Russia Has A ‘Colossal’ Supercomputer

Building of Russian Ministry of Defence at Frunzenskaya Embankment. Moscow, Russia. Wikipedia. Wikipedia

RT: Army’s brain: Russia’s ‘colossal’ supercomputer helps predict wars, defense minister says

A “colossally powerful” supercomputer installed at Russia’s military headquarters helps the country’s armed forces tackle emerging threats by analyzing previous conflicts, such as the Yugoslavian war and the like, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said.

The supercomputer is a key part of the headquarters’ IT infrastructure and is so powerful that the military uses less than half of its capacity, Shoigu told Rossiya 24 TV channel, which filmed a documentary about Russia’s National Defense Management Center (NDMC).

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Update: Potential of Russian Defense Ministry's supercomputer colossal - Shoigu (TASS).

WNU Editor: It looks like Russia wants to build Skynet .... Powerful Russian supercomputer to ‘speak’ to any robotic system, no matter which manufacturer (RT).

The Pentagon Is Still Computer Systems-Networks And Floppy Disks From The 1970s

The Hill: US nuclear emergency messaging system still uses floppy disks

The Defense Department’s system for sending emergency messages to nuclear forces is made up of aging technology that runs on a 1970s-era computer system and uses 8-inch floppy disks.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) made the finding in a broad report highlighting the billions of dollars the government spends every year to maintain largely outdated information technology (IT).

“Replacement parts for the system are difficult to find because they are now obsolete,” the report concluded.

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More News On The Pentagon Still Using Computer Systems-Networks And Floppy Disks From The 1970s

Government spending billions to keep antique computer systems running -- AP
US Nuke Force Still Uses Floppy Disks, Watchdog Says -- Defense News/AFP
Pentagon Still Uses Floppy Disks To Run Parts Of Its Nuclear Program -- IBTimes
The U.S. is still using floppy disks to run its nuclear program -- CNN
US military uses 8-inch floppy disks to coordinate nuclear force operations -- CNBC
US nuclear force still uses floppy disks -- BBC
Report: US Spending 75% of Billion-Dollar IT Budget on Aging Computer Systems -- ABC news
The Pentagon’s Huge Atomic Floppies -- Time
The long legacy of the floppy disk -- BBC
US still uses floppy disks to control nuclear bombers & ballistic missiles -- RT
America's Nukes Are Protected by 50-Year-Old Floppy Disks -- Fortune
US nuclear force will phase out floppy disks next year -- Verge
What will it take to bring US government 21st century tech? -- Story Hinckley, Yahoo News

Will Future Wars Be Waged Using Quantum Computers?

Zoe Hawkins, National Interest: How to Fight a War With a Quantum Computer

The Australian Government recently announced plans to invest $26 million in the development of quantum computing technology as part of the National Innovation and Science Agenda (NISA). Prime Minister Turnbull has argued that NISA is part of a new “ideas boom” designed to “create a modern, dynamic and 21st century economy for Australia.” It emphasizes quantum computing as an important area for government investment based on its ability to produce “jobs and economic growth.” And while this industry could certainly be “worth billions,” it offers much more than financial prosperity: quantum technologies could play a significant role in our future defense and security.

Quantum technology harnesses the obscure properties of subatomic matter to achieve computing processes unobtainable with classic computers. Today’s computers run on binary digits, or bits, which exist as either 1s or 0s. In contrast, quantum bits, or qubits, exploit the bizarre principle of superposition that enables them to occupy all possible states (both 1 and 0) at the same time. This allows quantum computers to undertake multiple calculations in parallel, unlocking unprecedented processing power that could “solve problems that would take conventional computers centuries.”

WNU Editor: This BBC report explains why the Pentagon and the NSA want Quantum computers .... Why Google and the Pentagon want 'quantum computers' (BBC).

Remembering Colossus The World's First Electronic Computer That Helped Bring Down Hitler

Working replica of Colossus at The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley park

Colossus At 70: The Computer That Helped Bring Down Hitler -- The Telegraph

Today marks the seventieth anniversary of Colossus, the world's first electronic computer.

War veterans and their families are gathering at Bletchley Park today to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of Colossus, the world's first electronic computer.

