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U.S. Government Catalogue of Cellphone Surveillance Devices Used by The Military and by CIA, NSA, FBI and other Intelligence Agencies

The Truth News — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 23:05:17 +0000

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U.S. Government Catalogue of Cellphone Surveillance Devices
Used by The Military and by CIA, NSA, FBI and other Intelligence Agencies

A fellow leader in the intelligence community new sources as we INTERCEPT them from the INTERCEPT which HAS OBTAINED a secret, internal U.S. government catalogue of dozens of cellphone surveillance devices used by the military and by intelligence agencies. The document, thick with previously undisclosed information, also offers rare insight into the spying capabilities of federal law enforcement and local police inside the United States.

The catalogue includes details on the Stingray, a well-known brand of surveillance gear, as well as Boeing “dirt boxes” and dozens of more obscure devices that can be mounted on vehicles, drones, and piloted aircraft. Some are designed to be used at static locations, while others can be discreetly carried by an individual. They have names like Cyberhawk, Yellowstone, Blackfin, Maximus, Cyclone, and Spartacus. Within the catalogue, the NSA is listed as the vendor of one device, while another was developed for use by the CIA, and another was developed for a special forces requirement. Nearly a third of the entries focus on equipment that seems to have never been described in public before. Click the image below to see what they got.

A Secret Catalogue of Government Gear for Spying on Your Cellphone click yellow image to visit

The Intercept obtained the catalogue from a source within the intelligence community concerned about the militarization of domestic law enforcement. (The original is here.)

A few of the devices can house a “target list” of as many as 10,000 unique phone identifiers. Most can be used to geolocate people, but the documents indicate that some have more advanced capabilities, like eavesdropping on calls and spying on SMS messages. Two systems, apparently designed for use on captured phones, are touted as having the ability to extract media files, address books, and notes, and one can retrieve deleted text messages.

Above all, the catalogue represents a trove of details on surveillance devices developed for military and intelligence purposes but increasingly used by law enforcement agencies to spy on people and convict them of crimes. The mass shooting earlier this month in San Bernardino, California, which President Barack Obama has called “an act of terrorism,” prompted calls for state and local police forces to beef up their counterterrorism capabilities, a process that has historically involved adapting military technologies to civilian use. Meanwhile, civil liberties advocates and others are increasingly alarmed about how cellphone surveillance devices are used domestically and have called for a more open and informed debate about the trade-off between security and privacy — despite a virtual blackout by the federal government on any information about the specific capabilities of the gear.

“We’ve seen a trend in the years since 9/11 to bring sophisticated surveillance technologies that were originally designed for military use — like Stingrays or drones or biometrics — back home to the United States,” said Jennifer Lynch, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has waged a legal battle challenging the use of cellphone surveillance devices domestically. “But using these technologies for domestic law enforcement purposes raises a host of issues that are different from a military context.”

MANY OF THE DEVICES in the catalogue, including the Stingrays and dirt boxes, are cell-site simulators, which operate by mimicking the towers of major telecom companies like Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. When someone’s phone connects to the spoofed network, it transmits a unique identification code and, through the characteristics of its radio signals when they reach the receiver, information about the phone’s location. There are also indications that cell-site simulators may be able to monitor calls and text messages.

In the catalogue, each device is listed with guidelines about how its use must be approved; the answer is usually via the “Ground Force Commander” or under one of two titles in the U.S. code governing military and intelligence operations, including covert action.

But domestically the devices have been used in a way that violates the constitutional rights of citizens, including the Fourth Amendment prohibition on illegal search and seizure, critics like Lynch say. They have regularly been used without warrants, or with warrants that critics call overly broad. Judges and civil liberties groups alike have complained that the devices are used without full disclosure of how they work, even within court proceedings.

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“Every time police drive the streets with a Stingray, these dragnet devices can identify and locate dozens or hundreds of innocent bystanders’ phones,” said Nathan Wessler, a staff attorney with the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The controversy around cellphone surveillance illustrates the friction that comes with redeploying military combat gear into civilian life. The U.S. government has been using cell-site simulators for at least 20 years, but their use by local law enforcement is a more recent development.

