Finally, I have a new sci-fi detective series, the Delta Devlin Novels, which follow the career of a rookie New York detective as she faces some harrowing cases. The first in this series is The Dreaming Tree, which is available right now, as is the second book Meet Your Maker, and Out of Time which is coming soon.
Thank you again for supporting my writing and family, and all my warmest wishes to you and yours,
Matthew Mather
Montreal, January 2021
p.s. In the next section is the discussion on drones and AI in the real world!
Author Discussion on Drones and AI
Dear Reader,
Thank you so much for coming on this adventure!
As in many of my novels, I like to blend reality with fiction, and in CyberWar, I decided to take the final path along the cyber trail and examine the impact of artificial intelligence and drones in modern warfare, and I would like to share some of what I researched.
The original CyberStorm novel was inspired by my real-world meetings on cybersecurity in Washington, DC, where I was presenting the intelligence community using my perspective as an info-security contractor for Fortune 500 corporations in my previous life before I became a full-time writer. CyberSpace, the second novel in World War C, was inspired by a second set of meetings I was invited to, again in Washington, discussing the vulnerabilities presented if navigation and timing satellites, notably GPS, were knocked out.
In CyberWar, I took this to its natural conclusion by considering what could happen if drone technology and artificial intelligence were preceded with the events of the first two novels, a coordinated cyberattack with the crippling of space-based assets. In the final analysis, the modern world we live in is surprisingly vulnerable, and the technologies to carry out these attacks are spreading faster than we can contain them.
And this is all based on the incredible rise of drone technologies.
The term “drone” or “UAV” (unmanned aerial vehicle) is somewhat controversial, as all current flying drones require a human operator as well as a supply chain on the ground to maintain their operation, and a vast bureaucratic infrastructure around the supervision of pilots. Typically, they are also intended to be reused, as opposed to the miniature killer bots I portrayed in this novel—but more on this later.
Twenty years ago, there were only a handful of drones in the world, almost all of which were connected to programs in the US military. Today, there are tens of thousands of military drones in operation, from over eighty different countries with active UAV military programs and dozens of independent manufacturers, not to mention the millions of commercial and hobby drones doing everything from filming TV shows to delivering pharmaceuticals.
The term drones, however, doesn’t just apply to things that fly.
The most astounding revelation for me was when I read about the US Navy’s Overlord uncrewed vessel, a massive two-hundred-foot-long ship that autonomously piloted itself on a 5000-mile journey down the Atlantic coast, through the Panama Canal, and back up through the Pacific. Again, that is a two-hundred-foot-long (!) US Navy robotic ship that piloted itself—without any human help—on a journey almost halfway around the world. The US Navy also has the AN-2 Anaconda gunboat, which is a completely autonomous watercraft equipped with artificial intelligence.
Russia’s new T-14 Armata tank is equally or even more frightening. This is a new generation of heavy tank that is being designed to be completely unmanned and even autonomous, meaning it can maneuver and fire without any human intervention. The American military has already launched the new X-47B pilotless autonomous drone combat aircraft from aircraft carriers at sea, which do not require human pilots.
In 2019, the Turkish defense companies STM and Asisguard announced that nation’s army will start using their Kargu and Songar drones in 2021, which will have the capability to find, track, and kill people without human intervention. These are fifteen to fifty-pound quadcopters, some of which can be mounted with machine guns, and are intended to be used as parts of a cooperative swarm in combat.
These are entirely different than the drones we began talking about, as these are specifically designed to be autonomous—no human controller required—and operate as combat-ready killing machines.
The difference here is the addition of artificial intelligence.
A few years ago, Google initiated an endeavor called Project Maven in collaboration with the US Department of Defense, which was focused on using AI to enhance or control military drones, with the goal of singling out and attacking enemy human targets. The project was quickly canceled, however, after mass employee outcry.
Of course, the technology is still moving ahead, but now more in the shadows.
The potential for mass atrocities is alarming, especially when hundreds or thousands of these machines may be deployed on a battlefield at once, not to mention the possibility of them being hacked or taken over by bad actors. Nuclear technology is difficult to steal, but the proliferation of artificially intelligent combat machines has almost as much potential for use as weapons of mass destruction, with almost no international treaties governing their control.
China has even recently named its new surveillance system “Skynet,” which is the name of the fictious artificial intelligence from the Terminator franchise of movies that wiped out humanity.
This seems to be tempting fate just a little.
With falling birthrates and rising standards of living in almost all industrialized countries, the reluctance to send young people into harm’s way in battle has driven governments everywhere to invest in machines that can replace them.
Take a survey in any nation on Earth, and every time the inhabitants will consistently indicate they would prefer sending machines in to fight their battles, rather than their sons and daughters. However, take that same survey and ask if they would prefer to be attacked by machines? An equal percentage is horrified by the idea.
Compared to what I’ve written in CyberWar, an actual attack by autonomous machines, in a conflict gone wrong, would be far more terrifying than anything I’ve described on these pages.
There is an ongoing effort at the United Nations to regulate autonomous killer robots, which is backed by people like Elon Musk as well as companies like Google, to create a framework for the banning of this technology, similar to the Chemical Weapons Convention which is a comprehensive and multilateral international ban on the use and possession of chemical weapons. I’m personally optimistic that this diplomatic solution will yield results to contain the spread of autonomous weapons systems, although I’m afraid that it will take a tragedy to wake up the international community to get it done.
With that, I leave you to investigate some of the topics I’ve brought up. If you haven’t come across it yet, I invite you to read my companion novel Darknet, which was designed as a sequel to CyberStorm, set in the same world a year afterward and deals with the rise of artificial intelligence.
And of course, if you have any feedback for me, my email is in the next section, I would love to hear from you.
Warmest regards and thanks again for reading!
Matthew Mather
Montreal, January 2021
p.s. Again, if you enjoyed this novel, PLEASE take a moment to write a review on Amazon, no matter how short. A constant stream of new reviews is the single best way to help stimulate new readers for an indie author like myself and lets me continue to write books for you!
About The Author
Amazon Charts Bestseller Matthew Mather's books have sold millions of copies, accumulated over 70,000 ratings on Goodreads, Audible and Amazon, been translated and published in over 24 countries across the globe, and optioned for multiple movie and television contracts.
He began his career as a researcher at the McGill Center for Intelligent Machines before starting and working in high-tech ventures ranging from nanotechnology to cyber security. He now works as a full-time author of speculative thrillers.
Website
www.MatthewMather.com
Facebook
www.facebook.com/Author.Matthew.Mather
Email
[email protected]
CyberWar: World War C Trilogy Book 3 Page 31