Designed by British telephone engineer Tommy Flowers, Colossus was built to speed up code-breaking of the complex Lorenz cipher, used in communications between Hitler and his generals during World War II. Its first job was on 5 February 1944, and its work thereafter is widely thought to have shortened the war and saved countless lives.

Colossus occupied the size of a living room (7ft high by 17ft wide and 11ft deep), weighed five tonnes, and used 8kW of power. It incorporated 2,500 valves, about 100 logic gates and 10,000 resistors connected by 7 km of wiring.

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My Comment: Computers have come a long way after 70 years.

Can Computer Models Predict Conflicts And Wars?

The Science Of Civil War: What Makes Heroic Strife -- the Economist

Computer models that can predict the outbreak and spread of civil conflict are being developed.

FOR the past decade or so, generals commanding the world’s most advanced armies have been able to rely on accurate forecasts of the outcomes of conventional battles. Given data on weather and terrain, and the combatants’ numbers, weaponry, positions, training and level of morale, computer programs such as the Tactical Numerical Deterministic Model, designed by the Dupuy Institute in Washington, DC, can predict who will win, how quickly and with how many casualties.

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My Comment: There are some analysts and pundits who have a very clear perception of where future wars and conflicts may occur .... developing computer programs and models will probably also give the same heads-up.

How Steve Jobs Impacted The Military

Steve Jobs’ Influence On The Military -- Defense Tech

Apple founder Steve Jobs, the Bay Area-bred Buddhist, tech mogul and non-conformist who died yesterday, may not be the first person you associate with the military — he even issued the famous quote “it’s more fun to be a pirate than join the navy” — his inventions have indeed helped transform the military.

First off, it was largely Jobs who brought the easy to use graphical user interface and mouse to the masses with the Macintosh computer. The Mac and other Jobs’ creations ushered in the spirit of the modern Internet long before it existed by allowing average people to use computers to produce and share information. In the decade and a half after the Mac’s release we’d see the major computer companies producing personal computers — inspired by the Mac — that ran easy to use software flooding average consumers’ houses — and these computers were soon connected to one another by the World Wide Web.

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My Comment: What is my take .... he not only made computers simple to use .... but more importantly .... he help to provide a platform for millions of applications and functions that everyone .... including those in the military .... can easily use.

US Army's Battlefield Computer System Does Not Work

The Army Needs Better Intelligence Software The program it has isn't getting the job done, some analysts say. U.S. Army

$2.7 Billion Later, The Army’s Intelligence-Sharing Computer System Still Doesn’t Work -- Popular Science

The idea is simple enough: Create a cloud-based software tool that can comb through the entire universe of military intelligence reports for a given region, group, or individual and come back with actionable intel that battlefield commanders can use on the ground, and do it in realtime. But a couple of analysts that have used the system, as well as documentation obtained by Politico, show that the tool is hurting more than it is helping because it doesn’t work properly. And that’s when it works at all.

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Update #1: US Army spent $2.7 billion on a battlefield computer that doesn’t work -- Extreme Tech
Update #2: Army computer system said flawed, buggy -- UPI

My Comment: $2.7 billion later ... and very little to show for it. Someone definite deserves to be fired or demoted.

DARPA Wants Faster Computers

ORNL's Petascale Jaguar Supercomputer The petascale Jaguar is the world's fastest computer, but DARPA wants to take computing to the next level.

DARPA Wants To Usher In The Age Of Exaflop Computing -- Popular Science

“Better, stronger, faster,” seems to be the mantra over at DARPA, so why wouldn’t the Pentagon’s innovative R&D wing demand the baddest, fastest computers in the world? Under the umbrella of its Ubiquitous High Performance Computing (UHPC) program, DARPA is looking to develop computers that make the prefix “peta” seem lame by comparison: a platform that can carry out one quintillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) calculations per second. The exaflop era is upon us.

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My Comment: Why does the U.S. military want faster computers? Hmmmm .... my imagination is hard at work.

