In 1983 the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was working on a project with a strong relationship to Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defence Initiative (Star Wars program) called the Strategic Computing Initiative (SCI). Publicly, SCI was billed as a way to stay ahead of the Japanese technology and stimulate growth in the American economy that was suffering at the hands of Japanese manufacturing. But the true goal of the program was to build a network of super fast computers that along that with advances in artificial intelligence would be used for military applications. These machines would replace slow and unreliable human logic and reason by responding rapidly to changing battlefield and worldwide strategic threats.
SCI supposedly died as a project in 1993. But those who are familiar with DARPA's recent projects will see clearly that SCI underestimated the complexity of what it was trying to accomplish. We see the results of SCI today in drone technology (in the air and at sea), robotics, surveillance, artificial intelligence and computing. The defence department is using autonomous equipment on a regular basis. And they are increasingly relying on the automated military and less on manned military equipment. The Strategic Computing Initiative may have been shut down as a project, but its goals are very much alive in today's defence department.
Below is a very good article about SCI at Gizmodo Australia. They make a correlation between SCI and 'Skynet' from the Terminator movies. When you consider how equipment is networked together today, it is a fair comparison.
DARPA Tried To Build Skynet In The 1980s
From 1983 to 1993, the US Government’s
DARPA program spent over $US1 billion on a program called the
Strategic Computing Initiative. The agency’s goal was to push the
boundaries of computers, artificial intelligence, and robotics to
build something that, in hindsight, looks strikingly similar to the
dystopian future of the Terminator movies. They wanted to build
Skynet.
Much like Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars
program, the idea behind Strategic Computing proved too futuristic
for its time. But with the stunning advancements we’re witnessing
today in military AI and autonomous robots, it’s worth revisiting
this nearly forgotten program, and asking ourselves if we’re ready
for a world of hyperconnected killing machines. And perhaps a more
futile question: Even if we wanted to stop it, is it too late?
If the new generation technology
evolves as we now expect, there will be unique new opportunities for
military applications of computing. For example, instead of fielding
simple guided missiles or remotely piloted vehicles, we might launch
completely autonomous land, sea, and air vehicles capable of complex,
far-ranging reconnaissance and attack missions. The possibilities are
quite startling, and suggest that new generation computing could
fundamentally change the nature of future conflicts.
That’s from a little-known document
presented to Congress in October of 1983 outlining the mission of the
new Strategic Computing Initiative (SCI). And like nearly everything
DARPA has done before and since, it’s unapologetically ambitious.
The vision for SCI was wrapped up in a
completely new system spearheaded by Robert Kahn, then director of
Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) at DARPA. As it’s
explained in the 2002 book Strategic Computing, Kahn wasn’t the
first to imagine such a system, but “he was the first to articulate
a vision of what SC might be. He launched the project and shaped its
early years. SC went on to have a life of its own, run by other
people, but it never lost the imprint of Kahn.”
The system was supposed to create a
world where autonomous vehicles not only provide intelligence on any
enemy worldwide, but could strike with deadly precision from land,
sea, and air. It was to be a global network that connected every
aspect of the U.S. military’s technological capabilities —
capabilities that depended on new, impossibly fast computers.
But the network wasn’t supposed to
process information in a cold, matter-of-fact way. No, this new
system was supposed to see, hear, act, and react. Most importantly,
it was supposed to understand, all without human prompting.
