"Alexa, Drop a Bomb": Amazon Wants in on US Warfare

[pecosbob]

Amazon is seeking to build a global “brain” for the Pentagon called JEDI, a weapon of unprecedented surveillance and killing power, a profoundly aggressive weapon that should not be allowed to be created.

Amazon has built a vast, globally distributed data storage capacity and sophisticated artificial intelligence programs to propel its retail business that it hopes to use to win a $10 billion Pentagon contract to create the aforementioned “brain” that goes by the project name Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, a moniker obviously concocted to yield the Star Wars acronym — JEDI.

As of the October 12, 2018, deadline for submitting proposals for JEDI, Amazon is the betting favorite for the contract, which will go to just one bidder, in spite of protests by competitors, chief among them Microsoft and IBM. The Pentagon appears likely to select a winner for the contract in 2019.

We must confront capitalism or we will perish as a species. Hyperbolic? I don't believe so.

read more at https://truthout.org/articles/alexa-drop-a-bomb-amazon-wants-in-on-us-warfare/

[EX500rider]

1. "We must confront capitalism or we will perish as a species"

Which economic system has no war or paying for defense?

The Communists USSR spent WAY more then the West of their GDP on military stuff.

[pecosbob]

4. My comment has more to do with data collection and it's use, not so much the military aspect

Palantir (Peter Thiel) etc...it starts with smartphone alerts when you go near a retailer. Before you know it the FBI's arresting people for 'pre-crimes' like some Dicksian dystopia.

[RKP5637]

6. Data collection with AI could be so damn misleading in the wrong hands. n/t

[EX500rider]

8. Data collection is not really a genie you can get back in the bottle. n/t

[EX500rider]

2. And what Amazon is bidding on is global cloud services..

....so all military info/data is readily available anywhere in the world.

[RKP5637]

3. Good point! Many use Amazon each day and don't even realize it ... far more than selling stuff.

https://aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora/?sc_icampaign=pac_dms-aurora&sc_ichannel=ha&sc_icontent=awssm-1617-default-editorial-upper&sc_iplace=ed&trk=ha_awssm-1617-default-editorial-upper

[Volaris]

5. Oh so Amazon will build Skynet. Got it.

[sarcasmo]

7. Robot Wars 2040

[EX500rider]

9. Did u think it would be someone else? Google i guess maybe..

[hunter]

10. Colossus: The Forbin Project

The film is based upon the 1966 science fiction novel Colossus, by Dennis Feltham Jones (writing as D. F. Jones),[1] about an advanced American defense system, named Colossus, becoming sentient to everyone's pleasant surprise... at first. After being handed full control, Colossus's draconian logic expands on its original nuclear defense directives to assume total control of the world and end all warfare for the good of mankind despite its creators' orders to stop.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project

[pecosbob]

11. I remember this film...