives, but they also began to worry about all the various ethical and legal questions that the increased availability of genetic information would cause. Who "owned" the genes? What could be patented or not? How much of the information should be shared with the government, police, insurance companies, and other institutions? The geneticists knew they didn't have the answers to such thorny questions, and that they should not try to answer them on their own. So they took the interesting step of setting aside 5 percent of the project's annual budget for a multidisciplinary program to "define and deal with the ethical, legal and social implications raised by this brave new world of genetics." The world of genetics began this program at the very start of their research, which means that it is now years ahead of the world of robotics in the depth of its ethical discussions. This gap becomes even more unsettling with robotics' growing use in war. As General Omar Bradley once said, we have given ourselves the destructive power of "giants," while remaining "ethical infants." "We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living." Just as with the new laws of war, the research and discussion on the ethics of robotics and roboticists can't be limited to the scientists. "We have reached a point where technology development can no longer flourish in a policy vacuum," describes analyst Neal Pollard. Scientists often fail to consider the policy ramifications of their research. In turn, says one research center director, scientists "don't have a seat at the table" when scientific issues are discussed in the halls of power in Washington. If the dialogue between the policy world and science doesn't occur, a double whammy results. The good prescriptions that might come out of the scientific world are unlikely to go anywhere without political support. In turn, an uninformed political world might take decisions that could make things worse. One answer may be to require new unmanned systems to have a "human impact statement" before they enter production, analogous to the environmental impact statements now required of new consumer products and buildings. This will not only embed a formal reporting mechanism into the policy process, but also force tough questions to be asked early on. Indeed, if we are concerned enough about the spotted owl to require studies about potential environmental harms before a new consumer product is released, we should be concerned enough about humanity to require the same reporting on the legal, ethical, and social questions of our new cleaning and killing machines. Ultimately, government is both of and for the people. The burden of weighing the ethical issues of our new technologies is shared not just by researchers and policymakers, but also by the wider public. Too often, when issues of robot ethics are raised, it comes across as science fiction, and is all too ripe for the kind of mocking that Daniel Wilson did so well. Indeed, this is perhaps why so many roboticists avoid talking about the issue altogether. That is an ethical shame. Robots may not be poised to revolt, but robotic technologies and the ethical questions they raise are all too real. For scientists, policymakers, and the rest of us to ignore the issue only sets us up for a terrible fall down the line. As military robotics expert Robert Finkelstein explains, many may want to "think that the technology is so far in the future that we'll all be dead. But to think that way is to be brain dead now." **[TWENTY-TWO]** **CONCLUSION: THE DUALITY OF ROBOTS AND HUMANS** _For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong._ _—_ H. L . MENCKEN In 2003, the American Film Institute assembled a jury of experts to name Hollywood's hundred greatest villains and heroes of all time. For the purposes of the vote, a "villain" was defined as a character whose "wickedness of mind, selfishness of character and will to power are sometimes masked by beauty and nobility, while others may rage unmasked. They can be horribly evil or grandiosely funny, but are ultimately tragic." A "hero" was defined as a character "who prevails in extreme circumstances and dramatizes a sense of morality, courage and purpose. Though they may be ambiguous or flawed, they often sacrifice themselves to show humanity at its best." Hannibal Lecter, the cunning serial killer from _The Silence of the Lambs_ , and Atticus Finch, the principled attorney and father in _To Kill a Mockingbird_ , headed the lists of villains and heroes. But a single character ended up on both lists. And it was a robot, Arnold Schwarzenegger's portrayal of the Terminator. The same year that Hollywood put together its team of experts, the U.S. government did the same. The National Science Foundation assembled hundreds of scientists to try to examine what would happen over the next ten to twenty years, as everything from robotics and artificial intelligence to nanotechnology and bioscience continued to advance and converge, intertwining and feeding off one another. The product of their efforts was an immense report, weighing over three pounds. They did a masterful job, exploring the impact of these developments on fields that ranged from national security to kindergarten education. And yet, ultimately, the top minds in the U.S. government could conclude that the only thing we could be certain of was uncertainty itself. "This will be an Age of Transitions, and it will last for at least a half-century." It is this sense of duality and uncertainty that perhaps best captures how we may have to ultimately weigh what is going on in war and politics. Revolutionary new technologies are not only being introduced to war, but used in ever greater numbers, with novel and often unexpected effects. That said, everything that seems so futuristic is playing out in a present that follows familiar historical lines. Robots are doing amazing things in Iraq and Afghanistan, and yet, as I sat down to write this sentence, the news carried the story of five American troops tragically killed by a roadside bomb. This sense of simultaneous change and stasis is nothing new. As obvious as a great change often seems after the fact, it rarely happens in one fell swoop, where you see a complete elimination of the old. The battleship, for example, went from being the dominant beast in the jungle of war to an endangered species in the course of the first few minutes of Pearl Harbor. And yet battleships stayed in naval service for another fifty years (the last ones firing their big guns during the 1991 Gulf War, directed where to shoot by unmanned drones). Atomic weapons had an unmistakable debut, a mushroom cloud that helped end the very same world war. Yet their real impact was that which played out over the following decades, driving a heated, global competition between two superpowers, but also making sure that war stayed "cold." Change is also hard to tease out if you just look at the numbers. For instance, any outside observer could tell that tanks clearly were somewhat important when they swept across France in the German blitzkrieg that began World War II. And yet only 10 percent of the German army's units had converted to armor, meaning that this revolutionary new force still had, in historian Max Boot's words, "more ponies than panzers." Given this uncertainty, how do we really know whether any new technology does matter, that it really is changing things? More to the point, how do we know that is the case with robotics? The answer is simple. From little EOD #129 "dying" on the battlefield of Iraq to the all too real questions now looming in machine ethics, the revolution in robotics is forcing us to reexamine what is possible, probable, and proper in war and politics. It is forcing us to reshape, reevaluate, and reconsider what we thought we knew before. That is the essence of revolution. Our very vocabulary illustrates. Right now, we refer to these systems as "unmanned" or "artificial," calling them by what they are not, akin to how cars were once called "horseless carriages." This is not only because we can't yet conceptualize exactly what these technologies are and what they can do. It is also because their nonhumanity sums up their difference from all previous weapons. It is why their effect on war and politics is beginning to play out in such a new and revolutionary manner. Because they are not human, these new technologies are being used in ways that were impossible before. Because they are not human, these new technologies have capabilities that were impossible before. And, because they are not human, these new technologies are creating new dilemmas and problems, as well as complicating old ones, in a manner and pace that was impossible before. Robots in Iraq and Afghanistan today are sketching out the contours of what bodes to be a historic revolution in warfare. The wars of the future will feature robots of a wide variety of sizes, designs, capabilities, autonomy, and intelligence. The plans, strategies, and tactics used in these future conflicts will be built from new doctrines that are just now being created, potentially involving everything from robotic motherships and swarms of autonomous drones to cubicle warriors managing war from a distance. The forces that fight these wars may well represent both governments and nonstate groups or even crazed individuals bearing a lethality once held by nations. In these battles, machines will take on greater roles, not just in executing missions, but also in planning them. In turn, the humans still fighting will reflect changed demographics, often not matching our traditional assumptions of who we have thought of as soldiers over the last five thousand years of war. They will be younger, older, trained differently, use different equipment, fight from new locales, and even have altered concepts of their own identities and roles in war. For many, their experiences of battle will be fundamentally different from those of every soldier who went to war in every generation past. The relationships that these combatants will have with their leaders and even with each other will also be altered. The public back home will be further distanced from the human costs of war, perhaps making such wars easier to start, but maybe also harder to end, even in democracies. In turn, the very technology itself might lead to new social, economic, even religious conflicts and maybe even create new sparks of war among those either left behind or so fearful as to lash out in anger and confusion. Finally, these wars will feature new questions about what is legal and ethical, including even how to control our own weapons. The resulting dilemmas and debates will not only be intense, but will challenge many of the codes that have long shaped and regulated the very practice of war. In short, the systems and stories captured in this book are just the start of a process that will be of historic importance to the story of humanity itself. Our robotic creations are creating new dimensions and dynamics for our human wars and politics that we are only now just beginning to fathom. # ROBOTIC HOPES AND FEARS Many, including nearly every roboticist I met while writing this book, hope that these new technologies will finally end our species' bent toward war. Indeed, even that very sober and lengthy U.S. government report about the future of technology and society expressed a similar optimism, describing how "the twenty-first century could end in world peace, universal prosperity, and evolution to a higher level of compassion and accomplishment." Then again, it's hard to imagine us getting rid of conflict anytime soon. And indeed, as we learn about the new temptations, questions, confusions, and even anger that our new technologies might spark, there could be even more war and deadlier conflict. As Bertrand Russell once said, "Without more kindliness in the world, technological power would mainly serve to increase men's capacity to inflict harm on one another." Notably enough, Russell said this back in 1924, and the events of the last century, our most technologically advanced as well as violent one, bear him out. The fear among soldiers is the very opposite of the scientists' hope. They worry that war is disappearing. Let me be clear here: Theirs is not some selfish sense that these new technologies will somehow end violent conflict and they'll be tossed out of work (most would gladly trade their military fatigues for a Dairy Queen uniform, if it meant the end of war and suffering). Rather, they often express fears that the unmanned planes, robot guns, and AI battle managers are turning their experience of war into something else altogether. Lives may be saved in unmanned warfare, but war itself is becoming almost unrecognizable, something they are not all that comfortable with. From Homer's Achilles to Shakespeare's Henry V to my grandfather in World War II, war and the life of the warrior was never simply just about killing. Rather, it was the ideals that lay behind an accompanying sense of sacrifice, the acceptance that one might also have to die. Indeed, military historian Martin van Creveld argued that this willingness to sacrifice "represents the single most important factor" in modern war. "War does not begin when some people kill others; instead, it starts at the point where they themselves risk being killed in return." This willingness to bear the most horrible burdens, face the most terrible risks, and even make the ultimate sacrifice, for your nation or just for your buddies, has always made war defy the normal rules of logic. All the great writers on war focus on this aspect because it gives war its humanity, its sense of purpose, and its heroism. From the knights' codes of chivalry to today's goals of ending tyranny or terrorism, war has always had to be linked to some ideal. Of course, these ideals weren't always followed and were rife with double standards. But they influenced how war itself was viewed, as something terrible but always linked to a higher purpose. Without these ideals, war's often horrific costs and sacrifices would be deemed unworthy. Robotics starts to take these ideals, so essential to the definition of war, out of the equation. In so doing, they might just make the way we have framed war, and rationalized the killing that takes place in it, fall apart. Paul Kahn, a professor at Yale Law School, describes it as the "paradox of riskless warfare. It was tough enough to describe war as something permissible or moral, when combat involves deliberately choosing to inflict destruction and mayhem on your fellow humans. Yet, as long as there was a sense of mutuality, that the two sides were both accepting to bear the risks involved, there was some sense of equality and fairness." As technologies have distanced soldiers farther and farther from the fighting, the risks, and the destruction, this sense of equality and fairness becomes harder to claim. When it becomes not just a matter of distance, but actual disconnection, as Kahn describes, it "propels us beyond the ethics of warfare." This doesn't mean, then, that any war is instantly evil, immoral, or purposeless. And it certainly doesn't mean that there will be no more wars. Rather, wars using these new technologies are looking less like war as we once knew and understood it. The old definitions and codes don't fit so well with the realities brought on by our new technologies of killing. A parallel is what happened to the old codes of chivalry, such as those of the Japanese samurai. Having a system of understanding and ethics that had lasted over a millennium, the samurai held back from using guns for as long as they could. They knew that the technology was useful, but they saw these new weapons as depersonalizing war and, in so doing, dishonoring the codes and values that defined them as warriors. And yet, eventually, the pace of history and technology moved on, and Japanese society soon had to adjust to the new ways of both the world and war (despite the best efforts of Tom Cruise in _The Last Samurai_ ). They started using guns instead of swords, and redefined both what they viewed as war and warriors' values. The same redefinition may well happen with unmanned systems. If we are lucky, these new technologies might even redefine our sense of the acceptable human costs of war. In 1424, Machiavelli said that the side which lost the battle of Zagorara had suffered "a defeat renowned throughout all Italy." He was describing war in the time of the condottieri (hired armies), however, in which battles involved more maneuvering and posturing than actual fighting. So in this "renowned" defeat that no one now remembers, only three men perished, not from actual combat wounds, but from accidentally falling off their horses. Maybe the shift to unmanned systems, which bear the risks of war instead and move humans out of harm's way, will lead to a similar change in how we redefine war and its human costs. But history provides counterexamples. The Japanese redefined their warrior code in the late 1800s, but they turned it into a chauvinist militarism, which just a few decades later bore such bitter fruit as the Rape of Nanking, Pearl Harbor, and the horrors of the Bataan Death March. In turn, the condottieri of Machiavelli's time may have valued their soldiers' lives so much that they were unwilling to risk them in open battle with each other, but they had no such qualms in their definition of war about killing, raping, or pillaging any civilians they came across. A similar concern pops up time and again with robotics. In making war less human, we may also be making it less humane. # FINAGLE'S LAW My own worry is a bit different. I believe strongly in an adage that riffs on the better-known "Murphy's law." What science fiction calls "Finagle's law" states a simple truth that I have come to believe holds for both humans and their creations, including their robots: "Anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment." I have experienced Finagle's law again and again. The best example from my personal life may have been when the tuxedo store delivered a shirt sized for a four-year-old boy on the day before my wedding. But I also saw it at play time and again during the research for this book. The best example of this may have been when I was touring the U.S. Air Force's Middle East command center and the electricity went out. Even worse, the backup power generator didn't come on because, at that very moment, a breaker wasn't working. In the most high-tech military facility in the world, from which all unmanned operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are coordinated, airmen were finding their way around with flashlights as they rushed to turn off the computers before their batteries died. Finagle's law is important, as we are experiencing one of the most amazing changes in humanity's history, and yet we are completely unprepared. This is nothing new. Our forebears were likely just as unprepared for such groundbreaking new technologies as fire, printing presses, machine guns, and Pudding Pops. But they muddled through and figured it all out. That is, until some new technology came along and shook everything up again. But today, in our overcrowded, interconnected world, the stakes are far higher than they've ever been before. Even the most ardent supporters of robotics, AI, and the Singularity warn that we have to "get it right the first time," as there is little room for "non-recoverable errors." Unfortunately, we should expect errors. It is not merely Finagle's law at work in our machines. Mistakes are not just in robot nature, but also in human nature. As Albert Einstein advised, "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Compounding the challenge is the fact that we have less time to react and adjust to these immense changes than ever before. Our concern shouldn't be merely change itself. Rather, as Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put it, "What has gripped me the most is the pace of all this change." In the blink of an eye, things that were just fodder for science fiction are creeping, crawling, flying, swimming, and shooting on today's battlefields. And these machines are just the first generation of these new technologies, some of which may already be antiquated as you read these lines. One army officer captured well what happens when you combine an incredible pace of change with a lack of preparation: "We will only be able to react, and by the time we have responded we will be even further behind the next wave of change and very quickly left in the dust of accelerating change . . . . Change is coming, it is coming faster than nearly everyone expects, and nothing can be done to stop it." # CREATIVITY CONCERNS This all heightens the need to start discussing the issues that come as unmanned technologies are increasingly used in our society and, even more so, in our wars. Part of the reason is to take some of the shock and sting out of these transitions, which will feel overwhelming to many, and might even spur some to violence. As terrorism expert Richard Clarke explained, "We need to have discussion of issues before they are on us. Violence comes if people feel surprises." Or as the aptly named band Army of Me put it in their aptly named song "Going Through Changes": "It's hard to accept what you don't understand, And it's hard to launch without knowing how to land." But most of all, the reason for having these discussions is that our scientists, our military, and our political and business leaders are making decisions now that will matter for all of human society in decades to come. We are not merely building machines that will be with us for years, but setting in motion potentially irreversible research and development on what these machines can and cannot do. Even more so, we are just now creating the frameworks that will fill the current vacuum of policy, law, doctrine, and ethics. That is, how we frame an issue now will shape how we will understand and respond to the challenges that will pop up years from now. Yet for the most part, we are deciding such important matters from a position of ignorance. "Ignorance" actually has two meanings. The first is the one we tend to think of, "the state of being uninformed." But it can also mean the "willful neglect or refusal to acquire knowledge which one may acquire and it is his duty to have." This latter definition may be more apt when it comes to robotics today. We fund, research, and use these new technologies more and more, especially in war. Yet we willfully refuse to acknowledge that the reality of robotics is now upon us. "We are already in _A Brave New World,_ but just don't want to admit it," says one military consultant on unmanned systems. "We refuse to take our blinders off." The result is that leaders are ill equipped to handle all the emerging complications and dilemmas. Tells one worker in the military's robotics test programs, "The people higher up, who are making the decisions that matter, do not have a good understanding of this technology. They are older and more mature, but they don't get it. People fear what they don't know." Most of all, we have to start questioning into what exactly we want to invest our society's collective intellect, energy, drive, and resources. These are exciting, thrilling times, but I cannot think about them without a bit of disappointment. There is an inherent sadness in the fact that war remains one of those things that humankind is especially good at. As Eisenhower once said, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists and the hopes of its children." Humans have long been distinguished from other animals by our ability to create. Our distant ancestors learned how to tame the wild, reach the top of the food chain, and build civilization. Our more recent forebears figured out how to crack the codes of science, and even escape the bonds of gravity, taking our species beyond our home planet. Through our art, literature, poetry, music, architecture, and culture, we have fashioned awe-inspiring ways to express ourselves and our love for one another. And now we are creating something exciting and new, a technology that might just transform humans' role in their world, perhaps even create a new species. But this revolution is mainly driven by our inability to move beyond the conflicts that have shaped human history from the very start. Sadly, our machines may not be the only thing wired for war. **[ACKNOWLEDGMENTS]** No one could write a book like this without an immense amount of help. Ralph Wipfli of Brookings and Elina Noor of ISIS-Malaysia tirelessly assisted in gathering the immense amount of research that made the project possible. They are two of the smartest young political analysts out there, so I am sure many a time they wondered just how they had ended up researching robots and editing chapters that name-dropped Paris Hilton. The Brookings Institution sponsored and hosted the project through the Stephen and Barbara Friedman Fellowship, the Sydney J. Stein Jr. Chair, and the President's Special Initiative Fund. Brookings is the world's first "think tank," and thus is perhaps the only place confident enough in the rigor of its research to take risks on such a nontraditional but important project. Strobe Talbott, Carlos Pascual, and my colleagues in the 21st Century Defense Initiative have my deepest thanks for providing an atmosphere in which truly revolutionary scholarship can thrive. Various organizations and conferences kindly hosted me along the way, including several military bases and operations that must remain unidentified, but still have my gratitude. But some I can thank include the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, Foster-Miller, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, iRobot, Marine Corps University, the Air Force Institute of Technology, National Defense University, and the Office of Naval Research. I am in deep appreciation of the scores of interviewees who took time out of their busy schedules to talk with me about their work and share their perspectives. They had far better things to do, be it inventing robots or fighting wars, and I appreciate their generosity. I only regret that I could not tell all their stories. A special thanks goes to Noah Shachtman, who hosts _Danger Room_ , the best site for data and discussion on defense technology on the entire Internet, and someone with a wicked sense of humor that infected the research. Dan Mandel of Sanford J. Greenburger Associates shepherded the project to publishers and found it a home. Eamon Dolan showed immense faith and patience in a young author and guided it to completion with thoughtful edits and comments. And, finally, the reviewers and academic referees provided many useful suggestions that turned inferior early drafts into what you see here. If you like the book, all credit goes to them. If you do not, all bile and corrections go to me. Finally, I wish to thank the people who bought me the toys and gadgets, gave me the books, took me to the movies, told me the stories, and shared the times, for better or for worse, that shaped me as a person and this book as a whole. More recently, they suffered through countless oddball stories of robots or war, as if either was an appropriate conversation topic at dinners, parties, and even on vacations. Who could ask for more than good friends and family? **[NOTES]** # AUTHOR'SNOTE:WHY A BOOK ON ROBOTS AND WAR? **1** _**Because robots are frakin' cool**_ Frak is a made-up expletive that originated in the computer science research world. It then made its way into video gaming, ultimately becoming the title of a game designed for the BBC Micro and Commodore 64 in the early 1980s. The main character, a caveman called Trogg, would say "Frak!" in a little speech bubble whenever he was "killed." It soon spread into science fiction, appearing in such games as _Cyberpunk 2020_ and the _Warhammer 40,000_ novels. It crossed over into the mainstream most explicitly in the new 2003 reboot of the 1970s TV series _Battlestar Galactica_. That the characters in the updated version of the TV show cursed, albeit with a made-up word, was part of the grimier, more serious feel of the show. Soon thereafter, the word was used in such popular teen shows as _The OC_ and _Veronica Mars_ , completing its crossover to pop culture. **1** _**"It is not a phrase to be written"**_ John Keegan, _Six Armies at Normandy_ (New York: Random House, 2004), 30. **5** _**From war sprung the very first specializations**_ Elizabeth Arkush and Mark W. Allen, _The Archaeology of Warfare: Prehistories of Raiding and Conquest_ (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006). **5** _**"War is a sign of disobedience"**_ Jean Martensen, Director for Peace Education for the Evangelical Lutheran Church, as quoted in David R. Smock, ed., _Religious Perspectives on War: Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Attitudes Toward Force_ , Perspectives Series (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2002), 42. **5** _**It is our arrogance chastised**_ Christopher Coker, _Waging War Without Warriors? The Changing Culture of Military Conflict_ , IISS Studies in International Security (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002), 20. **5** _**we sure do seem to be obsessed with war**_ John Keegan, _The Face of Battle_ (New York: Viking Press, 1976), x. **6** _**"fighting is where man will win glory"**_ Coker, _Waging War Without Warriors?_ as quoted on 33. **6** _**war is described as a test**_ Ibid., 21-32. **6** _**a cruel teacher who reveals**_ Ibid., 30. **6** _**Democracy came from the phalanx**_ Ibid., 24. **6** _**"to end all wars"**_ Ibid., 30, 99. **6** _**all find their definitive expressions**_ Christopher Coker, _Humane Warfare_ (London, New York: Routledge, 2001). **6** _**Yet the reality is "ever again"**_ Yael Danieli, "What Determines How Social Scientists and Psychologists Try to Understand the Next War," paper presented at Imagining the Next War, Guggenheim Conference, New York City, March 25, 2006. **7** _**"The Future Ain't What It Used to Be"**_ Ray Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology_ (New York: Viking, 2005). **7** _**"producing more history"**_ Vago Muradian, "Interview with John Hillen, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State, Political-Military Affairs," _Defense News **,**_ October 9, 2006, 110. **7** _**"As I look at the trends"**_ Bill Gates, "A Robot in Every Home," ScientificAmerican.com, December 16, 2006 (cited December 17, 2006); at <http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?-a-robot-in-every-home>. **8** _**there were more robots**_ "iRobot Co-Founder Comes Clean: Roomba Vacuum Cleaner a Worldwide Success," CNN.com, May 30, 2005 (cited May 30, 2005); available at <http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/ptech/05/30/techprofile.irobot.ap/index.html>. **8** _**Another**_ 7 _**million more**_ Gates, "A Robot in Every Home." **8** _**a robot in every home by**_ **2013** Ibid. **8** _**One industry leader projects**_ "The Robots Are Coming!" Gizmag.com, January 19, 2004 (cited July 6, 2005); available at <http://www.gizmag.com/go/2801>. **8** _**assembly-line factory robotics**_ "Born Again Robots," _Fortune Small Business_ , October 2007, 57. **8** _**Roughly one of every ten workers**_ Gates, "A Robot in Every Home." **8** _**"the electronics industry is on the cusp"**_ Ian Rowley et al., "Ready to Buy a Home Robot? " _BusinessWeek_ , July 19, 2004; available at <http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_29/b3892141_mz070.htm>. **8** _**"A Robotics Gold Mine"**_ "A Robotics Gold Mine," _BusinessWeek,_ July 19, 2004; available at <http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_29/b3892145_mz070.htm> . **9** _**"the flying machine"**_ Sean Price, "When Man Took to the Skies: One Hundred Years Ago This Month, in Kitty Hawk, N.C., the Wright Brothers Gave the World Powered Flight" (Scholastic, Inc., 2005), http://www.thefreelibrary.com/+man+took+ to+the+skies:+one+hundred+years+ ago+this+month,+in . . . -a0112585040 (accessed August 13, 2006)..) **10** _**"Genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics"**_ Steve Martini, _The Jury_ (New York: Putnam's, 2001), 112. **11** _**"science fiction and futurism"**_ Michael E. O'Hanlon, _Technological Change and the Future of Warfare_ (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2000), 33. **11** _**"The true watersheds"**_ Daniel Boorstin, "History's Hidden Turning Points," _U.S. News & World Report_, April 22, 1991, 52. **13** _**"These robots are extensions of us"**_ Lee Gutkind, _Almost Human : Making Robots Think_ , 1st ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2006), 32. **14** _**Both groups tend to disregard**_ K. Eric Drexler, _Engines of Creation_ , 1st ed. (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1986). **14** _**these three problems can be diminished**_ Ibid. **14** _**but also much continuity**_ Stephen D. Biddle, _Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle_ (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). # 1 . INTRODUCTION: SCENES FROM A ROBOT WAR **19** _**"We are building the bridge to the future"**_ U.S. Army colonel, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 16, 2006. **19** _**averaging nearly 2,500 a month**_ Greg Grant, "U.S. Army: Active Protection Not Needed in Iraq," _Defense News_ , September 25, 2006, 30. See also Michael O'Hanlon and Jason H. Campbell, "The Iraq Index: Tracking Reconstruction and Security in Post-Saddam Iraq" (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2008); available at <http://www.brookings.edu/iraqindex>. **20** _**"IEDs are my number one threat"**_ General John Philip Abizaid, Commander CENTCOM, as quoted in Thomas E. Ricks, _Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq_ (New York: Penguin Press, 2006), 219. **20** _**spending more than $6.1 billion**_ Whitney Terrell, "The Bomb Squad," _Washington Post_ , October 29, 2006, W20. **20** _**"one of the most important assignments"**_ Noah Shachtman, "The Baghdad Bomb Squad," _Wired_ 13.11 (2005); <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.11/bomb.html>. **20** _**In a typical tour in Iraq**_ U.S. Navy EOD technician, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, May 26, 2006. **20** _**the pressure from the blast**_ Renae Merle, "Fighting Roadside Bombs: Low-Tech, High-Tech, Toy Box," _Washington Post_ , July 29, 2006, A1. **20** _**they loaded the remains**_ Noncommissioned officer, interview at the Military Robotics Conference in Washington, DC, Peter W. Singer, April 10-12, 2006. **22** _**"We were the longest overnight success"**_ David Whelan, "Fights Wars, Lint," _Forbes_ 178, no. 4 (2006): 96. **23** _**"rescuers [that] are unaffected by the carnage"**_ Jennifer 8. Lee, "Agile in a Crisis, Robots Show Their Mettle," _New York Times_ , September 27, 2001, G7. **23** _**"We began to run out of Afghans"**_ Andrew Bennett, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 16, 2006. **23** _**PackBots made their debut in a cave**_ Justin Pope, "Looking to Iraq, Military Robots Focus on Lessons of Afghanistan," _Detroit News_ , January 12, 2003, <http://www.detnews.com/2003/technology/0301/12/technology-57614.htm> . **23** _**the war robot business grew**_ Associated Press, "Robots Sniff Out Bombs," CNN.com, March 30, 2007 (cited March 30, 2007); available at http:// w w w.cnn.com /2007/TECH/03 /30 /robot.warriors .ap/index.html. **24** _**"really excited by it"**_ Patrick Seitz, "With Scoob, iRobot Looks to Clean Up for the Second Time," _Investor's Business Daily_ , January 17, 2006, A5. **24** _**"I have four boys and two cats"**_ iRobot Corporation, "iRobot Customer Quotes" (cited November 16, 2005); available at <http://www.irobot.com/sp.cfm?pageid=155>. **24** _**"You've done enough"**_ iRobot Corporation, "iRobot® Dirt Dog™ Workshop Robot" (cited October 13, 2006); available at <http://store.irobot.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2475131>. **24** _**"This is all very new stuff "**_ Colin Angle, as quoted in Seitz, "With Scoob, iRobot Looks to Clean Up for the Second Time." **24** _**"the demographics of our purchasers"**_ Ibid. **24** _**"there are no clear buyers yet"**_ iRobot designer, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 16, 2006. **25** _**"A robot may not harm"**_ Isaac Asimov, _I, Robot_ (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1950). **25** _**Asimov would definitely not approve**_ Dave White, "War Robots Dominate iRobot Show" _Mobile Magazine_ , October 12, 2006 (cited October 12, 2006); available at http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100 /313 /C10030 /. **25** _**"I think he would think it's cool as hell"**_ Helen Greiner, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 16, 2006. **26** _**Foster-Miller has boomed**_ Associated Press, "Robots Sniff Out Bombs." **26** _**an additional $20 million repair**_ "U.S. Navy Orders Talon Robots," _Defense News,_ October 23, 2006, 46. **27** _**"The soldiers have started taping"**_ Edward Godere, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 17, 2006. **27** _**"is all about robotics"**_ Andrew Bennett, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 16, 2006. **27** _**"We don't build Buicks"**_ Whelan, "Fights Wars, Lint," 96. **27** _**"These robots are on a mission"**_ Helen Greiner, as quoted in "iRobot Co-Founder Comes Clean: Roomba Vacuum Cleaner a Worldwide Success," CNN.com, May 30, 2005 (cited May 30, 2005); available at <http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/ptech/05/30/techprofile.irobot.ap/index.html>. **27** _**"a defense firm at heart"**_ Bob Quinn, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 17, 2006. **27** _**"We're industrialists looking for needs"**_ Foster-Miller executive, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 17, 2006. **28** _**the family got 40 percent annual returns**_ Daniel Golden, James Bandler, and Marcus Walker, "Bin Laden Family Has Intricate Ties with Washington," _Wall Street Journal Europe_ , September 28-29, 2001, 4. **28** _**"We hear that robots are trendy"**_ iRobot executive, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 16, 2006. **28** _**"We don't just do robots"**_ Foster-Miller executive, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 17, 2006. **29** _**"I wouldn't use anything else"**_ Foster-Miller, Inc., _The Soldier's Choice—Talon Robots. Talon E-mails from Iraq_ , brochure, 2005. **29** _**Another Talon serving**_ Foster-Miller employee, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 17, 2006. **29** _**"This little guy saved our butts"**_ Peter W. Singer, "Research Visit to Foster-Miller," 2006. **29** _**"most amazing inventions"**_ "The Most Amazing Inventions of the Year," Time.com, November 21, 2004, <http://www.time.com/time/press_releases/article/0,8599,785326,00.html.> **30** _**"with this increased firepower"**_ Discovery Channel Pictures, "Smart Weapons," in _Future Weapons_ , Discovery Channel, broadcast on May 17, 2006. **30** _**"You can read people's nametags"**_ Frank Colucci, "Explosive Ordnance Disposal Robots Outfitted with Weapons," _National Defense_ 88, no. 597 (2003): 44. **31** _**"It's small. It's quiet"**_ Ibid., 44. **31** _**"bootstrap development process"**_ Singer, "Research Visit to Foster-Miller." **31** _**"not everything has to be super high tech"**_ Anthony Sebasto, as quoted in Michael Regan, "Armed 'Robo-Soldier' Set for Iraq" _Sydney Morning Herald_ , February 4, 2005, <http://www.smh.com.au/articles/> 2005/02 / 03 /1107409974357.html. **31** _**gunslingers cost just $230,000**_ "Hi, Robot," _Time_ 164, no. 22 (2004): 81. **31** _**In a test of its antitank rockets**_ Regan, "Armed 'Robo-Soldier' Set for Iraq." **31** _**"pinpoint precision" as "nasty"**_ Foster-Miller employee, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 17, 2006. **31** _**"It eliminates the majority"**_ Regan, "Armed 'Robo-Soldier' Set for Iraq." **31** _**"The SWORDS doesn't care"**_ David Platt, as quoted in Regan, "Armed 'Robo-Soldier' Set for Iraq." **31** _**"G.I. of the 21st century"**_ Associated Press, "Robots Sniff Out Bombs." **32** _**"They have been a hit"**_ Eric Lenkowitz, "Robots Roll into Iraq War Zone," _New York Post_ , August 4, 2007. **32** _**reach as high as 12,000**_ Robert S. Boyd, "They're Very Expensive, but They Save Lives: U.S. Enlisting Smart Robots for War's Dirty, Deadly Jobs," _Philadelphia Inquirer_ , February 20, 2006, E2. **32** _**some twenty-two different robot systems**_ Jefferson Morris, "Military Projects 4,000 Robots in Theatre in FY'06," _Aerospace Daily & Defense Report_ 217, no. 26 (2006): 4. **32** _**"The Army of the Grand Robotic"**_ Charles Dean, "Unmanned Ground Vehicles for Armed Reconnaissance," paper presented at the Military Robotics Conference, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, Washington, DC, April 10-12, 2006. Charles Dean is a former lieutenant colonel with the United States Army who now is project manager at Foster-Miller. **32** _**"looks like a baby plane"**_ Susan B. Glasser and Vernon Loeb, "A War of Bridges: 225,000 U.S. and British Troops Are Now Within Striking Distance," _Washington Post Foreign Service_ , March 2, 2003, A1. **33** _**"a flying meat fork"**_ Max Boot, _War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today_ (New York: Gotham Books, 2006), 362. **34** _**in the first two months of operations**_ Ibid., 367. **34** _**"The Predator is my most capable sensor"**_ Elizabeth Bone and Christopher Bolkcom, _Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Background and Issues_ (Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, 2003), 24. **34** _**"Our major role"**_ Glasser and Loeb, "A War of Bridges: 225,000 U.S. and British Troops Are Now Within Striking Distance," A1. **34** _**He had been an F-16 pilot**_ Eric Schmitt, "Remotely Controlled Aircraft Crowd Dangerous Iraqi and Afghan Skies," _New York Times_ , April 5, 2005, A9. **34** _**The idea then arose**_ Air force general, interview, Peter W. Singer, March 22, 2007. **35** _**"it was a big problem"**_ Ibid. **35** _**"It saddens me to know"**_ Ibid. **35** _**In the words of one U.S. officer**_ Boot, _War Made New_ , 383. **35** _**Predators carried out 2,073 missions**_ Bill Sweetman, "USAF Predators Come of Age in Iraq and Afghanistan as Reaper Waits in the Wings," _Jane's International Defence Review_ 39, no. 6 (2006): 52. **36** _**Global Hawk can fly**_ "RQ-4 Global Hawk," Wikipedia, March 24, 2007 (cited March 30, 2007); available at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Hawk>. **36** _**"you basically hit the land button"**_ Air force officer, interview at Pentagon, Peter W. Singer, March 31, 2008. **36** _**The plane itself costs some $35 million**_ Renae Merle, "Price of Global Hawk Surveillance Program Rises," _Washington Post_ , 2004, A17. **36** _**the U.S. Air Force plans to spend**_ Bill Sweetman, "Long Range Endurance UAS Targets the Adversary," _Jane's International Defence Review_ 39, no. 8 (2006): 41. **37** _**"It is more of a rush"**_ Kevin Maurer, "Pilotless Plane Guides 82nd," _Fayetteville (NC) Observer_ , August 13, 2004. **37** _**"You throw the bird up"**_ Noah Shachtman, "Attack of the Drones," _Wired_ 13.06 (2005), <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.06/drones.html>. **37** _**the number of Ravens in service**_ Ibid. **37** _**"reconnaissance with firepower"**_ Owen West and Bing West, "Lessons from Iraq," _Popular Mechanics_ 182, no. 8 (2005): 50. **37** _**there were 5,331 drones**_ Tom Vanden Brook, "Report: Insurgents Benefit from Drone Shortage," _USA Today_ , March 25, 2008. **37** _**"given the growth trends"**_ David A. Deptula, "Unmanned Aircraft Systems: Taking Strategy to Task," _Joint Force Quarterly_ , no. 49 (2008): 50. **39** _**CRAM required a congressional earmark**_ David Wichner, "Army Eyes Raytheon's High-Tech, Sea-going Gatling Gun (Mortar Defense)," _Arizona Daily Star_ , May 19, 2005. **39** _**The business of protecting**_ " ' Boys with Toys' Expo Hawks Security Goods," CNN.com, April 28, 2008, available at <http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/25/security.expo/index.html>. **39** _**"Thank you, Osama bin Laden ! "**_ Ibid. **39** _**"reached heights not seen"**_ Stephen Handelman, "Technology vs. Terrorism," _Popular Science_ 269, no. 3 (2006): 33. **39** _**some one thousand robots**_ Jim Pinto, "Intelligent Robots Will Be Everywhere," Automation.com (cited August 22, 2005); available at <http://www.automation.com/sitepages/pid1014.php> . **39** _**"we will sell tens of thousands"**_ Business executive, interview at the Military Robotics Conference in Washington, DC, Peter W. Singer, April 20, 2006. **40** _**The robot border-cop helped**_ Sweetman, "USAF Predators Come of Age in Iraq and Afghanistan as Reaper Waits in the Wings," 56. **40** _**"But the acceptability of using these systems"**_ Bruce V. Bigelow, "Robot Planes' New Role Won't Fly with Some," _San Diego Union-Tribune_ , April 19, 2004. **40** _**One example is the "Border Hawk"**_ The group's online site is <http://www.americanborderpatrol.com/>. **40** _**"The Second Mexican-American War"**_ Max Blumenthal, "Vigilante Injustice," Salon.com, May 22, 2003,http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/05/22/vigilante/index.html . See also Glenn Spencer, "The Second Mexican-American War," DVD of the 2002 American Renaissance conference, Herndon, Virginia, February 22-24, 2002; available at <http://www.amren.com/estore/catalog/product_1672_2002_AR_Conference_Samuel_Francis_and_Glenn_Spencer_cat_94.html>. **40** _**The drones are launched**_ "Pictures of American Border Patrol UAV on the Arizona Border," _Desert Invasion—U. S_., 2004 (cited March 22, 2007); available at http://w w w.desertinvasion.us /invasion_pictures / pics_american_border_patrol.html. **40** _**"broadcasting the invasion live"**_ Noah Shachtman, _"_ 'Vigilantes' Use Drones on Border Patrol," Defensetech.org, May 14, 2003 (cited July 21, 2006); available at <http://www.defensetech.org/archives/000418.html>. **40** _**Silver Fox UAVs searched for survivors**_ Correspondents in Baton Rouge, "Drones Aid Katrina Rescue," Australian IT, September 5, 2005 (cited September 9, 2005); available at australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,16494558%5E26199%5E%5Enbv%5 E15306-15319,00.html. **41** _**"aerial cell tower"**_ Larry Dickerson, "UAV's on the Rise," _Aviation Week & Space Technology_, January 15, 2007, 116. # 2. SMART BOMBS, NORMA JEANE,AND DEFECATING DUCKS: A SHORT HISTORY OF ROBOTICS **42** _**"The further backward you look"**_ As quoted in Ray Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology_ (New York: Viking, 2005), 35. **42** _**"Perhaps the most wonderful piece"**_ David Brewster, as quoted in Jay Richards, _Are We Spiritual Machines? Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong AI_ , 1st ed. (Seattle: Discovery Institute Press, 2002). **42** _**called it "most deplorable"**_ Rony Gelman, "Gallery of Automata," 1996 (cited November 17, 2006); available at <http://www.nyu.edu/pages/linguistics/courses/v610051/gelmanr/ling.html>. **42** _**"the Defecating Duck"**_ Jessika Riskin, "The Defecating Duck, or, the Ambiguous Origins of Artificial Life," _Critical Inquiry_ 29, no. 4 (2003). **43** _**"getting assistance by producing some machines"**_ Gelman, "Gallery of Automata." **43** _**these punch cards would inspire**_ George Dyson, "The Undead: The Little Secret That Haunts Corporate America . . . A Technology That Won't Go Away," _Wired_ 7.03 (1999), http://www.wired.com/wired/archive /7.03 /punchcards.html. **43** _**container of "artificial excrement"**_ Etienne Ben-son, "Science Historian Examines the 18th-Century Quest for 'Artificial Life,'" _Stanford Report_ , October 19, 2001, <http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2001/october24/riskinprofile-1024.html>. **44** _**"If every tool, when ordered"**_ Alan L. Mackay and Maurice Ebison, _Scientific Quotations: The Harvest of a Quiet Eye_ (New York: Crane, Russak, 1977). **44** _**Archytas used it to carry**_ "A Brief History of Robotics," Megagiant.com (cited November 25, 2005); available at <http://robotics.megagiant.com/history.html>. **45** _**they were automated**_ Rodney Brooks, _Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us_ (New York: Pantheon, 2002). **45** _**von Kempelen had hidden a dwarf**_ This is much like the fighting robot Homer built for Bart in _The Simpsons_ , which turned out just to have Homer hidden inside, getting beat up by the real robots. T. H. Tarnóczy and H. Dudley, "The Speaking Mashine of Wolfgang von Kempelen," _Journal of Acoustical Society of America_ 22, no. 2 (1950). See also Robert Capps, "The 50 Best Robots Ever," _Wired_ 14.01 (2006), http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.01/robots.html?pg=2&topic=robots&topic_set=. **45** _**the field of modern chemistry**_ J. Boone Bartholomees Jr., "The Heirs of Archimedes: Science and the Art of War through the Age of Enlightenment," _Parameters_ 35, no. 4 (2005): 136. **46** _**"to see what would happen"**_ "Charles Babbage," Wikipedia, April 20, 2007 (cited April 20, 2007); available at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage>. **46** _**"I called an official"**_ Robert Finkelstein, "Military Robotics: Malignant Machines or the Path to Peace," paper presented at the Military Robotics Conference, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, Washington, DC, April 10-12, 2006. **47** _**the Germans protected their coast**_ Steven M. Shaker and Alan R. Wise, _War Without Men : Robot on the Future Battlefield_ (Washington, DC: Pergamon Brassey's International Defense Publishers Inc., 1988). **48** _**load them up with twenty-two thousand pounds of Torpex**_ Anthony J. Lazarski, "Legal Implications of the Uninhabited Combat Aerial Vehicle," _Aerospace Power Journal_ 16, no. 2 (2002), <http://www.air> power.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/ apj02 /sum02 /lazarski.html. **49** _**"bombing without knowledge"**_ Chris Gray, _Post-modern War: The New Politics of Conflict_ (New York: Guilford Press, 1997). **50** _**"put a bomb in a pickle barrel"**_ Max Boot, _War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today_ (New York: Gotham Books, 2006), 278. **51** _**Besides the automated bombsight**_ Ibid. **51** _**"Giant Electronic Brain"**_ David Hambling, _Weapons Grade : How Modern Warfare Gave Birth to Our High-Tech World_ (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2005), 90.0. **52** _**"Why don't we just have a network"**_ Ibid., 99. **53** _**a "formal set of instructions"**_ Ibid., 103. **53** _**"how to get the driver out"**_ Robert Finkelstein, interview, Peter W. Singer, July 7, 2006. **53** _**"certainly in the range of 2015-2030"**_ Ibid. **54** _**"The sad thing"**_ Finkelstein, "Military Robotics: Malignant Machines or the Path to Peace? " **54** _**"Then Nixon pulled the plug"**_ Finkelstein, interview, Peter W. Singer, July 7; Finkelstein, "Military Robotics: Malignant Machines or the Path to Peace ? " **54** _**"the gift wrap industry was larger"**_ Finkelstein, "Military Robotics: Malignant Machines or the Path to Peace? " **54** _**"One decision criterion of mine"**_ Finkelstein, interview, Peter W. Singer, July 7, 2006. **54** _**the Fire Fly flew 3,435 missions**_ Kit Lavell, "Defending America in the 21st Century: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Are Coming of Age," _San Diego Union-Tribune_ , February 16, 2003, <http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/op-ed/techwar/20030216-9999_main2.html>. **55** _**"It took decades for UAVs to recover"**_ Ibid. **55** _**The Aquila was to be**_ General Accounting Office, _Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Outrider Demonstrations Will Be Inadequate to Justify Further Production_ (Washington, DC: General Accounting Office, 1997). **56** _**what is called "customer pull"**_ Finkelstein, "Military Robotics: Malignant Machines or the Path to Peace ? " **56** _**While they reloaded**_ Ralph Sanders, "An Israeli Military Innovation: UAVs," _Joint Force Quarterly_ , no. 33 (2002). **56** _**"The Iraqis came to learn"**_ Dina El Boghdady, "Small Firms Turn to Drones: Demand Grows for Unmanned Craft," _Washington Post_ , October 31, 2005, D1. **57** _**"'smart bombs' are really only"**_ "Notes, 8 June 2004," in _National Security in the 21st Century: Rethinking the Principles of War_ (Arlington, VA: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, 2004); available at <http://www.jhuapl.edu/POW/notes/notes_8Jun.htm>. **57** _**"dropping a Cadillac"**_ Hambling, _Weapons Grade,_ 125. **58** _**Only 7 percent of all the bombs**_ James Dunigan, "The Air Campaign in Iraq," _Strategy Page_ , May 21, 2003, <http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/20030522.asp>. **58** _**the U.S. military had bought into the idea**_ Gray, _Postmodern War,_ 52. **58** _**"I couldn't have done it all"**_ Ibid., 36. **58** _**"That's when it really came together"**_ Tom Erhard, interview, Peter W. Singer, January 31, 2007. **58** _**"no longer . . . spend money the way"**_ General Ronald R. Fogleman, as quoted in John A. Tirpak, "The Robotic Air Force," _Air Force_ 80, no. 9 (1997),> <http://www.afa.org/magazine/sept1997/0997robot.asp>. **59** _**"it was threatened"**_ Finkelstein, "Military Robotics: Malignant Machines or the Path to Peace ? " **59** _**"running an after-retirement jobs program"**_ Robotics firm executive, interview, Peter W. Singer, March 13, 2004. **59** _**shrinking by more than 30 percent**_ George C. Wilson, "Tough Choices Loom for the Services," _Air Force Times_ , January 20, 1997, 14. **59** _**"dead soldiers are America's most vulnerable center"**_ Robert Scales, "Urban Warfare," _Military Review_ , February 2005, 9; available at http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate /milreview/scales.pdf. **59** _**an added reason for investing**_ Edward Luttwak, "Post-Heroic Armies," _Foreign Affairs_ 75, no. 4 (1996): 33. **60** _**"So what do you do?"**_ Senator John Warner, as quoted in George C. Wilson, "A Chairman Pushes Unmanned Warfare," _National Journal_ 32, no. 10 (2000): 718. **60** _**"Every now and then"**_ Ibid. **60** _**"The Robot Is Our Answer"**_ H. R. Everett, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 20, 2006. **61** _**the total Pentagon budget**_ Steven Kosiak, Classified Funding in the FY 2009 Defense Funding Request, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Analysis, June 17, 2008, www.csbaonline.org. **61** _**"unchecked growth"**_ Jeffrey M. Tebbs, "Smelting the Triangle: Constraining Congress, Defense Contractors, and the Military Brass to Restore a Fiscally Prudent Defense Budget" (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2006), 3. **61** _**the black budget is not released to the public**_ John Bennett, "CSBA: 'Black' Spending Doubled Since 1995," _Defense News_ , July 30, 2007, 22. **61** _**"Prior to 9/11"**_ Larry Dickerson, "UAV's on the Rise," _Aviation Week & Space Technology_, January 15, 2007, 115. **61** _**"Make 'em as fast as you can"**_ Stayne Hoff, interview, Peter W. Singer, December 5, 2006. **61** _**93 percent of the bombs and missiles dropped**_ Sean J. A. Edwards, "Swarming and the Future of Warfare," doctoral thesis, Pardee Rand Graduate School, 2005, 36-37. **61** _**"The undertaking has attracted"**_ Renae Merle, "Fighting Roadside Bombs: Low-Tech, High-Tech, Toy Box," _Washington Post_ , July 29,2006, A1. **62** _**"Just as World War I accelerated"**_ Robert Finkelstein and James Albus, "Technology Assessment of Autonomous Intelligent Bipedal and Other Legged Robots" (DARPA, 2004), 104. **62** _**"the most dynamic growth sector"**_ "Teal Group: UAV Spending to Triple Within Decade," _Aerospace Daily & Defense Report_, September 1, 2006; available at <http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/>. **62** _**global spending on unmanned planes**_ Ibid. **62** _**"ground vehicles are just now on the edge"**_ Finkelstein, "Military Robotics: Malignant Machines or the Path to Peace? " **62** _**"One, the technology has finally matured"**_ H. R. Everett, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 20, 2006. **63** _**"They're not afraid"**_ Tim Weiner, "Pentagon Has Sights on Robot Soldiers," _New York Times News Service_ , February 16, 2005. **63** _**"Can you keep your eyes open"**_ Hambling, _Weapons Grade,_ 324. **63** _**Even using the same mine-detecting**_ Jerry Harbor, "Assessing Unmanned System Performance," paper presented at the Military Robotics Conference, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, Washington, DC, April 10-12, 2006. **63** _**"inclement weather, smog, and smoke"**_ Patrick Eberle, "To UAV or Not to UAV: That Is the Question; Here Is One Answer," _Air & Space Power Journal—Chronicles Online Journal_, October 9, 2001, http://w w w.airpower.au.af.mil /airchronicles /cc / eberle.html. **64** _**"The airplane was too good"**_ As quoted in George Friedman and Meredith Friedman, _The Future of War: Power, Technology, and American World Dominance in the Twenty-first Century_ (New York: Crown, 1996), 296. **64** _**"the human is becoming the weakest link"**_ Cheryl Seal, "Frankensteins in the Pentagon: DARPA's Creepy Bioengineering Program," _Information Clearing House_ , August 25, 2003, <http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4572.htm>. **64** _**"the UCAV [the unmanned fighter jet]"**_ iRobot designer, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 16, 2006. **64** _**"The trend towards the future"**_ Ibid. **64** _**can share that skill or knowledge with another computer**_ Jay Richards, _Are We Spiritual Machines? Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong AI_ , 1st ed. (Seattle: Discovery Institute Press, 2002). **65** _**"robots don't participate"**_ Robotics company executive, interview, Peter W. Singer, Acton, MA, November 18, 2006. **65** _**"The military is deciding"**_ Eliot Cohen, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, November 15, 2006. **65** _**"preference for joint unmanned systems"**_ Christian Lowe, "Senators Love Robots," Defensetech .org, May 17, 2006 (cited November 1, 2006); availableathttp: //www.defensetech.org/archives/002419 .html. **65** _**"We're entering an era"**_ As quoted in John J. Klein, "The Problematic Nexus: Where Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles and the Law of Armed Conflict Meet," _Air & Space Power Journal—Chronicles Online Journal_, July 22, 2003, <http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/cc/klein.html> # 3. ROBOTICS FOR DUMMIES **66** _**Like a robot, sometimes I just know not**_ Eminem, _8 Mile._ Soundtrack. Shady Records, CDC 493508, 2002. **66** _**"The ROBOTs are dressed like people"**_ Karel Capek, _R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)_ , in _Toward the Radical Center: A Karel Capek Reader_ , ed. Peter Kussi (Highland Park, NJ: Catbird Press, 1990), 35. **66** _**first mention of the word "robot"**_ Ibid., 33. **66** _**"And God said unto them"**_ Genesis 1:28. **67** _**man-made devices with three key components:**_ Robert Finkelstein, "Military Robotics: Malignant Machines or the Path to Peace," paper presented at the Military Robotics Conference, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, Washington, DC, April 10-12, 2006. **68** _**"too much technology"**_ U.S. Army soldier, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, November 2, 2006. **68** _**"the TV episode of**_ **I Love Lucy"** Sandra Erwin, "More Eyes in the Sky May Not Generate Better intelligence," _National Defense_ , June 2008, <http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/issues/2008/June/MoreEye.htm> **68** _**"User interface is a big, big problem"**_ Andrew Bennett, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 16, 2006. **68** _**"playing to the soldiers' preconceptions"**_ Ibid. **68** _**"We modeled the controller"**_ Stephen Graham, "America's Robot Army," _New Statesman_ , June 12, 2006, <http://www.newstatesman.com/200606120018>. **69** _**"As a military person,"**_ CBS News, "Gesture Glove Not Science Fiction," CBSNews.com, August 23, 2005 (cited February 3, 2007); available at <http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/08/23/eveningnews/main792311.shtml.> **69** _**"if it takes more than two clicks"**_ As quoted in Giles Ebbutt, "Knowledge Is Power," _Jane's International Defence Review_ 40, no. 1 (2007): 29. **69** _**The new controller programs**_ M. O'Madharain and B. Gillespie, "The Moose: A Haptic User Interface for Blind Persons" (Stanford University, 1995), 131. **70** _**"It will really make a complete fusional relation"**_ Jeff Wise, "Bertrand Piccard's Solar-Powered Flight Around the World," _Popular Mechanics_ , September 2005, <http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/1701581.html?page=2>. **70** _**felt just like "Pop Rock candies"**_ Associated Press, "Creating Superhuman Troops of Future Starts at the Tongue, April 22, 2006 (cited August 14, 2007); available at http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060422/LOCAL/204220325 /1078/news. **70** _**"In terms of evolution"**_ Julian Jones, director, _How William Shatner Changed the World_ , produced by the History Channel, broadcast on October 21, 2006. **71** _**"We know that machines . . . phenomenal memory"**_ Andrew Smith, "Science 2001: Net Prophets," _Observer_ , December 31, 2000, 18. **71** _**An EEG wearer**_ Peter Schwartz, Chris Taylor, and Rita Koselka, "Quantum Leap," _Fortune_ 154, no. 3 (2006). **71** _**"It's a blurry vision"**_ Emily Gold Boutilier, "Thinking the World into Motion," _Brown Alumni Magazine_ , January 2005, <http://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/storyDetail.cfm?ID=2521>. **71** _**"like watching a high-definition plasma screen"**_ Ibid. **71** _**"Every other day I wanted to die"**_ Discovery Science Channel, _Robosapiens: The Secret (R)evolution,_ broadcast on June 18, 2006. **72** _**"I do feel like it was a part of me"**_ Ibid. **72** _**"the most lavishly funded"**_ Cheryl Seal, "Frankensteins in the Pentagon: DARPA's Creepy Bioengineering Program," _Information Clearing House_ , August 25, 2003, <http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4572.htm>. **72** _**"It's as if the first flight at Kitty Hawk"**_ John Fauber, "Think, Think, Shoot, Score!" _Milwaukee Journal Sentinel_ , December 4, 2004, http://www.jsonline.com/alive /news /dec04 /281287.asp **73** _**it wasn't so much that he could "feel"**_ Tim Usborne, _Stargate SG-1: True Science_ , produced by Paul Sen and Rosie Kingham, Sci Fi Channel, broadcast on July 18, 2006. **73** _**you can squeeze it into tight parking spaces**_ Rodney Brooks, _Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us_ (New York: Pantheon, 2002), 227. **73** _**"is going to be my mental prosthesis"**_ Schwartz, Taylor, and Koselka, "Quantum Leap." **73** _**"We would all share information"**_ Robert Finkelstein, interview, Peter W. Singer, July 7, 2006. **74** _**"network-enabled telepathy"**_ Schwartz, Taylor, and Koselka, "Quantum Leap." **74** _**National Science Foundation envisions**_ Mihail C. Roco and William Sims Bainbridge, "Converging Technologies for Improving Human Health: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science" (National Science Foundation, 2002), 19. **75** _**"Having a dedicated operator"**_ Robert Finkelstein and James Albus, "Technology Assessment of Autonomous Intelligent Bipedal and Other Legged Robots" (DARPA, 2004). **75** _**"The autonomy thing is f'ing hard"**_ Noah Shachtman, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, March 25, 2006. **75** _**"Forget about whether the intelligence"**_ John Arquilla, as quoted in _Warbots_ , produced by Dan Saxton Company, History Channel, broadcast on August 8, 2006. **75** _**"an ability to act appropriately"**_ George A. Miller, "WordNet Search—3.0" (Cognitive Science Laboratory, Princeton University, 2006). **76** _**They argue that a machine**_ Chris Gray, _Postmodern War: The New Politics of Conflict_ (New York: Guilford Press, 1997), 71. **76** _**"calculate faster than any human being"**_ David Hambling, _Weapons Grade: How Modern Warfare Gave Birth to Our High-Tech World_ (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2005), 205. **77** _**which is 95 percent of what we ask**_ David Hambling discusses this analogy in _Weapons Grade_ , 205. **77** _**"If you think it's easy"**_ Ian Rowley et al., "Ready to Buy a Home Robot?" _BusinessWeek_ , no. 3892 (2004): 84. **77** _**"perceive something complex and make"**_ Sebastian Thrun, interview, Peter W. Singer, March 18, 2007. **77** _**"Simply put, we can't know"**_ "Interview with Lynne E. Parker," _International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems_ 2, no. 2 (2004). **78** _**Starting with the acclaimed battles**_ Rodney Brooks, _Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us_ (New York: Pantheon, 2002), 103. **78** _**the size of the AI market**_ Ray Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology_ (New York: Viking, 2005), 279. **78** _**the U.S. military funds as much as 80 percent**_ Ibid., 205. **78** _**"We are not close to having AI"**_ Neal Conan, "Interview with Helen Greiner, Chairman and Co-founder of iRobot," on _Talk of the Nation_ , National Public Radio, broadcast on June 23, 2006. **78** _**"the UAV is able to learn"**_ "UAV Learns to Think for Itself—Now Technology Will Transition to Military," Gizmag.com, February 22, 2005 (cited July 6, 2005); available at http://www.gizmag.com/go/3745 /. **78** _**GT Max has been able**_ Ibid. **79** _**Thaler has created**_ Tina Hesman, "Stephen Thaler's Computer Creativity Machine Simulates the Human Brain," _St. Louis Post-Dispatch_ , January 24, 2004. **79** _**the air force lab contracted Thaler**_ David Hambling, "Experimental AI Powers Robot Army," _Wired News_ , September 14, 2006, http://www.wired.com/news /technolog y/sof tware /coolapps / news /2006/09 /71779. **79** _**There was even one robot**_ More about the Reading University experiments at <http://cirg.reading.ac.uk/home.htm>. **79** _**the computer might learn so much by**_ Richards, _Are We Spiritual Machines? Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong AI_ , 1st ed. (Seattle: Discovery Institute Press, 2002). **80** _**"If it's a child, you want to stop"**_ Preston Lerner, "Robots Go to War: Within 10 Years, Infantry Soldiers Will Go into Battle with Autonomous Robots Close Behind Them," _Popular Science_ 268, no. 1 (2006): 42. **81** _**"understanding the environment is the Holy Grail"**_ Sebastian Thrun, interview, Peter W. Singer, March 18, 2007. **81** _**"black pick-up truck driven by two men"**_ Stephen Trimble, "US Eyes Hyperspectral Technology for UAVs," _Jane's Defence Weekly_ , September 6, 2006, 31. **81** _**Its multispectral sensors detect**_ Richards, _Are We Spiritual Machines?,_ 110. **82** _**"As opposed to a computer"**_ David Bruemmer, "Intelligent Autonomy for Unmanned Vehicles," paper presented at the Military Robotics Conference, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, Washington, DC, April 10-12, 2006. **82** _**but it has since sold only six thousand units**_ Associated Press, "U.S. Considers Turning Scooters into War Robots," Ctv.ca, November 28, 2003 (cited August 18, 2006); available at <http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1070032823376_233//>. See also Segway, "About the Robotic Mobility Platform," 2005 (cited November 16, 2005); available at <http://www.segway.com/products/rmp/>. **82** _**recent U.S. Navy work on a system**_ Jennifer Bails, "Water Bug Robot," _Pittsburgh Tribune-Review_ , April 6, 2006. **82** _**a "diamond-tipped" buzz saw**_ John Canning et al., "A Concept for the Operation of Armed Autonomous Systems on the Battlefield," Dahlgren Division, Naval Surface Warfare Center, 2008. **83** _**The switch from chemical to electric**_ Geoff His-cock, "Gun Whips Up a Metal Storm," CNN.com, June 27, 2003 (cited September 14, 2006); available at <http://www.cnn.com/2003/BUSINESS/06/26/australia.metalstorm/>. **83** _**is good for "crowd control"**_ <http://www.metalstorm.com/content/view/82/166/.> **83** _**"The combination of robotics"**_ Steven Metz, interview, Peter W. Singer, September 19, 2006. **83** _**The devices have a range**_ General Dynamics, _Long Range Acoustic Device_ , 2002. Product Information Sheet. **83** _**the crew used LRAD sonic blasters**_ John Pain, "Cruise Ship Attacked by Pirates Used Sonic Weapon," USAToday.com, July 11, 2005, http://www.usatoday.com /tech /news /techinnovations /2005- 11-07-cruise-blast_x.htm **84** _**shoots blobs of compressed glue**_ Lothar Ibruegger, "Special Report: Emerging Technologies and Their Impact on Arms Control and Non Proliferation" (NATO Parliamentary Assembly, International Secretariat, 2001). **84** _**If the ray is turned off**_ Associated Press, "Ray Gun Makes Targets Feel Like They're on Fire," MSNBC .com, January 25, 2007, <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16794717/>. **84** _**being off just a few degrees could kill**_ Hambling, _Weapons Grade_ , 346. **84** _**Depending on the tuning**_ David Hambling, "Air Force Plan: Hack Your Nervous System," Defensetech.org, February 13, 2006 (cited December 18, 2006); available at <http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002152.html.> **84** _**Another prototype is the tetanizing beam weapon**_ Hambling, _Weapons Grade,_ 237. **85** _**The idea of lasers first came**_ H. G. Wells, _The War of the Worlds_ (New York: Tor/Forge, 1993 [1898]), 25. **85** _**George Lucas sued the U.S. government**_ Hambling, _Weapons Grade,_ 119. See court case. _Lucasfilm Ltd. v. High Frontier,_ 622 F. Supp. 931 (D.D.C. 1985). **85** _**called it the "Holy Grail" of weapons**_ Doug Beason, _The E-Bomb_ (New York: Da Capo, 2001), 188. **85** _**a useful defense against "terrorists on Jet-Skis"**_ Dan Wildt, as quoted in Bill Sweetman, "Fact or Fiction," _Jane's Defence Weekly_ , February 22, 2006. **86** _**"instantaneous burst-combustion of insurgent clothing"**_ The request is available at http://blog.wired.com/defense /files /PASDEW.pdf **86** _**the Tactical Relay Mirror System**_ Joshua Kucera, "US Eyes Fast Fielding of Attack Laser," _Jane's Defence Weekly_ , July 6, 2005, 6. **86** _**A novel program at Tel Aviv University**_ "Introducing the Nano Battery, as Thick as a Strand of Hair," WorldTribune.com, November 17, 2006, <http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/06/front2454057.073611111.html>. **86** _**"It didn't like carbonated beer"**_ As quoted in Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near_ , 248. **87** _**The U.S. Air Force is presently exploring**_ Hambling, _Weapons Grade,_ 152. **87** _**Another UAV, the Global Observer**_ Stephen Trimble, "Multi-UAV Approach Proposed for BAMS," _Jane's Defence Weekly_ , September 13, 2006, 10. **87** _**There are all sorts of projects**_ Lonnie D. Henley, "The RMA After Next," _Parameters_ 29, no. 4 (1999). **87** _**Chew-Chew, the "gastrobot"**_ Reuters, "Meat-Eating Robot Has (G)astronomic Potential," CNN.com, July 21, 2000 (cited February 10, 2006); available at <http://archives.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/07/21/carnivorous.robot.reut/index.html>. **87** _**A contemporary of Chew-Chew's**_ Ibid. **87** _**It is called a "vampire-bot"**_ Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near,_ 248. **87** _**"grass, wood, broken furniture, and] dead bodies"**_ Finkelstein, "Military Robotics: Malignant Machines or the Path to Peace?" **88** _**"Although a few of the robots"**_ Bill Gates, "A Robot in Every Home," [ScientificAmerican.com, December 16, 2006 (cited December 17, 2006); available at <http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-robot-in-every-home.> **88** _**"The tool has to fit the task"**_ Mark Barber, "Force Protection Robotics," paper presented at the Military Robotics Conference, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, Washington, DC, April 10-12, 2006. **88** _**"Every vehicle is a robot"**_ Daniel H. Wilson, _How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion_ , 1st U.S. ed. (New York: Bloomsbury, 2005), 26. **88** _**the "No Hands Across America" drive**_ Todd Jochem, "No Hands Across America Journal," 1995 (cited November 16, 2006); available at <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/tjochem/www/nhaa/Journal.html>. **88** _**Its journey ended**_ Wilson, _How to Survive a Robot Uprising,_ 26. **89** _**it costs just $70,000 to convert**_ Globes Correspondent, "InRob Tech Completes Remote-Controlled Hummer Trials," Globes.co.il, January 9, 2006, http ://w w w.globes.co.il /ser veen /globes /docv iew .asp?did=1000048585&fid= 942. **89** _**Wheeled vehicles can only operate**_ Finkelstein and Albus, "Technology Assessment of Autonomous Intelligent Bipedal and Other Legged Robots." **89** _**"humanoid robots should be fielded"**_ Finkelstein, "Military Robotics: Malignant Machines or the Path to Peace?" **90** _**describe human eyes as "badly designed"**_ Brooks, _Flesh and Machines_. **90** _**"In the next 10-20 years"**_ Rodney Brooks, "Technology Impacts on Military Robotics over the Coming Decades," paper presented at the Military Robotics Conference, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, Washington, DC, April 10-12, 2006. **90** _**"Every aspect of robotics is touched by biology"**_ Ronald Arkin, as quoted in Eric Smalley, "Georgia Tech's Ronald Arkin," 2005, http://www/trnmag.com/stories /2005 /091205 /View_Rona ld _ Ark in_ 091205.html. **91** _**"getting robots to jump"**_ Joel Garreau, _Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—And What It Means to Be Human_ (New York: Doubleday, 2005), 35. **91** _**"detection tracking algorithm"**_ David Hambling, "Selective Focus May Give Drone Aircraft Eagle Eyes," _New Scientist_ , September 25, 2006, http://w w w .newscientisttech.com/article.ns?id=dn10156&feedId=tech_rss20. **91** _**the research was also used by the Pixar**_ Elizabeth Corcoran, "The Stickybot," _Forbes_ 178, no. 4 (2006): 106. **91** _**"Fact of nature"**_ Finkelstein and Albus, "Technology Assessment of Autonomous Intelligent Bipedal and Other Legged Robots," 158. **91** _**Designs that find their inspiration**_ David Hambling, "A Breed Apart," _Guardian_ (UK), February 25, 2005 (cited December 18, 2006); available at <http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/feb/24/onlinesupplement.insideit3>. **92** _**Big Dog will be "unleashed"**_ Preston Lerner, "The Army's Robot Sherpa from the Backcountry to the Rubble-Strewn Back Alleys of a War-Torn City, This Mechanized Pack Animal Will Follow Soldiers Wherever Duty Calls Them," _Popular Science_ 268, no. 4 (2006): 72. **92** _**DARPA's survey on robotics futures**_ Finkelstein and Albus, "Technology Assessment of Autonomous Intelligent Bipedal and Other Legged Robots." **92** _**"I have so many dreams"**_ "Future Dreams," BBC News.com, December 21, 2006 (cited May 30, 2007); available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/06/technology_robot_menagerie /html/10.stm. **93** _**researchers are at work on "claytronic" robots**_ Tom Simonite, "Shape-Shifting Robot Forms from Magnetic Swarm," _New Scientist_ , January 29, 2008. **93** _**"it may be increasingly difficult to say"**_ Gates, "A Robot in Every Home." # 4. TO INFINITY AND BEYOND: THE POWER OF EXPONENTIAL TRENDS **94** _**"I decided I would be an inventor"**_ Ray Kurzweil on Discovery Science Channel, _Robosapiens: The Secret (R)evolution,_ broadcast on June 18, 2006. **95** _**inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame**_ " _Ray Kurzweil,"_ singularity.com (cited May 29, 2007); available at <http://singularity.com/aboutray.html>. **95** _**"About thirty years ago"**_ Ray Kurzweil, interview via phone, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, December 7, 2006. **95** _**"We use predictions"**_ Ibid. **95** _**"I've slowed down aging to a crawl"**_ Ibid. **96** _**this is a guy whom Bill Gates described**_ Brian O'Keefe, "The Smartest (or the Nuttiest) Futurist on Earth," CNNMoney.com, May 2, 2007 (cited May 2, 2007); available at http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05 /14 /100008848/. **96** _**Kurzweil gets a reported $ 25,000**_ Ibid. **96** _**He is also one of five members**_ Ibid. **96** _**"only an early harbinger"**_ Kurzweil, interview, Peter W. Singer, December 7, 2006. **96** _**will "create qualitative change"**_ Ibid. **96** _**"In just 20 years"**_ Kurzweil, as quoted in Joel Garreau, _Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—And What It Means to Be Human_ (New York: Doubleday, 2005), 6. **96** _**"very much at the mainstream"**_ Kurzweil, interview, Peter W. Singer, December 7, 2006. **97** _**"the pace of change"**_ Ray Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology_ (New York: Viking, 2005), 35. **97** _**"Skeptics said there's no way"**_ Kurzweil, interview, Peter W. Singer, December 7, 2006. **97** _**"If you double from 1 percent every year"**_ Ibid. **97** _**some two billion people around the world**_ Max Boot, _War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today_ (New York: Gotham Books, 2006), 312. **98** _**Moore predicted**_ Gordon E. Moore, "Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits," _Electronics_ 38, no. 8 (1965), available at <http://download.intel.com/research/silicon/moorespaper.pdf>. **98** _**Tradic, the first computer**_ Mihail C. Roco and William Sims Bainbridge, "Converging Technologies for Improving Human Health: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science" (National Science Foundation, 2002). **98** _**Moore's old company Intel**_ "Higher Levels of Design Abstraction," Intel.com (cited August 14, 2006); available at <http://www.intel.com/technology/silicon/scl/abstraction.htm>. **98** _**it has roughly the same capacity**_ Thomas Homer-Dixon, "The Rise of Complex Terrorism," _Foreign Policy_ , no. 128 (2002): 54. **98** _**a present-day supercomputer**_ Peggy Mihelich, "Supercomputers Crunching Potato Chips, Proteins and Nuclear Bombs," CNN.com, December 5, 2006 (cited December 5, 2006); available at <http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/12/05/supercomputers/index.html>. **98** _**to build a next-generation supercomputer**_ Ibid. **98** _**Only four years later**_ Garreau, _Radical Evolution,_ 59. **99** _**refrigerator magnets that play Christmas jingles**_ Ibid. **99** _**"riding someone else's exponentials"**_ Ibid. **99** _**"The Law of Accelerating Returns"**_ Kurzweil, interview, Peter W. Singer, December 7, 2006. **99** _**Internet bandwidth backbone is doubling**_ Roco and Bainbridge, "Converging Technologies for Improving Human Health." **99** _**the number of personal and service robots**_ Unless otherwise noted, all figures are from Garreau, _Radical Evolution_ , 59. **99** _**The modern-day bomber jet**_ Sean J. A. Edwards, "Swarming and the Future of Warfare" (doctoral thesis, Pardee Rand Graduate School, 2005), 136. **100** _**the range and effectiveness of artillery fire**_ Stephen D. Biddle, _Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle_ (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 30. **100** _**exponential "stretching" of the battlefield**_ Michael E. O'Hanlon, _Technological Change and the Future of Warfare_ (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2000), 121. **100** _**each plane was destroying** 4_. _07 **targets**_ Edwards, "Swarming and the Future of Warfare," 137. **100** _**the agricultural revolution**_ Rodney Brooks, _Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us_ (New York: Pantheon, 2002). **100** _**launching the Industrial Age**_ Richard R. Nelson, _Technology, Institutions, and Economic Growth_ (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 135. **100** _**The Internet took roughly a decade**_ "Internet Usage Statistics—The Big Picture," _Internet World Stats_ , 2007 (cited May 30, 2007); available at <http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm>. **100** _**In less than a decade, over a billion people**_ Chuck Klosterman, _Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto_ (New York: Scribner, 2003), 112. **101** _**the aggregate of technologic change**_ Ray Kurweil in an interview with Kip P. Nygren, "Emerging Technologies and Exponential Change: Implications for Army Transformation," _Parameters_ 32, no. 2 (2002): 91. **101** _**"Golden Age of Invention"**_ "Golden Age of Invention," Sparknotes.com, 2006 (cited May 30, 2007); available at <http://www.sparknotes.com/biography/edison/section4.rhtml>. **101** _**"The Singularity Is Near"**_ Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology_. **101** _**"We often say things like"**_ Kurzweil, interview, Peter W. Singer, December 7, 2006. **102** _**"Within a single human generation"**_ Hugo de Garis, "Building Gods or Building Our Potential Exterminators?" KurzweilAI.net, February 26, 2001 (cited June 27, 2006); available at http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0131.html ?. **102** _**the human brain is created**_ Jay Richards, _Are We Spiritual Machines? Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong AI_ , 1st ed. (Seattle: Discovery Institute Press, 2002), 206. **102** _**"about twenty thousand years of progress"**_ Kurzweil, interview, Peter W. Singer, December 7, 2006. **103** _**"the laws of science and our ability"**_ As quoted in Garreau, _Radical Evolution_ , 72. **103** _**"Google all the time"**_ Peter Moon, "AI Will Surpass Human Intelligence After 2020," TTworld.com, May 3, 2007 (cited May 30, 2007); available at <http://www.itworld.com/Tech/3494/070503ai2020/>. **103** _**"the Internet-based cognitive tools"**_ Vernor Vinge, _Rainbows End_ (New York: Tor Books, 2006), 5. **103** _**"The Coming Technological Singularity"**_ Vernor Vinge, "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era" (paper presented at the VISION-21 Symposium, March 30-31, 1993). **103** _**"within thirty years"**_ Ibid. **103** _**"point where our old models"**_ Ibid. **104** _**"We are on the edge of change"**_ Vinge, as quoted in Garreau, _Radical Evolution,_ 71-72. **104** _**"It's a future period"**_ Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near,_ 7. **104** _**"It's not merely a technology"**_ Robert Epstein, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, October 25, 2006. **104** _**"fits many of our happiest dreams"**_ Vinge, "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era." **104** _**"physical extinction of the human race"**_ Ibid. **104** _**"the very nature of what it means to be human"**_ "About the Book," Singularity.com (cited May 29, 2007); available at <http://singularity.com/aboutthebook.html>. **105** _**"the non-biological intelligence"**_ Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near,_ 136. **105** _**"The Rapture for Nerds"**_ Charles Stross, "Singularity: A Tough Guide to the Rapture of the Nerds," 2005 (cited January 28, 2008); available at <http://www.antipope.org/charlie/toughguide.html>. **105** _**"By 2030 we are likely to"**_ Bill Joy, "Forfeiting the Future," _Resurgence_ , no. 208 (2001), http://www.resurgence.org/resurgence /issues /joy208.htm. **105** _**"By the way, Joy's thesis is spot-on"**_ Special forces officer, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, September 7, 2006. **105** _**"Never before in history"**_ As quoted in Frank Schirrmacher, "Beyond 2001: HAL's Legacy for the Enterprise Generation," _Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung_ , August 31, 2000. **105** _**"The Future Is Coming Sooner Than You Think"**_ Jim Saxton, "Nanotechnology: The Future Is Coming Sooner Than You Think" (Washington, DC: Joint Economic Committee, U.S. Congress, 2007), available at <http://www.house.gov/jec/publications/110/nanotechnology_03-22-07.pdf>. **106** _**"some people, smart people"**_ Robert Epstein, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 25, 2006. **107** _**IBM and Intel found a way**_ Reuters, "Intel, IBM Unveil New Chip Technology," Speedguide.net, 2007 (cited May 30, 2007); available at <http://www.speedguide.net/read_news.php?id=2240>. **107** _**That is, while an electric charge**_ Peter Schwartz, Chris Taylor, and Rita Koselka, "Quantum Leap," _Fortune_ 154, no. 3 (2006). **107** _**"The challenges facing the robotics industry"**_ Ibid. **107** _**"doesn't require us to try"**_ Robert Finkelstein, interview, Peter W. Singer, July 7, 2006. **107** _**"If this war keeps going"**_ Personal communication at the Military Robotics Conference, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, Washington, DC, April 10-12, 2006. **107** _**"When you marry all that up"**_ Robert Epstein, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 25, 2006. # 5. COMING SOON TO A BATTLEFIELD NEAR YOU: THE NEXT WAVE OF WARBOTS **109** _**"They're going to sneak up on us"**_ John Pike, as quoted in Preston Lerner, "Robots Go to War: Within 10 Years, Infantry Soldiers Will Go into Battle with Autonomous Robots Close Behind Them," _Popular Science_ 268, no. 1 (2006). **109** _**" Instead of us telling machines where to go"**_ Noah Shachtman, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, March 25, 2006. **109** _**In the course of his reporting**_ Noah Shachtman, "The Baghdad Bomb Squad," _Wired_ 13.11 (2005), http://w w w.wired.com/wired/archive /13.11/bomb .html. **110** _**"The robots you are seeing here"**_ Patrick Rowe as quoted in _Warbots_ , produced by Dan Saxton Company, History Channel, broadcast on August 8, 2006. **110** _**"But I'm convinced"**_ Lerner, "Robots Go to War." **110** _**twenty-two different prototypes of intelligent ground vehicles**_ Robert Finkelstein, interview, Peter W. Singer, July 7, 2006. **110** _**"It's already been done"**_ Ibid. **111** _**fire a variety of ammunition**_ John Dyer, "Robotics in Urban Warfare," paper presented at the Military Robotics Conference, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, Washington, DC, April 10-12, 2006. **111** _**"You'll actually see the sniper"**_ Hiawatha Bray, "Robotic-Vacuum Maker, BU Team Up on Anti-sniper Device," _Boston Globe_ , October 4, 2005, E3. **111** _**"It is not an insurmountable problem"**_ Bob Quinn, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 17, 2006. **111** _**"world's first multipurpose combat robot"**_ Dennis Sorenson, "Technological Development of Unmanned Systems to Support the Naval Warfighters," paper presented at the Military Robotics Conference, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, Washington, DC, April 10-12, 2006. **112** _**"It is just fucking nasty"**_ Noah Shachtman, interview, Peter W. Singer, March 25, 2006. **112** _**"If you can avoid unnecessary situations"**_ Ibid. **112** _**"could be operational on the battlefield"**_ Bill Christensen, "Trauma Pod Battlefield Medical Treatment System," Technology.com, April 5, 2005 (cited July 31, 2006); available at <http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=364> **113** _**"The average surgeon will become"**_ Robert Langreth, "Robo-Docs," _Forbes_ 178, no. 4 (2006): 100. **113** _**"The last thing I want to see"**_ History Channel, _Warbots_. **113** _**Future Combat Systems (FCS) program**_ United States Congressional Budget Office, _The Army's Future Combat Systems Program and Alternatives_ (Washington, DC, 2006). **114** _**"it would have saved an NCO's life"**_ Fred Baker III, "Soldiers Like FCS Test Systems So Much, They Don't Want to Return Them," _Army News Service_ , February 13, 2007. **114** _**cost as much as $16 billion a year**_ Jeffrey M. Tebbs, "Smelting the Triangle: Constraining Congress, Defense Contractors, and the Military Brass to Restore a Fiscally Prudent Defense Budget," (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2006), 12. **114** _**"the largest weapons procurement in history"**_ Robert Finkelstein, interview, Peter W. Singer, July 7, 2006. **114** _**"it's the system that ate the army"**_ Ralph Peters, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, March 29, 2007. **114** _**the majority of technical hurdles**_ United States Congressional Budget Office, _The Army's Future Combat Systems Program and Alternatives_ , 82, 39. **114** _**"Everything's working against you"**_ Carl Posey, "Robot Submarines Go to War," _Popular Science_ 262, no. 4 (2003). **115** _**"The civilian sailors were"**_ James F. Dunnigan, "Robotic Ship Talks to Startled Sailors," _Strategy Page_ , June 14, 2005 (cited June 14, 2005); available at <http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/200561415554.asp> **115** _**the Fire Scout can fly more than**_ Nick Brown, "Fire Scout Takes Over Landing Control," _Jane's Defence Weekly_ , February 1, 2006, 30. **116** _**It lands in the water**_ Bill Sweetman, "The Navy's Swimming Spy Plane: It Floats, It Flies, It Eliminates Enemy Targets—Meet the Water-Launched Unmanned Enforcer," _Popular Science_ 268, no. 3 (2006). **116** _**"I want to see a Predator"**_ David A. Fulghum, "Predator's Progress," _Aviation Week & Space Technology_ 158, no. 9 (2003): 48. **116** _**"It may not be unreasonable"**_ Bill Sweetman, "USAF Predators Come of Age in Iraq and Afghanistan as Reaper Waits in the Wings," _Jane's International Defence Review_ 39, no. 6 (2006): 52. **116** _**The air force sees at least 45 percent**_ Robert S. Boyd, "They're Very Expensive, but They Save Lives: U.S. Enlisting Smart Robots for War's Dirty, Deadly Jobs," _Philadelphia Inquirer_ , February 20, 2006, E2. **117** _**looking like "a B-2 bomber's chick"**_ Bill Sweetman, "The Top-Secret Warplanes of Area 51," _Popular Science_ , October 2006, <http://www.popsci.com/popsci/aviationspace/95e16f096bd8d010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd/7.html.