Leaderboard

Cast your mind back to September 1, 1983. Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was on a routine flight from New York to Seoul via Anchorage. It accidentally crossed into Soviet airspace. At the time, NATO had a policy of continually flying its bombers directly at Eastern Bloc airspace and then diverting at the last possible moment. The Soviets were kept on perpetual high alert. When Flight 007 accidentally crossed over the line, the Soviets, fearing an American bomber incursion, shot the plane out of the sky. The 269 civilian passengers died. The world seemed to be teetering on disaster. On September 22, 1983, the Toronto Disarmament Network issued a public warning of the danger of escalating tensions: “A miscalculation, a computer error, an itchy trigger finger could lead to the murder of not hundreds but millions of innocent civilians.” (WW3) In the immediate aftermath of the Korean jetliner disaster, the Soviets anticipated a retaliatory action, and their radar crews were trained to respond quickly in the event of a serious incursion. The crews knew that if they hesitated, the Soviets would be wiped out in a first-wave attack. On September 26, 1983, Soviet radar crews detected a large group of incoming missiles. But Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov broke protocol by refusing to immediately launch the counter-strike. He suspected the blips on the screen might be some kind of computer error. Petrov was correct. Had the automatic rapid military response been controlled by A.I. You would not be reading this now. It is equally possible that human error might start MAD WW3. But I cannot trust computer to control it. In Iran, a missile landed on a park that was marked on the town map as "Police Park". It is alleged the target was chosen by A.I. Which begs the question "who targetted the school, human or A.I."?