From: Brian Atkins (brian@posthuman.com)
Date: Sun Aug 18 2002 - 22:50:06 MDT
Harvey Newstrom wrote:
>
> On Sunday, August 18, 2002, at 08:01 pm, Brian Atkins wrote:
>
> > At this point the various governments and corporations still haven't
> > figured out how to perfect a multilayered defense against 40 year old
> > offensive weapons (jet passenger planes),
>
> Actually, this is not quite correct. Many of the assumptions floating
> around since 9/11 are not quite accurate.
>
Ok assuming I buy into your theory that US jetliners are now 100%
hijacker-proof (I don't personally, but...), my other point remains
that the real problem here is that the government will be increasingly
required to anticipate such attacks before they occur, because if they
do occur the results may be increasing bad as technology advances. So
the real issue is how does government become able to do perfect
prediction of threats?
>
> In other words, many of our security procedures work just fine. It is
> not true that we are incapable of defending ourselves. We just haven't
> really tried before. Now that we know security is imperative, we can
> apply what we know in ways we have never tried before. We shouldn't
> have to reinvent everything from scratch.
>
For jetliners, no. For suitcase nukes, maybe no, although I still haven't
heard a complete theory of interlacing defenses that will prevent them.
For designer biowarfare, nanotech, etc. YES. And the defenses for those
have to be in place and able to deal with/anticipate everything that
will get thrown at them before it happens.
-- Brian Atkins Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence http://www.singinst.org/
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