Human-Nets-Request%rutgers@brl-bmd.UUCP (Human-Nets-Request@rutgers) (01/12/84)
HUMAN-NETS Digest Thursday, 12 Jan 1984 Volume 7 : Issue 10
Today's Topics:
Computers and People - New Generation Computing,
Computers on TV - Whiz Kids (3 msgs)
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Date: 10 Jan 1984 1313-PST
From: Ted Shapin <BEC.SHAPIN%USC-ECL@SRI-NIC>
Subject: New Generation Computing
Postal-address: Beckman Instruments, Inc.
Postal-address: 2500 Harbor X-11, Fullerton, CA 92634
Phone: (714)961-3393
I think Ron Newman's quotes on Japan's and the U.S. views on
new generation computing are very much to the point.
Since I haven't seen much discussion in Human-Nets on the subject,
here are some references:
"The Fifth Generation: Artificial Intelligence and Japan's Computer
Challenge to the World", by Edward A. Feigenbaum and Pamela McCorduck,
Addison-Wesley, 1983.
Aside from being written as though it was dictated but never edited,
and as Stewart Brand says having the flavor of "the Japanese are
coming", this book describes the purpose of computer-based expert
systems and the Japanese plan of a huge national effort to develop
them.
Somehow I can't imagine a U.S. government agency telling IBM, Amdahl,
Apple and Apollo that they must send a few of their brightest young
technical people to work on a joint project for three years, which is
essentially what is happening in Japan.
- - -
"The Mind of the Japanese Strategist" by K. Ohmae, McGraw-Hill, 1982.
This book describes how long-range planning can be done and how it was
successful in helping Japan in steel, in auto production and other
areas where Japanese industry is a leader.
- - -
The nearest thing the U.S. has done similar to the 5th generation
project is to set up the Microelectronics and Computer Technology
Corp. with Admiral Bobby Inman (retired) as head. This is a
consortium of 14 computer and semiconductor companies that was formed
to compete head-on with advanced Japanese research. It is privately
funded. If you read the interview with Inman in the May 23, 1983
issue of Computerworld you will see the same emphasis on military
applications even though this is a commercial venture.
Q. "What role, direct or otherwise, will the U.S. government play
in MCC and if there is a role, what should be the government's
return on investment?"
Inman: "First, when you look at the era of great economic growth
in the U.S. in the late '40s and '50s I believe you will find the
impetus was in a very large measure [U.S. Defense Department]
funding of basic research and grants to graduate education,
without strings attached, that played a very major role not only
in finding things that were useful in defense, but in stimulating
tremendous commercial growth.
Much of that was cut back in the '60s. It wasn't cost-
effective as one looked for ways to pay for the cost of VIetnam.
Nobody else moved to fill the gap.
Defense today remains the only single part of the government
that has both the size and the scope to impact across a very
broad range of research in the country. So, I have watched with
interest Defense's effort to refocus on the whole area of
computers and software."
To answer Pournelle's question, of course DARPA is properly
interested in military applications. Unfortunately, all of the
main funding agencies in the U.S. for advanced computer research
have this as their driving interest.
- - -
Infoworld, Jan. 23, 1984, pg. 99 has an interview with Feigenbaum.
Q. Have you seen any signs of change in the federal government's
commitment to high-tech research and development in the areas you
identify in the book as critical?
Feigenbaum: There has been one very dramatic development: the
announcement of DARPA's Strategic Computing initiative. The
Defense Department has, through this project, directly taken on the
challenge of the Japanese Fifth Generation project.
- - -
The Jan. 1984 issue of IEEE Computer has a letter by Ben G.
Matley "And now, a US National computer policy?", pgs. 87-88.
"In 1972, the Japan Computer Usage Development Institue
published 'The Plan for an Informatin Society -- A National
Goal Toward the Year 2000', in which it targeted nine areas for
computer-based societal developments that would call for a $65
billion national investment by 1985. Four tasks in the JCUDI
plan are of particular interest:
- Build an experimental 'Computopolis' city of the future,
complete with computer-controlled transportation systems and
home telematics services for work, education, and
entertainment.