> **117** _**"a fully autonomous flight control"**_ Nick Cook, "Skunk Works Unveils Secret Polecat UAV," _Jane's Defence Weekly **,**_ July 19, 2006, <http://www.janes.com/regional_news/americas/news/jdw/jdw060719_1_n.shtml> **117** _**It would have a wingspan**_ Bill Sweetman, "Boeing Working on New Large UAV," _Jane's Defence Weekly_ , July 5, 2006. **117** _**The next step is DARPA's plan**_ Ramon Lopez, "Five-Year Plan," _Defense Technology International_ 1, no. 7 (2007): 16. **117** _**airships could literally be "parked"**_ David A. Fulghum, "Space-RAAM: AIM-120 Recast as Ballistic Missile Interceptor," _Aviation Week & Space Technology_ 166, no. 19 (2007): 32. **117** _**"itty-bitty, teeny-weeny UAVs"**_ Christian Lowe, "High-Flying, Secret Drone Unveiled," Defense tech.org, July 24, 2006 (cited December 18, 2006); available at <http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002598.html.> **117** _**small, pilotless planes**_ Dina El Boghdady, "Small Firms Turn to Drones: Demand Grows for Unmanned Craft," _Washington Post_ , October 31, 2005, D1. **117** _**"It was tough to track on film"**_ David Hart, "Nano-Air Vehicle Program," paper presented at the Military Robotics Conference, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, Washington, DC, April 10-12, 2006. **118** _**"similar in size and shape to a maple tree seed"**_ Lowe, "High-Flying, Secret Drone Unveiled." **118** _**"A lot of the three-letter agencies"**_ Robert Finkelstein, interview, Peter W. Singer, July 7, 2006. **118** _**"perch and stare" into windows**_ Jim Pinto, "Intelligent Robots Will Be Everywhere," Automation.com(cited August 22, 2005); available at <http://www.automation.com/sitepages/pid1014.php> **118** _**recharge themselves off electrical outlets**_ Ibid. **118** _**Boston College researchers**_ Ibid., 234. **118** _**"It is a bit like when stone-age man"**_ Reuters, "1867 Nanomachine Now Reality," CNN.com, February 1, 2007 (cited February 3, 2007); available at <http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/02/01/nanomachine.reut/index.html> **119** _**"flat as a pancake"**_ Matthew Brzezinski, "The Unmanned Army," _New York Times Magazine_ , April 20, 2003. **120** _**"Can you see him now, sir?!?"**_ interview with U.S. soldier, Peter W. Singer, September 18, 2007. **120** _**"space Pearl Harbor"**_ Shephard W. Hill, "A Legacy of Support to the Warfighter," _High Frontier Journal_ 2, no. 3 (2006): 22. **121** _**to "crush someone anywhere in the world"**_ As quoted in Walter Pincus, "Pentagon Has Far-Reaching Defense Spacecraft in Works," _Washington Post **,**_ March 16, 2005, A3. **121** _**"the single dumbest thing I have heard so far"**_ Ibruegger, "Special Report: Emerging Technologies and Their Impact on Arms Control and Non Proliferation," NATO Parliamentary Assembly, International Secretariat, 2001, 41. **121** _**open up the floodgates for others**_ Bruce M. DeBlois, "Space Sanctuary: A Viable National Strategy," _Airpower Journal_ 12, no. 4 (1998). **121** _**"a space superpower, it is not going to be alone"**_ Richard Fisher, "Space to Manoeuvre," _Jane's Intelligence Review_ , March 2007, 63. **121** _**the Tamil Tiger group of Sri Lanka**_ Peter de Selding, "Intelsat Vows to Stop Piracy by Sri Lankan Separatist Group," _Space News_ , April 17, 2007, 1, 4. **122** _**"Once safely in orbit"**_ "Bots Will Battle to in Space," _New Scientist,_ April 12, 2006 (cited January 21, 2007); available at http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technolog y/2006/04/bots-will-to-battle-in-space. html. # 6. ALWAYS IN THE LOOP? THE ARMING AND AUTONOMY OF ROBOTS **123** _**"Wars are a human phenomenon"**_ Thomas K. Adams, "Future Warfare and the Decline of Human Decisionmaking," _Parameters_ 31, no. 4 (2001): 57. **123** _**"people will always want humans"**_ Eliot Cohen, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, November 15, 2006. **123** _**"In some cases, the potential exists"**_ Patrick Eberle, "To UAV or Not to UAV: That Is the Question; Here Is One Answer," _Air & Space Power Journal—Chronicles Online Journal_, October 9, 2001, http:// w w w.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/cc/eberle.html. **124** _**"It's far away enough"**_ Helen Greiner, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 16, 2006. **124** _**"ever be able to autonomously fire"**_ Bob Quinn, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 17, 2006. **124** _**"It helps keep people calm"**_ Noah Shachtman, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, July 2, 2007. **124** _**"The navigation computer"**_ Eberle, "To UAV or Not to UAV." **124** _**The system came with four modes**_ George Friedman and Meredith Friedman, _The Future of War: Power, Technology, and American World Dominance in the Twenty-first Century **,**_ 1st ed. (New York: Crown, 1996), 196. **125** _**nicknamed "Robo-cruiser"**_ "Iran Air Flight 655," Wikipedia, July 7, 2007 (cited July 8, 2007); available at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655> **125** _**the computer was trusted**_ Chris Gray, _Postmodern War: The New Politics of Conflict_ (New York: Guilford Press, 1997), 69. **125** _**"In ten to twenty years"**_ Andrew Bennett, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 16, 2006. **125** _**"just a political description"**_ Ray Kurzweil, interview via phone, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, December 7, 2006. **125** _**U.S. Patriot missile batteries**_ Defense Science Board, "Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Patriot System Performance" (Washington, DC, 2005). **126** _**"The irony"**_ Robert Epstein, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, October 25, 2006. **126** _**"you cannot take the human out"**_ Predator pilot, interview, Peter W. Singer, August 28, 2006. **126** _**"currently, at best, very ambitious"**_ Michael J. Barnes et al., "Soldier Interactions with Aerial and Ground Robots in Future Military Environments" (NATO, 2006). **126** _**"Even if the tactical commander"**_ Sean J. A. Edwards, "Swarming and the Future of Warfare" (doctoral thesis, Pardee Rand Graduate School, 2005), 139. **127** _**"By making them autonomous"**_ Jim Rymarcsuk, interview with Ralph Wipfli, Washington, DC, October 20, 2006. **127** _**"If you can automatically hit it"**_ U.S. military officer, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 17, 2006. **127** _**"Anyone who would shoot"**_ Stephen Graham, "America's Robot Army," _New Statesman_ , June 12, 2006, <http://www.newstatesman.com/200606120018>. **127** _**"establish a track record of reliability"**_ Ibid. **127** _**"supervisor who serves"**_ Adams, "Future Warfare and the Decline of Human Decisionmaking," 58. **128** _**"are rapidly taking us to a place"**_ Ibid., 57. **128** _**"humans will always be in"**_ Randall Steeb, _Examining the Army's Future Warrior: Force-on-Force Simulation of Candidate Technologies_ (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2004), 44. **128** _**"Let's design our armed unmanned systems"**_ Stephen Trimble, "DoD Group Seeks to Give Autonomy to Armed Drones," _Jane's Defence Weekly_ , October 11, 2006, 10. **128** _**"Concept for the Operation of Armed Autonomous Systems"**_ Ronald C. Arkin, "Governing Legal Behavior: Embedding Ethics in a Hybrid Deliberative /Reactive Robot Architecture" (Georgia Institute of Technology/U.S. Army Research Office, 2007); John S. Canning, "Concept for the Operation of Armed Autonomous Systems on the Battlefield," Dahlgren Division, Naval Surface Warfare Center, 2008. **128** _**"Unmanned Effects : Taking the Human Out of the Loop"**_ U.S. Joint Forces Command, "Military Robots of the Future" (U.S. Joint Forces Command, 2003). **128** _**"all the lip service paid"**_ Preston Lerner, "Robots Go to War: Within 10 Years, Infantry Soldiers Will Go into Battle with Autonomous Robots Close Behind Them," _Popular Science_ 268, no. 1 (2006). **128** _**"That's exactly the kind"**_ Special forces officer, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, September 7, 2006. **129** _**"There is a lot of fear"**_ Retired air force officer, interview, Peter W. Singer, January 28, 2007. **129** _**"Soon you will just"**_ James Lasswell, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, November 7, 2006. **129** _**"We all joke about it"**_ As quoted in John Barry and Evan Thomas, "Up in the Sky, an Unblinking Eye," _Newsweek_ , June 4, 2008. **129** _**officers describe unmanned systems**_ Elizabeth Bone and Christopher Bolkcom, _Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Background and Issues_ (Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, 2003). **130** _**"Maybe you don't need fighter pilots at all"**_ Noah Shachtman, "Attack of the Drones," _Wired_ 13.06 (2005), <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.06/drones.html> **130** _**Wilkerson is not some groundpounder**_ Ibid. **130** _**"We clearly see an evolution"**_ Bob Quinn, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 17, 2006. **130** _**Special forces roles were felt**_ Robert Finkelstein and James Albus, "Technology Assessment of Autonomous Intelligent Bipedal and Other Legged Robots" (DARPA, 2004). **130** _**"As technology advances"**_ Ibid. **130** _**"**_ **2035** _**[that] we will have robots"**_ Ibid. **131** _**"Common sense is not a simple thing"**_ Ray Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology_ (New York: Viking, 2005), 177. **131** _**our "emotional intelligence"**_ Ibid., 191. **131** _**Rod Brooks of MIT and iRobot predicts**_ Rodney Brooks, _Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us_ (New York: Pantheon, 2002), 22. **131** _**"My job will be eliminated"**_ As quoted by David Bruemmer, "Intelligent Autonomy for Unmanned Vehicles," paper presented at the Military Robotics Conference, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, Washington, DC, April 10-12, 2006. **131** _**"Asking whether robots"**_ Rodney Brooks, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, October 30, 2006. **132** _**Haile, a robot musician**_ Gil Weinberg and Scott Driscoll, "Haile," 2006 (cited July 7, 2007); available at <http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/~gilwein/Haile.htm> **132** _**understand and interact with human musicians**_ Matthew Abshire, "Musical Robot Composes, Performs and Teaches," CNN.com, October 3, 2006 (cited October 3 2006); available at <http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/10/03/musical.robot/index.html> **132** _**"I firmly believe"**_ H. R. Everett, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 20, 2006. **132** _**"The challenge is to create a system"**_ Nick Turse, "Baghdad 2025: The Pentagon Solution to a Planet of Slums," TomDispatch.com, January 7, 2007, http//www.tomdispatch.com/post/155031 /nickturse_pentagon_to_global_cities_drop_dead **133** _**the soldier would call the "play"**_ Susan R. Flaherty et al., "Playbook® Control of Multiple Heterogeneous Weaponized UAVs," paper presented at the Unmanned Systems North America, AUVSI's 34th Annual Symposium and Exhibition, Washington, DC, August 6-9, 2007. **133** _**"Just see it and shoot it is not the future"**_ Thomas McKenna, interview, Peter W. Singer, Arlington Office of Naval Research, December 12, 2006. **133** _**"The robot will do what robots do best"**_ Ibid. **133** _**"human and robot roles will evolve"**_ Bruemmer, "Intelligent Autonomy for Unmanned Vehicles." **133** _**The military, then, doesn't expect**_ U.S. Joint Forces Command, "Military Robots of the Future." See also "Automated Killer Robots 'Threat to Humanity': expert," Agence France-Presse, February 26, 2008. **133** _**"I believe we should think"**_ Finkelstein and Albus, "Technology Assessment of Autonomous Intelligent Bipedal and Other Legged Robots," 182. **133** _**"The next war could be fought"**_ Lee Dye, "New Vehicles Will Make Own Decisions Based on Commands," ABC News, November 17, 2004 (cited July 18, 2006); available at <http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/about/contact-us.cfm> **133** _**WT-6 is a robot in Japan**_ Eric Mika, "This Modern Robot," _Popular Science_ 269, no. 3 (2006): 66. **134** _**"trust is a huge issue"**_ Bruemmer, "Intelligent Autonomy for Unmanned Vehicles." # 7. ROBOTIC GODS: OUR MACHINE CREATORS **135** _**"You have to remember"**_ Daniel Wilson, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 19, 2006. **135** _**"Each year some forty-two thousand people"**_ Sebastian Thrun, interview, Peter W. Singer, March 18, 2007. **135** _**The Grand Challenge is a robotics road race**_ DARPA, "Grand Challenge 2004 Final Report," 2004 (cited May 4 2006); available at http://www.darpa.mil/body/NewsItems/pdf/DGCreport30July2004.pdf+% 22grand+challenge+2004% 22 +final+report+to+Congress & hl= en& gl=us &ct= clnk&cd=1; DARPA, "Grand Challenge 2004 Rules," 2004 (cited May 4, 2006); available at <http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge05/Rules_8oct04.pdf>; Anthony J. Tether, "Grand Challenge 2004 Briefing," 2005 (cited May 4, 2006); available at <http://www.darpa.mil/body/pdf/Courtyard_Event_Briefing12_05_05.pdf>; Lee Gomes, "Team of Amateurs Cuts Ahead of Experts in Computer-Car Race," _Wall Street Journal_ , October 19, 2005. **136** _**"it's an endurance race"** Warbots_, produced by Dan Saxton Company, History Channel, broadcast on August 8, 2006. **136** _**"the first Grand Challenge came off "**_ Preston Lerner, "Robots Go to War: Within 10 Years, Infantry Soldiers Will Go into Battle with Autonomous Robots Close Behind Them," _Popular Science_ 268, no. 1 (2006). **137** _**as much as $100 million in investment**_ Tether, "Grand Challenge 2004 Briefing"; Gomes, "Team of Amateurs Cuts Ahead of Experts in Computer-Car Race." **137** _**"the best part of the Grand Challenge"**_ Business executive, interview at the Military Robotics Conference in Washington, DC, Peter W. Singer, April 20, 2006. **137** _**"We trained Stanley"**_ Sebastian Thrun, interview, Peter W. Singer, March 18, 2007. **137** _**"We all won"**_ Sebastian Thrun, as quoted in Elizabeth Corcoran, "Data Driver," _Forbes_ 178, no. 4 (2006): 102. **137** _**one of the ten best and brightest minds**_ Rena Marie Pacella, "DARPA Grand Challenge—Sebastian Thrun," _Popular Science_ , October 2005 (cited May 4, 2006); available at <http://www.popsci.com/popsci/darpachallenge/5a6450f8d22d6010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html> **138** _**Stanley was declared the number one robot**_ Robert Capps, "The 50 Best Robots Ever," _Wired_ 14.01 (2006), http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.01/robots.html?pg=2&topic=robots&topic_set= **138** _**research usually takes place**_ Daniel Richard O'Brien, "Area 51," 2003 (cited May 4 2006); available at <http://www.area51show.co.uk/index.htm> **139** _**"too many rules specifications"**_ Brian Miller, interview at the Military Robotics Conference in Washington, DC, Peter W. Singer, April 10-12, 2006. **139** _**"Hands down, robots"**_ Daniel H. Wilson, "About the Author," 2005 (cited August 30, 2006); available at <http://www.robotuprising.com/qanda.htm> **139** _**"When you are deciding"**_ Daniel Wilson, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 19, 2006. **139** _**"it left [me] with an empty feeling"**_ Colin Angle, as quoted in David Whelan, "Fights Wars, Lint," _Forbes_ 178, no. 4 (2006). **139** _**"Nothing could make it so clear"**_ Colin Angle, as quoted in Mike Miliard, "Deus Ex Machina," _Boston Phoenix_ , February 18-24, 2005, <http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/other_stories/multi_3/documents/04475119.asp> **139** _**"We always knew we would change"**_ Helen Greiner, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 16, 2006. **139** _**"GIT Rockin': Government IT Rocks, Do You?"**_ "GIT Rockin': Government IT Rocks, Do You?" 2006 (cited May 4, 2006); available at www.gitrockin.com **140** _**"featured talent from Juniper Networks"** Federal Computer Week_, "Special Report: GIT Rockin'," 2006 (cited June 8, 2007); available at <http://www.fcw.com/gitrockin/> **140** _**"Folks from around"**_ Ibid. **140** _**up to a third of major university research faculty**_ Jonathan Moreno, "Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense," presentation at the Center for American Progress, Washington, DC, December 7, 2006. **140** _**"accelerate the future into being"**_ Joel Garreau, _Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—And What It Means to Be Human_ (New York: Doubleday, 2005), 24. **140** _**And now it's focusing on robots**_ Ibid., 22 _._ **141** _**"who work at the forefront of"**_ Joel Garreau, "Perfecting the Human," May 30, 2005 (cited April 4, 2007); available at <http://mindfully.org/Technology/2005/Perfecting-The-Human30may05.htm> **141** _**"By the time a technology"**_ Ibid. **141** _**"it takes risks"**_ Sebastian Thrun, interview, Peter W. Singer, March 18, 2007. **141** _**It is supposed to be a secret location**_ Marc Fisher, "Secret Buildings You May Not Photograph, Part 643," Washingtonpost.com, July 18, 2007, http://blog washingtonpost.com/rawfisher/2007/07/secret_buildings_you_may_not_p.html **141** _**"challenges verging on the impossible"**_ Steven Wax, as quoted in Garreau, _Perfecting the Human_. **141** _**the "Frankensteins in the Pentagon"**_ Cheryl Seal, "Frankensteins in the Pentagon: DARPA's Creepy Bioengineering Program," _Information Clearing House_ , August 25, 2003, <http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4572.htm> **141** _**"a mind-numbing mix"**_ Defense industry expert, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, September 28, 2006. **141** _**"real madmen"**_ Ibid. **142** _**"I spend an inordinate amount of time"**_ As quoted in Noah Shachtman, "Senate vs. Darpa," Defensetech.org, July 21, 2006 (cited July 21, 2006); available at <http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002599.html>. **142** _**"I have had everyone complain"**_ Ibid. **142** _**development of such varied programs**_ Robert Kavetsky and Christopher J. R. McCook, "The Technological Perfect Storm," _Proceedings,_ October 2006. **142** _**"ideas that literally changed the world"**_ Michael T. Isenberg, _Shield of the Republic: The United States Navy in an Era of Cold War and Violent Peace_ , 1st ed. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993). **143** _**"I was supporting some one hundred top graduate students"**_ Thomas McKenna, Arlington Office of Naval Research, interview, Peter W. Singer, December 12, 2006. **143** _**"sometimes I just find them on the Web"**_ Ibid. **143** _**"an idea and technology hummingbird"**_ Interview with NSA official, Peter W. Singer, Arlington- Crystal City, VA, February 29, 2008. **144** _**The mud battery would refuel**_ Bijal P. Trivedi, "Mud Batteries: Power Cells of the Future?" _National Geographic Today_ , May 20, 2004, <http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache>:F6_mV5yUpDkJ:news.national geographic.com/news/2002/01/0122_020122_tvmudbatteries.html+mud+battery&hl= en&gl= us&ct=clnk&cd= 8. **144** _**"You basically beat the snot"**_ Andrew Bennett, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 16, 2006. **145** _**It took eleven days for the labs**_ Dale G. Uhler, "Technology: Force Multiplier for Special Operations," _Joint Force Quarterly_ , no. 40 (2006). **145** _**"Saving Ryan's Privates"**_ Michael Garrett, "Saving Ryan's Privates: New 'Armored' Shorts Protect Precious Arteries," Military.com, 2005 (cited September 13, 2006); available at http://www.military.com/soldiertech/0,14632,Soldiertech_Kevlar,,00 html?ESRC =soldiertech.nl . **145** _**"When your butt's on the line"**_ Ibid. **145** _**"Any one who wants to play"**_ David Bruemmer, "Intelligent Autonomy for Unmanned Vehicles," paper presented at the Military Robotics Conference, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, Washington, DC, April 10-12, 2006. **146** _**"my obsession with robots"**_ H. R. Everett, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 20, 2006. **146** _**number sixteen on**_ **Wired** _**magazine's list**_ Capps, "The 50 Best Robots Ever." **147** _**the ultimate opportunity for customer feedback**_ Daniel Wilson, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 19, 2006. **147** _**"Heat and computers don't mix well"**_ Noncommissioned officer, interview at the Military Robotics Conference in Washington, DC, Peter W. Singer, April 10-12, 2006. **147** _**"Make it work"**_ Army specialist Jacob Chapman, interview at the Military Robotics conference in Washington, DC, Peter W. Singer, April 10-12, 2006. **148** _**"We're going to take"**_ Tom Ryden, interview at the Military Robotics Conference, in Washington, DC, Peter W. Singer, April 10-12, 2006. **148** _**"sometimes we get phone calls"**_ Mark Barber, "Force Protection Robotics," paper presented at the Military Robotics Conference, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, Washington, DC, April 10-12, 2006. **148** _**"The scientist did not need"**_ George Friedman and Meredith Friedman, _The Future of War: Power, Technology, and American World Dominance in the Twenty-first Century_ , 1st ed. (New York: Crown, 1996), 43. **148** _**"There are tons of guys"**_ Military analyst, e-mail, Peter W. Singer, June 12, 2007. **148** _**"Our robots have logistic information"**_ Jim Rymarcsuk, interview with Ralph Wipfli, Washington, DC, October 20, 2006. **149** _**went through some thirty-five different changes**_ Byron Brezina, interview at the Military Robotics Conference, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, April 10-12, 2006. **149** _**a request for "warranty repair"**_ John Dyer, "Robotics in Urban Warfare," paper presented at the Military Robotics Conference, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, Washington, DC, April 10-12, 2006. # 8. WHAT INSPIRES THEM: SCIENCE FICTION'S IMPACT ON SCIENCE REALITY **150** _**"You can never tell"**_ Donna Shirley, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, October 2, 2006. **150** _**"ridiculous . . . monstrosity"**_ Klosterman, _Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto_ (New York: Scribner, 2003), 220. **151** _**"like admitting that you masturbate"**_ Ibid., 149. **151** _**the navy's "Professional Reading" program**_ Admiral Mike Mullen, "The Means of Knowledge: The Navy's New Professional Reading Program," _Proceedings_ 132, no. 10 (2006): 22-23. **152** _**Museum director Donna Shirley**_ Donna Shirley, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 2, 2006. See also Science Fiction Museum, "Donna Shirley Named Director of Science Fiction Museum," February 11, 2004 (cited October 16, 2006); available at <http://www.sfhomeworld.org/press_room/donnashirley.pdf> **152** _**"Although the guys in my classes"**_ Sally Richards, "Managing Martians: Donna Shirley, WITI Hall of Fame Inductee, Talks About Generating Creativity and Accomplishing Goals in the Workplace," _Women in Technology International,_ 1989-2000 (cited July 7, 2007); available at <http://www.witi.com/wire/feature/dshirley.shtml> **152** _**"Not only were these events"**_ "Donna Shirley: Managing Martians," _Managing Creativity_ (cited October 16, 2006); available at <http://managingcreativity.com/> **152** _**"but their heroes were always"**_ Donna Shirley, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 2, 2006. **152** _**"educate people about science fiction"**_ Ibid. **153** _**"The technology is not the interesting part"**_ Ibid. **153** _**"the political and legal ramifications"**_ "Science Fiction," _Brainy Encyclopedia,_ 2006 (cited August 21, 2006); available at <http://www.brainyencyclopedia.com/encyclopedia/s/sc/science%5ffiction.html> **153** _**science fiction is more about**_ Harry Turtledove and Martin Harry Greenberg, eds., _The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century_ , 1st ed. (New York: Ballantine, 2001). **153** _**"remade and rereleased every time"**_ Donna Shirley, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 2, 2006. **153** _**"Women writers tend to write"**_ Ibid. **153** _**"in the hands of our depraved society"**_ Ibid. **153** _**"I thought**_ **Ender's Game** _ **"**_ Orson Scott Card, interview by e-mail, Peter W. Singer, January 24, 2007. **154** _**"Soldiers feel like**_ **Ender's Game** _ **"**_ Ibid. **155** _**"The real question"**_ Ibid. **155** _**"The conflict is obvious [in war]"**_ Robin Wayne Bailey, interview, Peter W. Singer, September 27, 2006. **155** _**"Fiction is about character"**_ Turtledove and Greenberg, eds., _The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century_ , viii. **156** _**"It only seems fitting"**_ Heinlein Centennial Inc., "The U.S.S. Robert A. Heinlein Campaign," Open Letter: The U.S.S. Robert A. Heinlein Campaign, Secretary of the Navy Donald C. Winter. **156** _**"the Father of Science Fiction"**_ Adam Roberts, _The History of Science Fiction_ (New York: Routledge, 2000), 48. **157** _**called Wells's idea "moonshine"**_ Richard Rhodes, _The Making of the Atomic Bomb_ (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986). **157** _**"The forecast of the writers"**_ Leó Szilárd, "Letter to Hugo Hirst on Forecast of Discoveries in Physics," Project of Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, 1934 (cited July 7, 2007); available at <http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/library/correspondence/szilard-leo/corr_szilard_1934-03-17.htm> **157** _**"the Man Who Invented Tomorrow"**_ Peggy Teeters, _Jules Verne: The Man Who Invented Tomorrow_ (New York: Walker and Company, 1993). **158** _**George is just a run-of-the-mill database administrator**_CNN.com, "From Sci-Fi to Reality," August 1, 2006. **158** _**"I think there is a world market"**_ David Hambling, _Weapons Grade: How Modern Warfare Gave Birth to Our High-Tech World_ (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2005), 153. **158** _**"We don't do well, historically"**_ Joseph J. Collins, "From the Ground Up," _Armed Forces Journal,_ October 2006, 47. **158** _**"no nation would permit it"**_ Tom Reiss, "Imagining the Worst," _New Yorker_ 81, no. 38 (2005): 112. **159** _**"Our advances in technical intelligence"**_ Collins, "From the Ground Up," 47. **159** _**"Science fiction is not making predictions"**_ Robert Epstein, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, October 25, 2006. **159** _**"Science fiction at its best is about ideas"**_ Robin Wayne Bailey, interview, Peter W. Singer, September 27, 2006. **159** _**"Science fiction did not predict"**_ Donna Shirley, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 2, 2006. **159** _**"Science fiction is unreliable"**_ Ray Kurzweil, interview via telephone, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, December 7, 2006. **160** _**"'I told you so"**_ Orson Scott Card, interview via e-mail, Peter W. Singer, January 24, 2007. **160** _**"It's the near future"**_ Greg Bear, _Quantico_ (London: Harper Collins UK, 2005). **160** _**"I mean, how many science fiction books"**_ David Sonntag, interview via e-mail, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, November 28, 2006. **160** _**"think tank of patriotic science fiction"**_ Grant Slater, "Futuristic Writers Offer Ideas to Fight Terrorism," _St. Louis Post-Dispatch_ , May 25, 2007. **160** _**"If you don't read science fiction"**_ Ibid. **161** _**"I say there are bad people"**_ Jay Cohen, as quoted in Slater, "Futuristic Writers Offer Ideas to Fight Terrorism." **161** _**"If you lead the life"**_ Greg Bear, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 4, 2006. **161** _**"Harry Truman loved science fiction"**_ Ibid. **161** _**"They seem to be more like FDR"**_ Ibid. **161** _**"How William Shatner Changed the World"**_ Julian Jones, director, _How William Shatner Changed the World,_ produced by the History Channel, broadcast on October 21, 2006. **161** _**"All this wiz-bangering"**_ Ibid. **162** _**drink a "Commander Riker-Rita"**_ "Star Trek: The Experience" (cited July 7, 2007); available at http:// www.startrekexp.com/ **162** _**fan base is 250 million Trekkies strong**_ Sue Kovach Shuman, "Set Phasers on Stun: Fans Beaming Up for Special Events as 'Star Trek' Turns 40," _San Francisco Chronicle_ , August 20, 2006, <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/20/TRGPAKJDBK1.DTL> **162** _**the origin of the transporter** How William Shatner Changed the World_. **162** _**"There's Captain Kirk"**_ Ibid. **162** _**"In Silicon Valley, everyone's a**_ **Star Trek** _**fan"**_ Ibid. **163** _**Perlman is working**_ Ibid. **163** _**an anthology of short stories**_ Turtledove and Greenberg, eds., _The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century_. **163** _**These range from exoskeleton suits**_ Such systems actually became a point of political debate in the Iraq war, as the Pentagon delayed developing and deploying such systems, despite their potential for protecting vehicles from ambush. **163** _**"We wanted ground mobility"**_ James Lasswell, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, November 7, 2006. **163** _**"We got the idea from**_ **Dick Tracy** _ **"**_ Ibid. The Israelis have a similar device they call V-Rambo. See Associated Press, "Israeli Army Wrist Video," _Wired News_ , March 6, 2005; <http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,66807-0.html> **163** _**"But now we are finding"**_ Andrew Bennett, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 16, 2006. **164** _**"People like Isaac Asimov"**_ Mihail C. Roco and William Sims Bainbridge, "Converging Technologies for Improving Human Health: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science" (National Science Foundation, 2002). **164** _**"We picked the PHaSR name"**_ United Press International, "Military Develops a Star Trek-like Phaser," Physorg.com, 2005 (cited August 13, 2006); available at <http://www.physorg.com/news8641.html> **164** _**"The popularity of robots in fiction"**_ Bill Gates, "A Robot in Every Home," ScientificAmerican.com, December 16, 2006 (cited December 17, 2006); available at <http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-robot-in-every-home.> **164** _**"It's a way to make possibilities"**_ Developer, interview at the Military Robotics Conference, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, April 10-12, 2006. **164** _**"Naval customers just assume"**_ Thomas McKenna, interview, Peter W. Singer, Arlington Office of Naval Research, December 12, 2006. **164** _**"You have to beg for money"**_ Steven Metz, interview, Peter W. Singer, September 19, 2006. **165** _**"Any sufficiently advanced technology"**_ Arthur Charles Clarke, _Profiles of the Future_ , rev. ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 21. **165** _**a magic box that killed almost a thousand spear-armed warriors**_ John Ellis, _The Social History of the Machine Gun_ , Johns Hopkins paperback ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 89. **165** _**what analysts call "Future Shock"**_ Alvin Toffler, _Future Shock_ (New York: Random House, 1970). **165** _**"Thereseemsastrongtendency"**_ TimothyHornyak, as quoted in Mark Jacob, "Japan's Robots Stride into Future," _Chicago Tribune_ , July 15, 2006, 7. **166** _**"stems from the fact that doomsday scenarios"**_ H. R. Everett, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 20, 2006. **166** _**"To be realistic, it's going to be"**_ Andrew Bridges, "Scientists Aim to Duplicate Harry Potter's Invisibility Cloak," LiveScience.com, May 25, 2006 (cited May 25, 2006); available at <http://www.livescience.com/scienceoffiction/060525_invisible_cloak.html> **166** _**"And I have no idea"**_ Rod Brooks, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 30, 2006. **167** _**"So, it is easy to use machines"**_ Jacob, "Japan's Robots Stride into Future." **167** _**robots are given Shinto rites**_ Timothy N. Hornyak, _Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots_ , 1st ed. (Tokyo; New York: Kodansha International, 2006). **167** _**"If you make something"**_ Jacob, "Japan's Robots Stride into Future." **168** _**"too artificial and icky"**_ Rod Brooks, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 30, 2006. **168** _**his lab has more collaboration with Asian companies**_ Sebastian Thrun, interview, Peter W. Singer, March 18, 2007. **168** _**"nearly 100%" accuracy**_ Gregory M. Lamb, "Battle of the Bot: The Future of War?" _Christian Science Monitor_ , July 27, 2005, <http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0127/p14s02-stct.html> **168** _**"also has a speaker that beckons"**_ Louis Ramirez, "Robotic Sentry Shoots and Laughs at You," Gizmodo. com, November 3, 2006 (cited November 3, 2006); available at <http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/tag/robotic-sentry-shoots-and-laughs-at-you-212241.php> **168** _**The footage of a real-world automated machine gun**_ Autonomous Sentry Gun video available at <http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xg078_robot-sentinella> **168** _**"There's definitely a feedback"**_ Science Fiction Museum, "Donna Shirley Named Director of Science Fiction Museum." **169** _**"The military is doing a fine job"**_ Robin Wayne Bailey, interview, Peter W. Singer, September 27, 2006. **169** _**"The idea of trying to hit a bullet"**_ Donna Shirley, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 2, 2006. **169** _**It not only predicts and influences the future**_ Bailey, interview, September 27, 2006. **169** _**"Science fiction says 'what if?' "**_ Shirley, interview, October 2, 2006. # 9. THE REFUSENIKS: THE ROBOTICISTS WHO JUST SAY NO **170** _**learned to say, "No, thank you"**_ Illah Nourbakhsh, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, October 31, 2006. **172** _**"They said, 'Here's some thousands of dollars' "**_ Eric Baard, "Make Robots, Not War," _Village Voice_ 48, no. 37 (2003). Note: Potter declined an interview. **172** _**"astonishing robotic creations"**_ Ibid. **172** _**His dad worked on projects**_ Ibid. **172** _**"However, there is a slippery slope"**_ Ibid. **173** _**a work stoppage by key scientists**_ George Friedman and Meredeth Friedman, _The Future of War: Power, Technology, and American World Dominance in the Twenty-first Century_ (New York: Crown, 1996), 45-49. **174** _**"It is, in some ways, responsible"**_ Bill Joy, "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us," in _Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix_ , ed. Glenn Yeffeth and David Gerrold (Chicago: BenBella Books, 2003), 219. **174** _**"The experiences of the atomic scientists"**_ Ibid., 221. **174** _**"a very touchy subject"**_ Illah Nourbakhsh, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 31, 2006. **174** _**"I stay out of politics"**_ Brian Miller, interview, Peter W. Singer, April 10, 2006. **174** _**"He didn't do it thinking"**_ Sebastian Thrun, interview, Peter W. Singer, March 18, 2007. **174** _**"What you don't get"**_ Joel Garreau, _Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—And What It Means to Be Human_ (New York: Doubleday, 2005), 43. **175** _**"For 364 days out of the year"**_ Daniel Wilson, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 19, 2006. **175** _**"That 's above my pay grade"**_ As quoted in Garreau, _Radical Evolution_ , 43. **175** _**"You can't let the fear of the future"**_ Ibid. **175** _**"I would probably put myself"**_ Eric Smalley, "Georgia Tech's Ronald Arkin," 2005, http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2005 /091205 /View_Ronald_Arkin_091205.html **175** _**"I don't think"**_ Baard, "Make Robots, Not War." **176** _**"Technology has begun to outstrip"**_ Paul Evans, "Dividing Lines," _UVA Alumni News_ , Winter 2005, 21. # 10. THE BIG CEBROWSKI AND THE REAL RMA: THINKING ABOUT REVOLUTIONARY TECHNOLOGIES **179** _**"Guns and violence have the potential"**_ Pete Hegseth, "Lessons from a War," _Princeton Alumni Weekly_ , November 7, 2007. **179** _**"Here at the end of a millennium"**_ Arthur K. Cebrowski and John J. Garstka, "Network-Centric Warfare: Its Origin and Future," _United States Naval Institute Proceedings_ 124, no. 1 (1998): 28. **179** _**"a nervous energy and maverick streak"**_ Clay Risen, "War-Mart: So Long, Clausewitz. Hello, Tom Peters," _New Republic_ , April 3, 2006, 20. **180** _**"baby-sit the petri dish"**_ Adam Bernstein, "Adm. Arthur Cebrowski Dies; Led Pentagon Think Tank," _Washington Post_ , November 15, 2005, B6. **180** _**"For nearly 200 years"**_ Cebrowski and Garstka, "Network-Centric Warfare." **181** _**"A Sudden Tempest Which Turns Everything Upside Down"**_ Francesco Guicciardini, as quoted in Max Boot, _War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today_ (New York: Gotham Books, 2006), 6. **181** _**revolutionized by the world of online file sharing**_ Rodney Brooks, _Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us_ (New York: Pantheon, 2002), 100. **182** _**"must prepare to abandon everything"**_ David Rejeski, "The Next Small Thing," _The Environmental Forum_ , March/April 2004. **182** _**at least ten revolutions in military affairs since 1300**_ Andrew F. Krepinevich, "Cavalry to Computer: The Pattern of Military Revolutions," _National Interest_ , no. 37 (1994). **182** _**"a sudden tempest"**_ Francesco Guicciardini, as quoted in Max Boot, _War Made New_ , 6. **182** _**"when the first early man"**_ Ralph Peters, _Wars of Blood and Faith: The Conflicts That Will Shape the Twenty-first Century_ , 1st ed. (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2007), 29. **182** _**"How do you become a winner"**_ Boot, _War Made New._ **183** " _ **Imagine for a moment"**_ Murray Scott, "Battle Command, Decision Making, and the Battlefield Panopticon," _Military Review_ , July-August 2002, 46. **183** _**"the military equivalent of a duck-billed platypus"**_ Boot, _War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today_ , 175. **184** _**That doesn't mean that industrialization**_ Ray Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology_ (New York: Viking, 2005), 95. **184** _**"dramatically increase force effectiveness"**_ David Albert and John J. Garstka, "Network-Centric Warfare. Report to Congress" (Department of Defense, 2001). **184** _**The side that was networked**_ Frederick W. Kagan, "The U.S. Military's Manpower Crisis," _Foreign Affairs_ 85, no. 4 (2006). **185** _**"a move away from platforms to networks"**_ Timothy L. Thomas, "Chinese and American Network Warfare," _Joint Force Quarterly_ , no. 38 (2005). **185** _**"Everything in war is very simple"**_ Carl von Clausewitz, Michael Eliot Howard, and Peter Paret, _On War_ (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 119. **185** _**with "near-perfect clarity"**_ Michael J. Mazarr, Jeffrey Shaffer, and Benjamin Ederington, "The Military Technical Revolution: A Structural Framework" (Washington DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1993), 38. **185** _**"result in a quantum leap"**_ William A. Owens and Edward Offley, _Lifting the Fog of War_ , 1st ed. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000). **185** _**"technological innovation"**_ MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray, _The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300-2050_ (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 178-79. **185** _**it would inevitably be "a winning force"**_ Michael E. O'Hanlon, _Technological Change and the Future of Warfare_ (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2000), 8. **185** _**"The U.S. is the only nation"**_ Stephen J. Cimbala, "Transformation in Concept and Policy," _Joint Force Quarterly_ , no. 38 (2005). **186** _**"The IT-RMA was pitched"**_ Richard Bitzinger, "Is the Revolution in Military Affairs Dead?" _Defense News_ , October 23, 2006. **186** _**"a revolution in the technology of war"**_ Ian Roxborough, "From Revolution to Transformation: The State of the Field," _Joint Force Quarterly_ , no. 32 (2002). **186** _**"Bush was (and remains) a firm believer"**_ Kagan, "The U.S. Military's Manpower Crisis," 98. **186** _**a mantra among the "Vulcans"**_ Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, _Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq_ , 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon, 2006), 5. **186** _**"harness the technological advances"**_ Max Boot, "The New American Way of War," _Foreign Affairs_ 82, no. 4 (2003): 42. **186** _**"They accepted the presumptions"**_ Frank Hoffman, "Challenging the Technocrats," _Armed Forces Journal_ , January 2007, 33. **187** _**"speed and agility and precision"**_ Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense, interview at WAPI-AM Radio, Birmingham, AL, Richard Dixon, September 28, 2004. **187** _**"If 'Rummy' was the president's high priest"**_ Scott Truver, review of James Blaker, _Transforming Military Force: The Legacy of Arthur Cebrowski and Network Centric Warfare_ , _Proceedings_ , January 2008, 75. **187** _**"In this position, he was responsible"**_ "Arthur K. Cebrowski," Wikipedia, September 20, 2007 (cited November 1, 2007); available at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_K._Cebrowski> **188** _**"Iraq, in turn, was set up"**_ Boot, "The New American Way of War," citation 44. **188** _**"at a cost of 'only' 27,000 dead soldiers"**_ Ibid. **188** _**"central to American military dominance"**_ Max Boot, "The Paradox of Military Technology," _New Atlantis_ , no. 14 (2006); http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/14 /boot.htm **189** _**"No one is shooting"**_ Loren Thompson, "Dot-Com Mania," _Defense News_ , October 28, 2002, 12. **189** _**"Theories and business models"**_ Hoffman, "Challenging the Technocrats," 32. **189** _**"We will never operate"**_ Ralph Peters, "Progress and Peril," _Armed Forces Journal,_ February 2007, 35. **189** _**"We kind of lost track"**_ Gordon and Trainor, _Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq_ , 300. **190** _**"When do we get red force trackers?"