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4 April 2018 Technology

Artificial Intelligent Agents: Prerequisites for Rights and Dignity

By Nayef Al-Rodhan

Image courtesy of ITU Pictures/Flickr. (CC BY 2.0)

This article was originally published in Volume 2, Issue 2 of Age of Robots magazine on 6 March 2018.

IBM’s Deep Blue was a chess-playing computer that achieved remarkable success in 1997 when it defeated the world champion Gary Kasparov in 19 moves. Kasparov had never lost a match to a human in under 20 moves. He managed to beat Deep Blue in the next games but was again defeated the following year after Deep Blue received an upgrade—and the unofficial nickname “Deeper Blue”. This was a landmark moment in artificial intelligence, but at no point was the genius chess machine deemed worthy of “rights”. Although theoretically able to visualize 200 million chess positions per second, Deep Blue had limited general abilities and could not work on other tasks beyond what it was programmed to do—such as playing chess, in this case.

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Prior focus: CSS Graphics
29 March 2018 Security, Defense

Estimated Global Nuclear Warhead Inventories 1945-2017

By the Center for Security Studies

 

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This graphic provides an overview of estimated global nuclear warhead inventories from 1945 to 2017. To find out about the Trump administration’s ‘Nuclear Posture Review’ and what it means for US nuclear policy, see Oliver Thränert ‘s recent addition to the CSS’ Analyses in Security Policy series here. For more CSS charts and graphs on proliferation, click here.

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28 March 2018 Security

EU-NATO Alignment after Brexit

By Daniel Keohane

Image courtesy of European External Action Service/Flickr. (CC BY-NC 2.0)

This article was originally published by Carnegie Europe on 22 March 2018.

After Brexit, there is no guarantee that the major powers in NATO and the EU will agree on how to respond to future crises.

At a summit in Brussels on March 22, EU heads of government will issue a statement of solidarity with the United Kingdom following the recent nerve agent attack on double-agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury. This statement of support follows similar strong declarations by NATO and the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council.

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26 March 2018 Security, Technology

Increasing International Cooperation in Cybersecurity and Adapting Cyber Norms

By Elena Chernenko, Oleg Demidov and Fyodor Lukyanov

Image courtesy of Colin/Wikimedia Commons. (CC BY-SA 4.0)

This article was originally published by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) on 23 February 2018.

Without increased cooperation, the global digital economy is vulnerable to catastrophic cyberattack.

The Challenge

Information and communications technology (ICT) presents one of the most critical modern challenges to global security. Threat assessments predict that the next major international crisis could be due to a state or terrorist group weaponizing ICTs to devastate critical infrastructure or military logistics networks. The proliferation of asymmetric warfare (i.e., conflicts between nations or groups that have disparate military capabilities) has increased states’ use of ICTs, which necessitates the development of an international code of cyber conduct.

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23 March 2018 Conflict, Terrorism

10 Takeaways from the Fight against the Islamic State

By Michael Dempsey

Image courtesy of DMA Army -Soldiers/Flickr. (CC BY-NC 2.0)

This article was originally published by War on the Rocks on 12 March 2018.

Nearly three years on from the Islamic State’s high water mark in the summer of 2015, there are several lessons that the United States and its allies can discern from the terrorist group’s meteoric rise to control large parts of Iraq and Syria to the loss of its physical caliphate late last year. The steady decline in ISIL’s fortunes is striking given the palpable fear its rise in the summer of 2014 sparked across Washington, when a common question circulating within the policy community was whether Baghdad itself might fall. Many of these takeaways will be relevant to U.S. policymakers as they attempt to prevent the group from reconstituting itself in the coming months.
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