Risks and Responsibilities

Whirlwind was made by MIT,which is used for flight simulation.

It is an analogue computer which runs the dlight simulation.

It gives the altitude of the flight depending on the input we give.

It was widely used during the period before world war II (1940-1950).

It was of Dual use . It is used to train both military pilot and also civilian pilot.

The number increased rapidly during the world war II, to train the pilots.

The sage system was brought into action , which is derived from the whirlwind .

The prototype computer which is used in the sage computer tower is whirlwind.

The Tower consists of 4 floors ,without windows and the walls are of 6m thickness, so that they are blast resistive.

There were many parts in Sage control tower and was manufactured by IBM.

This system is used to analyse or detect any planes flying into the country .

These systems run 24x7 ,so the vacuum tubes of the computer were developed so that they dont breakdown .

But there is risk of malfunctioning of the system , if it does then there is a possibility to wage a war with other countries.

My second example is banking, during or before world war II most of the information required for the banks were stored by the humans and the accounts are also taken care by humans only.

so therefore it is ideal for computerization .

The computers can store all the data of their customers , without making any mistakes.It can handle the accounts of n number  of people .

The risk in this is that ,computers can be hacked and if the security

of the servers is not good enough the money in the bank accounts can be interchanged.

As the technology increases,the risk involved in it also increases. 

- N.HARDEV
CH09B066

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The development and further research on Computers was associated with the perceived need of national security during the Cold War period. Discuss, with contemporary examples some of the risks and responsibilities involved with such justifications.

Abstract

This post discusses about further research on Computers which was associated with the perceived need of national security during the Cold War period and the risks and responsibilities associated during this competitive spirit between the two groups. Enhancing the knowledge on the risks and responsibilities by taking contemporary example of “Nuclear Bomb Testing”

Introduction:

What is cold war?

The Cold War (1947–1991), was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition existing after World War II(1939–1945) between the Communist World and the powers of the Western world. Although the primary participants' military force never officially clashed directly, they expressed the conflict through military coalitions, proxy wars, espionage, propaganda, conventional and nuclear arms races, appeals to neutral nations, rivalry at sports events, and technological competitions such as the Space Race.

Political Conditions during Cold War:

Immediately after the Second World War, there were differences between USSR and USA in splitting of Germany. During cold war the world was literally split into two, one being the predominant USA on one side and USSR on the other side. Because of Berlin Blockage, the differences between USA and USSR grew far more wider. The United States new status as a superpower, the central role of science and technology in the war effort, the massive wartime federal funding and the associated advancement of communal aims for science.

So due the division of the world into 2 major super powers there existed a need for natural security due to the “tense” differences between the 2 parties

FURTHER RESEARCH IN COMPUTERS DUE TO THE NEED OF NATURAL SECURITY

According to Edwards “practical military objectives guided technological development down particular channels, increased its speed, and helped shape the structure of the emerging computer industry”. But the feverish technical developments of WWII weaponry generated demand for huge numbers of computations to solve ballistics and coding problems — and, because of their urgency, for unprecedented rates of speed. It was to this end that programmable, electronic digital computers, capable of dramatically faster calculation, were developed.ENIAC was constructed by the US Army Ordnance Department to automate the tedious calculation of ballistics tables

WWII-era computers produced only limited impacts on the military, since they were used simply to speed up existing processes.

But these military projects did produce local concentrations of researchers working on electronic digital techniques, and these groups persisted after the war, providing the social and organizational nucleus for future research.

TAKING THE EXAMPLE OF NUCLEAR BOMB TESTING

Due to the cold war condition many countries started with the notion of national security. Many countries started improving their nuclear weaponry for the defense. Even developing countries like India and Pakistan started improving nuclear weaponry which led to acute tension in the world. A competition between two or more parties for the best armed forces existed during the cold war. Each party competes to produce larger numbers of weapons, greater armies, or superior military technology in a technological escalation.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

Defense is the main responsibilities for the use of nuclear weapons.