**_ Ibid. **190** _**"What I discovered"**_ Joshua Davis, "If We Run Out of Batteries, This War Is Screwed," _Wired_ 11.06 (2003); <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.06/battlefield.html> **190** _**"if we run out of batteries"**_ Ibid. **190** _**"Major combat missions during Gulf War II"**_ Noah Shachtman, "Battery Lack Almost Pulled Plug on Iraq War," Defensetech.org, September 3, 2003 (cited November 29, 2005); available at <http://www.defensetech.org/archives/000555.html> **191** _**"there is probably no conflict"**_ Milan Vego, "The NCW Illusion," _Armed Forces Journal_ , January 2007, 17. **191** _**they debated back and forth**_ R. Mike Worden, "Rethinking the U.S. Military Revolution," presentation at the Stanley Foundation Conference on Leveraging US Strength in an Uncertain World, Washington, DC, December 7, 2006. **192** _**"Sir, the PackBot"**_ John Dyer, _Robots in Urban Warfare: The Evolving Threat Requires an Innovative, Flexible, and Persistent Response_ , 2006. PowerPoint presentation. **192** _**"I believe that we are the pioneers"**_ Robert Finkelstein and James Albus, "Technology Assessment of Autonomous Intelligent Bipedal and Other Legged Robots" (DARPA, 2004), 230. **192** _**"nascent stage, set to burst"**_ Brooks, _Flesh and Machines,_ 10-11. **192** _**"tsunami that will toss our lives"**_ Ibid., 6. **192** _**I found it repeated**_ See for example Martin van Creveld, "War and Technology," _Footnotes: The Newsletter of FPRI's Marvin Wachman Fund for International Education_ , 12, no. 25 (2007), <http://www.fpri.org/footnotes/1225.200710.vancreveldwartechnology.html>; Williamson Murray, "War and the West," _Footnotes: The Newsletter of FPRI's Marvin Wachman Fund for International Education_ , 12, no. 26 (2007), <http://www.fpri.org/footnotes/1226.200711.murray.warwest.html>. **192** _**"in something like the position"**_ Thomas K. Adams, "Future Warfare and the Decline of Human Decisionmaking," _Parameters_ 31, no. 4 (2001): 57. **193** _**"It is always hard to see"**_ Bill Joy, "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us," in _Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix_ , ed. Glenn Yeffeth and David Gerrold (Chicago: BenBella Books, 2003), 209. **193** _**While he was a huge supporter**_ Douglas McGray, "The Marshall Plan," _Wired_ 11.02 (2003), <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/marshall.html> **193** _**"There is a tendency to talk"**_ As quoted in Richard O. Hundley et al., _Past Revolutions, Future Transformations: What Can the History of Revolutions in Military Affairs Tell Us About Transforming the U.S. Military?_ (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1999). **193** _**"Historians will see the last decade"**_ Steven Metz, _Armed Conflict in the 21st Century: The Information Revolution and Post-modern Warfare_ (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2000), 93. **194** _**"First, you had human beings without machines,"**_ John Pike, as quoted in Fred Reed, "Robotic Warfare Drawing Nearer," _Washington Times_ , February 10, 2005. **194** _**"We now stand on the cusp"**_ Christopher Coker, _Waging War Without Warriors? The Changing Culture of Military Conflict_ , IISS Studies in International Security (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002), 171. **194** _**"a very different age"**_ George Friedman and Meredith Friedman, _The Future of War: Power, Technology, and American World Dominance in the Twenty-first Century_ , 1st ed. (New York: Crown, 1996), xi. **195** _**"The robot kept operating"**_ Tim Kiska, "Robot Firm Liable in Death," _Oregonian_ , August 11, 1983. **195** _**"to be murdered by a robot"**_ Mel Croucher, "Killer Computers," _Crash_ , no. 56 (1988), <http://www.crashonline.org.uk/56/monitor.htm> **195** _**"attacked by a humanoid robot"**_ "Trust Me, I'm a Robot," _Economist_ 379, no. 8481 (2006); <http://tmsuk.co.jp/artemis>; "Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Attacked by Humanoid Robot," in our media.org (2005). **195** _**"Robots are very complex"**_ Daniel Wilson, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 19, 2006. **196** _**"anything that can go wrong, will"**_ "Edward A. Murphy, Jr." Wikipedia (cited February 8, 2008), <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Edward_A._MurphyJr>, **196** _**His response: "No."**_ Francis Harvey, private presentation, Brookings Institution, December 15, 2005. **196** _**"There was nowhere to hide"**_ Graeme Hosken, Michael Schmidt, and Johan du Plessis, "9 Killed in Army Horror," _The Star_ , October 13, 2007, http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=13& set_id=1&art_id=vn20071013080449804C939465 . **196** _**a "software glitch"**_ Leon Engelbrecht, "Did Software Kill Soldiers," ITWeb.com, October 16, 2007 (cited December 5, 2007); available at http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/business/2007/0710161034.asp?S=IT%20in%20Defence&A=DFN&O=FRGN **197** _**At its first demonstration**_ David Hambling, _Weapons Grade: How Modern Warfare Gave Birth to Our High-Tech World_ (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2005), 314. **197** _**the system "detected" a launch**_ Croucher, "Killer Computers." **197** _**The U.S. Strategic Command**_ Tom Stockman, "NORAD False Alarm of Soviet Missile Attack November 9 1979," 2006 (cited December 5, 2007); available at <http://www.tomstockman.com/columns/sac.shtml> **197** _**"We've all had problems"**_ Noah Shachtman, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, July 2, 2007. **198** _**"It will drive off the road"**_ Noncommissioned officer, interview at the Military Robotics Conference in Washington, DC, Peter W. Singer, April 10-12, 2006. **198** _**SWORDS doing "a Crazy Ivan"**_ iRobot engineer, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 16, 2006. **198** _**The Marine Corps' Gladiator combat robot**_ Interview at Pentagon, March 31, 2008. **198** _**"pressure to try to pass safety tests"**_ Jonathan Hall, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, August 6-9, 2007. **199** _**sometimes just crash when they fly**_ Ibid. **199** _**"Rainman the robot"**_ Noah Shachtman, "The Baghdad Bomb Squad," _Wired_ 13.11 (2005), <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.11/bomb.html> **199** _**"In football, everything is complicated"**_ Steve Rushin, "Thus Spake Mountaineers," _Sports Illustrated_ , January 22, 2007, 15. **199** _**"The more complex any system becomes"**_ Ralph Peters, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, March 29, 2007. **199** _**"weak and easily jammed"**_ John A. Gentry, "Doomed to Fail: America's Blind Faith in Military Technology," _Parameters_ 32, no. 4, (2002) 91. **199** _**powered by plugging it**_ "Perspectives," _GPS World_ , June 27, 2008, accessed at http://sidt.gpsworld.com/gpssidt/Latest+News/National-Space-Symposium-Day- 3-OCX-and-GPS-III/ ArticleStandard/Article /detail/525875. **200** _**to fry the other side's electricity**_ O'Hanlon, _Technological Change and the Future of Warfare_. **200** _**ongoing work on radio-frequency weapons**_ Ibid., 60. **200** _**"The smarter the weapons"**_ Boot, _War Made New,_ 448. **200** _**radio-frequency weapons, or "e-bombs"**_ Michael Abrams, "The Dawn of the E-Bomb," _IEEE Spectrum_ 40, no. 11 (2003). **200** _**electronic "battles of conviction"**_ Ralph Peters, "The Future of Armored Warfare," _Parameters_ 27, no. 3 (1997): 52. **200** _**Ninety-five percent of its communications**_ Gentry, "Doomed to Fail: America's Blind Faith in Military Technology." **200** _**"vulnerable to robots"**_ Jürgen Altmann and Mark Gubrud, "Anticipating Military Nanotechnology," _IEEE Technology and Society Magazine_ 23, no. 4 (2004): 38. **201** _**"The idea that they can make software unhackable"**_ Ralph Peters, interview, Peter W. Singer, March 29, 2007. **201** _**"The parts are easily available"**_ Humphrey Cheung, "How To: Building a BlueSniper Rifle—Part 1," _Small Net Builder_ , March 8, 2005 (cited December 18, 2006); available at http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless /w ireless-how-to / how_to_bluesniper_pt1. **201** _**"Why is it that every time"**_ Richard Clarke, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, August 8, 2007. **201** _**"six-year-old kid"**_ Robert Young Pelton, "Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror," presentation, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, October 5, 2006. **202** _**"We cannot expect the enemy"**_ Charles J. Dunlap Jr., "21st-Century Land Warfare: Four Dangerous Myths," _Parameters_ 27, no. 3 (1997). **202** _**the "bandwidth battle"**_ Gopal Ratnam, "Bandwidth Battle: Supply Falters as Demand Soars, Forcing U.S. to Manage Info Flow," _Defense News_ , October 9, 2006. **202** _**"During Gulf War I"**_ Harry Raduege, as quoted in Gopal Ratnam, "Bandwidth Battle," 37. **202** _**"For him to deliver"**_ Jeffrey Smith, as quoted in Gopal Ratnam, "Bandwidth Battle," 37. **202** _**"staring at the ground"**_ Lewis Crenshaw, as quoted in Gopal Ratnam, "Bandwidth Battle," 40. **203** _**"hotspots on the battlefield"**_ Steven Boutelle, as quoted in Gopal Ratnam, "Bandwidth Battle," 37. **203** _**"Who's overseeing all this crap?"**_ Air force pilot, interview, Peter W. Singer, September 9, 2006. **203** _**"unleash a hurricane"**_ Metz, _Armed Conflict in the 21st Century,_ xix. **204** _**"Ultimately no one can fully predict"**_ Ibid., 99. # 11. "ADVANCED" WARFARE: HOW WE MIGHT FIGHT WITH ROBOTS **205** _**"Once in a while, everything about the world changes"**_ Chuck Klosterman, "Real Genius," _Esquire_ , July 2004, <http://www.thesongcorporation.com/klosterman-advancement2.htm>: 223. **205** _**the thesis comes not from**_ Ibid. **207** _**"When people think about the future of technology"**_ Robert Bateman, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 27, 2006. **207** _**"Kurzweil, while an interesting technologist"**_ Ibid. **207** _**"The Turing test"**_ Ibid. **207** _**"First and foremost"**_ Ibid. **207** _**"completely bottom up right now"**_ Ibid. **207** _**"leaders not able to think beyond"**_ Ibid. **208** _**"U.S. Army had to rip out the radios"**_ Ibid. **208** _**A doctrine is the central idea**_ J. F. C. Fuller, _The Foundations of the Science of War_ (Fort Leaven-worth, KS: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Press, 1993), 254. **208** _**"outline of how we fight"**_ Clinton J. Ancker III and Michael D. Burke, "Doctrine for Asymmetric Warfare," _Military Review_ 83, no. 4 (2003): 18. **209** _**"prostitution of the air force"**_ Max Boot, _War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today_ (New York: Gotham Books, 2006): 223. **209** _**He set up fifty-seven committees**_ James S. Corum, _The Roots of Blitzkrieg: Hans von Seeckt and German Military Reform_ (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), 37; Murray Williamson, "Armored Warfare: The British, French, and German Experiences," in _Military Innovation in the Interwar Period_ , ed. Murray Williamson and Allan Reed Millett (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996). **210** _**the French alone had more tanks**_ George Friedman and Meredith Friedman, _The Future of War: Power, Technology, and American World Dominance in the Twenty-first Century_ , 1st ed. (New York: Crown, 1996), 124. **210** _**"the Maginot Line of the 21st century**_ " John A. Gentry, "Doomed to Fail: America's Blind Faith in Military Technology," _Parameters_ 32, no. 4 (2002): 88. **210** _**developing a strategy and doctrine**_ Robert Finkelstein and James Albus, "Technology Assessment of Autonomous Intelligent Bipedal and Other Legged Robots" (DARPA, 2004). **210** _**"smacked of attention deficit disorder"**_ Bill Sweetman, "UCAVs Offer Fast Track to Stealth, Long Range, and Carrier Operations," _Jane's International Defence Review_ 40 (2007): 41. **210** _**"There's got to be a better way"**_ Interview at U.S. military facility, February 19, 2008. **211** _**they "lost it somewhere in Iraq"**_ U.S. Army soldier, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, November 2, 2006; "American Drone Discovered in Baghdad Cache," _Danger Room_ , June 20, 2008, <http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/06/insurgents-unma.html> **211** _**"We don't have the strategy"**_ Robert Finkelstein, interview, Peter W. Singer, July 7, 2006. **211** _**"We are just now thinking"**_ Ibid. **211** _**"And it's been a mess for decades"**_ Scientist, interview, Peter W. Singer, July 17, 2006. **211** _**"mainly bottom-up"**_ Noah Shachtman, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, March 25, 2006. **211** _**"They still think of robots"**_ iRobot executive, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 16, 2006. **211** _**"nothing yet on logistics"**_ Foster-Miller executive, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 17, 2006. **211** _**"It started out with people arguing"**_ Scientist, interview, Peter W. Singer, July 17, 2006 **211** _**"in all sorts of offices"**_ Ibid. **212** _**"The Navy has programs"**_ U.S. Joint Forces Command, "Military Robots of the Future" (U.S. Joint Forces Command, 2003). **212** _**"We were defeated by one thing only"**_ Arthur C. Clarke, "Superiority," in _The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century_ , ed. Harry Turtledove and Martin Harry Greenberg (New York: Ballantine, 2001), 129. **212** _**"We now realize"**_ Ibid., 131. **212** _**"How We Lost the High-Tech War"**_ Charles J. Dunlap Jr., "How We Lost the High-Tech War of 2007: A Warning from the Future," _Weekly Standard_ 1, no. 19 (1996); Charles J. Dunlap Jr., "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 1912," _Parameters,_ 12, no. 4 1992. **213** _**"are part of the traditional U.S. military repertoire"**_ Jeffrey Record, "Why the Strong Lose," _Parameters_ 35, no. 4 (2005): 16. **213** _**"During the Cold War"**_ Steven Metz, _Learning from Iraq: Counter-Insurgency in American Strategy_ (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College, 2006), 78. **213** _**not being localized battles of asymmetry**_ Rick Brennan et al., "Future Insurgency Threats" (RAND Corporation, 2005); David Kilcullen, "Countering Global Insurgency," _Journal of Strategic Studies_ 28, no. 4 (2005). **213** _**"in discussing any modernization effort"**_ Ann Roosevelt, "FCS Would Bring Significant Advantages to Future Insurgency-Type Operations, Harvey Says," _Defense Daily_ , January 23, 2007. **213** _**"We continue to focus"**_ Thomas X. Hammes, _The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century_ (St. Paul, MN: Zenith Press, 2004), 3. **213** _**"On the battlefields of the future"**_ Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, _Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America_ (Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, 1999). **213** _**"We have made huge leaps"**_ USAF lieutenant general Lance L. Smith, as quoted in Boot, _War Made New,_ 394. **214** _**"The success of DPhil papers"**_ Tom Baldwin, "Editorial Review: _Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife_ ," Amazon.com (cited December 13, 2007); available at <http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Eat-Soup-Knife-Counterinsurgency/dp/product-description/0226567702>. **214** _**"Defeating an insurgency"**_ John Nagl, "A Better War in Iraq," _Armed Forces Journal_ , August 2006, 23. **214** _**"The use of force is but temporary"**_ Edmund Burke and Andrew Jackson George, _Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America, 1775_ (Boston: D. C. Heath & Co., 1895). **215** _**"When it comes to reorganizing"**_ Frederick W. Kagan, "The U.S. Military's Manpower Crisis," _Foreign Affairs_ 85, no. 4 (2006): 107. **215** _**"more effective than all the high-tech shit"**_ Robert D. Kaplan, _Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground_ (New York: Random House, 2005), 337. **215** _**"Insurgents don't show up"**_ Boot, _War Made New,_ 239. **215** _**"After all the GBUs"**_ Todd Fredericks, "Comments and Discussion: We Have a Serious COIN Shortage," _Proceedings_ 133, no. 7 (2007): 79. **215** _**"I'm bothered by the old canard"**_ Steven Metz, interview, Peter W. Singer, September 19, 2006. **216** _**finally led them to be truly accepted**_ Quote from an Ohio State professor at a presentation by the author on "Wired for War," October 10, 2006. **216** _**" 'UAVs? Yes, give me more!' "**_ Eliot Cohen, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 15, 2006. **216** _**"In March of 2002"**_ Lieutenant General Walter E. Buchanan III, Commander of USAF 9th Air Force and U.S. Central Command Air Forces, during a meeting with the Defense Writers Group on October 27, 2005, in Washington, DC, as quoted in Marc V. Schanz, "A Complex and Changing Air War," _Air Force Magazine_ 89, no. 1 (2006), http:// www.afa.org/magazine /jan2006/0106airwar.asp. **216** _**"It was a Hunter UAV"**_ Nathan Hodge, "Interview with Gen. William Wallace," _Jane's Defence Weekly_ , October 4, 2006, 50. **216** _**"It wasn't too long"**_ Noah Shachtman, "Robo-Planes Log 250,000 Flight Hours This Year," _Danger Room_ , December 17, 2007, http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/12 /uav-conference.html **216** _**more than seven hundred Hunters**_ Lolita C. Baldor, "Military Use of Unmanned Aircraft Soars," _Google News_ , January 1, 2008, <http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i_7otabxw8XLB8yCGhhlMhX7Vs7QD8TTEH400>. **216** _**they responded that they wanted more**_ Joshua Kucera, "UAV Missions in Iraq Set to Rise," _Jane's Defence Weekly_ , January 19, 2005, 11. **217** _**the air force retooled its pilot training program**_ Noah Shachtman, "Deadly 'Drone Shortage' in Iraq?" _Danger Room_ , March 25, 2008, <http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/03/theres-a-drone.html>; and Noah Shachtman, "Gates, Air Force Battle over Robot Planes," _Danger Room_ , March 21, 2008, <http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/03/gates-vs-usa-f-o.htm>. **217** _**the army flew 54 percent of all drone flights**_ Jeffrey Kappenman, "Army Unmanned Aircraft Systems: Decisive in Battle," _Joint Force Quarterly,_ no. 49 (2008): 23. **217** _**"a power grab"**_ Amy Butler, "Let the Race Begin," _Aviation Week & Space Technology_ 166, no. 13 (2007): 52. **217** _**"Robots were only used"**_ Edward Godere, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 17, 2006. **217** _**"After five years of trying"**_ Anthony Aponick, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 17, 2006. **217** _**more than thirty thousand missions**_ Kris Osborn, "U.S. Wants 3,000 New Robots for War," _Defense News_ , August 13, 2007, 1. **217** _**"For a long time"**_ Charles Duhigg, "The Pilotless Plane That Only Looks Like Child's Play," _New York Times_ , April 15, 2007. **218** _**"We adapt, they adapt"**_ As quoted in Boot, _War Made New,_ 411. **218** _**"There is a huge intellectual battle"**_ Foster-Miller employee, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 17, 2006. **218** _**more than ninety ways of triggering IEDs**_ John Bokel, "IEDs in Asymmetric Warfare," _Military Technology_ 31, no. 10 (2007). **219** _**"The enemy realizes"**_ As quoted in Byron Spice, "Battlefield Robots Saving Lives, Proving their Worth in Iraq," _Pittsburgh Gazette_ , June 9, 2006. **219** _**"They're always trying to outsmart us"**_ Stew Magnuson, "Bomb Disposal Teams Deliver Blunt Talk on Robots," _National Defense_ 91, no. 632 (2006). **219** _**"Insurgents have been intensifying"**_ "U.S. Navy Orders Talon Robots," _Defense News_ , October 23, 2006, 46. **219** _**"We figured it out"**_ Noncommissioned officer, interview at the Military Robotics Conference in Washington, DC, Peter W. Singer, April 10-12, 2006. **219** _**"Jihadis are also concerned"**_ Insurgent, interview, Peter W. Singer, August 17, 2006. **219** _**They ranged from jury-rigged**_ Thomas E. Ricks, _Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq_ (New York: Penguin Press, 2006), 219. **220** _**"like the wind was pushing it"**_ Kenneth Dahl, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, March 16, 2006. **220** _**"It's basically a game"**_ H. R. Everett, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 20, 2006. **220** _**A Quick Reaction Force of marines**_ Scene re-created from Bing West, "Streetwise," _Atlantic Monthly_ , Jan.-Feb. 2007, <http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200701/west-iraq>. **221** _**"Americans have the watches"**_ David Barno, "Briefing" (presentation, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, October 4, 2007). **221** _**"we can use robots"**_ Foster-Miller executive, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 17, 2006. **221** _**"Robotics also hold great promise"**_ Steven Metz, _Armed Conflict in the 21st Century: The Information Revolution and Post-modern Warfare_ (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2000). **221** _**"winning hearts and minds"**_ Charles J. Dunlap Jr., "We Still Need the Big Guns," _New York Times_ , January 9, 2008, <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/opinion/09dunlap.html.> **221** _**"Solving root causes"**_ Metz, _Armed Conflict in the 21st Century_. **222** _**"see things develop over time"**_ Predator pilot, interview, Peter W. Singer, August 28, 2006. **222** _**"we can spot the bad guys"**_ Owen West and Bing West, "Lessons from Iraq," _Popular Mechanics_ 182, no. 8 (2005). **222** _**has "TiVo-like capabilities"**_ Tom Vanden Brook, "U.S. Spy Technology Caught in Military Turf Battle," _Defense News_ , October 8, 2007, 54. **222** _**The Odin team was able**_ Kris Osborn, "U.S. Aviators, UAVs Team Up Against IEDs," _Defense News_ , January 21, 2008. **222** _**"provide persistent staring"**_ Brian Newberry, "The Air Force in the Urban Fight," _Armed Forces Journal_ , September 2006, 29. **223** _**"The driver had a perfect ID"**_ Bing West, "Nowhere to Hide," _Popular Mechanics_ 182, no. 2 (2005). **223** _**"It's a comforting sound"**_ Thomas E. Ricks, "Beaming the Battlefield Home: Live Video of Afghan Fighting Had Questionable Effect," _Washington Post_ , March 22, 2002, 1. **223** _**"Situational awareness ain't deterrence,"**_ Sam Mundy, interview, Peter W. Singer, March 3, 2004. **223** _**guided in by lasers and GPS coordinates**_ Zoran Kusovac, "Joint Intel Located Al-Qaeda Leader," _Jane's Defence Weekly_ , June 4, 2006, 24. **223** _**"While technology is not the sole answer"**_ John Bellflower, "The Indirect Approach," _Armed Forces Journal,_ January 2007, 16. **223** _**"an era of 'oh gee' technology"**_ James Lasswell, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, November 7, 2006. **224** _**"UCAVs are the answer"**_ As quoted in Sweetman, "UCAVs Offer Fast Track to Stealth, Long Range, and Carrier Operations," 41. **224** _**"the most significant threat"**_ Max Boot, "The Paradox of Military Technology," _New Atlantis_ , no. 14 (2006), http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/14 /boot.htm. **224** _**"faster speeds, greater stealth"**_ Joris Janssen Lok, "Navies Look for Ways to Tackle the Ever-Changing Close-in Threat," _Jane's International Defence Review_ 37 (2004). **225** _**"we are just beginning to understand"**_ F. W. LaCroix and Irving N. Blickstein, _Forks in the Road for the U.S. Navy_ (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2003), ix. **225** _**"is like playing"**_ The Military Channel, _Creating the X Craft_ , broadcast on June 13, 2006. **225** _**"Sometimes computers are better"**_ Ibid. **225** _**sitting at control module stations**_ Scott Truver, "Mix and Match," _Jane's Defence Weekly_ , March 16, 2005, 24. **226** _**"spot on, almost visionary"**_ Bill Sweetman, "US Finally Looks Beyond the B-2 for Long-Range Strike Capability," _Jane's International Defence Review_ 39 (2006): 44. **226** _**tested out Wasp Micro Air Vehicles**_ Christian Lowe, "Itsy-bitsy Drone," Defensetech.org, April 5, 2005 (cited February 9, 2006); available at http:// www.defensetech.org/archives/001467.html. **226** _**"a critical next step"**_ Boeing, "Boeing Achieves First Submerged Unmanned Undersea Vehicle Recovery by a Submarine," November 26, 2007 (cited January 11, 2008); available at <http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2007/q4/071126b_nr.html>. **226** _**"can sit at the bottom"**_ Andrew Bennett, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 16, 2006. **227** _**"They would act as 'force multipliers' "**_ Carl Posey, "Robot Submarines Go to War, Part 2: The Navy's AUVs," _Popular Science_ , March 2003, <http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/6327359b9fa84010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html>. **227** _**"the under-sea fiber-optic cables"**_ Bill Sweetman, "Exposing the Spy Sub of the Future," _Popular Science_ 267, no. 2 (2005): 81. **227** _**the navy is developing a plan**_ Michael Fetsch, Chris Mailey, and Sara Wallace, "UV Sentry," paper presented at the Unmanned Systems North America, AUVSI's 34th Annual Symposium and Exhibition, Washington, DC, August 6-9, 2007. **227** _**Similar plans are being developed**_ Lok, "Navies Look for Ways to Tackle the Ever-Changing Close-in Threat." **227** _**The drones fly in and out**_ David Pugliese, "Launch and Recover UAV System Tested," _Defense News_ , February 19, 2007, 14. **227** _**"fork in the road"**_ LaCroix and Blickstein, _Forks in the Road for the U.S. Navy_ , ix. **228** _**"cataclysmic clashes"**_ Ibid. **228** _**"the touchstone for U.S. naval force planning"**_ Frank Hoffman, "The Fleet We Need," _Armed Forces Journal_ , August 2006, 29. **228** _**"a truism—no one would dispute it"**_ "Julian Corbett," Wikipedia, January 13, 2007 (cited January 15, 2008); available at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Corbett>. Quote from Williamson Murray in "Corbett, Julian," _Reader's Companion to Military History_ (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004). **229** _**"Well before it was fashionable"**_ Hoffman, "The Fleet We Need," 49. **230** _**"An [enemy] air defense system"**_ David A. Fulghum and Michael J. Fabey, "F-22: Unseen and Lethal," _Aviation Week & Space Technology_ 166, no. 2 (2007): 46. **230** _**"If you look at nature's most efficient predators"**_ Noah Shachtman, as quoted in _Warbots,_ History Channel, broadcast on August 8, 2006. **231** _**40 percent of these victories**_ Sean J. A. Edwards, "Swarming and the Future of Warfare" (doctoral thesis, Pardee Rand Graduate School, 2005), 83. **231** _**"an influence, a thing invulnerable, intangible"**_ Ibid., 64. **231** _**"Obviously the birds lack"**_ Thomas K. Adams, "The Real Military Revolution," _Parameters_ 30, no. 3 (2000). **231** _**"boids," artificial birds**_ Craig W. Reynolds, "An Evolved, Vision-Based Model of Obstacle Avoidance Behavior," in _Proceedings_ , ed. C. Langton (Redwood City, CA: Addison-Wesley, 1994). **231** _**follow three simple rules**_ Adams, "The Real Military Revolution." **232** _**"the wisdom of crowds"**_ James Surowiecki, _The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations_ , 1st ed. (New York: Doubleday, 2004). **232** _**"We don't want to copy"**_ Tobey Grumet, "Robots Clean House," _Popular Mechanics_ 180, no. 11 (2003): 30. **232** _**"an unassailable wireless 'Internet in the sky'"**_ Lakshmi Sandhana, "The Drone Armies Are Coming," _Wired News_ , August 30, 2002, <http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2002/08/54728>. **232** _**"They should just go ahead"**_ Scientist, interview, Peter W. Singer, July 17, 2006. **232** _**The Santa Fe Institute**_ "UCAR—The Next Generation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles," Gizmag.com, August 17, 2003 (cited July 6, 2005); available at <http://www.gizmag.com/go/2118/> **233** _**PRAWNs might also carry different weapons**_ Dave Frelinger et al., _Proliferated Autonomous Weapons: An Example of Cooperative Behavior_ , Documented Briefing (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1998), 6. **234** _**"a dark and menacing cloud"**_ Carl von Clausewitz, Michael Eliot Howard, and Peter Paret, _On War_ (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 581. **234** _**"My vision of the future"**_ History Channel, _Warbots._ **234** _**They might even draw inspiration**_ Edwards, "Swarming and the Future of Warfare," 99. **234** _**"When you see one robot coming"**_ Justin Pope, "Looking to Iraq, Military Robots Focus on Lessons of Afghanistan," _Detroit News_ , January 12, 2003, <http://www.detnews.com/2003/technology/0301/12/technology-57614.htm> **234** _**"zillions and zillions of robots"**_ As quoted in James D. McLurkin, "Stupid Robot Tricks: A Behavior-Based Distributed Algorithm Library for Programming Swarms of Robots" (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004); available at <http://people.csail.mit.edu/jamesm/McLurkin-SM-MIT-2004> (72dpi).pdf. **235** _**"not all novelty is desirable"**_ Adams, "The Real Military Revolution." **235** _**"There go my people"**_ Gregory A. Jackson, "' Follow the Money' and Other Unsolicited Advice for CIOs," _Cause and Effect_ 22, no. 1 (1999). **235** _**"Basically stay the hell out of the way"**_ As quoted in Joel Garreau, _Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—And What It Means to Be Human_ (New York: Doubleday, 2005), 217. **236** _**"decentralized decision making"**_ United States Marine Corps general, interview, January 16, 2007. # 12. ROBOTS THAT DON'T LIKE APPLE PI: HOW THE U.S. COULD LOSE THE UNMANNED REVOLUTION **237** _**"Technology is a double-edged sword"**_ George Michael Casey, "Maintaining Quality in the Force" (presentation, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, December 4, 2007). **237** _**"Sorry, sir, but we can't export"**_ Peter Pae, "Arms Dealers Fight It Out for Sales in Booming Asia," _Los Angeles Times_ , February 27, 2006. **238** _**"[Air] shows are nice"**_ Stayne Hoff, interview, Peter W. Singer, December 5, 2006. **238** _**"knowledge, more than ever before"**_ Joseph S. Nye Jr. and William A. Owens, "America's Information Edge," _Foreign Affairs_ 75, no. 2 (1996). **238** _**"The ability to accept and capitalize"**_ Steven Metz, _Armed Conflict in the 21st Century: The Information Revolution and Post-modern Warfare_ (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2000), xviii. **238** _**"America is by its nature"**_ George Friedman and Meredith Friedman, _The Future of War: Power, Technology and American World Dominance in the Twenty-first Century_ , 1st ed. (New York: Crown, 1996), 1. **239** _**"Technology is part of how Americans"**_ Metz, _Armed Conflict in the 21st Century,_ 69. **239** _**the first to invent or take advantage**_ Richard R. Nelson, _Technology, Institutions, and Economic Growth_ (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). **239** _**"The longer you are on top"**_ Max Boot, _War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today_ (New York: Gotham Books, 2006), 455. **239** _**video games and computers made the point**_ U.S. Naval Academy, interviews, Peter W. Singer, November 20, 2007. **240** _**"most of the things we do"**_ James Lasswell, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, November 7, 2006. **240** _**"These major advances"**_ Talat Masood, "Shackling Shock and Awe: American and Muslim World Views on the Laws of High Tech Warfare," presentation, U.S. Islamic World Forum, Doha, January 10-12, 2004. **240** _**"We have not abolished"**_ Orson Scott Card, interview by e-mail, Peter W. Singer, January 24, 2007. **240** _**"We will see if not identical technologies"**_ Steven Metz, interview, Peter W. Singer, September 19, 2006. **241** _**fourteen hundred corporate members in fifty nations**_ See Unmanned Vehicle Systems International's Web site, available at <http://www.auvsi.org/about/>. **241** _**forty-two countries were at work**_ David Hughes, "A Second Kitty Hawk," _Aviation Week & Space Technology,_ February 12, 2007: 49. **241** _**"programmed for blasting"**_ "Iran Devises Robot-Soldier," IRINN, June 8, 2008, 06.08.08 13:04, available at http://news.trendaz.com/index.shtml?show=news&newsid=1263671&lang=EN. **241** _**"The small U.S. humanoid robot community"**_ Robert Finkelstein and James Albus, "Technology Assessment of Autonomous Intelligent Bipedal and Other Legged Robots" (DARPA, 2004), 11. **241** _**"failed in its assigned mission"**_ Ibid., 52. **241** _**Dave Sonntag's job is**_ David Sonntag, e-mail interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, November 28, 2006. **242** _**a third of all the world's industrial robots**_ Tim Kelly, "Rise of the Cyborg," _Forbes_ 178, no. 4 (2006): 94. **242** _**Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry**_ K. Eric Drexler, _Engines of Creation_ , 1st ed. (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1986), 75; "Robots Enter Japan's Daily Life," Associated Press, March 3, 2008. **243** _**One of the most vehement**_ Prabhu Guptara, "Why the Next Decade Will Be Neither Chinese Nor Indian," _Globalist_ , March 15, 2006, <http://www.theglobalist.com/printStoryId.aspx?StoryId=5083>. **243** _**"My choice may be"**_ Office of the Secretary of Defense, "Airspace Integration Plan for Unmanned Aviation" (Department of Defense, 2004), 40. **243** _**"put a robot in every household"**_ "Robot Love: South Korea to Build Robot Theme Parks," _Network World_ , November 13, 2007, <http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/21867.> **244** _**Korean robotics research**_ "Korea to Invest $14 Billion in Biotech," _Korea Times_ , November 14, 2006, <http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/biz/200611/kt2006111519261411900.htm>. **244** _**"The two cities"**_ "Robot Love: South Korea to Build Robot Theme Parks." **244** _**"This means"**_ Chas W. Freeman, "China's Real Three Challenges to the United States," _Globalist_ , December 12, 2006, <http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=5770> **244** _**"much of the momentum"**_ Ibid. **245** _**a cost of only $37,500**_ Jason Chen, "Chinese Beauty Robot Needs More Beauty," Gizmodo.com, August 10, 2006 (cited October 30, 2006); available at <http://www.gizmodo.net/gadgets/robots/chinese-beauty-robot-needs-more-beauty-193496.php> **245** _**a robot waiter to a robot chimpanzee**_ Jason Chen, "Chinese Robotic Gallery," Gizmodo.com, August 14, 2006 (cited October 30, 2006); available at <http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/robots/chinese-robot-gallery-194102.php>. **245** _**A five-foot-long robot**_ "China Develops Fish-Shaped Robot for Underwater Archeological Research," _People's Daily Online_ , December 7, 2004, <http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200412/07/eng20041207_166401.html> **245** _**"the perfect artificial limb"**_ Lisa Egan, "Intelligent Software Helps Build Perfect Robotic Hand," _Innovations Report_ , November 29, 2007, <http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/information_technology/report-99200.html> **245** _**China's growing Internet presence**_ Wendell Minnick, "Taiwan: Chinese Virus Stole Secret Files," _Defense News_ , April 16, 2007, 1. **245** _**"retired fighter aircraft"**_ Office of the Secretary of Defense, "Annual Report on the Military Power of the People's Republic of China" (Department of Defense, 2005), 4. **246** _**"the U.S. and its military"**_ Roger Cliff, _The Military Potential of China's Commercial Technology_ (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2001), xv. **246** _**"Technology is like 'magic shoes'"**_ Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, _Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America_ (Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, 1999). **247** _**"The new concept of weapons"**_ Ibid. **247** _**"We believe that some morning"**_ Qiao and Wang, _Unrestricted Warfare_. **247** _**the United States only has 4 percent of the world's population**_ Boot, _War Made New,_ 322. **247** _**"the United States is headed"**_ Robert Kavetsky and Christopher J. R. McCook, "The Technological Perfect Storm," _Proceedings,_ October 2006. **247** _**Only 54 percent of America's high school students**_ Shirley Tilghman, "'Rising Above the Gathering Storm' Through Science and Engineering Education," _Princeton Alumni Weekly_ , January 24, 2007, 3. The report is available at <http://www.nsf.gov/attachments/105652/public/NAS-Gathering-Storm-11463.pdf>. **248** _**"The longer students are exposed"**_ Norman R. Augustine, "Learning to Compete," _Princeton Alumni Weekly_ , March 7, 2007, 36. **248** _**"When I compare our high schools"**_ Ibid. **248** _**create a "futile cycle"**_ Tilghman, "'Rising Above the Gathering Storm' Through Science and Engineering Education." **248** _**"In the past four years"**_ As quoted in Augustine, "Learning to Compete." **248** _**"This research, in turn"**_ Bruce Alberts, William A. Wulf, and Harvey Fineberg, _Current Visa Restrictions Interfere with U.S. Science and Engineering Contributions to Important National Needs,_ National Academies, 2003 (cited January 8, 2007); available at <http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=s12132002>. **249** _**"If action is not taken"**_ National Science Board, "A Companion to Science and Engineering Indicators 2004: An Emerging and Critical Problem of the Science and Engineering Labor Force" (National Science Board, 2004). **249** _**In India, six engineers**_ Augustine, "Learning to Compete." **249** _**Starbucks has to spend more**_ Ibid., 35. **249** _**America's trade balance in high-tech goods**_ Ibid. **249** _**three-fourths of the new R &D facilities**_ Ibid. **249** _**"There is massive industrial espionage"**_ Richard Clarke, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, August 8, 2007. **250** _**angrily confronted a group**_ Peter W. Singer, "Research Visit to iRobot Corporation," 2006. **250** _**"when they only want to buy one"**_ Stayne Hoff, interview, Peter W. Singer, December 5, 2007. **250** _**"If the U.S. doesn't wake up"**_ Tina Hesman, "Stephen Thaler's Computer Creativity Machine Simulates the Human Brain," _St. Louis Post-Dispatch_ , January 24, 2004. **251** _**new ideas still have trouble**_ Credit goes to James Surowiecki for this insight. **251** _**QWERTY is the way**_ Jared M. Diamond, _Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies **,**_ 1st ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1997), 248. **251** _**"In no profession"**_ Stephen Peter Rosen, _Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military_ (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 2. **252** _**good enough for their heroes**_ J. E. Lendon, _Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). **252** _**"foolish and unjustified discarding of horses"**_ David E. Johnson, _Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation in the U.S. Army, 1917-1945_ (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 136. **252** _**"The greatest hurdle"**_ U.S. Joint Forces Command, "Military Robots of the Future" (U.S. Joint Forces Command, 2003). **252** _**"no fighter pilot is ever"**_ Charles Duhigg, "The Pilotless Plane That Only Looks Like Child's Play," _New York Times_ , April 15, 2007. **253** _**"It's like being a pilot for nerds"**_ Sig Christenson, "Cutting Edge of Military Aviation Has Steep Price Tag," _San Antonio Express-News_ , September 18, 2007. **253** _**"I was happy when drones came in"**_ Greg Lengyel, interview, Peter W. Singer, April 13, 2006. **253** _**"Today's Air Force clings"**_ Ralph Peters, _Never Quit the Fight_ , 1st ed. (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2006), 61. **253** _**"It's seen as this geeky thing to do"**_ Interview at U.S. military facility, Peter W. Singer, February 19, 2008. **253** _**"The reason that was given"**_ David Axe, "Who Killed the Killer Drone—And Why?" Defensetech. org, May 8, 2005 (cited May 9, 2005); available at <http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002386.html>. **254** _**"perform high-speed aerobatics"**_ George C. Wilson, "A Chairman Pushes Unmanned Warfare," _National Journal_ 32, no. 10 (2000): 718. **254** _**"If you dislike change"**_ As quoted in P. H. Liotta, "Chaos as Strategy," _Parameters_ 32, no. 2 (2002): 55. **254** _**"cavorting with headhunters"**_ Christopher Palmeri, "A Predator That Preys on Hawks," _BusinessWeek_ , no. 3820 (2003). **255** _**"It's like a California speed shop"**_ Ibid. **255** _**"The development of the smaller, cheaper plane"**_ Ibid. **256** _**"We're number**_ **1** _**in the world"**_ Boot, _War Made New,_ 435. **256** _**The Department of Justice**_ Dawn Kopecki, "On the Hunt for Fraud," BusinessWeek.com, October 10, 2006 (cited October 10, 2006); available at <http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/oct2006/db20061011_184367.htm>. **256** _**"routinely broken"**_ William Matthews, "Pentagon Inspector General: Procurement Laws Are Routinely Broken," _Defense News_ , January 22, 2007, 4. **256** _**being "hierarchical and top down"**_ Former army colonel, interview, Peter W. Singer, April 11, 2007. **256** _**"The thing is 30 pounds and electric!"