The archetypical cell-site simulator, the Stingray, was trademarked by Harris Corp. in 2003 and initially used by the military, intelligence agencies, and federal law enforcement. Another company, Digital Receiver Technology, now owned by Boeing, developed dirt boxes — more powerful cell-site simulators — which gained favor among the NSA, CIA, and U.S. military as good tools for hunting down suspected terrorists. The devices can reportedly track more than 200 phones over a wider range than the Stingray.

Amid the war on terror, companies selling cell-site simulators to the federal government thrived. In addition to large corporations like Boeing and Harris, which clocked more than $2.6 billion in federal contracts last year, the catalogue obtained by The Intercept includes products from little-known outfits like Nevada-based Ventis, which appears to have been dissolved, and SR Technologies of Davie, Florida, which has a website that warns: “Due to the sensitive nature of this business, we require that all visitors be registered before accessing further information.” (The catalogue obtained by The Intercept is not dated, but includes information about an event that occurred in 2012.)

The U.S. government eventually used cell-site simulators to target people for assassination in drone strikes, The Intercept has reported. But the CIA helped use the technology at home, too. For more than a decade, the agency worked with the U.S. Marshals Service to deploy planes with dirt boxes attached to track mobile phones across the U.S., the Wall Street Journal revealed.

After being used by federal agencies for years, cellular surveillance devices began to make their way into the arsenals of a small number of local police agencies. By 2007, Harris sought a license from the Federal Communications Commission to widely sell its devices to local law enforcement, and police flooded the FCC with letters of support. “The text of every letter was the same. The only difference was the law enforcement logo at the top,” said Chris Soghoian, the principal technologist at the ACLU, who obtained copies of the letters from the FCC through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The lobbying campaign was a success. Today nearly 60 law enforcement agencies in 23 states are known to possess a Stingray or some form of cell-site simulator, though experts believe that number likely underrepresents the real total. In some jurisdictions, police use cell-site simulators regularly. The Baltimore Police Department, for example, has used Stingrays more than 4,300 times since 2007.

Police often cite the war on terror in acquiring such systems. Michigan State Police claimed their Stingrays would “allow the State to track the physical location of a suspected terrorist,” although the ACLU later found that in 128 uses of the devices last year, none were related to terrorism. In Tacoma, Washington, police claimed Stingrays could prevent attacks using improvised explosive devices — the roadside bombs that plagued soldiers in Iraq. “I am not aware of any case in which a police agency has used a cell-site simulator to find a terrorist,” said Lynch. Instead, “law enforcement agencies have been using cell-site simulators to solve even the most minor domestic crimes.”

The Intercept is not publishing information on devices in the catalogue where the disclosure is not relevant to the debate over the extent of domestic surveillance.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment for this article. The FBI, NSA, and U.S. military did not offer any comment after acknowledging The Intercept’s written requests. The Department of Justice “uses technology in a manner that is consistent with the requirements and protections of the Constitution, including the Fourth Amendment, and applicable statutory authorities,” said Marc Raimondi, a Justice Department spokesperson who, for six years prior to working for the DOJ, worked for Harris Corp., the manufacturer of the Stingray.

WHILE INTEREST FROM local cops helped fuel the spread of cell-site simulators, funding from the federal government also played a role, incentivizing municipalities to buy more of the technology. In the years since 9/11, the U.S. has expanded its funding to provide military hardware to state and local law enforcement agencies via grants awarded by the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department. There’s been a similar pattern with Stingray-like devices.

“The same grant programs that paid for local law enforcement agencies across the country to buy armored personnel carriers and drones have paid for Stingrays,” said Soghoian. “Like drones, license plate readers, and biometric scanners, the Stingrays are yet another surveillance technology created by defense contractors for the military, and after years of use in war zones, it eventually trickles down to local and state agencies, paid for with DOJ and DHS money.”

In 2013, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement reported the purchase of two HEATR long-range surveillance devices as well as $3 million worth of Stingray devices since 2008. In California, Alameda County and police departments in Oakland and Fremont are using $180,000 in Homeland Security grant money to buy Harris’ Hailstorm cell-site simulator and the hand-held Thoracic surveillance device, made by Maryland security and intelligence company Keyw. As part of Project Archangel, which is described in government contract documents as a “border radio intercept program,” the Drug Enforcement Administration has contracted with Digital Receiver Technology for over $1 million in DRT surveillance box equipment. The Department of the Interior contracted with Keyw for more than half a million dollars of “reduced signature cellular precision geolocation.”

