U.S. Company Cycorp "Predicts" Anthrax mailings by 6 months

[reprehensor]

From the Dept. of Say What?

Cyc-ing out the terrorists

Posted 3/30/03

Only sheer brilliance or a crystal ball could foretell the next terrorist attack, right? Nope, says the inventor of a computer program that predicted anthrax might be sent through the mail six months before it happened. Cyc (as in encyclopedia), a project that is now part of the Pentagon's research on sniffing out terrorist plots, comes up with scenarios that could help focus screening efforts. It works by applying common sense to an extensive knowledge of terrorism. "It's not like beating Kasparov at chess," says creator Doug Lenat, head of the Austin-based firm Cycorp. He compares it to "a person with average intelligence but a vast amount of time and patience."

Cyc's roots go back to 1983, when Lenat concluded that efforts to create computer intelligence had hit a wall. "Robots lacked the common sense of humans," he says. So he began feeding Cyc concepts like the difference between turkey the meat or bird and Turkey, the country. The database now holds almost 2 million such simple truths.

Under a $9.8 million grant from the Defense Department's Information Awareness Office, Cyc has acquired a trove of knowledge about past terrorist activities, tactics, and weapons. But it is still a work in progress. Once, developing a scenario for a terrorist attack on Hoover Dam, it hypothesized a school of 1,000 al Qaeda- trained dolphins bearing explosives. Another time, Cyc, which can learn by asking questions, inquired: "Am I human?" It's reassuring to know it still needs our help. -Dana Hawkins

This story appears in the April 7, 2003 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.

The Cycorp wikipedia entry links to this story by Lenat;

From 2001 to 2001: Common Sense and the Mind of HAL

...

"In the late 1970s I built a computer program (Eurisko) that discovered things on its own in many fields."
...

"We're now in a position to specify the steps required to bring a HAL-like being into existence.

1. Prime the pump with the millions of everyday terms, concepts, facts, and rules of thumb that comprise human consensus reality -- that is, common sense.

2. On top of this base, construct the ability to communicate in a natural language, such as English. Let the HAL-to-be use that ability to vastly enlarge its knowledge base.

3. Eventually, as it reaches the frontier of human knowledge in some area, there will be no one left to talk to about it, so it will need to perform experiments to make further headway in that area."
...

"In the fall of 1984, Admiral Bobby Ray Inman convinced me that if I was serious about taking that first step, I needed to leave academia and come to his newly formed MCC (Microelectronics and Computer Consortium) in Austin, Texas, and assemble a team to do it. The idea was that over the next decade dozens of individuals would create a program, CYC, with common sense. We would "prime the knowledge pump" by handcrafting and spoon-feeding CYC with a couple of million important facts and rules of thumb. The goal was to give CYC enough knowledge by the late 1990s to enable it to learn more by means of natural language conversations and reading (step 2). Soon thereafter, say by 2001, we planned to have it learning on its own, by automated-discovery methods guided by models or minitheories of the real world (step 3).

To a large extent, that's just what we did. At the end of 1994, the CYC program was mature enough to spin off from MCC as a new company -- Cycorp -- to commercialize the technology and begin its widespread deployment."

Admiral Inman is linked to SAIC (among other things, SAIC is neck-deep in connections to digital voting machines). This article from 2003 is pretty informative;

""Currently on SAIC's board is ex-CIA director Bobby Ray Inman, director of the National Security Agency, deputy director of the CIA, and vice director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. According to the OC (*Orange County) Weekly, "Inman worked at the highest levels of American intelligence during an era (President Ronald Reagan) when it displayed a stunning lack of it. Inman's achievements include: failing to predict the peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union; prolonging violent, useless civil wars in Central America; and giving arms to terrorists in exchange for hostages (Iran Contra)."

"During the Bush administration, Inman, Perry and Deutch - while directors of Science Applications (SAIC), were also members of the National Foreign Intelligence Board (NFIB), an advisory group reporting to the President and the director of Central Intelligence, which deals with production, review and coordination of foreign intelligence," reports the Crypt. Both Inman and Deutch were former Directors of the CIA. William J. Perry was also a former Secretary of Defense during the Clinton Administration.

SAIC proudly lists DARPA in its annual report as one of its prime clients. DARPA is the controversial Department of Defense (DOD) subsidiary, which until recently employed Admiral John Poindexter of Iran-Contra fame. Poindexter was forced to resign when it was revealed that DARPA was prepared to trade "futures" in terrorist attacks. DARPA has also developed a program to spy on American citizens, which has civil libertarians in an uproar."

SAIC in turn, is linked to Steven Hatfill and Jerome Hauer. Mr. Hauer is currently a director at Emergent Solutions, parent co. of BioPort, which in turn is linked to Bruce Ivins.

So, an artificial intelligence program with an uncanny knack for putting the pieces together "predicts" the anthrax mailings, and 6 months later they happen?

And the program, under "widespread deployment" is funded heavily by DARPA, and is hard-wired into the U.S. intelligence community.

