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Saturday, June 30, 2007

Parallel Earth Simulator

Possible world semantics put to good use, or The US military's new "war game"? From Slashdot:

The US Department of Defense (DOD) may already be creating a copy of you in an alternate reality. Putting supercomputers to an innovative use, the military is simulating our planet in an effort to predict the outcome of different scenarios. They might run tests to see how long 'you' can go without food or water, or how 'you' will respond to televised propaganda. Billions of nodes are created in the system, intended to reflect every man, woman, and child. 'Called the Sentient World Simulation (SWS), it will be a "synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information", according to a concept paper for the project. Simulex is the company developing these systems, and they list pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and defense contractor Lockheed Martin among their private sector clients. The U.S. military is their biggest customer, apparently now running the most complex version of the system. JFCOM-9 is now capable of running real-time simulations for up to 62 nations, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and China. The simulations gobble up breaking news, census data, economic indicators, and climactic events in the real world, along with proprietary information such as military intelligence.

(Thanks to Ben Ricker for the link)

1 comment:

Adam Taylor said...

Brit...call me old fashioned but I just can't help thinking that this project is going to lead to the apocalyptic annihilation of human race at the hands of giant AI-controlled Cybermen.