no bigger ships than battleships

[Dunbal]

It has always been annoying to talk with armchair generals, which is why I tend to try and refrain from it.

Yes I'm sure a real general like yourself must find it frustrating to talk with someone who merely does reading.

 

[lwarmonger]

"Drone hacking" has been a constant fear pretty much from the moment drones were introduced. In practice, however, it's a bit more limited than it seems. The Iranians are believed to have managed something of the sort (although the Iranian regime has a long history of lying about stuff like this) by using radio jamming to cut communication from the drone to its handlers and to the GPS satellites it uses to navigate, then feeding it spoofed GPS data to manipulate its flight once it switched to autopilot. It wasn't "hacking" in the sense of accessing the operating system, as military drones do not use operating systems which are vulnerable to hacking (although some civilian drones do), more exploiting a weakness in the drone's navigation system.

How it was done is not 100% certain. What is certain is that the Iranians got the drone, and not from a crash. This technology is still in its infancy, both on the drone side, and on the countermeasure side.

Anyone in a warzone could pick up a radio, try to find the frequency the enemy are communicating on and tell them to go walk into a minefield. It wouldn't work because military communications are encrypted.

You would be surprised at how much of a threat this actually is. The greater threat with modern armies is the enemy gaining access to your communications and then, instead of using it give false directions to your manned units (that is easily identified), listening in on your tactical communications so they can identify exactly what you are doing in real time.

 

[lwarmonger]

Yes I'm sure a real general like yourself must find it frustrating to talk with someone who merely does reading.

Actually living it does give one a perspective that you lack without it. Would you like someone who has read about surgery to operate on you, or someone who has actually done it before?

 

[TheBeautifulVoid2]

Your knowledge of conflict is clearly gained from books. It has always been annoying to talk with armchair generals, which is why I tend to try and refrain from it.

By the sound of it you're ex-military. What was your branch? What rank did you achieve?

If you actually have real expertise in the matter, then I'm happy to submit to that expertise.

 

[KonradKurze202]

See, I don't get that. To me a predictive algorithm which can predict the best way to win a basketball game can also predict the best way to win a one-on-one dogfight or a thousand-ship space battle. From there it's a very short leap to plugging that predictive algorithm directly into the controls. The human then only has to tell the algorithm to "go and win that battle" and it will.

We are already at the point where computers can beat humans at Go, at chess, at stock trading and now at basketball. Arguing that winning battles is somehow different is, to my mind, an artificial distinction.

Your mistake is presuming the number variables in a game of Basketball (a game with set rules, and easily measurable attributes) are the same as in a combat scenario (a situation with no rules, and difficult to measure variables, even without human involvement).

In addition all you've done is say a computer exists that someone says can predict basketball, does it really exist? Does it really work? Can it predict baseball games? Can it predict who will become President of the US in 2024? If the answer to any of these is no then there will always be a need for human judgement in unexpected scenarios. No human knows everything, and thus no computer can be programmed to respond to every possible scenario.

 

[KonradKurze202]

Disclaimer: I am not a computer scientist.

It is my understanding that with the ever-growing availability of processing power, the eventual fate of cryptography and of all hacking depends upon the solution to P = NP. Depending on what the outcome of that is, either all data can be made entirely secure or all data can be trivially compromised by anyone who feels like it. We don't yet know which one is the case but either way, security isn't going to be an issue.

An overly simple explanation, but substantially correct for today's level of technology. As a computer scientist it is my firm believe that P != NP (if it did it would essentially be possible to guess a random number within a polynomial number of steps regardless of that numbers complexity), so cryptography is fairly safe for the moment.
If computers gain an exponential leap in processing power (unpredictable as it requires a true 'invention' something that cannot be predicted) then this may change.

 

[hsuzy1987]

Your mistake is presuming the number variables in a game of Basketball (a game with set rules, and easily measurable attributes) are the same as in a combat scenario (a situation with no rules, and difficult to measure variables, even without human involvement).

Yep. A basketball game (or that other famous AI victory, chess) is a highly controlled environment with a comparatively small number of parameters for an AI to process, and war is a different beast in that regard altogether. Also, while an AI could make for an extremely efficient killing machine, how easily can you program a sense of ethics? An AI controlled ship ordered to interdict convoy activity might come across a ship filled with refugees for example. If they behave in a potentially threatening way by accident (or panic), would the AI know to hold it's fire?

As an interesting aside, there were recent (I think. 2015 it might have been) articles regarding self-driving cars and potential ethical scenarios. The one I remember was that the car with you, the sole passenger, was going to collide and kill a pedestrian. Does the car swerve and potentially put you in a fatal crash to avoid the pedestrian? The other scenario was that where there was a group of pedestrians instead, so from a utilitarian perspective it would be better to kill you in an accident rather than a whole bunch of other people. On the other hand, you don't exactly want to die. What should the car be programmed to do?

All things said, however, it's all fiction with Stellaris anyway, at least from the viewpoint of current levels of scientific understanding. Sentient AIs are a thing, along with FTL travel, psionics, inertial dampeners, and weird phallic-looking fungus that want to hug everyone. I'll be fine suspending my sense of disbelief.

 

[Dunbal]

Actually living it does give one a perspective that you lack without it. Would you like someone who has read about surgery to operate on you, or someone who has actually done it before?

To be honest I would be a little worried if my wife's gynecologist wanted to perform coronary artery bypass surgery on me. I mean the gynecologist is a doctor, and he is allowed to perform some surgeries... but still.

See, NO ONE has experience in "space warfare", so I really don't see how you can claim to be more experienced, general.

 

[apoc527]

I have fought many space battles and waged many space wars. All simulated, of course. #LtGorman