The Pentagon's Hunger For Greater Computer Speed

Petaflops At War -- Strategy Page

June 7, 2010: DARPA, the U.S. Department of Defense advanced research organization, has asked computer hardware developers to come up with a very powerful supercomputer (speed of one petaflop, or a million billion floating point operations per second, otherwise known as FLOPS), that is small enough to fit into a cabinet 61x198x102 cm (24x78x40 inches) and require no more than 57 kilowatts to operate (including cooling). This ExtremeScale supercomputer would be flown out to combat zones, run off generator power and perform analysis of images and other data, to determine where the enemy is and what they are up to. This sort of predictive analysis have become a major weapon in the last decade, and it needs more computer power to be even more useful. There are currently portable PC cards that will goose a PC up to 20 teraflops (a thousand billion FLOPS). Currently, the most powerful PC can do 50 gigaflops (billion FLOPS). That, in turn, is faster than the fastest supercomputers of the early 1990s. In this area, progress isn't marching on, it's sprinting.

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My Comment: With video information and surveillance assuming a greater role for the military, greater and faster processing power will be required .... hence the need for superior (and transportable) computers.

Military Eases Thumb Drive, Flash Media Bans

Military Relaxes Ban On Computer Flash Drives -- Washington Post/AP

WASHINGTON -- Nearly 15 months after the Defense Department banned the use of external computer flash drives, officials have agreed to allow limited use of the convenient high-tech storage devices.

The approved flash drives will be included in kits that the military will soon begin to distribute, with the first priority being troops in Afghanistan and Iraq who need the devices to carry or transfer critical data.

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More News On The Relaxation Of Rules For US Military Personnel To use Flashdrives

Hackers, Troops Rejoice: Pentagon Lifts Thumb-Drive Ban (Updated) -- The Danger Room
Pentagon to allow thumb drives with strict rules -- Federal Times
Military Eases Thumb Drive, Flash Media Bans -- US Department of Defense
Defense allows flash media on systems only as a 'last resort' -- NextGov

My Comment: This is going to make the lives of some in the military a bit easier.

The US Air Force's Holiday Wish List: 2500 PlayStations

Leave your beer and pizza at the door, please (Image: Air Force Research Lab)

From The New Scientist:

The US Air Force Research Lab recently put out a request for 2200 Sony PlayStation 3 games consoles. The military researchers want to wired them up with the 300 or so they already have to make a type of supercomputer never seen before.

But it won't be the ultimate gaming system to teach pilots how to blast enemies out of the sky. Instead it will analyse radar and simulate the workings of brains.

The consoles are desirable because of the unique abilities of the chip at their heart. Jointly designed by Sony, Toshiba and IBM, the Cell chip is designed for the speedy and efficient graphics processing that gaming requires, as well as for number crunching.

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The NSA Wants to Know How and WHAT You Think

The NSA's "retired" Cray super computer (in the NSA museum)

From Australia T.O.:

The National Security Agency (NSA) is developing a tool that George Orwell's Thought Police might have found useful: an artificial intelligence system designed to gain insight into what people are thinking.

With the entire Internet and thousands of databases for a brain, the device will be able to respond almost instantaneously to complex questions posed by intelligence analysts. As more and more data is collected—through phone calls, credit card receipts, social networks like Facebook and MySpace, GPS tracks, cell phone geolocation, Internet searches, Amazon book purchases, even E-Z Pass toll records—it may one day be possible to know not just where people are and what they are doing, but what and how they think.

The system is so potentially intrusive that at least one researcher has quit, citing concerns over the dangers in placing such a powerful weapon in the hands of a top-secret agency with little accountability.

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My Comment: It is only a question of time before AI platforms have been developed to the point where they will be useful tools in sorting through mountains of intelligence and surveillance data that would otherwise take weeks if humans were involved.

Under Worm Assault, Military Bans Disks, USB Drives

From The Danger Room:

The Defense Department's geeks are spooked by a rapidly spreading worm crawling across their networks. So they've suspended the use of so-called thumb drives, CDs, flash media cards, and all other removable data storage devices from their nets, to try to keep the worm from multiplying any further.

The ban comes from the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, according to an internal Army e-mail. It applies to both the secret SIPR and unclassified NIPR nets. The suspension, which includes everything from external hard drives to "floppy disks," is supposed to take effect "immediately." Similar notices went out to the other military services.

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Update: Military USB Ban Meant to Stop 'Adversary Attacks' -- The Danger Room

My Comment: I love my external drives and USB drives.