JFK

[BoSoxGal]

So evidently the conspiracy theorists weren’t entirely wrong. The KGB was in contact with Oswald just weeks before the assassination. Occam’s Razor and all, it seems like it’s fair to assume that the Soviet Union had a hand in murdering our Camelot president in retaliation for him having some balls.

Now they’re messing heavily in our democracy via social media manipulation and their useful idiot Agent Orange.

Sorry Ronnie, it’s never been clearer that you didn’t actually end the Cold War, and now we live in a world where Russia doesn’t need massive military assets or the old agent states to be a huge threat to us - just a whole bunch of IT nerds and some twisted GRU agents to run the show.

It feels to me like our democracy is currently hanging in the balance, and the next couple of years will reveal if our Russian enemies will finally win the war and achieve the fall of the USA.

Thoughts?

[ex-khobar Andy]

They've done enough - just have to wait it out. Useful idiots like Boris Johnson in the UK, Trump and his acolytes (Jim Jordan and others of that ilk) are in place. No need to bother about China as long as they are allowed to hang onto their corner of the world including Taiwan. China are certainly not going to balk at Putin taking Ukraine.

[MajGenl.Meade]

So evidently the conspiracy theorists weren’t entirely wrong. The KGB was in contact with Oswald just weeks before the assassination.

But that's not news. His presence at the Soviet and Cuban embassies in September 1963 was well-known at the time to US and Mexican authorities and was part of the investigation after 11/22. I've always thought Oswald's action was grandstanding to the nth degree by a semi-psychotic loser.

The exposure to new and perhaps more deadly means of warfare created by our ever-increasing reliance upon cyberspace (indeed, the interconnectedness of everything) is more than worrying. I remember 1950s SF stories about such "impossible" events as all electricity vanishing or all metals turning malleable - groping for the idea of dependence on the undependable.

The problem described in later works is that HAL serves HAL. In reality, HAL works (or stops working) for anybody with the right set of tools. Some of those are Russians and others are 14-year old kids in basements having "fun"

[Bicycle Bill]

HAL, in this case, is a reference to the computer that went rogue in '2001' ("I'm sorry, Dave.  I'm afraid I can't do that.  This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it."), signifying the ascendancy of artificial intelligence, correct?
Or is it some other acronym with which I am not familiar?

-"BB"-

[Burning Petard]

Thoughts? Only fear that you are right, BSG. To paraphrase another Soviet leader: the Americans will sell us the rope to hang them with.

Now we just exercise laziness in construction of our computer systems and are baffled when some naughty entity takes advantage of it.

snailgate

[MajGenl.Meade]

HAL, in this case, is a reference to the computer that went rogue in '2001' ("I'm sorry, Dave.  I'm afraid I can't do that.  This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it."), signifying the ascendancy of artificial intelligence, correct?
Or is it some other acronym with which I am not familiar?

-"BB"-

Yes
No

[Big RR]

And, if I recall correctly, the name HAL was chosen because each letter is one before each letter of IBM.