- Build a comprehensive 'think tank' center providing
databases with computer simulation and modeling facilities
to be shared among both government and private researchers.
- Organize a labor redevelopment center for the retraining and
reeducation of older workers.
- Implement a 'Computer Peace Corps' for transferring computer
technology to underdeveloped countries, with the expectation
of peace through improved economic development.
Such ambitious plans for a totally new computer-based society
obviously require equally ambitious plans for the development
of a domestic computer industry. Little wonder, then, that the
first $250 million of the $65 billion investment went to
establishing a domestic Japanese chip industry. Of the nine
areas targeted for computer-based developments under the
JUCDI's plan, significant progress had been made in eight areas
by 1980."
The letter goes on to mention the response of the French government
and then Matley says:
"Clearly the 'computer problems' in our society now are not apt
to yield to solutions from entrepreneurships in Silicon Valley
nor venture capital along the HiTech Hiway North of Boston. As
aviation passed from Kitty Hawk to the government's NASA, so
computing has passed from Shockley Semiconductor to sovereign
nations."
A statement I agree with!
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Date: 10 Jan 1984 0109-PST
Subject: Re: HUMAN-NETS Digest V7 #6
From: Ian H. Merritt <SWG.MERRITT@USC-ISIB>
I was somewhat less impressed with the Whiz Kids episode on which REM
was commenting. I don't often watch TV at all; much less that
particular program, but I happened to be switching channels and
stumbled upon it, and out of curiousity, I watched perhaps the last
3/4 of it.
As for shutting down the entire communications network in the US, I
won't say it couldn't happen; just that it is \\HIGHLY UNLIKELY//, and
I am indeed aware of what happened here in LA. Furthermore, the story
portrayed a disjoint sequence of events presumably leading up to the
climax of the naive 'Ritchie' (was it?) breaking into what? A payroll
system somewhere in or near the NSA? (I suspect that his account and
password from the first break-in wouldn't have worked in anything
else; his 'magic' is certainly nothing special. Presumably, the NSA
would better protect its secure information than it would its payroll
systems).
In the first place, it is not clear what purpose was served by
shutting down communications networks in the story, despite the
unlikelihood of any single entity being able to simultaneously shut
down the combined resources of every one of the probably more than 100
communications carriers in the United States.
Let's assume for a moment that the kid could indeed get into some
top-secret NSA system. It would seem to me that it would take the
'bad guys' a considerable amount of time to figure out what was where
within this system, or even how to use it. Time, in which the NSA
would undoubtedly discover the unauthorized access and plug the hole.
Incidentally, if someone managed to knock off the whole country's
communications systems, just how long do you think it would take
before personnel at the many administration centers around the country
NOTICED?
I think we indeed need to be prepared and aware of potential problems,
but running off and getting SCARED every time some Hollywood TV
producers decide to portray a catastrophe accomplishes nothing.
Some historical (hysterical?) notes on the LA 'demonstration'. In
fact, the entire 'operation' involved a single, albeit important
switching system: the Los Angeles 4E tandem, which provides
connections to and from the long-distance network. Actually, less
substantial shutdowns occurred many times on local switches and TSPS
systems over the years. This (I speak of the more significant event,
which has, in fact, occurred several times for different reasons, and
with varying consequences, but I think REM was referring to a specific
time), as with most such manipulations was in fact not so much an act
of any technical wizardry, as one of great command of the Bureaucracy.
Somebody telephoned the central office, pretending to be Western
Electric personnel (the names of whom were most likely researched
before-hand), and instructed the craftperson at the console to install
a software patch that was itself a fairly serious bug, not, I might
add, of the phone-freak's own invention. Then, as soon as the
situation that invoked the module into which this patch had been
installed was invoked, all hell broke loose.