Information on such purchases, like so much about cell-site simulators, has trickled out through freedom of information requests and public records. The capabilities of the devices are kept under lock and key — a secrecy that hearkens back to their military origins. When state or local police purchase the cell-site simulators, they are routinely required to sign non-disclosure agreements with the FBI that they may not reveal the “existence of and the capabilities provided by” the surveillance devices, or share “any information” about the equipment with the public.

Indeed, while several of the devices in the military catalogue obtained by The Intercept are actively deployed by federal and local law enforcement agencies, according to public records, judges have struggled to obtain details of how they work. Other products in the secret catalogue have never been publicly acknowledged and any use by state, local, and federal agencies inside the U.S. is, therefore, difficult to challenge.

“It can take decades for the public to learn what our police departments are doing, by which point constitutional violations may be widespread,” Wessler said. “By showing what new surveillance capabilities are coming down the pike, these documents will help lawmakers, judges, and the public know what to look out for as police departments seek ever-more powerful electronic surveillance tools.”

Sometimes it’s not even clear how much police are spending on Stingray-like devices because they are bought with proceeds from assets seized under federal civil forfeiture law, in drug busts and other operations. Illinois, Michigan, and Maryland police forces have all used asset forfeiture funds to pay for Stingray-type equipment.

“The full extent of the secrecy surrounding cell-site simulators is completely unjustified and unlawful,” said EFF’s Lynch. “No police officer or detective should be allowed to withhold information from a court or criminal defendant about how the officer conducted an investigation.”

JUDGES HAVE BEEN among the foremost advocates for ending the secrecy around cell-site simulators, including by pushing back on warrant requests. At times, police have attempted to hide their use of Stingrays in criminal cases, prompting at least one judge to throw out evidence obtained by the device. In 2012, a U.S. magistrate judge in Texas rejected an application by the Drug Enforcement Administration to use a cell-site simulator in an operation, saying that the agency had failed to explain “what the government would do with” the data collected from innocent people.

Law enforcement has responded with some limited forms of transparency. In September, the Justice Department issued new guidelines for the use of Stingrays and similar devices, including that federal law enforcement agencies using them must obtain a warrant based on probable cause and must delete any data intercepted from individuals not under investigation.

Contained within the guidelines, however, is a clause stipulating vague “exceptional circumstances” under which agents could be exempt from the requirement to get a probable cause warrant.

“Cell-site simulator technology has been instrumental in aiding law enforcement in a broad array of investigations, including kidnappings, fugitive investigations, and complicated narcotics cases,” said Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates.

Meanwhile, parallel guidelines issued by the Department of Homeland Security in October do not require warrants for operations on the U.S. border, nor do the warrant requirements apply to state and local officials who purchased their Stingrays through grants from the federal government, such as those in Wisconsin, Maryland, and Florida.

The ACLU, EFF, and several prominent members of Congress have said the federal government’s exceptions are too broad and leave the door open for abuses.

“Because cell-site simulators can collect so much information from innocent people, a simple warrant for their use is not enough,” said Lynch, the EFF attorney. “Police officers should be required to limit their use of the device to a short and defined period of time. Officers also need to be clear in the probable cause affidavit supporting the warrant about the device’s capabilities.”

In November, a federal judge in Illinois published a legal memorandum about the government’s application to use a cell-tower spoofing technology in a drug-trafficking investigation. In his memo, Judge Iain Johnston sharply criticized the secrecy surrounding Stingrays and other surveillance devices, suggesting that it made weighing the constitutional implications of their use extremely difficult. “A cell-site simulator is simply too powerful of a device to be used and the information captured by it too vast to allow its use without specific authorization from a fully informed court,” he wrote.

He added that Harris Corp. “is extremely protective about information regarding its device. In fact, Harris is so protective that it has been widely reported that prosecutors are negotiating plea deals far below what they could obtain so as to not disclose cell-site simulator information. … So where is one, including a federal judge, able to learn about cell-site simulators? A judge can ask a requesting Assistant United States Attorney or a federal agent, but they are tight-lipped about the device, too.”