**_ Bruce Jette, "Robotics Development: An Overview of the Work of the Rapid Equipping Force," paper presented at the Military Robotics Conference, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, Washington, DC, April 10-12, 2006. **257** _**"We become prisoners"**_ Peters, _Never Quit the Fight_ , 36. **257** _**"quantitative incompetence"**_ Ralph Peters, "COIN of the Realm," presentation, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, October 22, 2007. **257** _**"In the year 2054"**_ Friedman and Friedman, _The Future of War_ , 248. **257** _**"If you think it is a young technology"**_ Demetri Sevastopulo, "US Military in Dogfight over Drones," _Financial Times_ , August 19, 2007, <http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/78317cc4-4e93-11dc-85e7-0000779fd2ac.html>. **257** _**the number of Pentagon prime contractors**_ Defense Acquisition Performance Assessment Project, "Defense Acquisition Performance Assessment" (Washington, DC, 2006). **257** _**"Only the dinosaurs were allowed"**_ Scientist, interview, Peter W. Singer, July 17, 2006. **258** _**"The future belongs to those people"**_ "Interview: Neal Blue Chairman-CEO, General Atomics," _Defense News_ , February 11, 2008, p. 26. **258** _**"We just work on what the Pentagon"**_ Defense executive, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 4, 2007. **258** _**a combined $295 billion over budget**_ GAO Report, "Defense Acquisitions: Assessments of Selected Weapon Programs," March 2008. **258 91** _**percent of the performance bonus**_ This is not an isolated incident. Contractors for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter also received their full bonus of nearly $500 million from 1999 to 2003, despite the fact that it overran the budget by $10 billion and was almost a year behind schedule. **258** _**"Larger companies trend towards larger vehicles"**_ Mark Barber, "Force Protection Robotics," paper presented at the Military Robotics Conference, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, Washington, DC, April 10-12, 2006. Interview with author. **259** _**"There is no comparison"**_ Bing West, interview, Peter W. Singer, August 23, 2006. **259** _**"more often smart than stupid"**_ Richard Szafranski, "When Waves Collide: Future Conflict," _Joint Force Quarterly_ , no. 7 (1995): 82. **260** _**"The ability to learn faster"**_ As quoted in Joel Garreau, _Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—And What It Means to Be Human_ (New York: Doubleday, 2005), 257. **260** _**"While learning from experience"**_ As quoted in Thomas Ricks, "America's Adventure," _Armed Forces Journal_ , August (2006): 19. # 13. OPEN-SOURCE WARFARE: COLLEGE KIDS, TERRORISTS, AND OTHER NEW USERS OF ROBOTS AT WAR **261** _**"If I can imagine it"**_ Greg Bear, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 4, 2006. **261** _**"It was an unusual shopping expedition"**_ Jason Zengerle, "Raising Money to Save Darfur," _New Republic_ , March 20, 2006. **263** _**"technology is both"**_ Max Boot, "The Paradox of Military Technology," _New Atlantis_ , 14 (2006), http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive /14 /boothtm **263** _**It is simultaneously**_ United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, _Lebanon: The Many Hands and Faces of Hezbollah_ (IRIN, 2006 [cited August 18 2006]); available at <http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=26242> **263** _**"There are many who belittled"**_ Barbara Opall-Rome, "Combating the Hizbollah Network: Israel Army Lessons from War in Lebanon," _Defense News_ , October 9, 2006, 6. **264** _**"a divine and strategic victory"**_ CNN.com, "Hezbollah Leader: Militants 'Won't Surrender Arms,'" September 22, 2006 (cited October 8, 2007); available at http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/09/22 /lebanon.rally/index.html. **264** _**a "hybrid war"**_ United States Marine Corps general James Mattis, presentation at the Brookings Institution, January 16, 2007. See also Frank Hoffman, "Lessons from Lebanon: Hezbollah and Hybrid Wars," Foreign Policy Research Institute, August 24, 2006 (cited August 26, 2006); available at <http://www.fpri.org/enotes/20060824.military.hoffman,hezbollahhybridwars.html>. **264** _**Hezbollah also flew at least three**_ Alon Ben-David, "Israel Shoots Down Hezbollah UAV," _Jane's Defence Weekly_ , August 16, 2006, 6. **264** _**"able to hack into"**_ Noah Shachtman, "Arabs to Hezbollah: Up Yours," Defensetech.org, July 14, 2006 (cited July 14, 2006); available at <http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002584.html.> **264** _**"hijacked" by Hezbollah hackers**_ Hilary Hylton, "How Hizballah Hijacks the Internet," Time.com, August 8, 2006, <http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1224273,00.html>. **264** _**"In the cyberterrorism trade"**_ Ibid. **265** _**The group even infiltrated**_ Opall-Rome, "Combating the Hizbollah Network: Israel Army Lessons from War in Lebanon." **265** _**"The intelligence data provided"**_ David A. Fulghum, "Insurgents' New Tools," _Aviation Week & Space Technology_ 165, no. 16 (2006). **265** _**"All contempt for terrorists"**_ Ralph Peters, "Lessons from Lebanon," _Armed Forces Journal,_ October 2006, 43. **265** _**"robot mercenaries"**_ Special forces officer, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, September 7, 2006. **265** _**"I read an article in**_ **Popular Science** _ **"**_ Lee Gomes, "Team of Amateurs Cuts Ahead of Experts in Computer-Car Race," _Wall Street Journal_ , October 19, 2005, B1. **266** _**"It's a beautiful thing"**_ Ibid. **266** _**"War made the state"**_ Charles Tilly, "Reflections on the History of European State-Making," in _The Formation of National States in Western Europe_ , ed. Charles Tilly (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Unviersity Press, 1975), 42. **266** _**past RMAs were associated**_ Max Boot, _War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today_ (New York: Gotham Books, 2006), 464. **267** _**some sixty thousand multinational companies**_ For more information see New America Foundation, "Privatization of Foreign Policy Initiative" (cited January 12, 2008); available at <http://www.newamerica.net/programs/american_strategy/privatization_of_foreign_policy_initiative>. **267** _**so too is conflict being**_ John Robb, _Global Guerrillas_ (cited January 10, 2008); available at <http://globalguerrillas.ty>pepad.com **267** _**"The actual physical hardware"**_ Noah Shachtman, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, March 25, 2006. **267** _**"There are no friends"**_ Al J. Venter, _War Dog: Fighting Other People's Wars—The Modern Mercenary in Combat_ , 1st ed. (Philadelphia: Casemate, 2006), 230. **267** _**"A robot out of sight"**_ Bruce Jette, "Robotics Development: An Overview of the Work of the Rapid Equipping Force," paper presented at the Military Robotics Conference, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, Washington, DC, April 10-12, 2006. **268** _**the tiny country had hired**_ "Des Combats terrestres ont opposé l'armée ivoirienne et les militaires français," _Le Monde_ , November 15, 2004, www.lemonde.fr. **268** _**"State, nonstate, air, land, sea"**_ Noah Shachtman, interview, Peter W. Singer, March 25, 2006. **268** _**"One of the reasons"**_ Logan Ward et al., "America 2025," _Popular Mechanics_ 182, no. 5 (2005). **268** _**"High-Tech Terror: Al-Qaeda's Use of New Technology"**_ Jarret M. Brachman, "High-Tech Terror: Al-Qaeda's Use of New Technology," _Fletcher Forum of World Affairs_ 30, no. 2 (2006). **268** _**"offer news on Iraq"**_ Anton LaGuardia, "Al-Qaeda Places Recruiting Ads," _Telegraph London_ , August 10, 2005. **269** _**There is even a site**_ "Now Online: Swear Loyalty to Al-Qaeda Leaders," Middle East Media Research Institute Special Dispatch 1027, 2005 (cited November 14, 2006); available at http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID= SP102705. **269** _**"killer robots"**_ As quoted in Brachman, "High-Tech Terror: Al-Qaeda's Use of New Technology," 157. **269** _**al-Qaeda explored the use of a UAV**_ David Hambling, "Terrorists' Unmanned Airforce," Defensetech .org, May 1, 2006 (cited July 14, 2006); available at <http://www.noahshachtman.com/archives/002369.html>. **269** _**"Sooner or later"**_ "Quote of the Day," Time.com, February 28, 2008, at <http://www.time.com/time/quotes/0,26174,1718148,00.html?xid=feed-quoteswidget>. **269** _**"intersection of robotics and terrorist groups"**_ Robert Finkelstein, interview, Peter W. Singer, July 7, 2006. **269** _**"You can be a wimp"**_ Noah Shachtman, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, July 2, 2007. **270** _**"a suicide bomber on steroids"**_ Ibid. **270** _**"Robots could be very attractive"**_ Robert Finkelstein, interview, Peter W. Singer, July 7, 2006. **270** _**"an ideal platform"**_ USAF Scientific Advisory Board, _Air Defense Against Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)_ (2006). **270** _**costs only $1,000**_ <http://diydrones.com>, accessed April 28, 2008. See also "Build Your Own War Bot," at <http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Build_Your_Own_War_Bot>, accessed March 20, 2008. **271** _**The footage was so detailed**_ Thomas Claburn, "Terrorists Take Over Google Earth," _Information-Week_ , January 17, 2007, <http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml>;jsessionid=CYKV3P1NN DZPWQSNDLPSKHoCJUNN2JVN?articleID = 1 96901827. **271** _**"They can make a lone actor"**_ Robert Finkelstein, interview, Peter W. Singer, July 7, 2006. **271** _**"a few amateurs"**_ Ibid. **271** _**"One bright but embittered loner"**_ Joel Garreau, _Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—and What It Means to Be Human_ (New York: Doubleday, 2005), 139. **271** _**"The obligation of subjects"**_ Christopher Coker, _Humane Warfare_ (London, New York: Routledge, 2001), 18. Coker is quoting Thomas Hobbes, _Leviathan_ (Oxford: J. Thornton, 1881), 170. **272** _**Information on how to build**_ Ray Kurzweil, interview via phone, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, December 7, 2006. **272** _**"It feels like all ten billion of us"**_ Garreau, _Radical Evolution_ , 101. **272** _**"It is no exaggeration"**_ Ibid., 207. **272** _**"Historically, warfare"**_ Vernor Vinge, "Shaun Farrell Interviews Vernor Vinge," Shaun Farrell, April 2006; available at <http://www.farsector.com/quadrant/interview-vinge.htm>. **272** _**"The future is manhunting"**_ Special forces officer, interview, Peter W. Singer, September 7, 2006. **273** _**Skyshield, an automated machine-gun system**_ Alon Ben-David, "New Model Army," _Jane's Defence Weekly_ , October 11, 2006, 26. **273** _**the automated scanners can spot**_ Tom Simonite, "Scanner Recognises Hidden Knives and Guns," _New Scientist_ , September 26, 2006, http://www.newscientisttech.com/article.ns?id=dn10160&feedId=tech_rss20. **273** _**as many as three hundred times a day**_ Daniel H. Wilson, _How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion_ , 1st U.S. ed. (New York: Bloomsbury, 2005), 88. **273** _**"They're the next best thing"**_ Stephen Kinzer, "Chicago Moving to 'Smart' Surveillance Cameras," _New York Times_ , September 21, 2004, <http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/21/national/21cameras.html?_r=2> &oref=slogin&oref=slogin. **274** _**"They could only use"**_ Finkelstein, interview, Peter W. Singer, July 7, 2006. **274** _**They can even scan crowds**_ Ibid. **274** _**identify faces from as far as two hundred feet away**_ Noah Shachtman, "Cameras to Comb Crowds," Defensetech.org, October 24, 2006 (cited November 1, 2006); available at <http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002887.html.> **275** _**One of the biggest data-mining efforts**_ Constance L. Hays, "What They Know About You," _New York Times_ , November 14, 2004. **275** _**"Very quietly, the core of TIA survives"**_ Noah Shachtman, "TIA Reboots," Defensetech.org, February 9, 2006 (cited February 9, 2006); available at <http://www.noahshachtman.com/archives/002165.html>. **276** _**can then be matched against**_ Ibid. **276** _**"identifying that it is a needle"**_ As quoted in Giles Ebbutt, "Knowledge Is Power," _Jane's International Defence Review_ 40 (2007): 33. **276** _**"track leads, form hypotheses"**_ Duncan Graham-Rowe, "Intelligence Analysis Software to Predict Terrorist Attacks in the Future," _New Scientist_ , July 14, 2001, <http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn1368>; Michael P. Tremoglie, "Terrorist Tracking Technology," _American Daily_ , September 3, 2004, <http://www.americandaily.com/article/2048.> **277** _**"cannot guarantee the software"**_ Graham-Rowe, "Intelligence Analysis Software to Predict Terrorist Attacks in the Future"; Applied Systems Intelligence, _ASI Continues Growth by Putting Brains in Army's Robots_ ; Eng, _Digital Warriors Artificial Intelligence May Help Spot Future Terrorism Attacks_ ; Tremoglie, "Terrorist Tracking Technology." **277** _**"is more terrifying than losing one's privacy"**_ Graham-Rowe, "Intelligence Analysis Software to Predict Terrorist Attacks in the Future"; "Orwellian" quote from Wikipedia, "Information Awareness Office," December 25, 2007 (cited January 11, 2008); available at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office>. # 14. LOSERS AND LUDDITES: THE CHANGING BATTLEFIELDS ROBOTS WILL FIGHT ON AND THE NEW ELECTRONIC SPARKS OF WAR **279** _**"Technological progress"**_ "Albert Einstein Quotes," Brainy Quote, 2008 (cited January 31, 2008); available at <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins164554.html>. **279** _**"Increasingly, we live in a world"**_ Ralph Peters, "The Culture of Future Conflict," _Parameters_ 25, no. 4 (1995). **279** _**"I am a miner's son"**_ "Ralph Peters," Wikipedia, August 3, 2007 (cited August 3, 2007); available at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Peters>. **280** _**"simply one of the most creative"**_ Ralph Peters, _Beyond Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace_ , 1st ed. (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2003), back cover quote. **280** _**"Ours is the age of barbarians"**_ Ralph Peters, _Never Quit the Fight_ , 1st ed. (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2006), xv. **280** _**"The soldiers of the United States Army"**_ Ralph Peters, "The New Warrior Class," _Parameters_ 24, no. 2 (1994). **281** _**"Unlike soldiers, warriors do not play"**_ Ibid. **281** _**"postmodern warriors"**_ As quoted in Christopher Coker, _Waging War Without Warriors? The Changing Culture of Military Conflict_ , IISS Studies in International Security (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002), 9. **281** _**"These are people"**_ As quoted in Steven Metz, _Armed Conflict in the 21st Century: The Information Revolution and Post-modern Warfare_ (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2000), 48. **281** _**"The archetype of the new warrior"**_ Ibid. **281** _**"The longer the fighting continues"**_ Peters, "The New Warrior Class." **282** _**"rightful place in the sun"**_ Peters, "The Culture of Future Conflict." **282** _**"We live in the most dynamic age"**_ Ralph Peters, e-mail, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, March 9, 2007. **282** _**"The Internet is the greatest tool"**_ Ibid. **282** _**"The root causes of conflict"**_ Ibid. **283** _**Americans spend over half a trillion dollars**_ Emily Lambert, "The Odd Couple," _Forbes_ 178, no. 4 (2006). **283** _**1.3 billion people in the developing world**_ Figures from United Nations Human Settlements Programme, _The Challenge of Slums: Global Report on Human Settlements_ (London and Sterling, VA: Earthscan Publications Ltd., 2003); Paul Collier, "A Worldwide Scourge—How to Stem Civil Wars: It's the Economy, Stupid," _International Herald Tribune_ , May 21, 2003; Michael Renner, "The Global Divide: Socioeconomic Disparities and International Security," in _World Security: Challenges for a New Century_ , ed. Michael Klare and Yogesh Chandrani (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998), 275. **283** _**One hundred twenty-seven million Americans are "obese"**_ Lambert, "The Odd Couple." **284** _**90 percent of the world's youth**_ Petersen, "A Strategy for the Future of Humanity." **284** _**99 percent of the world's population growth**_ Jennifer Dabbs Sciubba, "The Defense Implications of Demographic Trends," _Joint Force Quarterly_ , no. 48 (2008): 121. **284** _**too many young males**_ Christian Mesquida and Neil I. Warner, "Male Age Composition and Severity of Conflicts," _Politics and Life Sciences_ 18, no. 2 (1999); Richard Morin, "Boy Trouble," _Washington Post_ , June 24, 2001; "Natural Born Killers: Does Biology Drive Our Need to Wage War," _Profile_ , May 1999, <http://www.yorku.ca/ycom/profiles/past/may/99current/dept/dispatch/dsp6.htm> **284** _**the trend is particularly pronounced**_ Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, _The Worldwide Threat 2004: Challenges in a Changing Global Context_ , Testimony by George J. Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence, February 24, 2004. **285** _**As many as 250 million children**_ Figures from the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of International Affairs (2003), and Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, "State of World Population 2003: Making 1 Billion Count" (New York: United Nations Population Fund, 2003). **285** _**"These poor, young billions"**_ Petersen, "A Strategy for the Future of Humanity." **285** _**Population growth in Sudan**_ "Water Find 'May End Darfur War' " BBC News, July 18, 2007 (cited July 18, 2007); available at <http://news.bbc.couk/2/hi/africa/6904318.stm> **285** _**"the century of 'not enough' "**_ Peters, "The Culture of Future Conflict." **285** _**global warming will bring water scarcity**_ Rob Taylor, "Millions to Go Hungry by 2080: Report," Truthout, January 30, 2007, <http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/013007EA.shtml> **285** _**100 million people**_ Michael Casey, "Report: Millions Face Hunger from Climate Change," _Christian Post_ , April 10, 2007, http://www.christianpost.com/article /20070410 /26802_Report: _ Millions_ Face_Hunger_from_Climate_Change.htm **285** _**"Unchecked climate change"**_ Ibid. **286** _**"Now the ignorant know"**_ Ralph Peters, interview, Peter W. Singer, March 29, 2007. **286** _**the more people are connected**_ Richard O. Hundley and RAND Corporation, _The Global Course of the Information Revolution: Recurring Themes and Regional Variations_ (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2003). **286** _**fifty countries that have "stateless zones"**_ George J. Tenet, _The Worldwide Threat 2004: Challenges in a Changing Global Context_. **286** _**"Extreme losers in the information revolution"**_ Hundley and RAND Corporation, _The Global Course of the Information Revolution_. **287** _**Al-Qaeda's movement of its training camps**_ George J. Tenet, _The Worldwide Threat 2004._ **287** _**"It has become increasingly difficult"**_ Syed Hamid Albar, "Remarks at the U.S. and Islamic World Forum" (presentation, Doha, Qatar, February 17, 2006). **287** _**over half of humankind**_ Tom Standage, _A History of the World in 6 Glasses_ (Walker & Company, 2006), 93; David Oliver, "Training Street Fighters," _Military Technology_ 31, no. 4 (2007): 39. **287** _**are about forty times larger**_ Joseph Grosso, review of _Monster at Our Door_ by Mike Davis (2005), _Z Magazine_ 19(11) (2005), available at <http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Nov2006/grosso1106.html>. **287** _**"The city—capstone of human organization"**_ Ralph Peters, "Our Soldiers, Their Cities," _Parameters_ 26, no. 2 (1996): 45. **287** _**"the new forests"**_ Ralph Peters, e-mail, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, March 9, 2007. **287** _**"Cities are now the center of rebellion"**_ Ibid. **288** _**"Habituated to violence"**_ As quoted in Coker, _Waging War Without Warriors? The Changing Culture of Military Conflict_ , 10. **288** _**"The future of warfare"**_ Peters, "Our Soldiers, Their Cities," 43. **288** _**"shanty-towns and squatter communities"**_ Mike Davis, _Planet of Slums_ (London: Verso, 2006). **288** _**"the diverse religious"**_ Ibid. **288** _**"stinking mountains of shit"**_ Ibid. **288** _**a crossover with crime**_ Kenneth Turan, "Movie Review: Favela Rising," _Los Angeles Times_ , August 4, 2006, http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/mov ies/cl-et-favela4aug04,1,1371999.story? coll=la-promo-entnews. **289** _**"The 'feral, failed cities' of the Third World"**_ Mike Davis, as quoted in Nick Turse, "Baghdad 2025: The Pentagon Solution to a Planet of Slums," TomDispatch.com, January 7, 2007, <http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/155031/nick_turse_pentagon_to_global_cities_drop_dead>. **289** _**"American Terminators"**_ Turse, "Baghdad 2025: The Pentagon Solution to a Planet of Slums." **289** _**"where the fight"**_ Ibid. **289** _**"The array of threats"**_ As quoted in Metz, _Armed Conflict in the 21st Century_ , 44. **289** _**"gallant struggles in green fields"**_ Peters, "Our Soldiers, Their Cities," 43. **290** _**"it's a no-brainer for the enemy"**_ Ralph Peters, interview, Peter W. Singer, March 29, 2007. **290** _**"A host of unmanned vehicles"**_ Turse, "Baghdad 2025: The Pentagon Solution to a Planet of Slums." **290** _**"to make the foreign city"**_ Ibid. **290** _**A similar program**_ David Hughes, "Street-Smart Maps," _Aviation Week & Space Technology_ 165, no. 21 (2006): 77. **290** _**"pressing need in urban warfare"**_ As quoted in Turse, "Baghdad 2025: The Pentagon Solution to a Planet of Slums." **291** _**"You have continuous coverage"**_ Graham, "America's Robot Army." **291** _**"unprecedented awareness"**_ Ibid. **291** _**"There is a uniquely American pursuit"**_ Ralph Peters, interview, Peter W. Singer, March 29, 2007. **291** _**Bush administration "urgently" needed**_ Richard Clarke, "Presidential Policy Initiative/Review—The Al Qida Network," Memorandum, Condoleezza Rice, Washington, DC, January 25, 2001; available at <http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB147/clarke%20memo.pdf>. **291** _**"You give bin Laden too much credit"**_ William Douglas, "White House Tries to Discredit Counterterrorism Coordinator," CommonDreams.com, March 22, 2004, <http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0322-10.htm>. **292** _**"Something very fundamental"**_ Richard Clarke, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, August 8, 2007. **294** _**"It goes to the last frontier"**_ Tom Erhard, interview, Peter W. Singer, January 31, 2007. **294** _**"will be a moral battlefield"**_ Rodney Brooks, _Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us_ (New York: Pantheon, 2002), x. **295** _**neo-Luddites will also see**_ Antón, Silberglitt, and Schneider, _The Global Technology Revolution: Bio/ Nano/Materials Trends and Their Synergies with Information Technology by 2015_. **295** _**short for "Freedom Club"**_ "The Unabomber: A Chronology," Court TV Online (cited August 12, 2007); available at <http://www.courttv.com/trials/unabomber/chronology/chron_8587.html>. **295** _**"As society and the problems"**_ "Industrial Society and Its Future," Wikipedia, August 9, 2007 (cited August 10, 2007); available at <http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Industrial_Society_and_Its_Future>. **295** _**"We therefore advocate a revolution"**_ Ibid. **296** _**"huge potential for strange bedfellows"**_ Richard Clarke, interview, Peter W. Singer, August 8, 2007. **296** _**"Since the stake is so high"**_ Hugo de Garis, "Building Gods or Building Our Potential Exterminators?" KurzweilAI.net, February 26, 2001 (cited June 27, 2006); available at <http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0131.html?> **296** _**"The great paradox"**_ Ralph Peters, e-mail, Peter W. Singer, March 9, 2007. # 15. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WARBOTS **297** _**"Warfare is about changing"**_ Ralph Peters, _Never Quit the Fight_ , 1st ed. (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2006), 39. **297** _**"Human versus robot?"**_ Eliot Cohen, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, November 15, 2006. **297** _**the book for civilian leaders**_ Ahmad Faruqui, "The Apocalyptic Vision of the Neo-Conservative Ideologues," _CounterPunch_ , November 26, 2002, http:// www.counterpunch.org/faruqui1126.html **298** _**"at which a majority"**_ John Keegan, _The Face of Battle_ (New York: Viking Press, 1976), 276. **298** _**"while soldiers will fight"**_ Fred Reed, "Robotic Warfare Drawing Nearer," _Washington Times_ , February 10, 2005. **298** _**"an almost helpless feeling"**_ Edward Godere, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 17, 2006. **298** _**"without even having to fire"**_ Discovery Channel Pictures, "Smart Weapons," in _Future Weapons_ , Discovery Channel, broadcast on May 17, 2006. **300** _**But after these strange, fearsome men**_ Jared M. Diamond, _Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies_ , 1st ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1997), 68 and 75. **300** _**"Any sufficiently advanced technology"**_ Christopher Coker, _The Future of War: The Re-enchantment of War in the Twenty-first Century_ , Blackwell Manifestos (Malden, MA; Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2004), 130. **300** _**how American air power**_ Charles J. Dunlap Jr., "America's Asymmetric Advantage," _Armed Forces Journal_ , September 2006. **300** _**"With all the dust"**_ Bing West, "Nowhere to Hide," _Popular Mechanics_ 182, no. 2 (2005). **300** _**While the hostage takers gathered**_ Peter W. Singer, "Research Visit to Foster-Miller," 2006. **301** _**robots that "creep people out"**_ Seth Borenstein, "Scientists Try to Make Robots More Human," USAToday.com, November 22, 2006, <http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/robotics/2006-11-22-humanistic-robots_x.htm>. **302** _**"market forces will shape things"**_ David Hanson, interview via phone, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, October 12, 2007. **302** _**influence the "attitudes, feelings"**_ United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Publication 3-35, _Doctrine for Joint Psychological Operations_ , September 5, 2003, 102. **302** _**evokes a state of terror**_ From Sigmund Freud, _Beyond the Pleasure Principle **(**_ 1920) _,_ as discussed in Christopher Coker, _Waging War Without Warriors? The Changing Culture of Military Conflict,_ IISS Studies in International Security (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002), 19 _._ **302** _**"makes**_ **Robocop** _**look like"**_ Jonathon Keats, "The Idea Man," Popsci.com, 2004 (cited August 18, 2006); available at <http://www.popsci.com/popsci/technology/generaltechnology/6b0898b0c9b84010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html>. **303** _**"That's not funny anymore"**_ Francis J. West, _No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah_ (New York: Bantam, 2005), 273. **304** _**"might even be a profession"**_ Robert Finkelstein, interview, Peter W. Singer, July 7, 2006. **304** _**"an object acting as a human"**_ David Hanson, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 12, 2007. **304** _**"The keyboard and the monitor"**_ Robert Epstein, "My Date with a Robot," _Scientific American_ , June-July 2006, 68-73. **304** _**"People's empathy increases"**_ Mark Jacob, "Japan's Robots Stride into Future," _Chicago Tribune_ , July 15, 2006. **305** _**"It's not just that"**_ Robert Epstein, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 25, 2006. **305** _**"The more familiar with technology"**_ Ibid. **305** _**"If they are not used to robots"**_ David Hanson, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 12, 2007. **305** _**"When my daughter first saw"**_ Epstein, "My Date with a Robot." **305** _**"The uncanny valley is"**_ Andrew Bennett, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 16, 2006. **305** _**The raids killed hundreds of thousands**_ Anthony D'Amato, "International Law, Cybernetics, and Cyberspace," _Naval War College International Law Studies_ 76 (2006): 66. **305** _**proved "fundamentally flawed"**_ H. R. McMaster, _Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam_ , 1st ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 327. **306** _**"I think that it will discourage"**_ U.S. Army UAV pilot, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 8, 2007. **306** _**"It must be daunting"**_ Interview at U.S. military facility, Peter W. Singer, February 19, 2008. **306** _**"I didn't really imagine"**_ Yousif Basil, interview, Peter W. Singer, August 15, 2006. **307** _**"you have to remember"**_ Nir Rosen, interview, Peter W. Singer, August 11, 2006. **307** _**"What is Osama bin Laden's"**_ Peter D. Feaver, "To Maintain That Support, Show Us What Success Means," Duke University (cited August 4, 2007); available at <http://www.duke.edu/web/forums/feaver.html>. **307** _**Showing personal bravery**_ United States Marine Corps general, interview, Peter W. Singer, January 16, 2007. **308** _**"Victory comes from human beings"**_ Charles J. Dunlap Jr., "How We Lost the High-Tech War of 2007: A Warning from the Future," _Weekly Standard_ 1, no. 19 (1996): 96. **308** _**The future hotbed of rebellion**_ LTC Todd Megill, intelligence officer with 4th Infantry Division, in Max Boot, _War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today_ (New York: Gotham Books, 2006), 401. **308** _**Khouri is also the editor-at-large**_ Rami Khouri, interview, Peter W. Singer, August 22, 2006. **309** _**"This [the robotics revolution]"**_ Noah Shachtman, "More Robot Grunts Ready for Duty," _Wired News_ , December 1, 2004, <http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,65885-0.html.> **310** _**"The optics of the situation"**_ Noah Shachtman, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, March 25, 2006. **310** _**17 percent of the global average**_ Herwig Schopper, "Islam and Science," _Nature_ , November 1, 2006, <http://www.nature.com/news/2006/061030/full/444035a.html>. **310** _**"encourages heresy"**_ For a transcript see "Samir Ubeid, an Iraqi Researcher Living in Europe: The Nobel Prize Is Racist and Stems from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion," Middle East Media Research Institute, October 31, 2006 (cited August 14, 2007); available at <http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/1313.htm>. **310** _**lacks "a cultural base"**_ Ibid. **310** _**"This type of warfare"**_ Talat Masood, "Shackling Shock and Awe: American and Muslim World Views on the Laws of High Tech Warfare" (presentation, U.S. Islamic World Forum, Doha, January 10-12, 2004). **311** _**"distance warfare"**_ Ibid. **311** _**"Overreliance on the military"**_ Ibid. **311** _**"The concept of 'shock and awe'"**_ Ibid. **311** _**"The mythology surrounding"**_ Mansoor Ijaz, "An Alliance Too Vital to Jeopardize with Poor Intelligence," _Financial Times_ , January 17, 2006, 13. **311** _**"America's heartless terrorism"**_ Munish Puri, e-mail, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, July 20, 2006. **311** _**give credence to the unintended psychological consequences**_ Mubashar Jawed Akbar, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, September 12, 2006. **312** _**Using robots in war**_ Ibid., 65. **313** _**"The insurgents are defending"**_ Nir Rosen, interview, Peter W. Singer, August 11, 2006. **313** _**"If they play by these rules"**_ Rami Khouri, interview, Peter W. Singer, August 22, 2006. **313** _**"Against them make ready"**_ Koran, sura 8, verse 60. **314** _**"the study of battle"**_ Keegan, _The Face of Battle_ , 298. **314** _**"vision, a dream, a nightmare"**_ Ibid., 294. # 16. YOUTUBE WAR: THE PUBLIC AND ITS UNMANNED WARS **315** _**"Wars are a human phenomenon"**_ Thomas K. Adams, "Future Warfare and the Decline of Human Decisionmaking," _Parameters_ 31, no. 4 (2001): 57. **315** _**"Robotics and all this unmanned stuff"**_ Larry Korb, interview, Peter W. Singer, September 30, 2006. **316** _**"There will be more marketing"**_ Ibid. **317** _**"The Army belongs"**_ Stephen J. Cimbala, "Transformation in Concept and Policy," _Joint Force Quarterly_ , no. 38 (2005): 28. **317** _**"War is much more than strategy"**_ R. D. Hooker Jr., "Beyond Vom Kriege: The Character and Conduct of Modern War," _Parameters_ 35, no. 2 (2005): 8. **317** _**"Society is an intimate participant"**_ Ibid. **318** _**"Rather than summoning Americans"**_ Andrew J. Bacevich, "The Right Choice?" _American Conservative,_ March 24, 2008, <http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_03_24/article.html.> **318** _**Josiah Bunting is a former major general**_ Josiah Bunting, "What Determines Why People Support the Next War?," Imagining the Next War, Guggenheim conference, New York, March 25, 2006. **319** _**"This may be a positive way"**_ Michael Kan, "The Evolution of Warfare," _Michigan Daily_ , July 27, 2005, <http://www.michigandaily/com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/03/31/424be2fd00491> **319** _**"They [unmanned systems] lower"**_ Tom Malinowsky, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, January 29, 2007. **319** _**"Anything that makes it morally"**_ Special forces officer, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, September 7, 2006. **320** _**"Taking the human factor out"**_ Patrick Eberle, "To UAV or Not to UAV: That Is the Question; Here Is One Answer," _Air & Space Power Journal—Chronicles Online Journal_, October 9, 2001, <http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/cc/eberle.html>. **320** _**entertainment, or "war porn"**_ Interview with U.S. Army War College officer, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, February 8, 2008. **320** _**"A global spectator sport"**_ "Notes, 8 June 2004," in _National Security in the 21st Century: Rethinking the Principles of War_ (Arlington, VA: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, 2004). **321** _**"the pleasure of a spectacle"**_ Christopher Coker, _Humane Warfare_ (London, New York: Routledge, 2001), 150. **321** _**Nations often go to war**_ Geoffrey Blainey, _The Causes of War_ (New York: Free Press, 1973). **321** _**"use it or lose it" mentality**_ "Nanotech Arms Races," Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, June 30, 2004 (cited July 18, 2006); available at http://crnano.typepad.com/crnblog /2004 /06/nanotech_arms_r.html. **321** _**"if we believe the hype"**_ Daniel Wilson, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 19, 2006. **321** _**"lower the threshold for violence"**_ James Der Derian, interview, Peter W. Singer, September 20, 2006. **321** _**"If one can argue that such new technologies"**_ Ibid. **322** _**"option of last resort"**_ A. J. Bacevich and Lawrence F. Kaplan, "The Clinton Doctrine," _Weekly Standard_ 215, no. 14 (1996): 16. **322** _**cruise missile diplomacy of the**_ **1990s** John A. Gentry, "Doomed to Fail: America's Blind Faith in Military Technology," _Parameters_ 32, no. 4 (2002): 100. **322** _**"feel good for a time"**_ Ibid. **322** _**"The military thinks"**_ Daniel Wilson, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 19, 2006. **323** _**One private military company executive**_ Robert Young Pelton, "Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror," presentation, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, October 5, 2006. **323** _**Instead of widespread engagement**_ Paul W. Kahn, "War and Sacrifice in Kosovo," _Philosophy & Public Diplomacy Quarterly_, ⅔ (1999), <http://www.publicpolicy.umd.edu/IPPP/spring_summer99/kosovo.htm> **323** _**"a reflection of the moral character"**_ Ibid. **324** _**"The life of one NATO soldier"**_ Ibid. **324** _**"become so intoxicated by the idea"**_ Coker, _Humane Warfare_ , 150. **324** _**"making war is the act of killing"**_ Francis J. West, _No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah_ (New York: Bantam, 2005), 323. **324** _**"is forced travel, no good food"**_ Paul Fussell, "What Determines Why People Support the Next War?" (paper presented at the Imagining the Next War, Guggenheim Conference, New York City, March 25, 2006). **324** _**"And so I tried to cut away"**_ Susanna Rustin, "Hello to All That," _Guardian_ (UK), July 31, 2004, <http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/history/story/0,,1272911,00.html>. **325** _**"If darkness had mercifully hidden"**_ Ibid. **325** _**"If there is no risk"**_ Fussell, "What Determines Why People Support the Next War?" **325** _**"people will support the next war"**_ Ibid. # 17. CHANGING THE EXPERIENCE OF WAR AND THE WARRIOR **326** _**"The introduction of every new technology"**_ Illah Nourbakhsh, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, October 31, 2006. **327** _**"The 101st kicks ass"**_ As quoted in Rym Brahimi et al., "Pentagon: Saddam's Sons Killed in Raid," CNN.com, July 22, 2003 (cited March 30, 2007); available at <http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/07/22/sprj.irq.sons/index.html> **327** _**"It was like a Super Bowl party"**_ Noah Shachtman, "Drone School, a Ground's-Eye View," _Wired News_ , May 27, 2005, <http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,67655,00.html>. **328** _**Colonel Gary Fabricius graduated from**_ Gary Fabricius, interview, Peter W. Singer, Pentagon, August 29, 2006. **328** _**"kicking, screaming, clawing, and scratching"**_ Ibid. **328** _**"But after a month, I became a believer"**_ Ibid. **329** _**"You could see him climbing out of the hole"**_ Ibid. **329** _**"If you want to pull the trigger"**_ Robert D. Kaplan, "Hunting the Taliban in Las Vegas," _Atlantic Monthly_ 298, no. 2 (2006). **329** _**the action felt so intense**_ Joel Garreau, "Bots on the Ground: In the Field of Battle (Or Even Above It), Robots Are a Soldier's Best Friend," _Washington Post_ , May 6, 2007, D1. **330** _**Marshall Harrison tells**_ Marshall Harrison, _A Lonely Kind of War: Forward Air Controller, Vietnam_ (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1989), 27. **330** _**"a wife, three children, and a well-mortgaged home"**_ Ibid., 43. **330** _**"At the end of the duty day"**_ Kaplan, "Hunting the Taliban in Las Vegas." **330** _**"YOU'LL BE SCARED"**_ Nancy Sherman, _Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy Behind the Military Mind_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 101. **330** _**"Most of the time,"**_ Noah Shachtman, "Attack of the Drones," _Wired_ 13.06 (2005), http://www.wired.com/wired/archive /13.06/drones.html. **330** _**getting home in time**_ Predator pilot, interview, Peter W. Singer, August 28, 2006. **331** _**"No, he doesn't meet my definition"**_ Special forces officer, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, September 7, 2006. **331** _**"If you see it through their eyes"**_ Ibid. **331** _**"so many brave and valiant men"**_ Max Boot, _War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today_ (New York: Gotham Books, 2006), 22. **331** _**"fighting by remote"**_ Robert Epstein, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, October 25, 2006. **331** _**"passive disdain"**_ Boot, _War Made New_ , 86. **331** _**"Three men and a machine gun"**_ Ibid., 167. **332** _**"The real function of an army"**_ T. R. Fehrenbach, _This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History_ , 1st Brassey's ed. (Washington: Brassey's, 1994), 66. **332** _**"The mysterious quality"**_ As quoted in Henry G. Gole, "Reflections of Courage," _Parameters_ 27, no. 4 (1997): 147. See also Charles McMoran Wilson Moran, _The Anatomy of Courage_ , 1st American ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967). **332** _**"It 's like a video game"**_ Shachtman, "Drone School, a Ground's-Eye View." **332** _**"Every now and then"**_ Hart Seely, "Robot Plane Pilots Have Bird's Eye View of Iraq War," New-house News Service, November 4, 2005. **332** _**"You've got to be thankful"**_ Ibid. **332** _**"Yeah, war is hell"**_ Ibid. **332** _**"I won the last game"**_ Ibid. **332** _**move toward "virtueless war"**_ Andrew White, "Uninhabited Military Vehicles as 'Virtueless' War: A Psycho-Social Exploration of Behavioural Responses" (NATO, 2006). Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge cited on p. 11-1 and later pp. 11-8. **333** _**"war is not just in transition"**_ Chris Gray, _Post-modern War: The New Politics of Conflict_ (New York: Guilford Press, 1997), 3. **333** _**"From this day to the ending of the world"**_ William Shakespeare, _Henry V_ , 4.3.58-62. **333** _**"We're a family"**_ Robert D. Kaplan, _Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground_ (New York: Random House, 2005), 281. **334** _**"Cohesion requires trusting"**_ Ralph E. McDonald, "Cohesion: The Key to Special Operations Teamwork, Research Report No. AU-ARI-94-2" (Maxwell AFB: Air University Press, October 1994). **334** _**the new experiences of warriors**_ Bing West, interview, Peter W. Singer, August 23, 2006. **334** _**"Make no mistake"**_ Interview at U.S. military facility, Peter W. Singer, February 19, 2008. **334** _**"founding father of the study"**_ Josh Hyatt, "The SOUL of a New Team," _Fortune_ 153, no. 11 (2006): 134-43. **335** _**"The only sound"**_ Mihail C. Roco and William Sims Bainbridge, "Converging Technologies for Improving Human Health: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science" (National Science Foundation, 2002), 164. **335** _**"MySpace Generation"**_ Jessi Hempel, "The MySpace Generation," BusinessWeek.com, December 12, 2005 (cited November 2, 2006); available at <http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_50/b3963001.htm>. **335** _**"Computers by their nature"**_ Thomas E. Ricks, _Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq_ (New York: Penguin Press, 2006), 313. **335** _**"skittering like water bugs"**_ Joel Garreau, _Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—And What It Means to Be Human_ (New York: Doubleday, 2005), 219. **335** _**"op-con [operational control] isn't real"**_ United States Marine Corps general, interview, Peter W. Singer, January 16, 2007. **336** _**"Ninety percent of the time"**_ Gary Fabricius, interview, Peter W. Singer, Pentagon, August 29, 2006. **336** _**"Staff Sergeant Smithy"**_ Ibid. **336** _**"I hate it"**_ Ibid. **336** _**"what's funny about using Microsoft Chat"**_ Joshua Davis, "If We Run Out of Batteries, This War is Screwed," _Wired_ 11.06 (2003), <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.06/battlefield.html.> **336** _**"Yipee-ki-aye! Motherfucker"**_ Interview at U.S. military facility, Peter W. Singer, February 19, 2008. **336** _**"everyone thinks they have a vote"**_ Predator pilot, interview, Peter W. Singer, August 28, 2006. **336** _**"Textual communications accounts"**_ Michael Downs, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, September 13, 2006. **337** _**"and confusion led the UAV"**_ Special forces officer, interview, Peter W. Singer, September 7, 2006. **337** _**"Can you fix it?"