The War Of The Virtual Worlds

man_ls writes "The University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute is working with the U.S. Joint Forces Command to harness supercomputer power, to simulate a virtual continent for use in urban battlefield situations. The simulation, set in the year 2015, involves 100,000 entities to simulate, although the system can support more than a million."

Comments

So there is a market

[Anonymous Coward]

for the SX-8

As Martin Luther King Jr. Once said:

[beppu]

I believe today that there is a need for all people of good will to come with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "We ain't goin' study war no more." This is the challenge facing modern man.

Re:As Martin Luther King Jr. Once said:

[deathcloset]

"We ain't goin' study war no more."

quite the opposite, I think. If we learn not history, well then are we not doomed to repeat it?

Ignorance is far from bliss - whomever came up with that saying was ignorant to the joy of knowledge, methinks.

Re:As Martin Luther King Jr. Once said:

[Kaa]

I believe today that there is a need for all people of good will to come with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "We ain't goin' study war no more." This is the challenge facing modern man.

The very obvious consequence of this would be that all people of good will will get the shit kicked out of them by people of ill will who do not seem to have a problem studying war.

wargames?

[eobanb]

This reminds me of Wargames. In case you haven't seen it, it involved a 'supercomputer' that could play out various scenarios leading up to a nuclear war. In the end the computer figured out that, like the game tic-tac-toe, if both sides were even remotely intelligent, there was no way for either side to win.

Re:wargames?

[Gr8Apes]

Reminds me more of one of several Star Trek episodes, namely the one where two worlds had computerized war and the people would be "dead" and walk over to the "vaporization" chamber.

The hard part

[moorcito]

Now the hard part is convincing everyone that real-life wars are outdated and we should start using the virtual battlefield.

Re:Uh oh

[ryanmfw]

Well, while that's possible, it's unimportant. I'm glad our military is doing this after all. We wouldn't want to get caught without skilled commanders, or even modern strategy. Before World War 2, France had the largest army in Europe, yet it managed to lose because German generals(specifically Guderian) pioneered new strategies. Most people don't think about this, at least Americans, but there are other armies out there that are advanced too. Maybe not as powerful, but still there. We need to stay focused on keeping the lead, instead of relaxing on our supposed invincibility.

Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum

[Anonymous Coward]

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.
-- Vegetius

Re:wanna make it really cool?

[xsupergr0verx]

Apparantly you don't play many games online in public servers. A character named "GOATSE!" always runs into a group of teammates and shoots an anti-tank rocket directly into the ground, or equivalent.

Very true

[Infonaut]

But also very, very difficult.

The unfortunate problem is that even if some are ready to give up the study of and preparation for war, others are not. I might be able to convince another American that it's a good idea, and I might even be able to convince a German or a Finn. But as an American how could I convince a Chetchen, or an Iranian, or a North Korean? Would their own leaders even want to convince them of the rightness of disarming? Leaders of "good will" have always been few and far between.

How can we all stop preparing for war? That is the challenge, but so far I've not encountered any plan that seems even remotely practical, given the cultural, ethnic, and religious schisms that divide people across the globe.

Re:Very true

[Infonaut]

I understand completely what you're saying. Yes, there are plenty of people who view the US as expansionist brutes. Believe it or not, a lot of Americans aren't interested in bombing people who have never been a threat to Americans.

But that sort of underlines my point. It's difficult to even get Americans to understand that bombing the crap out of people isn't always the smartest way to make the world a safer place. It's that difficult for me to convince the guy sitting next to me that invading Iraq wasn't the smartest way to fight terrorism, or that constraining freedoms in the US isn't a good example of democracy in action.

So if it's that difficult for me to convince another American of this, and we have the same cultural and religious background, and I'm in the same freakin' room with the guy, how difficult is it going to be to convince someone whose cultural and economic reference points are completely different?

I'm not saying this means we should not try to engage people from other cultures. I've done a lot of traveling and I always try to elicit opinions about the United States, our leaders, our foreign policy, and the impact of American culture. But I do think that while people are people, people are also not the same. Their beliefs and values are shaped by their culture and history, and not everyone follows the Judeo-Christian beliefs that have defined the United States and Western Europe.

Even if the United States put down its weapons today, the world would still be full of war and conflict. If the United States laid down its weapons and completely demilitarized, would that truly make the world a more peaceful place in the long run?

Maybe it would, but I'm not so sure. With the US out of the picture, someone else would step into the power vacuum. Maybe it would be Russia, and maybe it would be China. Would a dominant Russia be more peacful than the US? Would China?

