In WWI, Germany launched a Zeppelin and conducted aerial bombing of London. In WWII, the Axis and then the Allies conducted devastating non-military-target bombing raids on each others’ cities and populace in an effort to bring the enemy to its knees. The culmination of this warfare tactic played upon civilians was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To a lesser degree — but just as ruthless — was the Napalm bombing of villages in Vietnam. What is clear is that “taking the war to civilians” — a “scorched earth” policy — has become a tactical imprimatur of any war scenario.
All that is about to be eclipsed is a more selective, but also more lethal, way.
You all know that the phone you have contains a memory card. In fact, you may even have added memory with those tiny micro-SD cards… each one holding more memory than a computer 10 years ago. What you should also know is that the micro chip (the brains) have also been downsized… but what you may not know is that that tiny SD card? It’s 100 times as large as the most advanced memory cards, and so are the new brains’ chips.
And along comes Artificial Intelligence (AI). A couple of all those micro components and a “smart” AI program and you have the perfect lethal weapon. How perfect? Imagine a plane (even a commercial airliner) flying over a city, a gatling gun sticks out the side and fires off 200,000 rounds in a matter of minutes. Each one of those bullets, equipped with AI, infra-red sensors and a memory card with programming and data, can seek out every male above the age of 18 (for one example). AI can do that based on its ability to calculate heat signatures, postulate likelihood of target and rain down terror. And that’s one plane, one gatling gun. And that’s currently becoming all-too-possible.
So, while folks will proudly show you the B-21 Bomber shortly, that’s for old-fashioned conventional weapons, or the hypersonic missile, undetectable (almost) and lethal. True, but the scorched-earth devastation conventional warfare meets out is limited by the absence of tactical nuclear weapons use. Not so with AI smart bullets. AI smart bullets may well escape the pariah status of nuclear weapons, all the while unbalancing the military playing field and national superiority.
Oh, and for those of you thinking this can’t possibly be done for bullet-sized projectiles? In the mid-90s I saw a demonstration at Remington proving grounds in Connecticut of a heat-seeking propelled bullet that was fired on a moving target and tracked that target’s arc 22% as the target moved.
Expensive at the time (about $5,000 each), nevertheless it could do what no other bullet could do at the time. Now, 20 years later, you think they have not perfected those flight systems and are adding AI? Guess again.
Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, now resides in New Mexico.
Meg Sher, executive director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village.L. Tomaino 