**_ Garreau, "Bots on the Ground: In the Field of Battle (Or Even Above It), Robots Are a Soldier's Best Friend," _Washington Post_ , May 6, 2006, D1. **337** _**"This has been a really great robot"**_ Ibid. **338** _**"wanted Scooby-Doo back"**_ Peter W. Singer, "Research Visit to iRobot Corporation," 2006. **338** _**"I don't get happy about robots"**_ As quoted in Lee Gutkind, _Almost Human: Making Robots Think_ , 1st ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006), 36. **338** _**"You start to associate personalities"**_ Preston Lerner, "Robots Go to War: Within 10 Years, Infantry Soldiers Will Go into Battle with Autonomous Robots Close Behind Them," _Popular Science_ 268, no. 1 (2006). **338** _**"award 'battlefield promotions' "**_ Garreau, "Bots on the Ground." **339** _**"It was a big deal"**_ Ibid. **339** _**"I wish you all could be here"**_ Kari Thomas, "Robotics on the Battlefield," _Robotics Update News Letter_ , 2 (2004), <http://www.nosc.mil/robots/newsletter/RoboticsUpdate_4_2.pdf>. **339** _**an EOD soldier ran fifty meters**_ Peter W. Singer, "Research Visit to Foster-Miller," 2006. **340** _**"The Colonel could not stand"**_ Garreau, "Bots on the Ground." **340** _**the people had much the same brain activity**_ Robin Marantz Henig, "The Real Transformers," _New York Times Magazine_ , July 29, 2007. **340** _**describe their computers as having "agency"**_ Betya Friedman, Peter H. Kahn, and Jennifer Hagman, "Hardware Companions? What Online AIBO Discussion Forums Reveal About the Human-Robotic Relationship," in _Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems_ (Fort Lauderdale: ACM Press, 2003), 274. **340** _**"Oh yeah, I love Spaz"**_ Peter H. Kahn et al., "Social and Moral Relationships with Robotics Others?," paper presented at the IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interaction, Okayama, Japan, September 20-22, 2004, 548. **341** _**this line of what is alive or not**_ Mihail C. Roco and William Sims Bainbridge, "Converging Technologies for Improving Human Health: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science" (National Science Foundation, 2002). **341** _**"Robots will need to work"**_ Hiroko Tabuchi, "Japan Looks to a Robot Future," Associated Press, March 2, 2008. **342** _**"Hey [whatever their name was]"**_ Jennie J. Gallimore and Sasanka Prabhala, "Creating Collaborative Agents with Personality for Supervisory Control of Multiple UCAVs," paper presented at the Symposium on Human Factors of Uninhabited Military Vehicles as Force Multipliers, Biarritz, France, October 9-11, 2006, 14. **342** _**The other would say**_ Ibid. **342** _**"Here is the last known target"**_ Ibid., 16. **342** _**"Let's say you design robots"**_ Peter H. Kahn, "Social and Moral Relationships with Personified Robots" (presentation, Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence, March 12, 2007). **342** _**"But he was somebody"**_ Paul Fussell, "What Determines Why People Support the Next War?," paper presented at the Imagining the Next War, Guggenheim Conference, New York City, March 25, 2006. **342** _**"Being a Marine"**_ Nathaniel Fick, _One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer_ (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), 17. **343** _**"We joined the military"**_ United States Marine, interview, Peter W. Singer, May 15, 2007. # 18. COMMAND AND CONTROL...ALT-DELETE: NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND THEIR EFFECT ON LEADERSHIP **344** _**"You are watching the most violent actions"**_ LTC Michael Downs, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, September 13, 2006. **346** _**"What angers me"**_ Interview at U.S. military facility, Peter W. Singer, February 19, 2008. **348** _**his role in the operation**_ Interview, Peter W. Singer, Brookings Institution, December 17, 2007. **348** _**"the personal bond"**_ John Keegan, _The Face of Battle_ (New York: Viking Press, 1976), 114. **348** _**"towards centralization of command"**_ Chris Gray, _Postmodern War: The New Politics of Conflict_ (New York: Guilford Press, 1997), 274. **348** _**"just turned the radios off"**_ Ibid., 63. **348** _**"GCCS—known as 'Geeks' "**_ Joshua Davis, "If We Run Out of Batteries, This War Is Screwed," _Wired_ , 11.06 (2003), <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.06/battlefield.html>. **349** _**ordered the captain**_ Andrew Exum, interview, Peter W. Singer, April 28, 2008. **349** _**"It's like crack for generals"**_ Noah Shachtman, "Attack of the Drones," _Wired_ 13.06 (2005), <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.06/drones.html>. **349** _**"incentives to intervene tactically"**_ Robert Killebrew, "Why Doctrine Matters and How to Fix It," _Armed Forces Journal_ , October 2006, 22. **350** _**"5,000 mile long screwdriver"**_ Barry Rosenberg, "Technology and Leadership," _Armed Forces Journal_ , July 2007, 18. **350** _**"You get too focused"**_ As quoted in Thomas E. Ricks, "Beaming the Battlefield Home: Live Video of Afghan Fighting Had Questionable Effect," _Washington Post **,**_ March 22, 2002, A1. **351** _**the commanders thought**_ Stephen D. Biddle, _Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle_ (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 65. **351** _**eat "a shit sandwich"**_ Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, _Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq_ , 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon, 2006), 314. **351** _**"Mother may I?" syndrome**_ The term was used in four different interviews. **351** _**"it sat in someone's e-mail"**_ Interview at U.S. military facility, Peter W. Singer, February 19, 2008. **351** _**"It's the old story"**_ Robert D. Kaplan, "Hunting the Taliban in Las Vegas," _Atlantic Monthly_ 298, no. 2 (2006). **351** _**"One bad general is better"**_ Nicholas Wade, "Bytes Make Might," _New York Times Magazine_ , March 12, 1995, 28. **352** _**"each commander thinks he's in control of you"**_ Susan B. Glasser and Vernon Loeb, "A War of Bridges: 225,000 U.S. and British Troops Are Now Within Striking Distance," _Washington Post Foreign Service_ , March 2, 2003, A1. **352** _**"power struggles galore"**_ Ibid. **352** _**"they were in a position"**_ Ricks, "Beaming the Battlefield Home: Live Video of Afghan Fighting Had Questionable Effect," 1. **352** _**"flattening of the chain of command"**_ Rosenberg, "Technology and Leadership," 17. **353** _**"Don't do anything beyond patrol"**_ United States Marine Corps general, interview, Peter W. Singer, January 16, 2007. **353** _**"You may have some general officer"**_ John J. Klein, "The Problematic Nexus: Where Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles and the Law of Armed Conflict Meet," _Air & Space Power Journal—Chronicles Online Journal_, July 22, 2003, <http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/cc/klein.html>. **353** _**"in the near future"**_ Bing West, interview, Peter W. Singer, August 23, 2006. **353** _**"it'll be like taking LBJ"**_ Michael Wynne, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, January 25, 2008. **353** _**"techniques of leadership"**_ Paul Fussell, "What Determines Why People Support the Next War?" paper presented at the Imagining the Next War, Guggenheim Conference, New York City, March 25, 2006. **354** _**"the passion of command"**_ Bryan McCoy, _The Passion of Command: The Moral Imperative of Leadership_ (Quantico, VA: Marine Corps Association, 2006). **354** _**"Commanding an army of droids"**_ David Sherman and Dan Cragg, _Star Wars: Jedi Trial_ , 1st ed. (New York: Random House, 2004), 264. **354** _**"where the strategic, operational, and tactical levels"**_ Richard A. Chilcoat, "The 'Fourth' Army War College: Preparing Strategic Leaders for the Next Century," _Parameters_ 25, no. 4 (1995). **354** _**"The strategic leader best adapted"**_ Ibid. **355** _**flexibility to lead a "learning organization"**_ Janine Davidson, "Learning to Lift the Fog of Peace: The U.S. Military in Stability and Reconstruction Operations" (University of South Carolina, 2005). **355** _**"I speculate that the digital general"**_ Paul T. Harig, "The Digital General: Reflections on Leadership in the Post-Information Age," _Parameters_ 26, no. 3 (1996): 134. **355** _**"To the strategic commander of the Information Age"**_ Chilcoat, "The 'Fourth' Army War College: Preparing Strategic Leaders for the Next Century." **356** _**New inventions like the radio and teletype**_ Credit for this point goes to Harlan Ullman. **356** _**"Engage your brain"**_ James Mattis, presentation, Brookings Institution, January 16, 2007. **356** _**they identified such qualities**_ Chilcoat, "The 'Fourth' Army War College: Preparing Strategic Leaders for the Next Century." **356** _**"In the end, it could be argued"**_ Harig, "The Digital General: Reflections on Leadership in the Post-Information Age," 133. **356** _**"the decision cycle of the future"**_ John Bennett, "DoD Struggles to Craft Offensive Cyberspace Plan," _Defense News_ , February 26, 2007, 1. **357** _**"The solution to this problem"**_ Thomas K. Adams, "Future Warfare and the Decline of Human Decisionmaking," _Parameters_ 31, no. 4 (2001). **357** _**AI that allows a commander**_ Tony Skinner, "DARPA Develops Strategic Decision Support Tools," _Jane's Defence Weekly_ , January 4, 2007, 7. **357** _**"battle management" systems**_ Gray, _Postmodern War,_ 58. **357** _**"provide the commander"**_ "Interview: Dr. Alexander Kott: RAID program manager, DARPA," _Jane's International Defence Review_ , 41, March 2008, 66. **357** _**"virtual battle management" AI**_ Barbara Opall-Rome, "Israeli Defense to Use Artificial Intelligence," _Defense News_ , January 21, 2008. **358** _**"three-inch-deep" folder**_ Interview at U.S. military facility, Peter W. Singer, February 19, 2008. **358** _**Recent neurological findings**_ Drew Westen, _The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation_ (Public Affairs, 2007), ix, 69-88, 417-20. **358** _**two underrated factors**_ Stephen Peter Rosen, _War and Human Nature_ (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 28. **358** _**low levels of serotonin**_ Ibid., 87. **358** _**"The history of human conflicts"**_ Charles J. Dunlap Jr., _Technology and the 21st Century Battlefield: Recomplicating Moral Life for the Statesman and the Soldier_ (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, United States Army War College, 1999), 12. **359** _**"In war, as in life"**_ Christopher Coker, _The Future of War: The Re-enchantment of War in the Twenty-first Century_ , Blackwell Manifestos (Malden, MA; Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2004), 73. **359** _**"automatically send and collate information"**_ James Lasswell, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, November 7, 2006. **359** _**with each focusing**_ U.S. Navy, Convergence of Sea Power and Cyber Power, Strategic Studies Group XXVI, Naval War College, Newport, RI, July 2007. # 19. WHO LET YOU IN THE WAR? TECHNOLOGY AND THE NEW DEMOGRAPHICS OF CONFLICT **360** _**"How can I be a professional"**_ As quoted in Don M. Snider, "Jointness, Defense Transformation, and the Need for a New Joint Warfare Profession," _Parameters_ 33, no. 3 (2003). **360** _**"Simplicity"**_ Joel Clark, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, November 8, 2007. **360** _**his high school transcript revealed**_ Noah Shachtman, "Attack of the Drones," _Wired_ 13.06 (2005), <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.06/drones.html>. **360** _**"but the idea of running a robot spy"**_ Ibid. **361** _**"I love my job"**_ Joel Clark, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 8, 2008. **361** _**a "military culture clash"**_ Noah Shachtman, "Unmanned Culture War," e-mail, defensetech@ yahoogroups.com, May 27, 2005. **362** _**singular professional identity**_ Don M. Snider and Gayle L. Watkins, "The Future of Army Professionalism: A Need for Renewal and Redefinition," _Parameters_ 30, no. 3 (2000). **362** _**both working with and competing against**_ Ibid. **362** _**"will again revolutionize"**_ Christopher Coker, "Biotechnology and War: The New Challenge," _Australian Army Journal_ 2, no. 1 (2004): 128. **362** _**"UAVs are piloted"**_ Shachtman, "Attack of the Drones." **363** _**"It might be necessary"**_ Steven Metz, _Armed Conflict in the 21st Century: The Information Revolution and Post-modern Warfare_ (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2000), 83. **363** _**"After weapons system qualification"**_ Hap Carr, brigadier general, interview, Peter W. Singer, September 13, 2007. **364** _**"We'll get them a few rides"**_ Air force colonel, interview, Peter W. Singer, April 18, 2006. **364** _**"Those PlayStation 2s really do the trick"**_ As quoted in Eric Fleischauer, "Robots in Combat: Remote-Control Warfare: How PlayStation 2 Saves U.S. Lives," _Decatur Daily_ , September 27, 2005. **365** _**"you are never far from the Madden crowd"**_ Jeff Macgregor, "Imitation of Life," _Sports Illustrated_ , August 21, 2006, 19. **365** _**"The Army will draw on a generation"**_ Richard Szafranski, "When Waves Collide: Future Conflict," _Joint Force Quarterly_ , no. 7 (1995): 79. **365** _**"The video game generation learns"**_ Chris Barylick, "iRobot's PackBot on the Front Lines," _Space Daily_ , February 23, 2006, <http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/iRobots_PackBot_On_The_Front_Lines.html>. **365** _**today's pop culture and video games**_ Steven Johnson, _Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter_ (New York: Riverhead, 2005). **366** _**"It will be no surprise"**_ Paul T. Harig, "The Digital General: Reflections on Leadership in the Post-Information Age," _Parameters_ 26, no. 3 (1996). **366** _**"Battles are won"**_ Owen West and Bing West, "Lessons from Iraq," _Popular Mechanics_ 182, no. 8 (2005). **366** _**"The younger airmen and women"**_ Air force colonel, interview, Peter W. Singer, April 18, 2006. **367** _**"If you talk to my seven-year-old son"**_ Interview at U.S. military facility, Peter W. Singer, February 19, 2008. **367** _**"The native creativity, innovativeness"**_ Robert H. Scales, "Clausewitz and World War IV," _Armed Forces Journal_ , July 2006. **367** _**"How do you manage to train"**_ James Lasswell, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, November 7, 2006. **367** _**"an American tendency to think"**_ David R. Smock, ed., _Religious Perspectives on War: Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Attitudes Toward Force_ , Perspectives Series (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2002), 22. **367** _**"erase the pain given and taken"**_ Macgregor, "Imitation of Life," 19. **368** _**"When you have a radical idea"**_ As quoted in Jonathon Keats, "The Idea Man," Popsci.com, 2004 (cited August 18, 2006); available at <http://www.popsci.com/popsci/technology/generaltechnology/6b0898b0c9b84010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html>. **368** _**the Pentagon is now the largest day-care provider**_ Christopher Coker, _Humane Warfare_ (London, New York: Routledge, 2001), 98. **369** _**"Social intelligence and diplomatic skills"**_ Scales, "Clausewitz and World War IV." **369** _**"Sixty is the new forty"**_ Ralph Peters, "The Geezer Brigade: Wartime Needs and Military Retirees," _Armed Forces Journal_ , July 2007, <http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2007/07/2792594>. **369** _**"the Old Farts"**_ John Scalzi, _Old Man's War_ , 1st ed. (New York: A Tom Doherty Associates Book, 2005). **369** _**Our image of a soldier**_ For more on this, see Nancy Sherman, _Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy Behind the Military Mind_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). **369** _**"inoperable pilonidal cyst"**_ Michael Arkush, _Rush!_ (New York: Avon, 1993). **369** _**"having a strong bladder and big butt"**_ Noah Shachtman, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, March 25, 2006. **369** _**"it is likely that a pasty-faced scholar"**_ Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, _Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America_ (Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, 1999), 32. **370** _**"Over time, the proportion of soldiers"**_ Elliott Abrams and Andrew J. Bacevich, "A Symposium on Citizenship and Military Service," _Parameters_ 31, no. 2 (2001). **370** _**"If you let the geeks wage war"**_ Foster-Miller executive, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 17, 2006. **370** _**"much of the military regimen"**_ Bruce M. Lawlor, "Information Corps," _Armed Forces Journal_ , January 1998, 26, 28. **370** _**wars are fought by a new class of military reservists**_ Joe W. Haldeman, _Forever Peace_ , 1st ed. (New York: Ace Books, 1997). **370** _**the military's monopoly on war**_ P. W. Singer, _Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry_ (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003). **371** _**"While these actions are principally motivated"**_ Charles J. Dunlap Jr., _Technology and the 21st Century Battlefield: Recomplicating Moral Life for the Statesman and the Soldier_ (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, United States Army War College, 1999), 13. **371** _**"We take these Army guys"**_ As quoted in Noah Shachtman, "Drone School, a Ground's-Eye View," _Wired News_ , May 27, 2005, <http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,67655,00.html.> **371** _**"certain soldiers were not as comfortable flying"**_ Ibid. **371** _**"government-owned,contractor-operated"**_ Nathan Hodge, "Viper Strike Makes Its Combat Debut," _Jane's Defence Weekly_ , November 14, 2007, 7. **372** _**"surrogate warriors"**_ Bryan Bender, "Defense Contractors Quickly Becoming Surrogate Warriors," _Defense News_ , March 28, 1997, 490. **372** _**"They have their heart"**_ Rickey Smith and Helen Lardner, interview, Ralph Wipfli, November 14, 2006. **372** _**"the nature of their status"**_ Dunlap, _Technology and the 21st Century Battlefield_ , 14. **372** _**"Even though international law recognizes"**_ Paul Kennedy and George J. Andreopoulos, "The Laws of War: Some Concluding Reflections," in _The Laws of War: Constraints on Warfare in the Western World_ , ed. Michael Eliot Howard, George J. Andreopoulos, and Mark R. Shulman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994). **372** _**UAVs in wartime**_ John J. Klein, "The Problematic Nexus: Where Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles and the Law of Armed Conflict Meet," _Air & Space Power Journal—Chronicles Online Journal_, July 22, 2003, <http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/cc/klein.html.> **373** _**"he changes not only his clothing"**_ Coker, _Humane Warfare_ , 91. **373** _**"protect and defend the Constitution"**_ Morris Janowitz, _The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait_ (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1960). **373** _**"However much sociologists might argue"**_ Richard Holmes, _Acts of War: The Behavior of Men in Battle_ , 1st American ed. (New York: Free Press, 1986), 31. **373** _**"At least once a day"**_ Patrick O'Driscoll, "Losing a Limb Doesn't Mean Losing Your Job," USAToday .com, May 5, 2004, <http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-05-05-cover-fit-to-serve_x.htm>. **374** _**Over a thousand soldiers have lost a limb**_ Sheri Waldrop and Michele Wojciechowski, "The 'Bionic' Warrior: Advances in Prosthetics, Technology, and Rehabilitation," _PT Magazine_ 15, no. 4 (2007). **374** _**they can "feel" a temperature change**_ Associated Press, "Bionic Arm Provides Hope for Amputees," CNN.com, September 14, 2006 (cited September 14, 2006); available at <http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/09/14/bionic.arm.ap/index.html/2006/TECH/09/14/bionic.arm.ap/index.html> **374** _**"as close to real limbs"**_ Art Pine, "Military Prosthetics: The Next Generation," _Proceedings_ 133, no. 2 (2007): 13. **374** _**40 percent of the soldiers**_ Ibid., 14. **374** _**"It's sort of the Luke Skywalker"**_ As quoted in Discovery Science Channel _, Robosapiens: The Secret (R)evolution._ **375** _**"As us baby boomers get older"**_ As quoted in Bay and Ford, _Cybernetics: Merging Machine and Man_. **375** _**French physician Ambroise Paré**_ Ibid. **375** _**a status symbol for rappers**_ Meredith May, "The Gold Standard of Style," _San Francisco Chronicle_ , May 1, 2005, http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05 /01/BAG32CIDA81.DTL. **375** _**more than eleven million cosmetic surgeries**_ Reuters, "2006: Nearly 11 Million Cosmetic Surgeries in U.S.," _NewsMax_ , March 22, 2007, http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/3 /22/132047.shtml **375** _**Florida-based VeriChip company**_ VeriChip, "Corporate FAQ," 2006 (cited August 14, 2007); available at <http://www.verichipcorp.com/content/company/corporatefaq#g5> **375** _**The implants have also been used**_ Bruce Schneier, "The ID Chip You Don't Want in Your Passport," _Washington Post_ , September 16, 2006, A21. **375** _**"It makes me jealous"**_ Discovery Science Channel, _Robosapiens: The Secret (R)evolution._ **376** _**"Essentially we'll have a PDA"**_ Ibid. **376** _**"the equivalent of a flash drive"**_ Robert Finkelstein, interview, Peter W. Singer, July 7, 2006. **376** _**"take a book and gulp it down"**_ Mihail C. Roco and William Sims Bainbridge, "Converging Technologies for Improving Human Health: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science" (National Science Foundation, 2002), 110. **376** _**"All war presupposes human weakness"**_ Carl von Clausewitz, Michael Eliot Howard, and Peter Paret, _On War_ (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 257. **376** _**"the weakling of the battlefield"**_ Paul F. Gorman, "SuperTroop via I-Port: Distributed Simulation Technology for Combat Development and Training Development" (Institute for Defense Analyses, 1990). **376** _**"The G.I., the stamped government issue"**_ George Friedman and Meredith Friedman, _The Future of War: Power, Technology, and American World Dominance in the Twenty-first Century_ , 1st ed. (New York: Crown, 1996), 392. **377** _**"I draw the line"**_ Special forces officer, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, September 7, 2006. **377** _**"Being a guinea pig"**_ Ibid. **378** _**"We need to separate emotion"**_ Krystyna Rudzki, "IAAF: Pistorius' Prosthetic Legs Provide Less Air Resistance," USAToday.com, July 16, 2007, <http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/summer/track/2007-07-16-iaaf-prosthetics-study_N.htm>. **379** _**"You never quite get used to the implants"**_ R. J. Pinero, "Air Infantry," in _Future Wars_ , ed. Martin Harry Greenberg and Larry Segriff (New York: DAW Books, 2003), 212. **379** _**a new type of human species**_ Joel Garreau, _Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—And What It Means to Be Human_ (New York: Doubleday, 2005), 11. **380** _**the human body actually alters**_ Discovery Science Channel, _Robosapiens: The Secret (R)evolution._ **380** _**a growing division of "natural" humans**_ Ibid., 8. **381** _**"One of the reactions I had"**_ Andrew Smith, "Science 2001: Net Prophets," _Observer_ , December 31, 2000, 18. **381** _**"If you are not upgraded"**_ Julian Jones, director, _How William Shatner Changed the World,_ produced by the History Channel, broadcast on October 21, 2006. # 20. DIGITIZING THE LAWS OF WAR AND OTHER ISSUES OF (UN)HUMAN RIGHTS **382** _**"We risk continuing to fight"**_ John Reid, British defence secretary, "20th-Century Rules, 21st-Century Conflict" (speech, Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies, London, April 3, 2006). **382** _**War is a special kind of hell**_ Nancy Sherman, _Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy Behind the Military Mind_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). **382** _**"In times of war, the laws fall mute"**_ "Miscellaneous Military Quotes: Oats, and Military Proverbs," MilitaryQuotes.com, 2003 (cited March 30, 2007); available at <http://www.military-quotes.com/misc%20quotes.htm>. **382** _**"War is still a rule-governed activity"**_ Michael Walzer, _Just and Unjust Wars_ , 4th ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 36. **383** _**"Whether war is waged"**_ David J. DiCenso, "IW Cyberlaw," _Airpower Journal_ 13, no. 2 (1999). **383** _**"a rule-governed activity of equals"**_ As quoted in Sherman, _Stoic Warriors_ , 11. **384** _**"reconcile the necessities of war"**_ Peter Herby, "The Future of Weapons, Technology and International Law" (presentation, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, October 17, 2006). **384** _**"There are four pillars"**_ Ibid. **385** _**"We have no particular viewpoint"**_ Ibid. **385** _**"with every major scientific revolution"**_ Ibid. **385** _**"There is so much terrible going on"**_ Interview with Peter W. Singer, October 17, 2006. **385** _**"idiot protection device"**_ iRobot executive, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 16, 2006. **385** _**"Our responsibility"**_ iRobot engineer, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 16, 2006. **386** _**the conference on RMAs**_ Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism (INSCT) at Syracuse University, New Battlefields, Old Laws conference, Omni Shoreham Hotel, Washington, DC, October 8, 2007. **386** _**"There is nothing set for this"**_ Colonel Gary Fabricius, USAF, interview, Peter W. Singer, August 29, 2006. **387** _**The current "legal limbo"**_ Sebastian Thrun, interview, Peter W. Singer, March 18, 2007. **387** _**"The lawyers tell me"**_ Tim Weiner, "A New Model Army Soldier Rolls Closer to the Battlefield," _New York Times_ , February 16, 2005. **387** _**"There is no consensus"**_ Steven Metz, interview, Peter W. Singer, September 19, 2006. **388** _**participated "in over 50 interrogations"**_ Mother Jones Radio, "Marc Garlasco," October 2, 2005 (cited January 30, 2007); available at <http://www.motherjones.com/radio/2005/10/garlasco_bio.html>. **388** _**"Isaac Asimov was a bit of a dirty old man"**_ Marc Garlasco, Human Rights Watch, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, January 30, 2007. **390** _**"It used to be a simple thing to fight a battle"**_ As quoted in Charles J. Dunlap Jr., "Lawfare in Modern Conflicts," _The Reporter_ USAF JAG Corps Keystone Edition (2005): 94. **390** _**"My JAG doesn't like this"**_ John J. Klein, "The Problematic Nexus: Where Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles and the Law of Armed Conflict Meet," _Air & Space Power Journal—Chronicles Online Journal_, July 22, 2003, <http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/cc/klein.html.> **390** _**"The ability to backtrack"**_ James Lasswell, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, November 7, 2006. **391** _**"there is a legal and moral duty"**_ "International Law—The Conduct of Armed Conflict and Air Operations, Pamphlet 110-31," ed. Department of the Air Force (1976). **391** _**"What if a commander chooses"**_ Charles J. Dunlap Jr., _Technology and the 21st Century Battlefield: Recomplicating Moral Life for the Statesman and the Soldier_ (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, United States Army War College, 1999), 11. **391** _**"We'll see far more lawyers"**_ Lawrence Korb, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, September 30, 2006. **391** _**"They are intent on manipulating"**_ Dunlap, "Lawfare in Modern Conflicts," 96. **391** _**"We approach war in terror of lawsuits"**_ Ralph Peters, _Never Quit the Fight_ , 1st ed. (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2006), 36. **391** _**"The truth is"**_ Steven Green, as quoted in Andrew Tilghman, "I Came Over Here Because I Wanted to Kill People," _Washington Post_ , July 30, 2006. Steven Green's trial date is set for April 27, 2009; see Associated Press, "Ex-soldiers Indictment Dispute Rejected," September 2, 2008. **392** _**"revenge for our sister"**_ Michael Hedges, "Killings of Two Soldiers Perhaps Retaliation for Slain Iraqi Family," _Houston Chronicle_ , July 4, 2006, <http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4022556.html>. **392** _**"When you put young people"**_ Stephen E. Ambrose, _Americans at War_ (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997), 152. **392** _**"It is vitally important to recognize"**_ David Perry, "Why Hearts and Minds Matter," _Armed Forces Journal_ , September 2006. **393** _**"Anger is as much a part of war"**_ Nancy Sherman, _Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy Behind the Military Mind_ , 68. **393** _**"Situations where normal, good people"**_ Thomas Grassey, "Worse than a Failure of Leadership," _Proceedings_ 132, no. 12 (2006): 44. **393** _**"and the great expence of bloud is avoyed"**_ as quoted in Dunlap, _Technology and the 21st Century Battlefield_. **393** _**"Warfare on some levels will never be moral"**_ Retired army officer, interview, Peter W. Singer, Doha, Qatar, January 10, 2004. **393** _**"gave the detainee a good, swift kick"**_ U.S. Army War College meeting, Washington, DC, February 8, 2008. **394** _**45 percent of soldiers wouldn't report a fellow soldier**_ Ronald C. Arkin, "Governing Legal Behavior: Embedding Ethics in a Hybrid Deliberative/Reactive Robot Architecture" (Georgia Institute of Technology /U.S. Army Research Office, 2007), 7. **394** _**"behaves as if it were a single personality"**_ As quoted in Robert D. Kaplan, _Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground_ (New York: Random House, 2005), 60. **394** _**"In the dreadful presence of suffering"**_ Paul Van Riper and Robert H. Scales Jr., "Preparing for War in the 21st Century," _Parameters_ 27, no. 3 (1997). **394** _**"The big advantage of moving"**_ Bob Quinn, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 17, 2006. **394** _**"slow, methodical approach"**_ Andrew Bennett, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 16, 2006. **395** _**"can coolly pick out targets"**_ Michael Fumento, "Is Anything Mightier Than This Sword?" _Tech Central Station_ , January 6, 2005, <http://www.fumento.com/military/sword-robot.html>. **395** _**"are not a benevolent God"**_ Chuck Klosterman, _Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto_ (New York: Scribner, 2003). **395** _**"It's like a video game"**_ Interview at U.S. military facility, Peter W. Singer, February 19, 2008. **395** _**"that needs to be serviced"**_ David Singer, "What Determines Why People Support the Next War?," paper presented at the Imagining the Next War, Guggenheim Conference, New York City, March 25, 2006. **395** _**"The greater the distance"**_ D. Keith Shurtleff, "The Effects of Technology on Our Humanity," _Parameters_ 32, no. 2 (2002): 104. **396** _**"as war becomes safer"**_ Ibid., 103. **396** _**this sort of "externalization"**_ Chris Gray, _Postmodern War: The New Politics of Conflict_ (New York: Guilford Press, 1997). **396** _**"the impersonalization of battle"**_ John Keegan, _The Face of Battle_ (New York: Viking Press, 1976), 320. **397** _**"We're convinced that it was"**_ Marc W. Herold, "The Problem with the Predator," _Dissident Voice_ , January 15, 2003, <http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/Herold_Predator.htm> **397** _**"Why did you do this?"**_ Ibid. **398** _**the military target might have moved**_ Max Boot, _War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today_ (New York: Gotham Books, 2006), 396. **398** _**If the planes could have flown lower**_ John F. Burns, "U.S. Leapt Before Looking, Angry Villagers Say," _New York Times_ , February 17, 2002. **398** _**"gives you the ability to shoot second"**_ Andrew Bennett, interview, Peter W. Singer, November 16, 2006. **399** _**Israeli UAV opened fire**_ Yaakov Katz, "Disaster Averted: UAV Fires at IDF, IAF Halts Fire," _Jerusalem Post **,**_ July 25, 2006, http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1153291989822. **399** _**punched in the wrong coordinates**_ Patrick Eberle, "To UAV or Not to UAV: That Is the Question; Here is One Answer," _Air & Space Power Journal—Chronicles Online Journal **,**_ October 9, 2001, <http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/cc/eberle.html> **399** _**"The Predator has been used"**_ "Exclusive: CIA Aircraft Kills Terrorist," ABC News, May 13, 2005 (cited May 18, 2006); available at <http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=755961> **399** _**"The attack killed 18 civilians"**_ Mansoor Ijaz, "An Alliance Too Vital to Jeopardize with Poor Intelligence," _Financial Times_ , January 17, 2006. **400** _**"such as mistaking a civilian"**_ Robert Finkelstein, interview, Peter W. Singer, July 7, 2006. **400** _**"Inevitably, sooner or later"**_ Dennis Sorenson, "Technological Development of Unmanned Systems to Support the Naval Warfighters," paper presented at the Military Robotics Conference, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, Washington, DC, April 10-12, 2006. **400** _**"It depends on the situation"**_ Roboticist, interview, Peter W. Singer, July 7, 2006. **400** _**"The big question for military law"**_ Finkelstein, interview, July 7, 2006. **400** _**"collateral damage estimation methodology"**_ Ibid. **401** _**"able to be perfectly ethical in the battlefield"**_ Arkin, "Governing Legal Behavior: Embedding Ethics in a Hybrid Deliberative/Reactive Robot Architecture," 1, 7. **401** _**"We could reduce man's inhumanity"**_ Ronald Arkin, as quoted in Tom Abate, "If It Only Had a Heart: Can Robots Behave Humanely?" _San Francisco Chronicle **,**_ January 29, 2008, B1. **401** _**The target could be attacked only**_ Colin Kahl, "How We Fight," _Foreign Affairs_ 85, no.6 (2006), 86. **402** _**The Somali warrior**_ Sean J. A. Edwards, "Swarming and the Future of Warfare" (doctoral thesis, Pardee Rand Graduate School, 2005). **402** _**any farmers who refused**_ Alon Ben-David, "IDF Introspective Prior to Withdrawal from Lebanon," _Jane's Defence Weekly_ , September 20, 2006, 8. **403** _**"What happens when things don't work out"**_ UAV pilot, interview, Peter W. Singer, August 29, 2006. **403** _**"We're not in the business"**_ "Robots Could Demand Legal Rights," BBC News, December 21, 2006 (cited December 22, 2006); available at <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6200005.stm>. **403** _**a lawyer defended the right**_ Ray Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology_ (New York: Viking, 2005), 379. **404** _**"If they are given human level intelligence"**_ Robert Finkelstein, "Military Robotics: Malignant Machines or the Path to Peace?" paper presented at the Military Robotics Conference, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, Washington, DC, April 10-12, 2006. **404** _**"Will we ever get to the point"**_ Marc Garlasco, interview, Peter W.Singer, January 30, 2007. **404** _**whether we endow the robot**_ Rodney Brooks, _Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us_ (New York: Pantheon, 2002). **404** _**psychologists are finding that people**_ Betya Friedman, Peter H. Kahn, and Jennifer Hagman, "Hardware Companions? What Online AIBO Discussion Forums Reveal About the Human-Robotic Relationship," in _Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems_ (Fort Lauderdale: ACM Press, 2003); Betya Friedman and Peter H. Kahn, "Human Values, Ethics, and Design," in _The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook_ , ed. J. A. Jacko and A. Sears (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, forthcoming); Peter H. Kahn et al., "Robotic Pets in the Lives of Preschool Children," _Interaction Studies_ 7, no. 3 (2006); Peter H. Kahn, "Social and Moral Relationships with Personified Robots," presentation, Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence, March 12, 2007; Peter H. Kahn et al., "Social and Moral Relationships with Robotics Others?" paper presented at the IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interaction, Okayama, Japan, September 20-22, 2004; Peter H. Kahn et al., "What is a Human?" _Interaction Studies_ 8, no. 3 (2007). **405** _**"Humans are stupid"**_ Daniel Wilson, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 19, 2006. **405** _**"There will be people"**_ Salamander Davoudi, "Future Shock as Study Backs Rights for Robots in a PC world," _Financial Times_ , December 21, 2006, 1. **406** _**"the right to use all necessary means"**_ Anthony D'Amato, "International Law, Cybernetics, and Cyberspace," _Naval War College International Law Studies_ 76 (2006): 62. **407** _**The interpretation of robot rights**_ Charles J. Dunlap Jr., "The Revolution in Military Legal Affairs: Air Force Legal Professionals in 21st Century Conflicts," _Air Force Law Review_ 51 (2001). **407** _**"The Revolution in Military Legal Affairs"**_ Ibid. **407** _**when the average new house cost $** 7_, _450_ The People History, "1949 History: News, Events, Technology, Prices and Popular Culture," 2007 (cited November 3, 2007); available at <http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1949.html>. **407** _**"revolution in military legal affairs"**_ Dunlap, "The Revolution in Military Legal Affairs: Air Force Legal Professionals in 21st Century Conflicts." **408** _**"only military trigger pullers"**_ Klein, "The Problematic Nexus: Where Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles and the Law of Armed Conflict Meet." **408** _**"If these same Canadian forces"**_ Ibid. **409** _**"If a robot were programmed"**_ D'Amato, "International Law, Cybernetics, and Cyberspace," 62. **410** _**"Scientists and technologists must take"**_ Joel Garreau, _Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—And What it Means to Be Human_ (New York: Doubleday, 2005), 165. **411** _**"Science cannot by itself establish"**_ Ibid., 164. **412** _**we might see international agreements**_ Jürgen Altmann and Mark Gubrud, "Anticipating Military Nanotechnology," _IEEE Technology and Society Magazine_ 23, no. 4 (2004). **412** _**"You have to remember"**_ Steven Metz, interview, Peter W. Singer, September 19, 2006. **412** _**"The more society adheres"**_ Dunlap, "Lawfare in Modern Conflicts," 102. # 21. A ROBOT REVOLT? TALKING ABOUT ROBOT ETHICS **413** _**"Any machine could rebel"**_ Daniel H. Wilson, _How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion_ , 1st U.S. ed. (New York: Bloomsbury, 2005), 14. **413** _**"As a kid, I fell in love"**_ Daniel H. Wilson, "About the Author," 2005 (cited August 30, 2006); available at <http://www.robotuprising.com/qanda.htm>. **413** _**Wilson decided to try his hand**_ Wilson, _How to Survive a Robot Uprising,_ 10. **413** _**He details the warning signs**_ Ibid., 32. **414** _**"the chance of a Hollywood-style"**_ Wilson, "About the Author." **414** _**"Who will be man's successor?"**_ Ray Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology_ (New York: Viking, 2005), 205. **415** _**"matches human capabilities"**_ Robert Finkelstein, "Military Robotics: Malignant Machines or the Path to Peace?" paper presented at the Military Robotics Conference, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, Washington, DC, April 10-12, 2006. **415** _**"the robots will eventually succeed us"**_ Andrew Smith, "Science 2001: Net Prophets," _Observer_ , December 31, 2000, 19. **415** _**"our machines are evolving faster"**_ K. Eric Drexler, _Engines of Creation_ , 1st ed. (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1986), 171. **415** _**"humanity looks to me"**_ Smith, "Science 2001: Net Prophets," 18. **415** _**"In the game of life and evolution"**_ George Gilder and Richard Vigilante, "Stop Everything . . . It's Techno-Horror!," _American Spectator_ 34, no. 2 (2001): 40. **415** _**"a 50 percent chance of survival"**_ Smith, "Science 2001: Net Prophets," 18. **415** _**"leapingly, screamingly insane"**_ Joel Garreau, _Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—And What It Means to Be Human_ (New York: Doubleday, 2005), 73. **415** _**"Well, yeah, but I've decided"**_ Smith, "Science 2001: Net Prophets," 18. **416** " _ **In designing software and microprocessors"**_ Bill Joy, "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us," in _Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix_ , ed. Glenn Yeffeth and David Gerrold (Chicago: BenBella Books, 2003), 211. **416** _**"As one strong AI immediately begets"**_ Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near,_ 262. **417** _**"Evolution, Morpheus, evolution"**_ Robin Hand-son, "Was Cypher Right? (Part I): Why We Stay in Our Matrix," in _Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix_ , ed. Glenn Yeffeth and David Gerrold (Chicago: BenBella Books, 2003), 24. **417** _**a robot takeover "will never happen"**_ Rodney Brooks, _Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us_ (New York: Pantheon, 2002), ix. **417** _**They would have to have lost**_ Ibid., 199-204. **418** _**a robot takeover rests on a massive assumption**_ Garreau, _Radical Evolution,_ 211. **418** _**You don't get machines beyond control**_ Brooks, _Flesh and Machines_. **418** _**Why would machines ever need**_ Read Mercer Schuchardt, "What Is the Matrix?" in _Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix,_ ed. Glenn Yetheff and David Gerrold. **419** _**just as pornography helped launch**_ Brooks, _Flesh and Machines_ , 147. **419** _**"something we all await with excitement"**_ Scientist, interview, Peter W. Singer, July 7, 2006. **419** _**"People are [already] willing to have sex"**_ "Trust Me, I'm a Robot," _Economist_ 379, no. 8481 (2006): 20. **419** _**"Pedophiles may argue"**_ Ibid. **419** _**Are these the sorts of "experiences"**_ Ed Habershon and Richard Woods, "No Sex Please, Robot, Just Clean the Floor," _Sunday Times_ , June 18, 2006. **419** _**What are the boundaries**_ Eric Smalley, "Georgia Tech's Ronald Arkin," 2005, <http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2005/091205/View_Ronald_Arkin_091205.html>. **420** _**"I am sure there will be new dilemmas"**_ Rodney Brooks, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, October 30, 2006. **420** _**"fifteen minutes of privacy"**_ As quoted in Garreau, _Radical Evolution,_ 100. **420** _**"scares the shit out of me"**_ Daniel Wilson, interview, Peter W.Singer, October 19, 2006. **420** _**"The only realistic alternative"**_ As quoted in Jay Richards, _Are We Spiritual Machines ? Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong AI_ , 1st ed. (Seattle: Discovery Institute Press, 2002), 223. **420** _**"We aren't at war"**_ Ibid., 224. **421** _**"We are curious as a species"**_ Discovery Science Channel, _Robosapiens: The Secret (R)evolution,_ broadcast on June 18, 2006. **421** _**"If we knew what it was"**_ As quoted in Richards, _Are We Spiritual Machines?_ , 133. **421** _**"We would have to repeal capitalism"**_ Ibid., 54. **421** _**"We'll be chasing our fucking tails"**_ J. Sigger, "New 'WMD' Definition?" October 16, 2006 (cited October 20, 2006); available at <http://armchairgeneralist.