On other occasions, such simple methods as exercising an existing bug
in the standard software has been known to bring down an office, often
quite unintentionally.
In your efforts to not underestimate the power of a high-school kid,
you often seem to overestimate that power and danger. We needn't be
alarmists about these things; as long as we learn from mistakes,
irrespective of who makes them.
<>IHM<>
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Date: 11 January 1984 01:24 EST
From: Andrew Scott Beals <BANDY @ MIT-ML>
Subject: Whiz kids - remote intrusion into nuclear-war
To: REM @ MIT-MC
Date: 01/10/84 22:56:37
From: REM at MIT-MC
To: BANDY
Re: Whiz kids - remote intrusion into nuclear-war
Maybe some NSA person wanted to work at home and figured a
20-character pseudo-random password would be enough?
Nah, you're right, anything that crucial hooked to the phone
network for home work would use encrypted packet protocol, not
just a password.
Anything even pretending to be secure hooked into a public network
wouldn't use just >one< password .. I've talked to someone who had to
access a `top secret' computer to get something off for him to work
on... He had to go thru a long (>20 challenges/reply) sequence, and if
he got one of the wrong, or took too much time, it wouldn't boot you
off then ... it would boot you off when you were done with the
challenges ... then it'd just hang up the phone ... no "Invalid
response" or anything like that, just hang up the phone. (the file
that he got was a speech that he was supposed to work on ... I don't
think it was of a very highly secret nature)
Anyone who keeps crucial data on a system hooked to a public network
had better be more paranoid than our friends in the NSA, as there is
likely to be someone just a little bit more cleverer than the person
who made your system "secure" trying to crack your system.
andy
ps. Down with ascii! Why don't we all use funny encrypting terminals?
(for `secure' applications)
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Date: 11 January 1984 05:04 EST
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM @ MIT-MC>
Subject: Whiz Kids 1/7 (re: human-nets msg) / show mostly
Subject: realistic, but
To: urban @ RAND-UNIX
From: trw-unix!trwspp!urban@Berkeley (Mike Urban)
Date: Tuesday, 10 Jan 1984 08:34-PST
Reply-To: Mike Urban <urban@rand-unix>
1) "Wrench" is smart enough to come up with a 20-letter
random password for the NSA system, but (faced with hangup
when a zero-parity character is typed) isn't smart enough
to try 256 different characters. Sure.
Haven't you ever had a blind spot? You work on a computer-program bug
or a math problem or a puzzle (crossword, numerical, whatever) for
hours and can't figure out what's wrong or what the solution is; then
you ask somebody else and the answer turns out to be trivial and
you're embarrased you didn't think of it? Although the writers
probably goofed, they accidently invented the way things really are!
2) THE BIGGEST LOGIC GAFFE: Richie is convinced that he's
dealing with the real NSA because they take him into a big
room (that the bad guys managed to COVERTLY stock with
20-foot high situation monitors, etc. Right.) AND SHOW HIM
RALF, WHICH THE FBI HAD CONFISCATED. When Richie looks at
the room and breathes "Ralf!", it sure had ME convinced...
When he entered that room, he already knew (incorrectly) the fellow
was an NSA agent, because the fellow showed him his ID the day before
when they first met.
3) The NSA knows about "Wrench"(es) but the FBI doesn't.
Possible, but a little weird...?
This is based on the true premise that the National Security Agency
(NSA) is even more secretive than the FBI and CIA combined. Of course
they know things the FBI doesn't know, especially if it deals with
National Security.
5) The NSA gurus know someone's penetrating their system
(early scene in computer facility). They don't change the
password. Makes sense if "wrench" is really an NSA
audition, preposterous otherwise.
Yeah, you're right, I doubt the NSA would be so dumb. Almost anybody
in industry or government could be that dumb (anybody dumb not to
change the system-maintenance password after accepting delivery on a
brand new computer system; to whit a certain hospital and a certain
labratory near Livermore), but not the NSA!
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End of HUMAN-NETS Digest
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