Protection of these nuclear weapons from terrorist forces

Correct usage of this weaponry

People should be informed about the needs and consequences of these nuclear attacks

RISKS

 After the Bombing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki there is no specific need to really highlight the risks. Everyone knows the risks of nuclear attack from other county and also the radiation caused due to the testing of nuclear weaponry

On the advent of the cold age, USA have carried about 1054 nuclear tests and UK carried about 715 nuclear tests France 210 nuclear tests UK and China 45 tests India and Pakistan 6 tests each. We can interpret the amount of radiation which will be added to the universe because of these explosions

CONCLUSION:

Now UNO is taking the responsibility of checking the least usage of the nuclear weaponry and maintaining integrity of the world. But these nuclear weaponry testing is still going on. There are many risks if these nuclear weapons fall into wrong hands like terrorists who just want to create an havoc situation in a country. So there are many risks for having and testing these nuclear weaponry

B.VAMSHI

EE09B104

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_testing 

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Role of Science & War during the 1930s

Abstract:

In this blog post, I’ll try to discuss the role of science & war during the 1930s by explaining about the emergence of Cybernetic vision & the Anti-aircraft(AA) weapons developed with the the mechanized soldier faced his opponent as a machine, and machines manifested themselves as people during the WW-II.

Vannevar Bush - Military Advisory, WWII:

In the 1930s, US military research was relatively small and disorganized. It was performed primarily by military staff and often duplicated between different branches of the military. On June 12, 1940, Vannevar Bush met with President Roosevelt to detail a plan for changing the organization of military research & proposed a new organization, called the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), which would bring together government, military, business, and scientific leaders to coordinate military research.

Science at War – The Calculating Enemy :

In the mean time, three closely related sciences engaged this calculating Enemy : operations research, game theory, and cybernetics. Each had its own prototypical war problem. Operations research focused, for example, on maximizing efficiency in locating and destroying German U-boats in the North Atlantic and along the coast of the Americas. Game theory, though it had mathematical roots in the interwar years, exploded into view with John von Neumann and Oscar Morgenstern's masterwork of 1944, ’Theory of Games and Economic Be’ picked up the technique as a way of analyzing what two opposing forces ought to do when each expected the other to act in a maximally rational way but were ignorant both of the opponent's specific intentions and of the enemy's choice of where to bluff. Wiener, the spokesman and advocate of cybernetics, in a distinction of great importance to him, divided the devils facing us in two sorts. One was the "Manichean devil" "who is determined on victory and will use any trick of craftiness or dissimulation to obtain this victory." Wiener's rational Manichean devil could, for example, change strategy to outwit us. By contrast, the other, the "Augustinian devil" (and Wiener counted the forces of nature as such) was characterized by the "evil" of chance and disorder but could not change the rules.' Exemplary of the Manichean enemy, von Neumann's game theory postulated a logical but cunning opponent; it was designed precisely to analyze an antagonist who played against us and would bluff to win.

Cybernetic Vision – Blurring of Man & Machine boundary:

According to Galison, the system of weaponry and people that Wiener had in mind was predicated on a picture of a particular kind of enemy. On the mechanized battlefield, the enemy was neither invisible nor irrational; this was an enemy at home in the world of strategy, tactics, and manoeuvre, all the while thoroughly inaccessible to us, separated by a gulf of distance, speed, and metal. It was a vision in which the enemy pilot was so merged with machinery that (his) human-nonhuman status was blurred.

In fighting this cybernetic enemy, Wiener and his team began to conceive of the Allied antiaircraft operators as resembling the foe, and it was a short step from this elision of the human and the nonhuman in the ally to a blurring of the human-machine boundary in general. The servo mechanical enemy became, in the cybernetic vision of the 1940s, the prototype for human physiology and, ultimately, for all of human nature. Where Darwin had assiduously tracked the similarities between human and animal in order to blur the boundary between them, Wiener's efforts were devoted to effacing the distinction between human and machine.

World War II elevated the stakes of understanding the enemy's intention to survival itself; it stripped human behavior to moves of pursuit, escape, and deception; and it introduced a new class of self-regulating weapons. It is in this specific context that the identity of intention and self-correction was forged. And hence, the mechanized soldier faced his opponent as a machine, and machines manifested themselves as people.

Conclusion:

              In this way, Cybernetics which was intended by Wiener so as to use electrical networks to determine, several seconds in advance, where an attacking plane would be and to use that knowledge to direct artillery fire, the cybernetic vision changed the entire nature of war with Cybernetics, that science-as-steersman, made an angel of control and a devil of disorder.
                                                                                                                                   Submitted by: Syed Ashruf,
                                                                                                                                                               AE09B025.

                                                                                                                                                

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"What was the vision for science and War in the 1930's. Have things changed since then?"