The ACLU and EFF believe that the public has a right to review the types of devices being used to encourage an informed debate on the potentially far-reaching implications of the technology. The catalogue obtained by The Intercept, said Wessler, “fills an important gap in our knowledge, but it is incumbent on law enforcement agencies to proactively disclose information about what surveillance equipment they use and what steps they take to protect Fourth Amendment privacy rights.”

Written by Jeremy Scahill, Margot Williams Research: Josh Begley source

STINGRAYS

Learn what a Stingray is here

China launches investigation into suspected spy balloon flying over US, ministry says

The Truth News — Fri, 03 Feb 2023 11:59:38 +0000

China launches investigation into suspected spy balloon flying over US, ministry says

Mao urged the US and China to proceed ‘calmly and carefully’ amid the suspected spy balloon investigation

China has announced its government is looking into reports that a suspected Chinese spy balloon was discovered flying in U.S. airspace over Montana.

“China is a responsible country and has always strictly abided by international laws, and China has no intention to violate the territory and airspace of any sovereign countries,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning during a daily briefing on Friday.

She also urged U.S. officials and Chinese authorities to proceed “calmly and carefully” amid the investigation.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs headquarters in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 1, 2022. (Ju Huanzong/Xinhua via Getty Images)

The foreign minister said judgment should be withheld “before we have a clear understanding of the facts.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was scheduled to visit China on Friday, becoming the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the country since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A high altitude balloon floats over Billings, Mont., on Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2023. (Larry Mayer/The Billings Gazette via AP)

His visit comes amid months of tense relations between Beijing and Washington over trade, Taiwan, human rights issues and China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea.

“What I want to emphasize is that before we have a clear understanding of the facts, speculation and sensationalizing will be unhelpful to the proper handling of the issue. As for Blinken’s visit to China, I have no information,” Mao said.

“The United States government has detected and is tracking a high-altitude surveillance balloon that is over the continental United States right now,” said Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said during a briefing on Thursday afternoon.

Pentagon spokesman Air Force Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder speaks during a briefing at the Pentagon in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

He added: “The U.S. government, including NORAD, continues to track and monitor it closely. The balloon is currently traveling at an altitude well above commercial air traffic and does not present a military or physical threat to people on the ground. Instances of this kind of balloon activity have been observed previously over the past several years. Once the balloon was detected, the U.S. government acted immediately to protect against the collection of sensitive information.”

The U.S. government is “confident” the surveillance balloon belongs to the People’s Republic of China, a defense official told Fox News. It is also considering bringing it down using military assets.

It is not immediately clear how long the balloon has been in U.S. airspace. The senior defense official said the government has been tracking it for “some time” and that it entered U.S. airspace a “couple of days ago.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report. By Lawrence Richard | Fox News

US government monitoring suspected Chinese spy balloon over northern states

Senior U.S. defense official said government closely monitoring suspected Chinese spy balloon

The U.S. government is monitoring a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that has been moving over northern states over the past several days.

Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said during a briefing on Thursday afternoon that the U.S. government has detected a high-altitude surveillance balloon over the continental U.S.

“The United States government has detected and is tracking a high-altitude surveillance balloon that is over the continental United States right now. The U.S. government to include Norad, continues to track and monitor it closely. The balloon is currently traveling at an altitude well above commercial air traffic and does not present a military or physical threat to people on the ground. Instances of this kind of balloon activity have been observed previously over the past several years. Once the balloon was detected, the U.S. government acted immediately to protect against the collection of sensitive information,” Ryder said.

Red flags flutter in front of the Great Hall of the People before the annual two sessions in Beijing on March 4, 2022. (VCG / VCG via Getty Images)

A senior defense official said that the U.S. government is “confident” that the surveillance balloon belongs to the People’s Republic of China.

The defense official said that the balloon was recently over Montana and that officials were considering bringing it down with military assets, but they decided against doing so because of the risks associated, adding that President Joe Biden was briefed on the situation and asked for military options.