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/10/new_wmd_definit.html>. **421** _**"No matter what we do"**_ Robert Epstein, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, October 25, 2006. **421** _**"You can't say it's not part"**_ K. Eric Drexler, "Nanotechnology: Six Lessons from Sept. 11," Open Letter, Foresight Institute, December 2001. **422** _**"We've got to be pro-active"**_ Ibid. **422** _**"We have to manage the ethics"**_ Habershon and Woods, "No Sex Please, Robot, Just Clean the Floor." **422** _**"Ethicists have written at length"**_ Nick Bostrom, "Nanotechnology Perceptions: A Review of Ultraprecision," _Nanotechnology Perceptions: A Review of Ultraprecision Engineering and Nanotechnology_ 2, no. 2 (2006). **423** _**"People ask me about"**_ Rodney Brooks, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 30, 2006. **423** _**"Asimov's rules are neat"**_ Daniel Wilson, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 19, 2006. **423** _**"realized during a robot exhibition"**_ "Trust Me, I'm a Robot," _Economist_ 379, no. 8481 (2006): 20. **423** _**"You don't want to tell"**_ Mark Barber, "Force Protection Robotics," paper presented at the Military Robotics Conference, Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, Washington, DC, April 10-12, 2006. **423** _**"There is a lot of push"**_ Rodney Brooks, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 30, 2006. **424** _**"Businesses are notoriously uninterested"**_ Robert Sawyer, "On Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics," 1994 (cited November 1, 2007); available at <http://www.sfwriter.com/rmasilaw.htm> **424** _**"We can't simply do our science"**_ Bill Joy, "Forfeiting the Future," _Resurgence_ no. 208 (2001), <http://www.resurgence.org/resurgence/issues/joy208.htm> **424** _**"I gave him a six-foot extension cord"**_ Roger Nygard, "Grief Counseling," _The Office_ , produced by B. J. Novak et al., broadcast on October 12, 2006. **424** _**an ethic of "design ahead"**_ Drexler, _Engines of Creation._ **424** _**"There is no sense"**_ Daniel Wilson, interview, Peter W. Singer, October 19, 2006. **425** _**"Redundancy can bring"**_ Drexler, _Engines of Creation_ , 178. **425** _**"with a 'conscience' that would reflect"**_ Smalley, "Georgia Tech's Ronald Arkin." **426** _**"Make a habit of two things"**_ Hippocrates, _The Epidemics,_ book 1, section V. **426** _**"precautionary principle"**_ David Runciman, "The Precautionary Principle," _London Review of Books_ , 2004, <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n07/print/runc01_.html>. **426** _**"define and deal"**_ Julia A. Moore, "The Future Dances on a Pin's Head; Nanotechnology: Will It Be a Boon—Or Kill Us All?," _Los Angeles Times_ , November 26, 2002. **426** _**"We have reached a point"**_ Neal Pollard, "Technology and Intelligence Reform: Opportunities and Hurdles," in _The Faces of Intelligence Reform_ , ed. Angela M. Sapp, Barton B. Brown II, and James T. Kirkhope (Washington, DC: CENSA, 2005), 42. **426** _**scientists "don't have a seat at the table"**_ Policy Center director, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, November 3, 2006. **427** _**"human impact statement"**_ Pollard, "Technology and Intelligence Reform: Opportunities and Hurdles," 42. **427** _**"think that the technology"**_ Robert Finkelstein, interview, Peter W. Singer, July 7, 2006. # 22. CONCLUSION: THE DUALITY OF ROBOTS AND HUMANS **428** _**a character "who prevails"**_ American Film Institute, "AFI's 100 Years . . . 100 Heroes & Villains," 2007 (cited January 19, 2008); available at http:// www.afi.com/tvevents/100years /handv.aspx **429** _**"an Age of Transitions"**_ Mihail C. Roco and William Sims Bainbridge, "Converging Technologies for Improving Human Health: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science" (National Science Foundation, 2002). **429** _**the story of five American troops**_ Jomana Karadsheh, "Roadside Bomb Kills 5 U.S. Soldiers in Iraq," CNN.com, January 28, 2008 (cited January 28, 2008); available at <http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/01/28/iraq.main/index.html>. **429** _**"more ponies than panzers"**_ Max Boot, _War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today_ (New York: Gotham Books, 2006), 467. **431** _**"the twenty-first century could end"**_ Roco and Bainbridge, "Converging Technologies for Improving Human Health: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science." **431** _**"Without more kindliness"**_ As quoted in Nick Bostrom, "A History of Transhumanist Thought," _Journal of Evolution and Technology_ 14, no. 1 (2005), <http://jetpress.org/volume14/bostrom.html>. **432** _**"represents the single most important factor"**_ Martin van Creveld, _The Transformation of War_ (New York: Free Press, 1991), 273. **432** _**defy the normal rules of logic**_ I am indebted to Sebastian Kaempf of the University of Queensland for this insight. **432** _**"paradox of riskless warfare"**_ Paul W. Kahn, "The Paradox of Riskless Warfare," _Philosophy & Public Policy Quarterly_ 22, no. 2 (2002): 2-8. **432** _**"propels us beyond the ethics of warfare"**_ Ibid., 3. **433** _**the codes and values that defined them**_ Christopher Coker, _Waging War Without Warriors? The Changing Culture of Military Conflict_ , IISS Studies in International Security (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002). **433** _**"a defeat renowned"**_ Christopher Coker, _Humane Warfare_ (London, New York: Routledge, 2001), 45. **433** _**In making war less human**_ Ibid. **434** _**"get it right the first time"**_ Ray Kurzweil, _The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology_ (New York: Viking, 2005). **434** _**"What has gripped me the most"**_ Michael G. Mullen, "The Nation's Navy: Beyond Iraq—Sea Power for a New Iraq" (Briefing, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, April 3, 2007). **434** _**"We will only be able to react"**_ Kip P. Nygren, "Emerging Technologies and Exponential Change: Implications for Army Transformation," _Parameters_ 32, no. 2 (2002): 93. **435** _**"We need to have discussion"**_ Richard Clarke, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, August 8, 2007. **435** _**"Ignorance" actually has two meanings** Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary,_ 1913 (cited December 5, 2007); available at <http://dictionary.die.net/ignorance/ignorance.> **435** _**"We are already in**_ **A Brave New World** _ **"**_ Charles McLaughlin, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, January 30, 2008. **435** _**"The people higher up"**_ Jonathan Hall, interview, Peter W. Singer, Washington, DC, August 6-9, 2007. **436** _**"Every gun that is made"**_ As quoted by David Shukman, _Tomorrow's War: The Threat of High-Technology Weapons_ , 1st U.S. ed. (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1996). **[INDEX]** ## Abrams, Elliott Academy of Military Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Active Denial System "Active Protection Systems," _Acts of War: The Behavior of Men in Battle_ (Holmes) Adams, Thomas K. Adler, John advancement theory Aegis (computer system) Aerostar (drone) Afghanistan network-centric warfare in Predator operations in Soviet invasion of Agincourt, battle of _AI_ (film) AIBO (robot) Air Force, U.S. UAVs and future of Air Force Academy _Air Force Magazine_ Air Force Research Laboratory Directed Energy Directorate of Akbar, Mubashar Jawed "M. J.," Alberts, Bruce Aldiss, Brian Alexander, Bevin _Aliens_ (film) _Aliens of the Deep_ (film) Allen, Paul Allen-Vanguard, Inc. Alpha, Project Ambrose, Stephen E. _American Conservative_ Anaconda, Operation _Anatomy of Courage, The_ (Moran) Anderson, Chris Angel Fire (unmanned aerial vehicle) Angle, Colin Antikythera computer Aphrodite, Operation Aphrodite bombers Apollo program Aponick, Anthony Apple-Tomato test Aquila program Archimedes Archytas of Tarentum Area Aristotle Arithmometer Arkin, Ronald _Armed Forces Journal_ Army, U.S. FCS program of Army Air Corps, U.S. Army Research Laboratory Army War College Arpanet Arquilla, John artificial intelligence (AI) counterterrorism and in daily life decision making and early exponential changes in military Singularity and strong Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Asimo (robot) Asimov, Isaac _Astro-Boy_ ("Mighty Atom") (robot) Atahuallpa, Incan emperor atomic bomb debate on use of Wells's forecast of "AugCog," Augustine, Norman Autonomous Sentry Gun ## BA 5590 (battery) Babbage, Charles Bacevich, Andrew Baghdad, battles of Baghdad Bob Bailey, Robin Wayne Baker, Bill Baker, James A. Balkan wars Ballistic Missile Early Warning System _Band of Brothers_ (Ambrose) Barber, Mack _Baroque Cycle_ (Stephenson) Bateman, Robert "Bob," BAUV (Biometric Autonomous Undersea Vehicle) Beane, William "Billy," Bear, Greg Bell, Sam Bellflower, John Bello, Louis Bennett, Andrew Berra, Yogi _Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century, The_ (Turtledove and Greenberg) Big Dog (robot) bin Laden, Osama Biometric Autonomous Undersea Vehicle (BAUN) _Black Hawk Down_ (film) Blackwater _Blade Runner_ (film) blitzkrieg warfare Blue, Linden Blue, Neal Blue Brain project Blue Force Tracker Blue Gene (supercomputer) Boeing company Boeing X-45, Bogosh, Ted Boot, Max Border Hawk (drone) Border Patrol, U.S. Bosnia Boston Dynamics Boutelle, Steven Bowles, Erskine Bradbury, Ray Bradley, Omar BrainGate technology Brain-Interface Project Branson, Richard Brazil Brezina, Byron Brooks, Rodney Brown, Dan Bruemmer, David Buchan, Glenn Buchanan, Walter _Buddha in the Robot, The_ (Mori) _Bug's Life, A_ (film) "Building Gods or Building Our Potential Exterminators?" (de Garis) Bunting, Joshua Burke, Edmund Burridge, Brian Burroughs, Edgar Rice Bush, George H. W. Bush, George W. _BusinessWeek_ Butler, Samuel ## _Call of Duty_ (video game) Cameron, James Canning, John S. Čapek, Karel Card, Orson Scott Carlucci, Frank C. Carlyle Group Carnegie Mellon University Carr, Chalmers Rankin Carr, Hap Cartwright, James Casey, George Cassidy, Thomas Cebrowski, Arthur Center for Intelligent Robots Center for Robotics and Intelligent Machines Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Chao, Pierre Chapman, Jacob Chechnya Chew-Chew (robot) _Children of Dysfunctional Robots_ (Everett) China, People's Republic of industrial espionage and robotics industry of China Policy Foundation Choi, Jun Ho Christensen, Henrik Churchill, Winston _City of Quartz_ (Davis) Clancy, Tom Clark, Joel Clarke, Arthur C. Clarke, Richard Clarke, Victoria Clausewitz, Carl von claytronic robots Clerk, Vern Clinton, Bill CNN COBOL (Common Business Language) Cohen, Eliot Cohen, Jay Coker, Christopher Colbert, Stephen cold war computer technology and Cole, Henry _Cole,_ U.S.S. Coleman, William Colossus (computer) "Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era" (Vinge) _Command of the Air, The_ (Douhet) Communist Party, Chinese computers Antikythera Apple-Tomato test and cold war and compiler software and early development of in Gulf War Internet and robots and Turing test and Congo Congress, U.S. Joint Economic Committee of Conover, David Cooper, Martin Corbett, Julian Stafford Cormorant (drone) Cortés, Hernán counterinsurgency Counter Rocket Artillery Mortar (CRAM) counterterrorism AI and data mining and ID at a distance and as manhunt new technologies and TIA program and _see also_ terrorism CRAM (Counter Rocket Artillery Mortar) Creative Robots Crécy, battle of Crenshaw, Lewis Crichton, Michael Crimean War Cruise, Tom cruise missiles Crusher (robot) Cuba Cuban missile crisis Curveball (Iraqi defector) Custer, George Armstrong cyberglove cyberpunk movement CyberRider cyborgs ## Daley, Richard Darfur Darman, Richard DARPATech Darwin, Charles "Darwin Among the Machines" (Butler) _Darwin's Radio_ (Bear) Daschle, Tom da Vinci robotic system Davis, Joshua Davis, Mike decision making AI systems and Deep Blue (computer) Defence Evaluation and Research Agency Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) AugCog program of Brain-Interface Project of budget of critics of Grand Challenge and Integrated Battle Command of mission of PETE electronic assistant of TIA program of Urbanscape project of Defense Department, U.S. black budget of as day-care provider defense contracting and Joint Robotics Program of joint target list of Office of Force Transformation of Office of Net Assessment of requirements creep in resistance of innovation in Safety Working Group of small business research projects of 20XX program of Defense Ministry, South Korean _Defense News_ _DefenseTech_ de Forest, Lee de Garis, Hugo de Geus, Arie _De Jure Belli ac Pacis_ ( _On the Laws of War and Peace_ ) (Grotius) Del Giorno, Mark Denmark Denny, Reginald Dennymite Der Derian, James Descartes, René Diamond, Jared Di Censo, David Dickens, Charles "difference engine," _Digital War: A View from the Front Lines_ (Bateman) Distributed Intelligence Laboratory DIVAD (division air defense cannon) _DIY-Drones_ Donne, John _Doom_ (video game) Downs, Michael Doyle, Arthur Conan Dragon Runner (robot) Drexler, Eric Dreyfus, Herbert Drucker, Peter Dubai Air Show of 2007, Dunant, Henry _Dune_ (Herbert) Dunlap, Charles Dyer, Joe Dyson, Freeman Dyson, George ## Eagle Eye system Earth Liberation Front Eastwood, Clint EATR (Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot) e-bombs (radio-frequency weapons) Edison, Thomas effectors EFP (explosively formed projectile) Einstein, Albert Eisenhower, Dwight D. Ellison, Harlan Emory University EMP (electromagnetic pulse) _Ender's Game_ (Card) Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR) Energy Department, U.S. ENIAC (Electric Numerical Integrator and Computer) Enigma code _Enola Gay_ Epstein, Robert Erhard, Tom Erickson, John _Esquire_ Evans, Ryan Everett, H. R. "Bart," Evergreen International _Everything Bad Is Good for You_ (Johnson) explosively formed projectile (EFP) Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team ## Fabricius, Gary _Face of Battle, The_ (Keegan) Fallujah, battles of FCS (Future Combat Systems) program) Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Fehrenbach, T.R. Fermi, Enrico Ferreira, Jose Fetch (robot) Fick, Nathaniel Fire Fly (unmanned aeronautic vehicle) _Firefox_ (film) First Marine Expeditionary Force, U.S. Fisher, John "Jackie," Finagle's law Financial Accelerating Transactions (FatkaT) Finkelstein, Robert _Flight Simulator_ (computer program) Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition Fogleman, Ronald R. Ford, Harrison Ford Motor Company _Forever Peace_ (Haldeman) Foster, Eugene Foster-Miller company headquarters of Fox News France Franco, Julio Franklin, Benjamin Franks, Tommy Freeman, Chas Freud, Sigmund Friedman, George Friedman, Meredith Fukuyama, Francis Fuller, J.F.C. Full Mesh Fulton, Robert Fussell, Paul Future Combat Systems (FCS) program Future of Humanity Institute _Future of War, The: Power, Technology and American World Dominance in the Twenty-first Century_ (Friedman and Friedman) Future Shock FX-1400 (Fritz) (remote-controlled aircraft) ## Galileo Galilei Gandhi, Mohandas K. Garlasco, Marc Garreau, Joe Garstka, John gastrobots Gates, Bill GCCS (Global Command and Control System) "Geezer Brigade, The" (Peters) General Atomics General Motors Geneva Conventions Genghis (robot) Genocide Intervention Network (GI-Net) Georgia Tech Germany Gibson, William Gill, Matt Gingrich, Newt GIT Rockin' Gladiator (unmanned combat vehicle) Global Command and Control System (GCCS) Global Hawk (unmanned aerial vehicle) globalization Global Observer (unmanned aerial vehicle) Global Positioning System (GPS) global security global warming Godere, Edward Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Goldblatt, Michael Google Gotcha (sensor) Government Accountability Office (GAO) Grand Challenge (robotics road race) Gray, Chris Gray, Eric Great Britain counterterrorism in military doctrine choice of _Great War and Modern Memory, The_ (Fussell) Green, Steven Greenberg, Martin Greiner, Helen Grotius, Hugo G-Speak Gestural Technology System GT-Max (unmanned helicopter project) Guard Robo (robot) Guderian, Heinz Gulf War of 1991, SCUDs in smart bombs in GULP (Giant Up-Load Process) Gutenberg, Johannes ## hafnium Hagenbeck, Franklin "Buster," Halliburton _Halo_ (video game) Hamas Hammes, T.X. Hamza, Abeer Qasim Hanis, Mark Hanson, David haptic technologies Harig, Paul Harrison, Marshall Harvard Mark I computer Harvey, Francis Hastings, battle of Hawkes, Graham Hawking, Stephen Hawkins, Hamilton Hawthorne, Nathaniel Hehe tribe Heinlein, Robert Hempel, Bill Henry V, king of England Herbert, Frank Herby, Peter Hermann, Chris Hezbollah Hiero, king of Syracuse High Altitude Airship Hippocrates Hirose, Shigeo Hirst, Hugo Hitler, Adolf Hobbes, Thomas Hoff, Stayne Hoffman, Frank Hollywood Holmes, Richard Holocaust Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA) Homeland Security Department, U.S. Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE) program of SIGMA and Homer Hooker, R.D., Jr. Hopper, Grace _How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion_ (Wilson) Hudson, Cliff Human Genome Project "Human ID at a Distance" program humanoid robots human rights accountability of autonomous systems and legality of weapons and rules of engagement and rules of war and self-defense and unmanned systems and war crimes and Human Rights Watch Hunter (unmanned aerial vehicle) "Hunters of Minesweepers, The," Huntington, Sam Hurricane Katrina Hussein, Qusay Hussein, Saddam Hussein, Uday hyperspectral imagery ## _I, Robot_ (Asimov) _I, Robot_ (film) IBM Idaho National Lab i-Foot (robot) Ignatieff, Michael Ijaz, Mansoor _Iliad_ (Homer) improvised explosive device (IED) insurgency-technology struggle and Incans India Industrial Age Information and Communications Ministry, South Korean information technology (IT) network-centric warfare and Institute of Automation insurgency Integrated Battle Command Intel Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) International Atomic Energy Agency International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) International Trade and Industry Ministry, Japan Internet exponential changes in robotics and Iran Iran Air Flight 655 tragedy Iraq Iraq war counterinsurgency challenge in demand for UAVs in IEDs in insurgency in Joint Robotics Repair Facility in lack of doctrine in network-centric warfare and private contractors in rules of engagement in technology-insurgents battle in IREX (International Robotics Exhibition) iRobot Foster-Miller's rivalry with ownership structure of products of Swarm Project of Ishiguro, Hiroshi Israel Hezbollah vs. Italy Ivory Coast ## James, William Japan robotics research in Jefferson, Thomas Jet Propulsion Laboratory _Jimmy Carter,_ U.S.S. Johnson, Gordon Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Steven Joint Center of Excellence Joint Forces Command, U.S. Jones, James Jordan Joy, Bill Joy, Charles Turner JSF (F-35 Joint Strike Fighter) Juniper Networks Justice Department, U.S. ## Kaczynski, Theodore John Kagan, Fred Kahn, Paul Kahn, Peter Kamps, Chuck Kanade, Takeo Kant, Immanuel KARNAC (Knowledge Aided Retrieval in Activity Context) Keegan, John Keillor, Garrison Kempelen, Wolfgang von Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Joseph, Jr. Kennedy, Joseph, Sr. Kennedy, Philip Kettering Bug (aerial torpedo) Keys, Ronald Khan, Daraz Khouri, Rami Killebrew, Robert Klosterman, Chuck KMD (knowledge-enabled mass destruction) Knowledge Aided Retrieval in Activity Context (KARNAC) Koizumi, Junichiro Kojabashian, Charles Koran Korb, Larry Korea, People's Democratic Republic of (North Korea) Korea, Republic of (South Korea) robotics industry of Korean War Kosovo Krulak, Charles Kubrick, Stanley Kuipers, Benjamin Kurzweil, Ray Kurzweil Adaptive Technologies Kuwait ## LADAR Land Walker (robot) Lang, Fritz lasers Lasswell, James Lavoisier, Antoine-Laurent Lawlor, Bruce Lawrence, T.E. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC) leadership command psychology and decision making and enlightened control and and fighting at a distance GCCS and micromanagement and "Mother, May I" syndrome and OODA loop and in unmanned warfare _see also_ military profession _Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife_ (Nagl) Lebanon Lee, Robert E. Leigh, David LeMay, Curtis Lewis, Bert Libya Limbaugh, Rush Lincoln, Abraham Lindbergh, Charles Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Lockheed Martin Lockheed-Martin-Boeing F-22 fighter Lockheed-Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter _Lonely Kind of War, A_ (Harrison) Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) _Lord of the Rings_ (film series) Louis XV, king of France Louis XVI, king of France LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device) Lucas, George Luddites _Lusitania_ Lyon, Charlie Lyon, Roger ## McCaffrey, Barry McCoy, Bryan McDonald, Ralph E. McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantom McDonnell-Douglas F-15 fighter McDonough, William Macgregor, Jeff Machiavelli, Niccolò McKenna, Thomas McLurkin, James McMaster, H.R. McVeigh, Timothy Mahan, Alfred Thayer Major, John Malaysia Mangolds, Arniss Manhattan Project MARCBOT (Multi-Function Agile Remote-Controlled Robot) Marine Corps, U.S. Marine Corps University Marine Corps Warfighting Lab Mariner Mars Exploration Program Marshall, Andrew Marshall, George C. Mars Pathfinder Martin Marietta Masood, Talat _Matrix, The_ (film) Mattis, James Maxim, Hiram _Mayagüez_ incident mecha robots megaslums Mencken, H.L. Metal Storm (robotic weapon) metamaterials Metz, Steven Microsoft Corporation "Mighty Atom" ( _Astro-Boy_ ) (robot) Military Academy, U.S. _Military Misfortunes_ (Cohen) military profession age demographics and officer-enlisted ranks relationship and private contractors and role of pilot and technology changes and video game culture and _see also_ leadership military robotics autonomy issue in China's strategic view of corporate use of defense contracting and Defense-funded labs and doctrinal choice and FCS and growing demand for human psychology in in hybrid warfare insurgency and international law and irregular warfare and medical and surgical mothership concept in nonstate actors and obsolete soldier question and in post-9/11 era project development in and redefining war refuseniks and resistance to change in swarm tactics and technology-insurgent conflict and user feedback and warfighters' associate concept and in war of the future war in space and _see also_ robotics; robots; unmanned warfare; war, warfare Millenworks company Miller, Brian millimeter-wave radiation Milne, A.A. Mims, Norman Ministry of Trade and Industry, Japanese _Minority Report_ (film) Minsky, Marvin Mirsad (drone) Mitchell, Billy MITRE company Mobile Detection Assessment Response System (MDARS) Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System (MAARS) Moffett, William Moltke, Helmut von (the elder) _Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game_ (Lewis) Monroe, Marilyn Montecito (computer) Moore, Gordon Moore's law Moravec, Hans Mori, Masahiro mothership concept MQ-8 Fire Scout (robot) mud battery MULE (Multifunction Utility/Logistics and Equipment Vehicle) Mullen, Michael Multi-Function Agile Remote-Controlled Robot (MARCBOT) Murphy, Eddie (actor) Murphy, Edward (researcher) Murphy's law Murray, Scott Musharraf, Pervez Myers, Mike My Lai massacre MySpace ## Nagl, John Nagle, Matthew Nahikian, Edward nanobots Napoleon I, emperor of France National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) National Center for Defense Robotics _National Defense_ National Defense Authorization Act of 2001, National Institutes of Health National Missile Defense National Science Board National Science Foundation National Security Council Naval Academy, U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center Naval War College Navlab Navy, U.S. mothership concept and professional reading program of sea-basing concept and USVs and UUVs and war doctrine of water strider system of _see also_ Office of Naval Research NBC neo-Luddites network-centric warfare accidents and Afghan model and network-centric warfare _(cont.)_ Bush administration and failure of fog of war and information technology and interservice rivalry and Iraq war and networking advantage of RMA and unmanned systems and vulnerability and weaknesses of "Network-Centric Warfare: Its Origin and Future" (Garstka and Cebrowski) network-enabled telepathy Neumann, John "Ajax," _Neuromancer_ (Gibson) "New Battlefields, Old Laws," Newton, Isaac _New York Times_ Nietzsche, Friedrich _Nimitz,_ U.S.S. _1984_ (Orwell) Norden, Carl Norden bombsight North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) _North Dakota,_ U.S.S. Northrop Grumman X-47 UCAV prototype of Nourbakhsh, Illah Nova Sensors Nye, Joe ## observe, orient, decide, and act (OODA) loop Odin, Task Force Odom, William Office of Naval Research (ONR) BAUV and PLUS and Omar, Mullah Mohammed 101st Airborne Division, U.S. _On the Laws of War and Peace_ ( _De Jure Belli ac Pacis_ ) (Grotius) _On War_ (Clausewitz) OODA (observe, orient, decide, and act) loop Operation Anaconda Operation Aphrodite Oppenheimer, Robert OQ-2 Radioplane Orwell, George Oshkosh Truck Corporation "Our Soldiers, Their Cities" (Peters) Owens, William Ozolek, Dave ## Pacholczyk, Tadeusz PackBot (robot) cloned copies of user feedback on versions of Page, Larry Pakistan Pancrazio, Joseph paradigm shifts _Parameters_ Paré, Ambroise _Paris in the 20th Century_ (Verne) Parker, Lynne Parry, Chris Pascal, Blaise PASDEW (Precision Airborne Standoff Directed Energy Weapon) Patent Office, U.S. Patriot missile Patton, George S. Pearl Harbor attack Pelton, Robert Young Pendry, John _People's Daily_ _Perdition's Gate: Insurgency in the 21st Century_ (Metz) Peregrine UAV Killer Perlman, Steve _Perpetual Peace_ (Kant) Perry, David Perry, Matthew C. Persistent Littoral Undersea Surveillance (PLUS) Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response (PHaSR) Peters, Ralph Petraeus, David Phalanx Gatling gun Pike, John Pinero, R.J. Pioneer (drone) Pixar (film company) Pizarro, Francisco _Planet of Slums_ (Davis) Platt, David PLUS (Persistent Littoral Undersea Surveillance) Polecat (unmanned aerial vehicle) Polybot (robot) _Popular Science_ Postal Service, U.S. Potter, Steve poverty cities and population growth and stateless zones and Powell, Colin Powers, Francis Gary PRAWNs (Proliferated Autonomous Weapons) precautionary principle Precision Airborne Standoff Directed Energy Weapon (PASDEW) _Predator_ (film) Predator (unmanned aerial vehicle) in Afghan operations development of prototypes of upgraded _Prey_ (Crichton) _Proceedings_ (U.S. Navy) Professional, Educated, Trained, and Empowered (PETE) electronic assistant Project Alpha Pugwash movement Pulsed Energy Projectile Purple (supercomputer) ## al-Qaeda technology and al-Qaeda in Iraq Qiao Liang QinetiQ _Quantico_ (Bear) QuickTime (software program) Quinn, Robert ## radio control devices radio-frequency identification(RFID) radio-frequency weapons (e-bombs) Raduege, Harry _Rainbows End: A Novel with One Foot in the Future_ (Vinge) Ramirez, Louis Ramona (AI program) RAND Raven (unmanned aerial vehicle) Raytheon RCA Reagan, Ronald Real-Time Adversarial Intelligence and Decision-making (RAID) Reaper (unmanned aerial vehicle) Record, Jeffrey Reed, Lou Rees, Martin Reid, John Reid, Steve Remotec Remote Environmental Monitoring Unit (REMUS) remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs) Repliee (android) Republican Guard, Iraqi REV (Robotic Evacuation Vehicle) REX (Robotic Extraction Vehicle) Reynolds, Craig RFID (radio-frequency identification) RHEX (robot) Ribich, William Rice, Condoleezza Richards, Russ Richtofen, Manfred von Rifkin, Jeremy RMA (revolution in military affairs) hybrid technology and network-centric warfare and Robb, John _Robert Heinlein,_ U.S.S. Robo-lobster (unmanned underwater vehicle) Robo-One (competitive event) Robot Guard Dog Robotic Autonomy Robotic Enhanced Detection Outpost with Lasers (REDOWL) Robotic Evacuation Vehicle (REV) Robotic Extraction Vehicle (REX) robotics: Asian China's cyberwarfare program and cold war and exponential change in future of warfare and growth of human limitations and robotics _(cont.)_ and humans in the loop Internet and military, _see_ military robotics military capacity and Moore's law and physical implants and enhancements and Singularity and, _see_ Singularity Three Laws of user feedback and U.S. triumphalism and video game culture and _see also_ robots; unmanned warfare Robotics Institute Robotics Program Office Robotics Research Network Robotic Systems Joint Project Office Robotic Technologies, Inc. robots in accidents and mishaps amateur built Asian research on autonomy of backlash against "beauty," biological inspiration for bionic fish border surveillance and "Centaur," Chinese research on claytronic companion as computer chip implants definition of duality of early development of effectors and, _see_ effectors ethics issue and evolution of fear of first battlefield form of hacking attempts on haptics technology and Hollywood effect and homemade human identity and human interaction with humanoid human psychology and humans replaced by hybrid intelligence and Japanese key components of learning and marsupial mecha military law and morphing of naming of neo-Luddites and origin of term personal personality and population growth and power sources of privacy and and quest for artificial life rebellion of relinquishment and researchers and workers on rights of security and control of self-defense and sensors and sex industry and social South Korean research on submarine terrorism and user interfaces and video game technology and vulnerabilities and weaknesses of weapons and _see also_ artificial intelligence; robotics; unmanned warfare; _specific models_ Roddenberry, Gene Roomba (robot) Roosevelt, Franklin D. (FDR) Roosevelt, Theodore Rosen, Nir Rosen, Stephen Rowling, J.K. Royal Air Force Royal Navy Rozelle, David Rumsfeld, Donald network-centric warfare and _R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)_ (Čapek) Russell, Bertrand Rutherford, Ernest Rwanda Ryden, Tom Rymarcsuk, Jim Sagan, Carl Sakharov, Andrei SAMERAI (drone) samurai Sandia National Laboratories Sandstorm (robot) Sankoh, Foday Sartre, Jean-Paul Saudi Arabia Scales, Robert Scalzi, Joe Schwarzkopf, Norman Schwarzenegger, Arnold science fiction culture of future and inspirational role of museum of predictions of reality and research funding and sciences and war focus of Science Fiction Channel Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame Scooba (robot) sea basing, concept of _SeaQuest DSV_ (television show) Sea Sentry Second Life (cityscape) Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet) Seeckt, Hans von Senate Armed Services Committee Senge, Peter Sensor Dart sensors sentrybots Shadow (unmanned aerial vehicle) Shachtman, Noah Shakespeare, William Shakey (robot) Shallbetter, Robert Shani, Udi _Shape of Things to Come, The_ (Wells) Shatner, William Shelley, Mary Sherman, Nancy Shinseki, Eric Shirley, Donna Shoemaker, Charles Shurtleff. Keith Sierra Leone SIGMA Silver Fox (unmanned aerial vehicle) _Sim City_ (video game) Simmons, Bill Singapore Singapore Air Show Singularity AI and coming of military and SIPRNet (Secret Internet Protocol Router Network) Skyshield (automated machine gun) Sky Warrior (unmanned aerial vehicle) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Small Business Tech Transfer Research Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle smart bombs Smith, Jeffrey Smith, Lance Smith, Scott Smithsonian Museum of American History snake-bot Sniderman, Andrew Sohgo Security Services Soldier Support Institute Somalia _Some Principles of Maritime Strategy_ (Corbett) Sonntag, Dave Soviet Union Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR) Space Command, U.S. Space Commission, U.S. space shuttle Spain Spartan Scout (robotic boat) Special Operations Command, U.S. Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection System, _see_ SWORDS Spencer, Glenn Spielberg, Steven "Spirit of Butt's Farm" (drone) Sputnik SRI International Sri Lanka Stanford Research Institute Stanford University in Great Challenge competition Stanley (robot) StarBrain (AI project) _Starship Troopers_ (Heinlein) _Star Trek_ (television series) "Star Trek: The Experience," _Star Trek: The Next Generation_ (television series) _Star Wars_ (film) _Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back_ (film) Star Wars missile defense program, _see_ Strategic Defense Initiative _Star Wars: Return of the Jedi_ (film) State Department, U.S. stateless zones Steiner, Achim Stephenson, Neal Sterling, Bruce Stickybot Stimson, Henry Stinger missiles Stirling, Robert Stirling, S.M. "Story of the Army Aeroplane, The" (Milne) Stothard, Debbie _Stranger in a Strange Land_ (Heinlein) Strategic Command, U.S. "strategic corporal," Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) strong AI Sturk, Bruce Sudan Sun Microsystems supercomputers "Superiority" (Clarke) "Supertoys Last All Summer Long" (Aldiss) _Supreme Command_ (Cohen) swarm tactics historic use of Sweden Sweetman, Bill Switzerland SWORDS (Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection System) Iranian version of upgrade of Synertek (computer) Syria Szilárd, Leó ## Tactical Relay Mirror System Takeno, Junichi Taliban Talon (robot) SWORDS version of, _see_ SWORDS user feedback on Talos myth Tamagotchi (robotic toy) Tamil Tigers Task Force Odin Taylor, Bob Taylor, James Taylor, Russell Teal Group "technicity," technology backlash against counterterrorism and exponential power of future warfare and globalization and haptic hybrid information, _see_ information technology insurgency and laser Moore's law and neo-Luddites and physical implants and enhancements and population growth and al-Qaeda and terrorism and U.S. triumphalism and Teller, Edward 10th Mountain Division, U.S. _Terminator, The_ (film) _Terminator 2_ (film) TerraMax (robot) terrorism: technology and unmanned warfare and _see also_ counterterrorism terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, military budget after Tesla, Nikola tetanizing beam weapon Tether, Anthony J. Tetlock, Phillip Thailand Thaler, Stephen Thanh Hoa Bridge Thirty Years' War _This Kind of War_ (Fehrenbach) _300_ (film) "Three Laws of Robotics," Throwbot (robot) Thrun, Sebastian Thucydides Tilden, Mark Tilghman, Shirley Tilly, Charles _Time_ Tirpak, John _Today_ Tokyo Institute of Technology Tomahawk cruise missile _Tonight Show with Jay Leno_ Tonkin Gulf Incident Torpex (explosive) Total Information Awareness (TIA) _Total Recall_ (film) Toyota Motor Corp. Tradic (computer) Transportation Department, U.S. Truman, Harry S. T3 (Tomorrow Tool) Turing, Alan Turing test Turk, The (chess automaton) Turtledove, Harry _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_ (Verne) _Twilight Zone_ (television show) _2001: A Space Odyssey_ (Clarke) _2001: A Space Odyssey_ (film) Tyler, Kelly ## UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) anti-UAV drones and China's program of combat designed first combat mission of Hezbollah's use of homemade hyperspectral energy and Iraq war's demand for irregular warfare and Israeli experience with micro-scale next wave of nonstate actors and obsolete humans issue and pilots of private contractors and in remote split operations video game culture and in Vietnam War VisiBuilding technology and UCAV (unmanned combat aerial vehicle), _see_ UAVs UFO-Buttplug Hybrid _Ultimate Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, The_ _Ummah Defense_ (video game) Unabomber _Unabomber Manifesto_ Underkoffler, John Unimate (robot) Unimation (universal automation) unit cohesion United Arab Emirates United Nations United States China's strategic view and education system of health care system of and loss of technical superiority network-centric warfare and and resistance to innovative systems triumphalist power of unmanned warfare and war in space and UNIVAC "Unmanned Effects: Taking the Human Out of the Loop," Unmanned Vehicle Systems International unmanned warfare: accountability and cubicle warrior in dehumanization and enemy reaction to as entertainment international law and leadership and legal questions in lowered barrier to violence in mistakes and collateral damage in Muslim world and perception of U.S. and psychological power of public's disconnect from reachback operations and remote split operations in rules of engagement and second-guessing and stress and terrorism and unintended consequences and unintended messages and unmanned warfare _(cont.)_ unit cohesion and war crimes and war porn and warrior redefined by _see also_ military robotics; robotics; robots; war, warfare _Unrestricted Warfare_ (Qiao and Wang) Urbanscape program USV (unmanned surface vessel) U-2 spy plane UUV (unmanned underwater vehicle) ## V-1 rocket V-2 missile V-3 (supercannon) van Creveld, Martin Vanguard (robot) Varian, Paul Vaucanson, Jacques de Vaucanson's duck VB-1 Azons (radio-controlled bomb) Vego, Milan Velvet Underground Verdun, Battle of Verhoff, Donald VeriChip company Verne, Jules Verruggio, Gianmarco Very-high-altitude, Ultra-endurance, Loitering Theater Unmanned Reconnaissance Element (VULTURE) Vick, Michael Vietnam Vietnam War My Lai atrocity in smart bombs in Tonkin Gulf Incident and UAVs in _Vincennes,_ U.S.S. Vinge, Vernor Virgin Galactic VisiBuilding technology Vulcans (advisory group) VULTURE (Very-high-altitude, Ultra-endurance, Loitering Theater Unmanned Reconnaissance Element) ## Wachowski, Larry and Andy Walker, David Wallace, William WALL-E (robot) Wal-Mart data mining by Walzer, Michael Wang company Wang Xiangsui war, warfare China's strategic view of cities as center of dehumanization and discrimination rule of experience of going off to Fussell on future of human psychology and human rights and hybrid ideals and international law and irregular just war theory and medical advances and new warrior class and and obsolete warrior open source physical implants and enhancements for private contractors and proportionality rule of public's disconnect from redefining and resistance to change study of technology and future of unmanned, _see_ unmanned warfare _War and Human Nature_ (Rosen) Ward, Edward warfighters' associate concept Warfighters' Perspectives panel _War Games_ (film) _War Made New_ (Boot) Warner, John Warrior (robot) _Wars of Blood and Faith: The Conflicts That Will Shape the Twenty-first Century_ (Peters) _War of the Worlds, The_ (Wells) Warwick, Kevin _Washington Post_ Wasp (unmanned aerial vehicle) Waterloo, Battle of Watson, Thomas Wegerbauer, Cyndi Wegner, Thomas Weinberg, Gil Welles, Orson Wells, H.G. Wernli, Robert West, Bing _Westworld_ (Crichton) _What Computers Can't Do_ (Dreyfus) Whitaker, Jonathan Whitaker, Red "Why the Strong Lose" (Record) Wiimote Wildt, Dan Wilkerson, Tom Williams, Robert Willis, Bruce Wilson, Daniel Wilson, James Q. Wilson, Ronald _Wired_ Wolfowitz, Paul Wolves of War _World Set Free, The_ (Wells) World War I, unmanned weapons in World War II, blitzkrieg in Norden bombsight in remote control in unit cohesion in WT-6 (robot) Wynne, Michael ## X-37 (orbital test vehicle) X-41 Common Aero Vehicle (Falcon program) Xbox ## Yao Yunzhu Yemen YouTube Yugoslavia civil war in ## Zarqawi, Abu Musab al- Zawahiri, Ayman al- Zeno (robot) "Zeroth Law," Zeus system Zimmerman, Phil Photo Insert A soldier with a PackBot. When asked how science fi ction writer Isaac Asimov might react to real-world warbots such as these, iRobot's cofounder and chairman Helen Greiner responds, "I think he would think it is cool as hell." PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY IROBOT A Predator drone is prepared for launch. The number of drones in the U.S. military went from only a handful in 2001 to some 5,300 in 2008. After 9/11, Pentagon buyers told one robotics executive, "Make 'em as fast as you can." PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE The Predator drone, which can stay in the air for twenty-four hours, is one of the most widely used and effective weapons in the force. "If you want to pull the trigger and take out bad guys, you fl y a Predator," says one report. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE A special task force using drones armed with weapons such as these found and killed more than 2,400 Iraqi insurgents, in just one year. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE The Global Hawk spy drone can take off by itself, fl y 3,000 miles, spend a day spying on an area the size of Maine, fl y back 3,000 miles, and then land itself. Some uncharitably say it looks like "a fl ying albino whale." PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE In reachback operations, the drones over Iraq and Afghanistan are actually fl own by pilots sitting in Nevada. As one described fi ghting from a cubicle, "It's antiseptic. It's not as potent an emotion as being on the battlefi eld." Says another, "It's like a video game. It can get a little bloodthirsty. But it's fucking cool." PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE While the pilots are no longer at risk, the experience of fi ghting from home bases, some 7,500 miles away, does bring new psychological twists to war. "You see Americans killed in front of your eyes and then have to go to a PTA meeting," tells one pilot. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE Zero ground robots were used in the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Some twelve thousand were in service there by the end of 2008. As one offi cer put it, "The Army of the Grand Robotic is taking place." PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE A MARCBOT on patrol with U.S. troops in Iraq. A jury-rigged version of the tiny robot was actually the fi rst ground robot to draw blood on the battlefi eld. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE "Stanley," the robotic car from Stanford University that won the DARPA Grand Challenge race. By turning the research into a competition and offering prize money, the Pentagon was able to entice scientists and college students who wouldn't normally work on war technologies to help solve its battlefi eld problems. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY STANFORD UNIVERSITY Nicknamed "R2-D2" by the troops, the Counter Rocket Artillery Mortar system uses an automated machine gun to shoot down incoming missiles and rockets, which humans would be too slow to react to. A new version will mount a laser. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY RAYTHEON A TALON robot in action. These technologies "save lives," says a former Pentagon offi cial. But he also worries that "there will be more marketing of wars. More 'shock and awe' talk to defray discussion of the costs." PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE Military researchers are trying to make robots easier to control by "playing to the soldiers' preconceptions." And with young soldiers today, that means video games. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY IROBOT Two young army soldiers prepare to launch a Raven drone. According to one report, one of the unexpected results of the new technologies is a "military culture clash between teenaged videogamers and veteran fl ight jocks for control of the drones." PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE An army infantryman tosses a Raven drone into the air. The drone has proved so useful and popular in Iraq that its maker was approached by the Chinese military for a demonstration. Some forty countries now make military robots, meaning the revolution will not just be an Ameircan one. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE A Fire Scout helicopter drone fi res a missile on a target below. "This new technology creates new pressure points for international law," tells one human rights worker. "You will be trying to apply international law written for the Second World War to Star Trek technology." PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE A Warrior robot uncovers a hidden roadside bomb. While robots are a revolutionary technology, war still remains messy and diffi cult, with an enemy already learning how to fi ght back PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY IROBOT A soldier works on a TALON robot in Iraq. While these robots save lives, they also might be sending out an unintended message to the other side. One news editor in the Muslim world commented that such technologies made Americans look like "cowards because they send out machines to fi ght us.... They don't want to fi ght us like real men, but are afraid to fi ght. So we just have to kill a few of their soldiers to defeat them." PHOYOGRAPH COURTESY FOSTER-MILLER SWORDS, made by Foster-Miller, is a robot armed with the user's choice of weapons, ranging from machine guns to rockets. It gives new meaning to the term "killer app." PHOYOGRAPH COURTESY FOSTER-MILLER Scooby Doo, one of the very fi rst robots "killed in action" in Iraq, blown up by an insurgent's roadside bomb. It now rests in the offi ces of its manufacturer, iRobot. One commander put a positive spin on such losses, "When a robot dies, you don't have to write a letter to its mother." PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY THE AUTHOR Scooby Doo's human squadmates kept track of the number of dangerous missions the robot went out on, keeping them alive. When the robot could not be repaired, it left one soldier very upset. He didn't want a new robot but "wanted Scooby-Doo back." PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY THE AUTHOR One concept of robotic warfare is the "warfi ghter's associate" idea, where a mixed team of robots, such as the PackBot here, and human soldiers would jointly carry out missions. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY IROBOT Sometimes, for all their sophistication, robots still need a little help from their friends. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY IROBOT Unmanned submarines are increasingly being used for the most dangerous roles underwater as well. This includes hunting for mines and patrolling waters close to shore, missions considered too risky to send in expensive nuclear-powered manned submarines. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE Asimo, a humanoid robot built by Honda. Standing just over four feet tall, this real-world version of the Twiki robot from Buck Rogers, can run, jump, dance, recognize faces, and even hook up to the Internet. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY THE AUTHOR The Actroid robot not only is incredibly lifelike, but can also understand forty thousand phrases in four languages and give answers to more than two thousand questions it might encounter. Owned by the same company behind Hello Kitty, its Web site also notes that "rentals are now available." Such lifelike robots will open up new questions of ethics and rights. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY THE AUTHOR Wakamura is a cross between a house sitter and nanny robot. It is able to patrol the house, call the police or doctors in an emergency, and wake the family in the mornings and tell them about the weather and the news. In Japan, the little robot has also become a "companion" for elderly shut-ins. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY THE AUTHOR As part of its design, Wakamura can recognize faces, make eye contact, and start conversations. But robots are notoriously tight-lipped during interviews. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY THE AUTHOR One concept being explored for twenty-fi rst-century war at sea is the mothership, where a warship would serve as the hub for a tiny fl eet of unmanned drones and submarines. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE Described as looking like "a set piece from the television program Battlestar Galactica," the X-45 UCAV is designed to take on the most dangerous roles in the air and, perhaps, even replace manned bomber and fi ghter planes one day. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE One focus of Pentagon research is on bioinspired robots, such as tiny insectlike robots that could fl y up to windowsills and perch and stare inside or climb up walls or into pipes. Many worry about the end of privacy that these robots may portend. PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE The Crusher is a prototype of a next generation autonomous robotic fi ghting vehicle. The current robots at war are already outdated. The concern, as Isaac Asimov once said, is that "science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom." PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE ALSO BY P. W. SINGER _Children at War_ _Corporate Warriors:_ _The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry_