Re:Very true

[Infonaut]

Actually I was only using the example of Americans, Germans, Finns, etc. because there are some shared religous and cultural norms that would allow me as an American to convince one of these people as to the need for disarming. By the same token it would be difficult for a North Korean or Chechen to convince me of the need for disarmament.

My point was that for a wide variety of reasons it is difficult for the message of peace to pass through these religious and cultural walls. It becomes doubly difficult given that most often it is leaders talking to leaders, rather than regular individuals talking to regular individuals.

I agree with you that the world is beautiful. I just happen to think that while the variety of cultures and religions across the world make life interesting, human nature is to define each other by our differences rather than our similarities. So finding worldwide peace is not something we'll reach for a long, long time.

Re:Very true

[Jason Earl]

I spent my high school years as a Gringo in Peru. While I was there two of my Peruvian friends were killed by terrorists from Sendero Luminoso because they looked like the might be Americans. So excuse me if I have a strong opinion about this subject.

One of the things that I saw while I lived in Peru was that most Peruvians (as individuals) were as nice a people as you might want to meet. Most of the anti-American sentiment that existed in Peru, and there was a *lot* of it, was the direct result of manipulation by various Peruvian political leaders. Peru is a fairly screwed up country, and the political leaders there spend most of their time blaming their problems on the Devils in the United States. Now, I am not going to say that the U.S. hasn't forwarded some pretty bad South American foreign policies over the years, but Peru's major problems stem from rampant corruption of their own political system and not from any policy that the U.S. might have adopted. About the worst thing that U.S. has done in recent years is loan Peru money so that its corrupt leaders could waste it on gewgaws or leave the country with it. Despite the fact that Peru's problems are almost entirely of Peruvian manufacture the United States is every Peruvian politician's favorite scapegoat, and the Peruvian population is uneducated enough that they buy these lies wholesale.

As an example, at one point the government-sponsored TV station ran a totally bogus news story about a string of child abductions in which it was alleged that an American was running around Lima abducting children and stealing their corneas for sale in the U.S. I remember seeing one of these broadcasts on the news and the main graphic featured a silohuette with a question mark on its face backed by a U.S. flag (how they knew it was an American that was stealing the eyes was never told).

Months later one of the independent newspapers ran a story exposing the "Gringo saca ojos" story as a complete fraud, but by then the damage had been done. Heck, my father's SUV was actually attacked by a mob in downtown Lima, and the only thing that saved him was A) he spoke Spanish, and B) he had two of my little sisters in the SUV with him. He was finally able to calm the crowd down by pointing out that he was a father as well, and that he had his two little girls in the car with him. As it was quite a bit of damage was done to the car, and the incident scared the heck out of my entire family.

So what's the point to all this? The point is that it doesn't matter that the people in a country are sane if the people in power in their country are not sane. Most people believe what they are told, even cynical and well-educated people like the average American. If Peruvians are told by the government that America is responsible for their problems, then a lot of them are going to believe it. On a similar note if Moslems around the world are told that America is "the great Satan" by their religious leaders then no amount of positive PR is likely to make the average Moslem disbelieve that. America is a big target, and we make more than our share of mistakes, but much of the hatred for America is nothing more than shrewd political maneuvering. America is the enemy that all sorts of political leaders use to rally the uneducated and ill-informed into their causes.

My grandfather was an missionary for the LDS church (the Mormons) right before WWII. He barely escaped Germany with his life. A few years later he was back in Europe with a U.S. bomber squadron blasting the life out of people that just a few years earlier he had been teaching about Jesus Christ. My Grandfather loved the German people, but for whatever reason they let themselves get put into a position where the folks running the country were insane and dangerous, and so for the sake of the rest of the world he volunteered to blast Germans to bits, many of them complete innocents. Since the German people were unwilling to remove the threat that Hitler represented by themselves, my g

Re:Very true

[Anonymous Coward]

What these "sane" people, all over the world, need to do is kick the loonies out of power

I agree. George Bush is a good place to start

You do know that the US lost the war gaming

[Anonymous Coward]

of the Iraq war?

The generals wouldnt believe that the iraqis would attack them with road side bombs and suicide bombs. And when the US general in charge of the iraqi side did use tactics such as this, killing a lot of US troops, the generals for the US side declared it null and void and ordered the troops back to life.

And you think a computer simulation is going to help the US win wars? BWUAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA YOU DUMB CUNTS!

Re:Or as the good book said:

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Thou shalt not kill. No exceptions given, not even for self-defense.

Still no cure for cancer

[Cryofan]

and still no cure for the idiocy that afflicts American minds so they we let the military industrial complex and the religious nuts control what we do with our tax dollars.

Heaven forbid we stop riling up the Muslim world, leave them in peace, and instead concentrate on curing diseases that kill thousands.