“You did see reports yesterday of a ground stop at Billings Airport and the mobilization of a number of assets, including F-22. The context for that was that we put some things on station in the event that a decision was made to bring this down while it was over Montana. So, we wanted to make sure we were coordinating with civil authorities to empty out the airspace around that potential area. But even with those protective measures taken, it was the judgment of our military commanders that we didn’t drive the risk down low enough. So, we didn’t take the shot,” the official said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, center, walks past military guards during his arrival at the Department of National Defense in Camp Aguinaldo military camp in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines, on Thursday. (Rolex Dela Pena / Pool Photo via AP)

A well-placed senior U.S. official told Fox News that the government is still considering a variety of options with how to deal with the Chinese spy balloon, saying that the options presented to Biden and his national security team included concerns that if the military did shoot down the balloon, there could be civilian casualties the ground.

The White House hasn’t ruled out shooting the balloon down if it were deemed safe to do so, according to the source.

According to the source, there’s more than just a balloon, and heavy equipment would come crashing to the ground if it were to be shot down, creating a large debris field.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin convened a meeting with senior Department of Defense leadership Wednesday to discuss the balloon, and it was decided not to take military action due to “the risk to safety and security of people on the ground from the possible debris field,” the official said. At the time, Austin was visiting Camp Navarro in the Philippines, which is around 2,000 miles from China.

The balloon’s discovery also comes as the U.S. and Philippines agreed to increase its military presence within the islands amid escalating tensions between China and Taiwan.

Flags of Taiwan and U.S. are placed for a meeting in Taipei, Taiwan, on March 27, 2018. (Reuters / Tyrone Siu)

The senior defense official said that the government has been tracking the balloon for “some time” and said it entered U.S. airspace a “couple of days ago.”

While maintaining that the balloon doesn’t present a military threat to the U.S., the official said that it likely isn’t gathering any information of significant value to the People’s Republic of China.

“They’re trying to fly this balloon over sensitive sites, one of which was just mentioned to collect information,” the official said, adding that it’s not the first time that a balloon “of this nature” has been over the U.S.

By Adam Sabes , Liz Friden , Jennifer Griffin | Fox News

updated 2/3/2023 below with videos

‘I Lived in Hell for the Past 10 Years’ : Navy SEAL Veteran Detransitions After Decade Living as a Woman

The Truth News — Tue, 27 Dec 2022 05:25:41 +0000

‘I Lived in Hell for the Past 10 Years’: Navy SEAL Veteran De-Transitions After Decade Living as a Woman

by Louise Chambers source

Navy SEAL combat veteran Chris Beck, 56, made headlines in 2013 when he announced—after serving 20 years in the military—that he was a woman in a man’s body. He had hormone therapy and expensive gender reassignment surgery and went by “Kristin” for years before having a major realization: he’d been had.

Beck now claims that a VA psychologist, in a one-hour therapy session, convinced him he was transgender by luring him into a lucrative book deal. He says his past identity is still being used for indoctrination and warns children and parents of “trans-washing”—the promotion of “trans identities” on still-impressionable minds, coercing kids into making permanent, life-changing decisions against their best interests.

“I was naïve, I was in a really bad way, I was taken advantage of,” Beck told Robby Starbuck in an interview in early December. “I got used, badly, by a lot of people who had knowledge way beyond me. They knew what they were doing. I didn’t.”

‘I Destroyed Everything’

Two months prior to that interview, Beck announced to the world that he was “detransitioning” after living ten years as a woman. He posted on Facebook:

I will sound crazy to most of you. That’s ok. The path was clearly shown to me BECAUSE I have lived in hell for the past 10 years. As I read the Bible and other ancient texts I am continually aligned. I have no fear, no ego, no agenda, and only one wish: those with ears must listen, those with eyes must see, those with a voice must speak. I have a voice. I must speak and bear witness to what I saw.

Beck was doing alright before coming out as trans: earning $200,000 a year, having friends, a job, and a life he loved. “I look back and I see how I destroyed everything in my life that was holy, the temple of God, our bodies, what we have here,” he said. “I wish I’d had someone that would have helped me.”

After 13 military deployments, Beck suffered symptoms of trauma including depression, anxiety, and adjustment disorder. He was sent to a VA psychologist and confessed to feeling comforted by wearing women’s clothes. The psychologist made a shock diagnosis: Beck was transgender.

The former SEAL got on hormones, subsidized by the VA, and underwent gender reassignment surgery at his own cost—for which he is still out of pocket. But it wasn’t long before he began experiencing adverse effects from the hormone treatment.