Thursday, July 28, 2011 Review: Storm's Heart Warning: Contains mild spoilers from Dragon Bound, but no spoiler's from Storm's Heart. THE STORYWith the death of her uncle, Tricks (also known as Niniane) is now the rightful heir to the Dark Fae throne. She escaped from a life of politics over two hundred years ago when her entire family was slaughtered, seeking sanctuary with the Wyr and their leader Dragos. Now, she has to return to that life she ran from and be the person she's not entirely sure survived that tragedy. When Tricks goes missing after a scheduled meeting with Dark Fae representatives, Tiago, as one of the best trackers Dragos has, is sent to find her and ensure her safety. Though he's immeasurably powerful, battle-scarred, and possesses control over lightning and thunder, he finds himself vulnerable to the petite-sized Niniane, and he discovers his need to protect her extends beyond a mere desire to follow orders. Both Tricks and Tiago knew there would be many who were not happy with her placing a legitimate claim on the throne in the wake of her uncle's death, but they quickly realize the real threat is coming from someone close to her, someone in their small group of people traveling to Niniane's former home. Battling passion and politics, Niniane and Tiago leap into the fray together, hoping their combined emotional and physical strength will restore both order and leadership to the Dark Fae. MY THOUGHTSThe world of Storm's Heart is one that rejuvenates the paranormal romance genre, infusing it with new breeds of hero and heroine who delight us with their charismatic personalities and enthrall us with the newness of their supernatural abilities. Fairly unknown entities such as dragons, thunderbirds, and gryphons dominate the novels of the Elder Races, and we can't help but smile gleefully as these new additions join familiar vampire and faerie favorites to create stories that allow us to revel in what we love most about the genre as a whole while also providing us with new experiences and new characters with whom to fall in love. Ms. Harrison is a master at creating extraordinarily alpha-male heroes–men who are unapologetically protective and possessive, but who also acknowledge that the need for their women goes far beyond the physical and into a true and believable partnership. Tiago is typically rough on the exterior, strength and dominance oozing from his black-clad physique in staggering waves, but his tenderness and sensitivity when it comes to diminutive Niniane guarantees himself a treasured place in our hearts as we secretly wish for him to step from the pages and turn that slightly intimidating and focused attention our way. He is literally a raging storm encased in flesh, his temper impressive but never overwhelming, and his aggressiveness just enough to remind us what he's capable of as we melt with the knowledge of just how much he tempers that power with his mate. Niniane is strong in her own right, her power lying in the force of her infectious personality and her ability to diffuse tension with soothing words and genuine compliments when those around her would resort to more violent means of communicating. Though her relationship with Tiago is a bit of a push and pull in the beginning–her sense of royal responsibility outweighing her desire to pursue a relationship–once the decision to move forward is made, both parties throw their full weight behind the effort to present a unified front to all those who seek to do them harm. Little flashbacks to her gruesome past make us fully appreciate the safety she finds in Tiago's embrace, and we easily root for a woman of intelligence and wit who constantly seeks to put the well-being of others before her own. Though not quite as strong as its predecessor, Storm's Heart is still an intensely satisfying addition to this series. The political maneuvering, conniving, and corruption make for a slightly quieter read in comparison to Dragos's explosive and combative nature, but Ms. Harrison's characters are written in such rich and lush detail that they exist fully formed in our minds; their features, personalities, strengths and weaknesses etched crystal clear into our memories where they will remain indefinitely no matter how many books we pick up following their stories. 26 comments: Dragons, thunderbirds, and gryphons? Wow, that is so awesome! I think I come to expect the same sort of routine and paranormal creatures from paranormal romances so this one sounds absolutely refreshing! I'm for sure interested in this one, whereas I might overlook the same old, same old. Dragons, thunderbirds, and gryphons instead of the usual paranormal entities sound refreshing! I am not really a fan of alpha-male heroes, but I think I will like Tiago :D You've convinced me to add the first book to my TBR! Great review. Aylee - It is really refreshing! I just love her world and her characters - super fun to read:) Amanda - Not too much longer and Tiago is worth waiting for:) Missie - I loved them in Dragos's story - they were hilarious. After they do their push and pull for a few chapters, they decide to go for it and I really liked that they didn't play games once they reached that decision. Nic - THANK YOU!!! I hope you give this series a try, they're just different reads and highly enjoyable:) Misha - Dragos is definitely Alpha with a capital A in book one, but he's also sort of charming in all his gruffness:) She writes her heroes really well so they never get overbearing. Or if they start to, the heroine calls them on it:) Blodeuedd - It's okay, the series isn't for everyone:) Jan - Me too! I don't think I've ever read about a gryphon or thunderbird before, and I've only read Firelight dealing with dragons, so this was a fun take on them:) Patti - So glad you liked it! I'm just loving this series:) Jacinda - Hahaha that works:) Laura - If you like paranormal romance I think you'll really enjoy these books! This sort of paranormal romance isn't really my thing (I over-indulged a few years ago, haha), but what a fabulous review! It's nice to know that the hero and heroine are both strong characters in this series. :) I still need to read the first one. Oh and now I need this one too! Especially since the characters are just so well done! Oh and LOL I glanced up and I saw what you wrote to Tina. He does have nice moobs. ;) I haven't read many books about dragons and absolutely nothing about thunderbirds or gryphons so the use of those creatures is what makes this one sound fascinating to me. The fact that the character development is really good makes it even better. Okay, since this one isn't out yet, I Kindled (can I use that as a verb? I'm going with yes...) the first one in this series! Your review totally inspired me. Lately, the paranormals I've read have been a bit repetitive but this series sounds like it really stands out in the crowd. Thanks for a new read!Mary @ Book Swarm

Teilhard for Troubled Times (blog series by Cynthia) “… our real task at this evolutionary cusp is not to lose sight of what is coming to us from the future, the vision of our common humanity that is indeed “groaning and travailing” to be born.” ~ Cynthia Bourgeault The Omega Center has posted a 3-part blog series by Cynthia, entitled “Teilhard for Troubled Times.” Part 1 – Deep Hope Flows Over Deep Time I don’t know what kind of divine nudge it may have been that prompted me in January 2015 to challenge the students in my Wisdom network to a deep dive into Teilhard, but the response was electric, to say the least. Over the ensuing eighteen months we collectively chomped our way through The Human Phenomenon, The Divine Milieu, and The Heart of Matter in both online formats and on-the-ground Wisdom schools and retreats. Students who really caught the Teilhard bug read even more widely, exploring the entire range of his canon from the magnificent early mystical upwellings in Writings in Time of War to the profound final synthesis in The Christic, completed less than a month before his death. The second hopeful resource that Teilhard brings to our unsettled political times is his unshakable conviction that evolutionary progress will unfold its ultimate triumph in the realm of the personal. While our postmodern temperament has a well-engrained tendency to regard the world through a filter of distrust, in which the bits and pieces inevitably appear “random” and disconnected—certainly impersonal—Teilhard encourages us to see our planetary home as a coherent and increasingly compassionate whole, steadily plying its way along its irreversible evolutionary trajectory. In the big picture, there is nothing to suggest that evolution has gone off track. But there is plenty to suggest that we are entering a critical new phase in which some old-order planetary survival strategies are giving way to a new and more intentional sense of mutual interdependence. Continue reading on the Omega Center website HERE… Part 3 – The Living Reality of Omega! The third and most powerful wellspring of hope that Teilhard has to offer us—for those with “eyes to see and hearts to hear”—is the assurance that this slow toiling of the planet toward Omega is not merely some hypothetical, futuristic theory. Omega is neither abstract nor hypothetical; it is already present, actively suffusing and permeating the earth with its telluric energy. “I probably would never have dared to consider or form the rational hypothesis of it,” Teilhard writes in The Human Phenomenon, “if I had not already found in my consciousness as a believer not only the speculative model for it, but its living reality.” (HP, 211). That “living reality,” is of course, the radiant heart of Christ, which Teilhard first met as a child and which continued to grow in him throughout his life as a palpably real and personal presence. Not only his own heart but the entire planet, were increasingly enfolded within the immediately experiential realm of “the Christic.” Continue reading on the Omega Center website HERE… Teilhard’s conviction that faith is not something that we have but something that we do is perhaps the best antidote possible to the despair and distrust that paralyze so much of our post-modern moral resolve. ~ Cynthia Bourgeault Follow-up As a follow-up, Wisdom community member Marty Schmidt shares his reflections on Cynthia’s blog series, describing some of his experiences as a Humanities teacher at the Hong Kong International School. Read how Marty explores hope and meaning with his students in “Teaching Teilhardian Hope in Hong Kong” HERE, Mission Statement We are a non-profit organization committed to providing experiential teachings and resources to deepen the understanding and practice of the Christian Wisdom tradition as taught by Cynthia Bourgeault and other Wisdom teachers. We support a world-wide Wisdom Community Network by providing trusted online resources, a master archive of Cynthia’s teachings, ongoing eCourses, and by hosting circles of connection and conversation for self-paced study, reflection, and practice. The many offerings of the Wisdom Way of Knowing are possible through the support of our friends and donors like you! Because we are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, all donations are tax deductible.

# This file is distributed under the same license as the Django package. # # Translators: msgid "" msgstr "" "Project-Id-Version: Django\n" "Report-Msgid-Bugs-To: \n" "POT-Creation-Date: 2012-03-23 02:35+0100\n" "PO-Revision-Date: 2011-01-19 15:01+0000\n" "Last-Translator: Django team\n" "Language-Team: Luxembourgish (http://www.transifex.com/projects/p/django/" "language/lb/)\n" "MIME-Version: 1.0\n" "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n" "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n" "Language: lb\n" "Plural-Forms: nplurals=2; plural=(n != 1);\n" #: static/admin/js/SelectFilter2.js:45 #, c-format msgid "Available %s" msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/SelectFilter2.js:46 #, c-format msgid "" "This is the list of available %s. You may choose some by selecting them in " "the box below and then clicking the \"Choose\" arrow between the two boxes." msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/SelectFilter2.js:53 #, c-format msgid "Type into this box to filter down the list of available %s." msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/SelectFilter2.js:57 msgid "Filter" msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/SelectFilter2.js:61 msgid "Choose all" msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/SelectFilter2.js:61 #, c-format msgid "Click to choose all %s at once." msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/SelectFilter2.js:67 msgid "Choose" msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/SelectFilter2.js:69 msgid "Remove" msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/SelectFilter2.js:75 #, c-format msgid "Chosen %s" msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/SelectFilter2.js:76 #, c-format msgid "" "This is the list of chosen %s. You may remove some by selecting them in the " "box below and then clicking the \"Remove\" arrow between the two boxes." msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/SelectFilter2.js:80 msgid "Remove all" msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/SelectFilter2.js:80 #, c-format msgid "Click to remove all chosen %s at once." msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/actions.js:18 static/admin/js/actions.min.js:1 msgid "%(sel)s of %(cnt)s selected" msgid_plural "%(sel)s of %(cnt)s selected" msgstr[0] "" msgstr[1] "" #: static/admin/js/actions.js:109 static/admin/js/actions.min.js:5 msgid "" "You have unsaved changes on individual editable fields. If you run an " "action, your unsaved changes will be lost." msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/actions.js:121 static/admin/js/actions.min.js:6 msgid "" "You have selected an action, but you haven't saved your changes to " "individual fields yet. Please click OK to save. You'll need to re-run the " "action." msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/actions.js:123 static/admin/js/actions.min.js:6 msgid "" "You have selected an action, and you haven't made any changes on individual " "fields. You're probably looking for the Go button rather than the Save " "button." msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/calendar.js:26 msgid "" "January February March April May June July August September October November " "December" msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/calendar.js:27 msgid "S M T W T F S" msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/collapse.js:8 static/admin/js/collapse.js.c:19 #: static/admin/js/collapse.min.js:1 msgid "Show" msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/collapse.js:15 static/admin/js/collapse.min.js:1 msgid "Hide" msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/admin/DateTimeShortcuts.js:49 #: static/admin/js/admin/DateTimeShortcuts.js:85 msgid "Now" msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/admin/DateTimeShortcuts.js:53 msgid "Clock" msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/admin/DateTimeShortcuts.js:81 msgid "Choose a time" msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/admin/DateTimeShortcuts.js:86 msgid "Midnight" msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/admin/DateTimeShortcuts.js:87 msgid "6 a.m." msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/admin/DateTimeShortcuts.js:88 msgid "Noon" msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/admin/DateTimeShortcuts.js:92 #: static/admin/js/admin/DateTimeShortcuts.js:204 msgid "Cancel" msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/admin/DateTimeShortcuts.js:144 #: static/admin/js/admin/DateTimeShortcuts.js:197 msgid "Today" msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/admin/DateTimeShortcuts.js:148 msgid "Calendar" msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/admin/DateTimeShortcuts.js:195 msgid "Yesterday" msgstr "" #: static/admin/js/admin/DateTimeShortcuts.js:199 msgid "Tomorrow" msgstr ""

Effects of treadmill training on microvascular remodeling in the rat after spinal cord injury. The morphological characteristics of skeletal muscles innervated caudal to a spinal cord injury (SCI) undergo dramatic phenotypic and microvascular changes. Female Sprague-Dawley rats received a severe contusion at thoracic level 9/10 and were randomly assigned to locomotor training, epidural stimulation, or a combination of the treatment groups (CB). Fiber type composition and capillary distribution were assessed in phenotypically distinct compartments of the tibialis anterior. Spinal cord injury induced a shift in type II fiber phenotype from oxidative to glycolytic (P < 0.05) as well as capillary loss within the oxidative core and glycolytic cortex; the CB treatment best maintained capillary supply within both compartments. The angiogenic response of CB training improved capillary distribution across the muscle; capillary distribution became spatially more homogeneous and mean capillary supply area decreased, potentially improving oxygenation. There is an important role for weight-bearing training in maintaining the oxidative phenotype of muscle after SCI. Muscle Nerve 59:370-379, 2019.

The overall goal of this study is to determine the biological significance of a weak, but specifically directed, anti-tumor immune response to primary tumor development. Highly immunodepressed histocompatible mice obtained either by sublethally X-irradiating mutant athymic nude mice or by thymectomizng, lethally X-irradiating, and bone-marrow repopulating adult non-mutant mice will then be immunomodulated by infusing them with various numbers of specifically sensitized lymphoid cells. The first approach will use autochthonous hosts where the tumors will be induced with either murine mammary tumor virus (MTV) or 3-methylcholanthrene (MCA). These immunomodulated mice will be used to determine whether a weak, but specifically directed, anti-tumor immune response will induce a higher than normal probability of tumor development over that seen in mice with an immune responsiveness that is either much stronger or essentially absent. The tumors induced in these immunologically modulated mice will be tested to determine whether the immunologic status of the host was able to affect the immunogenicity of the resultant tumors. The second approach will determine whether a weak, but specifically directed, immune response will stimulate the progression of transplantable neoplasms towards malignancy.

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Aaron Rodgers on the Packers: ‘We have to be better’ The Green Bay Packers’ front office did everything possible to improve the defending NFC North champion’s roster during the offseason. The team added top-end free agent Martellus Bennett in free agency and targeted major needs on defense in the draft. But when it comes to the Packers’ ability to contend for a Super Bowl next season, the onus will primarily be on Pro Bowl quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Such is the nature of the beast in an NFL that’s trending heavily towards franchise quarterbacks making the most impact. As it relates to Rodgers himself, he understands full well the team needs to be better When its best is needed. “Going forward, we have to be better when our best is needed. All around — offense, defense, special teams,” Rodgers said, via ESPN (h/t Pro Football Talk). “There are plays in that Atlanta game that, if they go our way, it’s a different ballgame. We missed a kick, we fumbled, we go stagnant on offense and the next thing you know, it’s 31-0. You’re not going to win games like that against good teams. I think we’ve rebuilt a little bit, but we’ve got to see what we’ve got here.” Rodgers is specifically referencing Green Bay’s blowout loss to the Atlanta Falcons in the NFC Championship game this past February. It’s a game that saw the Packers fall down by four scores before ultimately losing 44-21. Rodgers himself threw an interception and was sacked twice in the loss. The former MVP put up another stellar performance in 2016, throwing for a league-high 40 touchdowns with just seven interceptions. With that said, it’s readily apparent that he’s calling himself out to an extent here as well.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), physical inactivity is the fourth-leading risk factor for global mortality, causing an estimated 3.2 million deaths around the world annually. Readers of this blog need no convincing that it’s important to be active every day. But is spending more time on it enough to reduce the risk of early death? Not necessarily. How we perceive this activity turns out to be just as important. We learn of this from the authors of an intriguing study in Health Psychology devoted to physical activity and mortality. Octavia Zahrt and Alia Crum at Stanford University were inspired by an earlier experiment involving hotel room attendants who completed a 20-minute intervention informing them that their daily work satisfied exercise recommendations and highlighting the benefits of this active lifestyle. This intervention not only shifted room attendants’ perceptions, but also resulted in health improvements including lower blood pressure and reductions in weight and body fat. Zahrt and Crum examined data from 61,141 Americans (selected to be representative of the general population) to determine whether the way we think about our own physical activity could be of major and long-term significance for health. The data came from the US National Health Interview Survey and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which included questions assessing how much exercise individuals think they get compared with their peers. The surveys also asked respondents detailed questions about actual physical activity they had undertaken, and in some cases participants wore an accelerometer to measure their activity objectively. The researchers cross-checked these survey data against the National Death Index records as they stood 21 years after the exercise surveys had been completed. As the researchers expected, perceived physical activity relative to peers was closely associated with risk of dying. Even after adjusting for actual levels of physical activity, individuals who perceived themselves as less active than others were up to 71 per cent more likely to die in the follow-up period than those who perceived themselves as more active. One can say with confidence that individuals’ perceptions about their level of physical activity were strongly related to their longevity, even after accounting for the effects of actual physical activity and other known determinants of mortality such as smoking or obesity. There are a few potential explanations. A convincing one is that perceptions can affect motivation. For instance, a room attendant’s awareness that she is getting exercise at work might increase her confidence and commitment to a healthy lifestyle, and motivate her to act on this “active” identity. Conversely, longitudinal research shows that individuals who perceive themselves as unfit compared with their friends are less likely to exercise a year later. Another potential mechanism is that perceptions can have emotional consequences. Public health messages often warn of the “life-threatening consequences” of physical inactivity. A person’s perception that she/he is inactive might thus lead to fear and stress about not getting enough exercise, with harmful consequences for health. Still another explanation is that our positive beliefs and expectations can directly induce physiological responses, even following inert treatments, as shown by the placebo effect (similarly, negative expectations can lead to a harmful “nocebo effect”). Following this logic, participants in the current research who failed to realise that they were getting good exercise may not have experienced its full physiological benefits. Conversely, negative expectations related to the belief that one is not getting enough exercise could have become self-fulfilling because of nocebo-like effects. Today we are not able to give a conclusive answer to the question of which of these mechanisms is most important. Perhaps a constellation of them? Or maybe there is another, unknown process involved. Whatever the mechanisms at play, what do these results mean for mere mortals, and for those who are involved in promoting an active lifestyle? Instead of working out, should we stand in front of the mirror and repeat to ourselves “I’m an active and physically fit person”? To be clear, the authors warn that their findings don’t mean exercise is unimportant. Separate from the influence of our perceptions, physical activity continues to be a crucial determinant of health. However, a more thorough understanding of these results could help us optimise public health messages, finding the happy medium between highlighting that people need to exercise more, but not to the extent that they become downhearted about the exercise they do get. Further studies will doubtlessly bring us more answers, but before that happens, let’s get up, walk away from the desk, and look at our activity with friendlier eyes than before. 10 thoughts on “People who think they exercise less than their peers die earlier, regardless of their actual activity levels” Intriguing! I have experienced a recurring dream where I am running effortlessly without any breathlessness or pain. The day after, I experience the kind of ‘high’ that I get from actual exercise. Also, like others, I have experienced that feeling of watching others exercise e.g. run marathons and it makes me feel physically tired!!! I believe there is also research showing that imagining doing an activity fires-up the same neural networks involved in actual activity? I am not for one moment suggesting that I or anyone else forego the ‘actual exercise’ in favour of ‘virtual’ exercise, except perhaps for those who are bedbound or perhaps recovering from paralysis to re-ignite those neural networks. Even if it only makes you FEEL better i.e. increases sense of wellbeing, there has to be some benefit to this?…My husband experiences fluctuating levels of pain according to his mood in his final battle with cancer. I think this is all related stuff to do with belief in the activity/ therapy benefits and costs. I suggested when studying for my degree, that the effectiveness of such a broad range of things as psychological interventions like CBT, ‘mindfulness’ training, religious belief, self affirmation techniques, medication compliance and pharmaceutical effectiveness were all rooted in how much the individual and others rated their effectiveness and likelihood of success. OR, put another way how much they BELIEVED in the intervention… My independent project on source credibility and uptake of healthy lifestyle advice was an extension of this idea related to the ‘placebo effect’ and health procrastination. I do think it is possible for example, (seen in tribal aboriginal cultures) to ‘will’ oneself to death, (see also broken – heart syndrome). Maybe confirmation bias, but this would appear to all fit together nicely…????

A new in vitro fertilization technique: intravaginal culture. Intravaginal culture (IVC) is a new technique elaborated by the authors for the fertilization and culture of human oocytes. Its principle consists of fertilization and early development of the eggs in a closed, air-free milieu without the addition of CO2. One to five ovocytes are deposited in a tube completely filled with 3 ml of culture medium less than 1 hour after their recovery, with 10,000 to 20,000 spermatozoa per ml previously prepared. The tube is then hermetically closed and it is placed in the maternal vagina and held by a diaphragm for incubation for 44 to 50 hours. After this time, the content of the tube is examined and embryos are transferred to the uterus. In the first 100 consecutive punctures, 22 clinical pregnancies were obtained: 17 deliveries, 3 spontaneous abortions, and 2 tubal pregnancies. Also, a randomized study comparing IVC to in vitro fertilization (IVF) was done (160 cycles) and no statistically different cleavage, transfer, or pregnancy rate was seen between IVC and IVF. By simplifying the laboratory manipulations, this technique decreases the cost of IVF and permits its standardization and diffusion. It creates a psychologic comfort permitting active participation of the mother in this stage of embryo development. Also, the use of this technique may give greater knowledge of human gamete metabolism and of the physiology of reproduction.

Who’s hotter: 2014 World Cup’s Neymar vs. Cristiano Ronaldo Mara Marini is a Canadian film, television and theater actress perhaps best known for her recurring role as Brandi Maxxxx on the hit NBC comedy series Parks and Recreation. Marini has also appeared in a number of indie comedy and horror ... Neymar da Silva Santos Neymar da Silva Santos, Jr. was born February 5, 1992, in Mogi das Cruzes, Brazil. He played football at an early age, following in the footsteps of his father, a former professional football player. Described as a "true phenomenon," Neymar signed his first professional contract at the age of 17. By 21, he had won four consecutive Player of the Year awards, becoming one of Brazil's most famous public figures. He plays for the Spanish club FC Barcelona and plays as a forward or winger for the Brazilian national team. Talent: He was a child prodigy, joining the Portugesa Santista youth club in 1999 and becoming one of the most renowned young talents in the country in just a few years. He joined the Santos academy when he was 21. In 2012, he was listed as the seventh-richest footballer in the world and the Guardian ranked him the sixth best player in the world. In 2013, he was named the most marketable athlete in the world by Sports Pro. Trivia: On his 20th birthday (February 5, 2012), he scored his 100th professional goal. Neymar almost played for Real Madrid. When he was 14, he flew to Spain, passed all of the tests and was about to make the official move when Santos paid a substantial price to keep him in Brazil. He is the only Brazilian athlete to make the cover of Time magazine. Fitness: He obviously keeps fit with all of his training, but he also enjoys golf, tennis, cycling, running in the mountains and swimming Kindness: He participates in charity matches. Sponsorships: In 2011, he signed an 11-year contract with Nike and a two-year deal with Panasonic. He has also signed sponsorship agreements with Volkswagen, Unilever, Santander and more. Commitment: Neymar became a father at the age of 19. He is very close with his son, David Lucca, but is not in a relationship with his son's mother, Carolina Dantas. He has also dated Brazilian actress Bruna Marquezine. Cristiano Ronaldo Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro was born February 5, 1985, in Funchal, Madeira, Portugal. His father was a gardener and his mother was a cook. He played for the amateur team CF Andorinha at the age of 8, and when he was 14, his mother allowed him to focus entirely on football. In 1995, he signed with Nacional, and later went on to Sporting CP. He plays forward for Real Madrid and captains the Portugal national team. Talent: Manchester United signed Ronaldo as their first-ever Portuguese player in 2003. He scored the first three goals for Manchester in the 2004 FA Cup Final and played a big part in their winning the championship. He set a record for goals scored in 2008, and in 2009, he was paid $131 million by Real Madrid. Trivia: His second given name, Ronaldo, was after Ronald Reagan, who was his father's favorite actor. At the age of 15, he was diagnosed with a racing heart. He had an operation where a laser cauterized the area of his heart that was affected. He was discharged from the hospital the afternoon of the surgery and resumed training a few days later. After his father's death from an alcoholism-related liver condition at the age of 52, when Ronaldo was only 20, he does not drink alcohol. Fitness: He exercises seven days a week with a rigorous workout schedule and follows a very disciplined diet plan to keep his body fat at 10 percent. Kindness: After the 2004 tsunami, Ronaldo visited Indonesia to raise funds. In 2009, he donated a large sum of money to the hospital that helped save his mother's life so that they could build a cancer center in Madeira. In 2013, he became the Save the Children's new Global Artist Ambassador. Sponsorships: In 2009, he became the spokesmodel for Emporio Armani, and he has an endorsement deal with Nike until the end of this year. Ronaldo also has or had sponsorship agreements with Coca-Cola, Motorola, Jacob & Co., Tag Heuer, Herbalife and KFC, to name a few. Commitment: Ronaldo has been linked to models Alice Goodwin and Gemma Atkinson. In 2010, he started dating Russian model Irina Shayk and became a father to son Cristiano (not by Shayk), of whom he has full custody. About Mara Marini Mara Marini is a Canadian film, television and theater actress perhaps best known for her recurring role as Brandi Maxxxx on the hit NBC comedy series, Parks and Recreation. Marini has also appeared in a number of indie comedy and horror films. In 2013, she launched a popular digital comedy video series called Inside Dating on Break.com. She will soon be guest-starring on Disney's Kickin' It and shooting a politically incorrect feature comedy this fall. For more information on Mara, check out her official website, www.maramarini.com, and follow her on Facebook or on Twitter at @popgloss.

e power of 1/2, to the nearest integer? 2645 What is 4742624 to the power of 1/2, to the nearest integer? 2178 What is 180264 to the power of 1/8, to the nearest integer? 5 What is 159359 to the power of 1/2, to the nearest integer? 399 What is 274521 to the power of 1/10, to the nearest integer? 3 What is the square root of 17311799 to the nearest integer? 4161 What is the sixth root of 219403 to the nearest integer? 8 What is the third root of 172760 to the nearest integer? 56 What is 139441 to the power of 1/3, to the nearest integer? 52 What is 3232350 to the power of 1/10, to the nearest integer? 4 What is the square root of 995491 to the nearest integer? 998 What is the square root of 1922363 to the nearest integer? 1386 What is the third root of 1005938 to the nearest integer? 100 What is the fifth root of 2867960 to the nearest integer? 20 What is 40281817 to the power of 1/2, to the nearest integer? 6347 What is the square root of 328178 to the nearest integer? 573 What is 109743 to the power of 1/6, to the nearest integer? 7 What is the sixth root of 7165993 to the nearest integer? 14 What is the seventh root of 22180657 to the nearest integer? 11 What is the square root of 298272 to the nearest integer? 546 What is the square root of 546604 to the nearest integer? 739 What is 737495 to the power of 1/2, to the nearest integer? 859 What is 162702 to the power of 1/4, to the nearest integer? 20 What is 928537 to the power of 1/4, to the nearest integer? 31 What is 2229953 to the power of 1/2, to the nearest integer? 1493 What is the square root of 17266932 to the nearest integer? 4155 What is the ninth root of 6060487 to the nearest integer? 6 What is the third root of 22251298 to the nearest integer? 281 What is the fifth root of 6782189 to the nearest integer? 23 What is 5516654 to the power of 1/2, to the nearest integer? 2349 What is the cube root of 5989382 to the nearest integer? 182 What is 6051507 to the power of 1/5, to the nearest integer? 23 What is 5625621 to the power of 1/9, to the nearest integer? 6 What is the square root of 18445151 to the nearest integer? 4295 What is 1781480 to the power of 1/10, to the nearest integer? 4 What is 18757029 to the power of 1/2, to the nearest integer? 4331 What is 306056 to the power of 1/2, to the nearest integer? 553 What is the square root of 4806901 to the nearest integer? 2192 What is the square root of 1918017 to the nearest integer? 1385 What is the cube root of 207850 to the nearest integer? 59 What is the tenth root of 3459754 to the nearest integer? 5 What is the cube root of 7245868 to the nearest integer? 194 What is the cube root of 3781541 to the nearest integer? 156 What is 38922356 to the power of 1/5, to the nearest integer? 33 What is 384566 to the power of 1/8, to the nearest integer? 5 What is the third root of 831082 to the nearest integer? 94 What is the fifth root of 2404025 to the nearest integer? 19 What is the third root of 177502 to the nearest integer? 56 What is the third root of 518148 to the nearest integer? 80 What is the cube root of 6002689 to the nearest integer? 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Pages Where are Kevin and Ruth right now? Calderitas (Chetumal), Quintana Roo, Mexico. Where are they going next? Xpujl, Campeche, Mexico. Arriving February 20th. Saturday, February 3, 2018 A relaxing day off watching the pelicans The day started off cloudy, but by noon there was nothing but blue sky and sunshine. We decided we needed some exercise, and the bay that we are in has very few waves. Seemed like a good time to get out our Intex Challenger K2 Kayak for a little paddle. And exercise it was! First, you get exercise setting it up. It only takes about 20 minutes, but you have to pump up the two air chambers and carry it down to the beach. Then, you get exercise paddling! Out for a paddle in the kayak. There is actually quite a current in the bay. Probably has something to do with the tide, but we made sure to paddle against the current. It took both of us paddling hard to make any headway. But coming back the other way was pretty easy! Fishing boats. Lots of birds around. It's fun to watch the pelicans. White pelicans. The brown pelicans fly right on the surface of the water, but we never see the white ones doing that. Pelican. More birds. And then, you get more exercise getting the air out of the boat, cleaning it, and putting it away. The whole experience takes about an hour and a half for a 45 minute kayak ride. But, we had nothing else to do, so why not. Then, we took the bicycles to the other side of the highway on the Gulf of Mexico side of the bay. I didn't bring the big camera, but I thought I had brought my phone for pictures. But, I had forgot the phone in the motorhome. Oh well... no pictures from our bike ride. We've had a good three days here at Isla Aguada, but it's time to move on! Next stop, the city of Campeche only 171 kms (105 miles) away. We'll do the drive this morning, and then at 3:00pm we go for a city tour, then dinner, then some kind of light show afterwards. Need a small shop vac to inflate/deflate! I actually carried a full sized compressor in our RV. Pretty sure the air bag compressor could have been used as well. But I know you like your exercise!Beaches are only going to get better heading around the Yuc! Love the pelican pictures. There are huge brown pelicans in Playa Los Muertos, PV that glide effortlessly just skimming the waters or suddenly fly up and dive sharply to catch a fish! So much fun to watch these birds. I admire your energy ...going kayaking, then a bicycling?! More power to you two! These pelicans just glided effortlessly inches above the water as well. We didn't see them diving for food though, they must get enough scraps from the fishermen that they don't have to go looking for it themselves. When we were in the Baja though we would watch them "dive bomb" for the fish. They were fun to watch and the noise of them diving down and hitting the water sounded like mini explosions going off, it would wake us up first thing in the morning. Everybody was ready to go right on time again. We pulled out just before 9:00am onto the busy pot-holed road towards Veracruz. It's amaz... “Travel with Kevin and Ruth is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.”