https://gizadeathstar.com/2019/04/ai-spoofing-a-chinese-anti-sat-facility-and-indias-announcement/
Yesterday
I blogged about the triple, and quasi-quadruple, redundancy being built
out in the world's international financial clearing systems, for now
there are viable alternatives to the West's SWIFT system: Russia's SPFS
and China's CIPS systems. Add to that the Japanese credit card clearing
system in widespread use in the Pacific, build that out a built more,
and one has a quadruple redundancy where, just a few years ago, there
was only one system: SWIFT. As I indicated yesterday, when one views
this activity without the conventional down-to-earth
geopolitical explanations, one is left with the question of why, and the
answer is that one makes such moves as a matter of planetary, rather than individual national,
security. It is the sort of move that one would expect as plans are
being made to move into space and "mine" asteroids and so on, thus
requiring some method or system(s) to enable what in effect will become
interplanetary commerce, and to secure it against "whomever" might seek
to disrupt it, be that "whomever" someone "down here" or someone "up
there."
It's that context, I suspect (in today's
high octane speculation) that might connect three seemingly unrelated
stories, each of which, considered on its own individual merits, has its
own typical "down to earth" geopolitical explanations, but which taken
together, might indicate that other capabilities are being built out for
space-related reasons.
The first story concerns a new technique
being developed by China to use AI to create fictitious installations
and modify satellite photos of the Earth, shared by Mr.V.T.:
Here's the gist of the technology and the motivation for it:
Worries about deep fakes — machine-manipulated videos of celebrities and world leaders purportedly saying or doing things that they really didn’t — are quaint compared to a new threat: doctored images of the Earth itself.China is the acknowledged leader in using an emerging technique called generative adversarial networks to trick computers into seeing objects in landscapes or in satellite images that aren’t there, says Todd Myers, automation lead and Chief Information Officer in the Office of the Director of Technology at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.“The Chinese are well ahead of us. This is not classified info,” Myers said Thursday at the second annual Genius Machines summit, hosted by Defense One and Nextgov. “The Chinese have already designed; they’re already doing it right now, using GANs—which are generative adversarial networks—to manipulate scenes and pixels to create things for nefarious reasons.”For example, Myers said, an adversary might fool your computer-assisted imagery analysts into reporting that a bridge crosses an important river at a given point.
It requires little imagination to see how
this could be expanded to space, to create images of exo-planetary
surfaces to create things that aren't there, or alternatively (and as
has been alleged many times over in the past few decades) to erase
things that are there. One might even envision an expansion of
the technique to be able to spoof the existence of "assets" on other
celestial bodies that aren't there, or to exaggerate amounts of assets
that are. Ultimately, one might envision a further expansion of
the technique to spoof off-planet "threats" to create imaginary
installations. The bottom line is that the capability is a unique form
both of camouflage and of deception and disinformation.
With that technology in mind, consider this second article, also shared by Mr. V.T:
What's interesting about this second story
is that its dateline is last Monday, April 1st, thus making it possible
that it is an elaborate April Fool's joke, and given the first article
with its AI spoofing technique, it's a possibility that can't be
entirely discounted. But suppose for a moment that it is genuine, and
that the analysis it purports to give of the Chinese facilities is for
the most part true. If so, two things emerge from the article as
implications. The analysis of the facilities, according to the article,
was undertaken by an Indian defense and photo analyst, Col. Vinayak
Bhat. he alleges that the Chinese facilities are for two basic types of
weapons: (1) powerful ground-based anti-satellite lasers, and (2) ground
based electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons. Additionally, the American
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has weighed in on the matter:
The report said Beijing "possibly already has a limited capability to employ laser systems against satellite sensors.""China likely will field a ground-based laser weapon that can counter low-orbit space-based sensors by 2020, and by the mid-to-late 2020s, it may field higher power systems that extend the threat to the structures of non-optical satellites," the report, "Challenges to Security in Space," says.The DIA said directed energy weapons can be used to "disrupt, damage, or destroy enemy equipment and facilities.""These weapons, which can have effects ranging from temporary to permanent, include lasers, high-power microwaves, and other types of radiofrequency weapons," the report said, noting the difficulties in identifying the source of such attacks.It is not known if the Xinjiang base was the source of the well-known laser illumination of U.S. reconnaissance satellites several times in August and September of 2006. The laser "painting" occurred as the satellites passed over China.