“Hormones are system-wide … I had so many problems in my body when I started taking those,” he said. “I was like, ‘This is terrible,’ so I stopped. He added that he’s “sorry” it came out of the American people’s tax dollars and that he is “not a victim” but takes responsibility for his actions.

“I’ll think about this the rest of my life, and beat myself up the rest of my life,” he said. “I was repeating those psychologists, basically parroting their words, and it wasn’t me.”

Gender reassignment is a multi-billion-dollar industry with an agenda. Beck is now engaged, and his fiancée, Courtney, with an academic background in biology, anthropology, and gender studies, knows this agenda all too well.

“Transgender ideology is cultish, and it’s not science-based at all,” she told Starbuck, adding that there is no control group, something which is required in the scientific method. “There can’t be a woman who says, ‘I’m happy to be a woman,’ and there can’t be a man who says, ‘I’m happy to be a man.’ In order to enter this ideology, you have to completely lose yourself.”

She noted a hypocrisy: “If you’re teaching in women and gender studies that gender is fluid, why would you then be advocating for permanent changes to someone’s gender?”

The Wellbeing of Our Children

The trans ideology is not normalized—yet. But it is being popularized through the media with massive corporate support, Beck said.

The discussion is neither political nor religious, he adds. It’s a health discussion, one of physical and mental health, involving the well-being of our children. Yet the so-called treatment seems to serve the opposite.

“The hormones they’re using are the same hormones they used to use for medical castration, chemical castration for pedophiles,” the former SEAL said. “Now they’re giving this to healthy 13-year-olds. Does this seem right?”

The “feelings-based” approach to diagnosis is also problematic, as it’s “not evidence-based” yet leads young patients to undergo hormone treatment and gender reassignment.

“If this does turn out to be a human condition that we all could face, and the numbers are one percent of the population, then so be it,” he told Starbuck. “But I want to see it in evidence, and then I’ll support that one percent.”

Beck, who retired from military service as a decorated chief petty officer in 2011, now says he doesn’t condone those serving to undergo gender transition, as such invasive treatments and surgeries would compromise the readiness of the armed forces.

‘Slow This Train Down’

Beck, who has studied graduate-level counseling, thinks anyone over the age of 25—when the human brain reaches full maturity—should be free to make their own decisions. But those under that age who are told they are transgender are being “brainwashed, coerced, manipulated.”

“Everyone has things that happen to them. It’s normal. That’s life,” he said. “What happened to me should not be an excuse for a psychologist to push their agenda.

“For me, with a child right now, I don’t trust psychologists or psychiatrists until they get to the bottom of this, when we find out the DSM [diagnostic and statistical manual for diagnosing mental disorders] is being used as a tool to push a narrative.”

If the kid turns out to be “tomboy,” she should not face bullying from the medical community and have a diagnosis pushed on her, Beck added.

The former officer’s inward battle of healing has turned outward since his decision to detransition. On Dec. 12, in a Facebook post, he stated his new mission:

“Yes. Lots changed, but I’m still me. Still trying to do good and help. … Someone has to try to slow this train down. No one else stood up. I stood up against madness to save innocent children.”

The military wants AI to replace human decision-making in battle

The Truth News — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 07:03:25 +0000

The military wants AI to replace human decision-making in battle

The development of a medical triage program raises a question: When lives are at stake, should artificial intelligence be involved?

When a suicide bomber attacked Kabul International Airport in August last year, the death and destruction was overwhelming: The violence left 183 people dead, including 13 U.S. service members.

This kind of mass casualty event can be particularly daunting for field workers. Hundreds of people need care, the hospitals nearby have limited room, and decisions on who gets care first and who can wait need to be made quickly. Often, the answer isn’t clear, and people disagree.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) — the innovation arm of the U.S. military — is aiming to answer these thorny questions by outsourcing the decision-making process to artificial intelligence. Through a new program, called In the Moment, it wants to develop technology that would make quick decisions in stressful situations using algorithms and data, arguing that removing human biases may save lives, according to details from the program’s launch this month.

Though the program is in its infancy, it comes as other countries try to update a centuries-old system of medical triage, and as the U.S. military increasingly leans on technology to limit human error in war. But the solution raises red flags among some experts and ethicists who wonder if AI should be involved when lives are at stake.