Admiral Inman is a very connected individual;
http://www.namebase.org/cgi-bin/nb06?_INMAN_BOBBY_RAY

Including a maximum of 2 degrees of seperation from all of the (known) players in the anthrax tango.

How detailed was Cy's (Cycorp) "prediction" about the mailings? Did it include variables like mailing the anthrax from different states to muddy the trail... stuff like that? How about a variable on creating false evidence trails to keep people guessing?

I'm not sure that Cy is any more humane than HAL ever was.

I call out to internet researchers everywhere for more info on Cycorp.

[Ian David]

1. If you set a robotic monkey to the task of predicting 100,000 terror attacks per day...

... occasionally its human handlers will cull from that huge pool of possibilities something that sounds credible, and then eventually one or more of those things will come true.

I am glad to see our taxes have successfully upgraded our ability to play "Mad Libs" to 21st Century levels.

[electropop]

8. I wrote a similar program back in the 70's.

It wrote little fake news stories for the amusement of my friends. The results looked a lot like The Onion or the Washington Times or Faux News.

[JackRiddler]

11. The question is whether humans are paying attention to the robotic monkey's ideas!

[reprehensor]

16. "off-the-shelf" terror scenarios

Just add Neocon treachery and stir.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3751108&mesg_id=3761940

Coming so soon after the chatter about a digital 9/11, this is kind of weird.

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/05/220229&from=rss

[pnorman]

2. Fascinating!

I just bookmarked it so that I can find it for careful rereading later on. It may seem odd, but what first came to mind was the movie: "The Day of the Condor", rather than "2001: A Space Odyssey".

pnormamn

[global1]

3. Sure Would Get Noticed And Maybe Get More Funding Money If.....

their prediction came through or if somebody made it come true. Hmmmmmm.

[PerpetuallyDazed]

4. Um, weird.

"Once, developing a scenario for a terrorist attack on Hoover Dam, it hypothesized a school of 1,000 al Qaeda- trained dolphins bearing explosives."

Does anyone else recall hearing this scenario in the actual news, or am I thinking of Austin Powers and sharks w/ laser beams?

Also, can you GET any more Newspeak-y with the "Cyc" thing? :scared:

[UTUSN]

5. What, did they program-in KKKarl's-CHEENEE's-Shrub's day planners?!1 n/t

[EstimatedProphet]

6. Not possible - they caught the anthrax terrorist

Haven't you heard? Hee's dead now. We'll never have to worry about anthrax mailings again.

[electropop]

9. I hope we learn the real story one day.

I assume Ivins was on to something that would lead back to the White House. So they suicided him.

[reprehensor]

7. Digg!

http://digg.com/general_sciences/Cycorp_the_Anthrax_Prediction

[reprehensor]

10. Mirrored at DailyKOS

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/8/947/65207/909/564561

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. This is working on heuristics

and the method is used in many fields of endevour

[autorank]

13. Well, of course, the computer can only predict what it's fed, probably right after it

gets the information.

I heard Bobby Ray Inman speak for a couple of hours at a conferenc ein 1986. I tried very hard
to understand what he was saying, very hard, and had no luck. I had to admit to my friend that
I was to completely in error in dragging her to the event since, as she had predicted, it was
meaningless.

This computer didn't predict anything. Simply ridiculous for them to claim this.

k*r

[reprehensor]

14. Potential whistleblower?

Someone posting as 'escudo' posted this on my Digg last night;
http://stephendevoy.blogspot.com/2008/08/xxxxxx-anthrax-prediction.html

"I worked for XXXXXX when the prediction this article mentioned was made. In fact, I was working on that project. I use XXXXXX instead of the name because all employees of that corporation, when they start, are forced to sign an agreement that they will never publish anything naming the corporation, but the article this links to DOES mention the name of the corporation.

I never thought it was interesting that XXXXXX predicted that the U.S. Mail could be used to send anthrax in an attack. The system of which the article speaks is really quite stupid, but it can spend a lot of time examinging all possible lines of inferences about the contents of its knowledgebase. Now that we know that the anthrax attacks were an inside job, something has occured to me that seemed less interesting then.

XXXXXX has or had a product using their inference engine and knowledge base to defend networks from cyber attacks. Publicly, they were marketing this system to the DoD as a network defense system. The DoD, however, had other ideas. They wanted to use it in reverse to detect weaknesses in networks they wished to wage cyber warfare upon. If a system can reason about network weakness in order to defend the network, it too can reason about network weaknesses to attack a network.

Starting from there and looking back on the anthrax "prediction" by their system (which was also my system at that time), I remember a conversation with the man attributed in the article as the "creator" of the system (ignoring the fact that all the people who really created the system cannot write about it without his permission, like ME for example). I will refer to this man as "Corporate Welfare Recipient". Mr. Corporate Welfare Recipient is closely tied with the CIA, the DIA, the NSA, the White House, and various other government agencies which include the FBI..."

Continued...
http://stephendevoy.blogspot.com/2008/08/xxxxxx-anthrax-prediction.html

[Ian David]

15. You should submit that to WikiLeaks and Raw Story. n/t