Is South Korea working on EMP and agent AI assistants for use in a war with North Korea?
By User:Photocopier, from government source. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
The latest article claims South Korea is working on military AI and a "blackout bomb" which I speculate is an electromagnetic pulse weapon. The article details how the weapon is supposed to work below:
The so-called "blackout bomb" reportedly spreads chemically treated carbon graphite fibres over electric facilities, which in turn will short-circuit power grids, essentially disrupting them. The non-lethal weapon is reportedly being developed as part of Seoul's pre-emptive "Kill Chain" programme by the Agency of Defense Development (ADD).
Is it an EMP bomb?
This is an exotic non-lethal weapon which uses "chemically treated graphite fibers". I honestly don't understand what chemical process would result in short circuiting electricity and it sounds a bit far fetched when an EMP device could blackout an entire city without any chemicals or graphite fiber but perhaps this is an innovation to the classic EMP in some way? It is also possible that this is just military posturing and that this weapon doesn't really exist so until it's shown to be real in some sort of demonstration can we know for sure?
Is it an agent based AI an decision support?
If we use AI in operational command decision making, military commanders will be able to get support in certain details that humans may overlook," Yonhap cited an unspecified source as saying. "I think it's not going to take long to see AI being a core assistant to commanders."
The other weapon seems to be an AI agent or intelligent assistant which likely runs on a super computer. Again I don't know for sure and without a demonstration none of this is verified but based on what we know exists in academia this would be possible with current technology if it's agent based AI. AI being used as decision support is not a big deal and I would expect the US and Chinese military already have AI decision support systems so this is very unlikely to be a world first. The United States in particular had super computers by the 1960s if not earlier and AI was being developed in the 1960s as well along with the Internet.
Conclusion
This article looks to be a lot of hype and political posturing for technology which is actually old by US standards but perhaps what is new is it's finally being discussed for use in an actual conflict. EMP has existed for well over 20 years and the concept of an EMP bomb is quite old. Chemically treated graphite is a very strange detail to put into an article which the enemy can analyze and I don't quite understand why details on how the weapon works would even be discussed in a non-classified setting. The AI acting as decision support in my opinion is one of the best roles AI can have in war because it's not an autonomous weapon and merely is to help humans make better decisions which may save lives.
the more sophisticated the means of war, the more people will be killed. why God must create a war on earth @dana-edwards
It's hard to say, but I think you're right, it seems like it is just posturing by the South. I suppose they believe that the North are so out of touch with modern tech, that you can frighten them into thinking anything.
Cg
does north korea even have computers?
I believe they have Windows PCs.
Wow EMP Shutdowns are getting close.
Could also be just propaganda but it will make sense, if you want to take care of North Korea, you have to prevent them from using their military installations.