A clear, well-written, and richly documented discussion of an issue that deserves deep and careful study.
Former Army Ranger Scharre, the director of the Future of War Initiative at the Center for a New American Security, looks at the technical, strategic, and ethical questions raised by autonomous weapons, which are closer to reality than many civilians may realize.
Mechanical weapons go back at least as far as the Civil War–era Gatling gun, which was expected to save lives by allowing a small crew to replace many riflemen. It led instead to the mass slaughter of World War I, when machine guns mowed down thousands of attacking infantrymen. Today’s drones allow air strikes without exposing pilots to enemy fire. But in those cases, human beings make the decision whether to fire. What happens if human judgment isn’t part of the decision-making loop? The author lists several weapons that pose that question, including missiles that could be sent to a location where enemy ships are known to be in order to seek out targets to attack. While such weapons are currently feasible, most military establishments are reluctant to deploy them. There is the ethical issue about using lethal force without a human taking the responsibility of killing, and there is also the strategic dilemma about starting an arms race. The technical question of creating autonomous control systems is already being tackled by makers of everything from vacuum cleaners to self-driving cars. Can robot tanks or bombers be far behind? Scharre looks at all these issues, talking to experts from the Pentagon, international peace organizations, and the robotics scientists who are pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence. He also gives first-person reports on drone tests and other leading-edge technological developments. The author puts it all in the context of military history, including his own combat experience. While there are no firm conclusions, it is clear that autonomous weapons are on the horizon and that decisions about whether—and how—to use them will be critical factors in the future of warfare.
A clear, well-written, and richly documented discussion of an issue that deserves deep and careful study.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-393-60898-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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