The increasing role of technology in warfare in the modern era has brought science and war into an increasingly intimate relationship. The relationship between Science and War dates ages, but it had got enhanced during 1930’s Science and war involved in “development symbiosis”, helping each other. Research in Science was encouraged for the development in war and science played a critical role in war. I am going to discuss about the “vision”  of science and war in 1930’s and how did it change now.
The military funding of science has had a powerful transformative effect on the practice and products of scientific research since the early 20th century. Particularly since World War I, advanced science-based technologies have been viewed as essential elements of a successful military.
World War I is often called "the chemists’ war", both for the extensive use of poison gas and the importance of nitrates and advanced high explosives. Poison gas, beginning in 1915 with chlorine from the powerful German dye industry, was used extensively by the Germans and the British ; over the course of the war, scientists on both sides raced to develop more and more potent chemicals and devise countermeasures against the newest enemy gases.

human bomber

 
The vision of science for war not really cybernetic during the World War 1 except few developments in wireless communication, sound-based methods of detecting U-boats.
But the development after the WW 1 cybernetic as the military started investing on the research of science for the enhancement of military. Enemies were viewed as cybernetic entities and a man-machine.
On the Allied side, the three closely related sciences which engaged in calculating the enemy were: Operational research, game theory, and cybernetics. Operational research focused on maximizing the efficiency in locating and destroying German U boats in the North Atlantic and along and along the coast of America. Game theory is the way of analyzing what two opposing forces ought to do when each expected the other to act in a maximally rational way but were ignorant both of the opponent's specific intentions and of the enemy's choice of where to bluff. The need of national security led to development of scientific and technological institutions. With the use of machines in war, the military saw humans and machines to be equivalent.
After the atomic bomb drop, Wiener felt guilty for working for the war and stated that his work has been used in a way that he had no control over it?
Now science plays a crucial role in war and military.
It is the no. of human bombers decides the power of the country rather than the people.

In the 1930's the main motive for war was to gain power and resources. This is what defined the enemy in those years and hence the enemy was narrowed down to a military entity. Nowadays to stay secure almost every country has their own set of arms, nuclear weapons to make sure no one attacks them. Interest in winning the war, helped by economic support, permanently linked the military and science in a symbiosis which still exists.

The view of war has changed from a mode on issue settlement to race of destruction. There was disappearance of understanding of a human life among the scientist developing technologies.

After the Second World War, the advent of the Cold War concretes the links between military and academic science. From 1930 the bondage between the sciences and the military had been increasing and yet increasing now, with new ideas of “destruction”, and in future this cybernetic nature can be automatic machines without the involvement of human.

B.Vamshi

EE09B104

References

OnBush As we may think

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Vision of science and war in 1930s

Vision of science and war in 1930s

There are many who speak as though science was responsible for war as though in the absence of scientific knowledge, war would not have been waged so disastrously. 

Nothing can be farther from the truth. Man fought fiercely with fists and cudgels and swords and axes when they had not mastered the technique of science.

Cybernetics

Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems.

Cybernetics is closely related to control theory and systems theory. 

Both in its origins and in its evolution in the second half of the 20th century, cybernetics is equally applicable to physical and social (that is, language-based) systems.

Cybernetics is an example of one such branch of science.

It was literally born out of war. It had many fundamentally revolutionary ideas at its root. 

The main concept behind it was that under extreme conditions like very high altitude, high mental tension and high speed aircraft manipulation, rather than fully processing the situation and then taking the decision, human mind behaves mechanically. 

This understanding paved the way to model human mind mathematically (at least in extreme situations). Then followed extensive research and result was high precision anti aircraft guns!

War is unavoidable because of the aggressive energy or pugnacious spirit of man. What science has done is to change the nature or front of warfare.By inventing the aircraft, science has introduced a new factor in modern war. 

Explosives are now rained down from above. 

A new dimension has been added to modern warfare with the introduction of missiles.The last Great War was brought to an end by two atom bombs that practically wiped out of existence of two Japanese cities—Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

conclusion

Many wrongly believe that scientific progress in peace must be less vigorous than in war time. According to them, this is bound to be so because in normal times, there is not the same sense of urgency as and when a country is at war and things go on a war footing. The tempo of scientific research is quickened because it multiplies profits in wartime. But war is never a permanent solution to any major problem of man. War or no war science will have a phenomenal march out of the inner urge of the scientist.

Gokul 
CH09B065

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Vision of Science & War in 1930's

At the time, in the 1930s, the relationship between science and war was quite different from what it is today. Since then Science and Technology has made substantial impact in the field of wars. In the period around 1930’s, major advancement in technology of warfare has been seen.