One immediate implication of these
analyses is that if China has developed a ground-based laser Anti-Sat
capability, then this means that it has perfected phase conjugation,
allowing the beams to stay more or less coherent through atmospheric
distortion (phase conjugation is a compensating mechanism for this
distortion). But what of the ground-based electromagnetic pulse
component? This is where it gets even more interesting from a high
octane speculation point of view:
Bhat also disclosed the locations of other facilities in China used for exotic weapons systems, including an electromagnetic pulse facility in Xinjiang.EMP is the pulse produced by a nuclear blast or solar flare that can disrupt electronics for thousands of miles.The photo shows a road leading in to the facility under a cylindrical EMP generator that can illuminate equipment and vehicles with EMP."This facility is used for researching methods of hardening Chinese military equipment and reverse effects on adversaries’ equipment using electronic components," Bhat says.Also in Xinjiang is a mobile pulse generator—an electronic warfare system used to create electromagnetic interference that can disable satellites. (Emphases added)
An electromagnetic pulse weapon that could
conceivably fry the electronic components of satellites, rendering them
so much useless lumps of metal in orbit, could conceivably also to the
same to aircraft, or other types of vehicles entering Chinese
airspace from "wherever." In this respect, I'm reminded of some of those
stories about the Roswell incident which allege that the Roswell UFO
was brought down by ground based American radar. In any case, it is
intriguing to ponder the fact that China has built out its financial
clearing system while simultaneously building out an anti-satellite (or
anti-whatever) capability, and the two things are obviously not
unrelated. In this respect it is also intriguing to note that the Trump
Administration has created a space force, and that President Trump plans
to issue an executive order regarding precisely those electromagnetic
pulse weapons. In effect, the geopolitical-exopolitical situation is
such that the major powers must develop both defensive and offensive
capabilities against the space assets of each other, but also against
the UFO problem, and it stands to reason that the "deep states" of the
major powers would do so by developing technologies that (they hope) can
do double duty.
And last but not least, to round out this
geopolitical-exopolitical jigsaw puzzle, we have the announcement of
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 27 of this year, that India
successfully shot down a satellite in low Earth orbit, making India a
bona fide "space power" and only the fourth nation to demonstrate such a
capability after the USA, Russia, and China (this story was shared by
Mr. G.L.R. and Mr. A.M.):
As the article indicates, the downing of
the satellite was a clear geopolitical message to rival nuclear power
Pakistan (and as well to the other three "space powers):
Brahma Chellaney, a security expert at New Delhi's Centre of Policy Research, said the United States, Russia and China were all pursuing anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons."Space is being turned into a battlefront, making counter-space capabilities critical. In this light, India's successful "kill" with an ASAT weapon is significant."No comment was immediately available from India's old rival Pakistan. There was also no immediate reaction from China's foreign or defence ministries.
But beyond this, I cannot help but wonder
if India is also playing the "deeper game" in space that I have been
alluding to in yesterday's and today's blog, for the simple reason that
it has long been suspected that India has had an anti-satellite
capability for a number of years. Mr. Modi merely made it "official" on
March 27, but it's difficult to imagine why India would not have such a capability. For a country and culture deeply steeped in the Vedic literature, with the Ramayana's and Mahabharata's
clear references to ancient advanced technologies and "wars of the
gods" both "down here" and "out there," it's again difficult to believe
that the "deeper game" is not part of India's defense policy...
Taking yesterday's blog about the
build-out of international financial clearing redundancy, and today's
story about unusual technologies and capabilities being developed by
China, the bottom line is that all of these developments can clearly be
rationalized adequately and solely by terrestrial financial and
geo-politics. But I strongly suspect that there are potential
"off-planet" reasons for their development as well...
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