3000 Americans died in WTC 911. But every day 5000 Americans die, many of cancer and heart disease...

Lunacy....

Re:Tax dollar at work

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice the word "diguy" in the upper left?

That stands for "Dismounted Infantry Guy", and is a program from Boston Dynamitcs, www.bdi.com. It's a skeletal-animator.

And as Mr. Miyagi once said:

[wass]

(really through a dialog):

Daniel : Hey - you ever get into fights when you were a kid?
Miyagi : Huh - plenty.
Daniel : Yeah, but it wasn't like the problem I have, right?
Miyagi : Why? Fighting fighting. Same same.
Daniel : Yeah, but you knew karate.
Miyagi : Someone always know more.
Daniel : You mean there were times when you were scared to fight?
Miyagi : Always scare. Miyagi hate fighting.
Daniel : Yeah, but you like karate.
Miyagi : So?
Daniel : So, karate's fighting. You train to fight.
Miyagi : That what you think?
Daniel : [pondering] No.
Miyagi : Then why train?
Daniel : [thinks] So I won't have to fight.
Miyagi : [laughs] Miyagi have hope for you.

Public Policy Simulator Needed

[Felgerkarb]

While I think this is pretty cool, even if only for the 'gee whiz' factor, and I think anything that maintains and supports military preparedness is a good thing (especially if it can be done virtually), I think this is missing the point.

I don't think the issue is that the U.S. Military is losing wars, or is somehow not prepared tactically/strategically speaking (though funding and morale may be an issue). I mean, the initial stages of the conflict in Iraq were a military success. Similarly, Afghanistan was a successful military action. This simulator will not address the political/economic/ethnic/religious realities that have to be addressed after the fighting stops.

So, if this helps plan for urban combat, and potentially reduce military and civilian casualties, it's a great thing. But, ultimately, the U.S. has no trouble winning wars.....if I may borrow a cliched phrase, the problem is winning the peace.

For an interesting analysis on the logistics of 'nation building', please see this recently completed report.

Re:A bit too late?

[Kwil]

Actually.. that one is scary.

Is the US planning on invading other first world countries now?

Re:Any other ideas besides war?!?

[Jubedgy]

This is an application developed specifically for the military. The military must remain trained, and it is far easier (and cheaper) to do it in simulation rather than try and do it in real life.

Just because our military ensures it is well-trained does NOT mean our country is focused on war. The purpose of our military is to protect US (assuming you are an American citizen). Would you want an untrained police force fighting crime? An untrained fire department fighting fires? An untrained surgeon operating on you? I know I wouldn't. I also wouldn't want an untrained military trying to defend me. It would be suicide for them and useless for us.

If you can think up a better way to train our war forces using scenarios other than war, I'm all ears. Unless and until we no longer have a need for a military, we had better keep it trained as well as we can.

The problem with preparing for war

[aepervius]

is that sometimes, you are so prepared that you feel the need to create your own war, out of various reason (religious, self righteousness, hidden WMD). A lot of people around here feel that the US long ago went beyond the "preparing for war" step and are way into the "being a master at crushing opponent mercilessly" and thus those other country feel the need to take "inssurance" that the US will not do war against them, for example by seeking out WMD themselves or targeting local population to make sure any battle would be extremly bloody. In other word, when the #1 army in the world is preparing for war, and you do not have any chance with conventional way, then use the dirtiest nasty trick you can to make sure that #1 army will hesitate a bit.

I have to wonder anyway why US has to prepare to war against country half the world away which could not care less about the US if left at their own devices. Especially with Checheny which is right now mostly a russian problem. How about a new US doctrine "Let other be". US might try that and becomming the #1 preparing for diplomacy, would be nice isn't it ? And by diplomacy I do not mean putting a lot of pressure on the population by cutting economic aids or closing markets. Or what about #1 helping countries without STRING attached ? Or how about being #1 at helping themselves by transfering a big part of their military project to education, or social ?

Oh, kinda like Morrowind...

[DourSalmon]

but smaller.

Re:Very true: Talk about Chechen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, here we have the Bush administration and the PATRIOT act. A most invasive legal mesure that makes the US a police state. A million times worse than the USSR. Sure the PATRIOT act dosen't affect 99.9998% of the population but not just terrorists are getting caught, innocent drug dealers are getting busted with it.

Lucky for us we have Communist protesters who really do know everything. With their guidence hopefully we can turn into the next Soviet Union, and turn away from the everyday oppression of American life. Yep, I don't wanna hear anyone talking to this US citizen about lack of human rights, they're all a bunch of whiners. I have to stand in a line at the airport for god's sakes (yet I'll still bitch about lack of security).