Every nation has been involved in war at some time or other.As time passed all these nations have become more powerful and advanced.These days all nations have sophisticated weapons,advance defence mechanisms.

Wiener who coined the term cybernetics in 1947 to designate what he hoped would be a new science of control mechanisms in which the exchange of information would play a central role. The vision of science for war in the early 1900's was cybernetic. With the help of feedback loops, efficient control and communication was achieved which was a key point in a warfare. The battlefields were mechanized. Enemies were viewed as cybernetic entities and a man-machine.

At the time of WWII, on proposal of Vannevar Bush, President Roosevelt formed a new organization, called the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), which would bring together government, military, business, and scientific leaders to coordinate military research and bush as its chairman .This committee led research in developing new weapons bush supervised the Manhattan project and developed the first atomic bomb and thus securing victory of the allies. Bush's work not only helped the Allies win the war, but it changed the way scientific research was done in the U.S. Bush demonstrated that technology was the key to winning a war, and in turn earned a new respect for scientists. Post- war, Bush argued that the nation would still need permanent support for research.In his reply President Roosevelt request he said

“It is my judgment that the national interest in scientific research and scientific education can best be promoted by the creation of a National Research Foundation.”

During 1930, publishing of newspapers was banned. The three closely related sciences which engaged in calculating the enemy were: Operational research, game theory, and cybernetics. Weiner divided the enemies into two categories, and regarded them as devils. One was the "Manichean devil" "who is determined on victory and will use any trick of craftiness or dissimulation to obtain this victory." The other, the "Augustinian devil" was characterized by the "evil" of chance and disorder but could not change the rules unlike the “Manichean devil”.

In the First World War science had certainly played a huge part in chemical synthesis for explosives, poison gas, aeronautics and much more. In World War Two the scientific community was thoroughly mobilized to serve the state for military ends, and this led to the continuing close connection between science and the state in the following decades. As time passes with the advancement of technology new graduates were allocated to all the important areas of defense research. By twentieth century science has become the language of war. Mutual interest in winning the war, reinforced by financial support, permanently linked the military and science in a web of cross-fertilization that continues today.

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R.SURENDER NAIK

CH09B071

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Vision of Science & War in 1930's

A thing which plays crucial role in determining the outcome of World War II is "Technology". Much of it was developed during the interwar years of the 1920s and 1930s, some was developed in response to lessons learned during the war, and some was beginning to be developed as the war ended.The massive research and development demands of the war had a great impact on the scientific community. A vast array of technology was employed, as different nations and different units found themselves equipped with different levels of technology. Military technology developments spanned across all areas of industry.

It was during this world war that the scientist worked in the field of surveillance, remote sensing and radar engineering. By constructing complex pieces of electronic equipment that had to be small, rugged, and reliable, radar engineering also set the foundations for modern electronics, especially television. Radar signals could also be used for navigation, as a ship or airplane could measure its distance from several radar bacons to “triangulate” its position. A system for radar navigation, called LORAN (long-range navigation) was the precursor to today’s satellite-based GPS technology. Meteorologists are also using these advancements to predict the weather around the globe.

Yet the most profound impacts of science and mathematics on warfare may not have been any particular invention as much as ways of thinking, ways of being in the world. For centuries, warfare had been its own specialized skill, carried out by professional officers – men of training, discipline, and high prestige in most societies (as they still are today). By contrast, scientists were often seen as madmen, or at best isolated dabblers (think of the “mad scientist” figure that appears in so many old movies). However , today countries are working towards automating warfare. Wars would be fought by robots and machines , so that there no lives lost. And scientists are given the highest amount of respect in any R&D department and are no longer considered ‘ freaks’.

The French Army suffered from serious technical deficiencies with its tanks. In 1918, the Renault FT-17 tanks of France had been the most advanced in the world, although small, capable of far outperforming their slow and clumsy British, German, or American counterparts. However, this superiority resulted in tank development stagnating after World War I. By 1939, French tanks were virtually unchanged from 1918. French and British Generals believed that a future war with Germany would be fought under very similar conditions as those of 1914–1918. Both invested in thickly-armoured, heavily-armed vehicles designed to cross shell damaged ground and trenches under fire. At the same time the British also developed faster but lightly armoured Cruiser tanks to range behind the enemy lines.

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N.HARDEV

CH09B066

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