“AI is great at counting things,” Sally A. Applin, a research fellow and consultant who studies the intersection between people, algorithms and ethics, said in reference to the DARPA program. “But I think it could set a [bad] precedent by which the decision for someone’s life is put in the hands of a machine.”

[The U.S. says humans will always be in control of AI weapons.
But the age of autonomous war is already here.]

Founded in 1958 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, DARPA is among the most influential organizations in technology research, spawning projects that have played a role in numerous innovations, including the Internet, GPS, weather satellites and, more recently, Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine.

But its history with AI has mirrored the field’s ups and downs. In 1960s, the agency made advances in natural language processing, and getting computers to play games such as chess. During the 1970s and 1980s, progress stalled, notably due to the limits in computing power.

Since the 2000s, as graphics cards have improved, computing power has become cheaper and cloud computing has boomed, the agency has seen a resurgence in using artificial intelligence for military applications. In 2018, it dedicated $2 billion, through a program called AI Next, to incorporate AI in over 60 defense projects, signifying how central the science could be for future fighters.

“DARPA envisions a future in which machines are more than just tools,” the agency said in announcing the AI Next program. “The machines DARPA envisions will function more as colleagues than as tools.”

To that end, DARPA’s In the Moment program will create and evaluate algorithms that aid military decision-makers in two situations: small unit injuries, such as those faced by Special Operations units under fire, and mass casualty events, like the Kabul airport bombing. Later, they may develop algorithms to aid disaster relief situations such as earthquakes, agency officials said.

The program, which will take roughly 3.5 years to complete, is soliciting private corporations to assist in its goals, a part of most early-stage DARPA research. Agency officials would not say which companies are interested, or how much money will be slated for the program.

Matt Turek, a program manager at DARPA in charge of shepherding the program, said the algorithms’ suggestions would model “highly trusted humans” who have expertise in triage. But they will be able to access information to make shrewd decisions in situations where even seasoned experts would be stumped.

For example, he said, AI could help identify all the resources a nearby hospital has — such as drug availability, blood supply and the availability of medical staff — to aid in decision-making.

“That wouldn’t fit within the brain of a single human decision-maker,” Turek added. “Computer algorithms may find solutions that humans can’t.”

Sohrab Dalal, a colonel and head of the medical branch for NATO’s Supreme Allied Command Transformation, said the triage process, whereby clinicians go to each soldier and assess how urgent their care needs are, is nearly 200 years old and could use refreshing.

Similar to DARPA, his team is working with Johns Hopkins University to create a digital triage assistant that can be used by NATO-member countries.

The triage assistant NATO is developing will use NATO injury data sets, casualty scoring systems, predictive modeling, and inputs of a patient’s condition to create a model to decide who should get care first in a situation where resources are limited.

“It’s a really good use of artificial intelligence,” Dalal, a trained physician, said. “The bottom line is that it will treat patients better [and] save lives.”

Despite the promise, some ethicists had questions about how DARPA’s program could play out: Would the data sets they use cause some soldiers to get prioritized for care over others? In the heat of the moment, would soldiers simply do whatever the algorithm told them to, even if common sense suggested different? And, if the algorithm plays a role in someone dying, who is to blame?

Peter Asaro, an AI philosopher at the New School, said military officials will need to decide how much responsibility the algorithm is given in triage decision-making. Leaders, he added, will also need to figure out how ethical situations will be dealt with. For example, he said, if there was a large explosion and civilians were among the people harmed, would they get less priority, even if they are badly hurt?

“That’s a values call,” he said. “That’s something you can tell the machine to prioritize in certain ways, but the machine isn’t gonna figure that out.”

“We know there’s bias in AI; we know that programmers can’t foresee every situation; we know that AI is not social; we know AI is not cultural,” she said. “It can’t think about this stuff.”

And in cases where the algorithm makes recommendations that lead to death, it poses a number of problems for the military and a soldier’s loved ones. “Some people want retribution. Some people prefer to know that the person has regret,” she said. “AI has none of that.”

source

By Pranshu Verma

US Military Aims to Replace Human Commanders With AI to Remove Bias, Accelerate Decision Making on the Battlefield

Margaret Davis source

Fast and timely decision-making is an integral part of the military, whether in combat, medical or disaster relief. MailOnline reported that scientists at the US military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) believe that artificial intelligence (AI) can arrive at sound decisions faster than human commanders, who may have biases that slow down decisions.

