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Comment by Bucephalus355 | Hacker News Reader

This article is shameful. The “tech” involved predicting bombing raids, to evacuate people beforehand. Obviously the tech will be used in the future to maximize casualties via predicting bombing raids.

Not saying what they are doing is bad, just the unabashed optimism / tech will save us all view of Wired magazine.

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From the article, it seemed like the “tech” is just text messages triggered based on flight paths of aircraft. How does that translate to killing more people?

If you know how people are going to respond, you can take advantage of it. You get a related practice in double-tap bombing attacks, where there's a second bomb set to hit the predictable batch first responders.

In this case, you can predict where people will evac to, and time your follow-up bombing flights to hit those areas before there's time to evacuate from them.

CEO of Hala here. What I think needs reiterating is that the tools to do what you fear are already available and employed by the highly advantaged attacker (regardless of who it is). One of our primary missions is to actually give defensive tools to people who currently lack adequate means to defend themselves.

I think that’s a very fair argument and you / your company should be commended for what you’re doing.

Really the criticism I have is of Wired magazine’s article, and not even the article so much as their promotion. On twitter and other places, you’ll see stuff from them like “how AI is preventing bombing raids”. That kind of attitude to generate readership I find recklessness and dangerous.

Again thank you for all your efforts.

Wow I never thought of it like that!

If you have any pride in what you’re doing, I see that as a problem. Maybe you’re helping, but we will never be sure if you’re making things worse.

Please.

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