Scientists at DARPA said that algorithms could be trained with lessons based on best practices. The technology is still in its early stages, but DARPA hopes to release it soon as the US military increasingly leans on technology to reduce human error.

(Photo : Pixabay/Computerizer)
US Military Aims to Replace Human Commanders With AI to Make Decisions on the Battlefield

In the Moment: DARPA’s New Technology Could Make Difficult Decisions at the Battlefield

DARPA has named its latest initiative “In the Moment” as it can make decisions fast without any biases, which is usually the concern of human commanders. As a research and development agency of the US military, DARPA aims to remove human bias in decision-making and save more lives through technology.

They said that it will take about two years to train and another 18 months to prepare before it can be ready for the real-world scenario. Sally A. Applin, an expert in the interaction of AI and ethics, told Washington Post that AI could set a precedent in making life or death decisions on the battlefield.

DARPA announced the ITM earlier this month, explaining that its first task will be to work with trusted human decision-makers to explore the best options when the best or agreed-upon correct answer is not available. ITM project manager Matt Turek assures that the development of the new technology is different from the typical AI that requires human agreement with the right outcomes

As MailOnline reported, the team takes inspiration from medical imaging analysis, in which techniques are developed for evaluating systems even when skilled experts disagree. Turek said that ITM will develop a quantitative framework from medical imaging insights to evaluate decision-making by algorithms during difficult situations.

He added that the technology will be based on realistic and challenging decision-making scenarios and map its responses and compare them to human decision-makers.

ALSO READ: Will AI Takeover Humanity? Advanced Robots May Now Have Consciousness

AI Can Amplify Human Effectiveness, Threaten Human Autonomy

AI systems rely on Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) that can be trained like neurons in brains to recognize patterns in the information. It has become the basis for many AI developments over the years. These developments helped humans in many tasks that were once impossible.

According to Pew Research Center, experts believe that AI will amplify the effectiveness of humans. However, it also could threaten their autonomy and capabilities.

They have discussed the possibility of computers exceeding human intelligence, just like how they are now being developed to make decisions and drive vehicles. These smart-systems aim to save time, money, and lives and offer a more customized future.

Despite this, they have expressed concerns about the long-term impact of these new tools on the essence of being a human. Many people shared their deep worries and suggested pathways toward solutions, such as living in the Metaverse and living physical bodies behind to live infinitely.

AI could replace human military commanders in making life or death decisions on the battlefield, DARPA suggests

DARPA is working with decision makers to train algorithms to make decisions
The idea is that humans have a bias and can disagree, slowing down decisions
AI can be trained from the start, based on best practice, to make fast decisions
The technology is still at the early stages, but DARPA hopes for a wide roll out

Modern military operations, whether it be combat, medical or disaster relief, require complex decisions to be made very quickly, and AI could be used to make them.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched a new program aimed at introducing artificial intelligence into the decision making process.

This is because, in a real world emergency situation, that might require instant choices between who does and doesn’t get help, the answer isn’t always clear and people disagree over the correct course of action – AI will make a quick decision.

The latest DARPA initiative, called ‘In the Moment’, will involve new technology that could take difficult decisions in stressful situations, using live analysis of data, such as the condition of patients in a mass-casualty event and drug availability.

It comes as the U.S. military increasingly leans on technology to reduce human error, with DARPA arguing removing human bias from decision making will ‘save lives’.

The new AI will take two years to train, then another 18 months to prepare, before it is likely to be used in a real world scenario, according to DARPA.

‘AI is great at counting things,’ Sally A. Applin, an expert in the interaction of AI and ethics, told Washington Post, adding ‘I think it could set a precedent by which the decision for someone’s life is put in the hands of a machine.’

According to DARPA, the technology is only part of the problem when it comes to switching to AI decision making, the rest is on building human trust.

‘As AI systems become more advanced in teaming with humans, building appropriate human trust in the AI’s abilities to make sound decisions is vital,’ a spokesperson for the military research organization explained.

By Ryan Morrison source