THE MORAL PERMISSIBILITY OF AUTOMATED RESPONSES DURING CYBERWARFARE

Automated responses are an inevitable aspect of cyberwarfare, but there has not been a systematic treatment of the conditions in which they are morally permissible. We argue that there are three substantial barriers to the moral permissibility of an automated response: the attribution, chain reaction, and projection bias problems. Moreover, these three challenges together provide a set of operational tests that can be used to assess the moral permissibility of a particular automated response in a specific situation. Defensive automated responses will almost always pass all three challenges, while offensive automated responses typically face a substantial positive burden in order to overcome the chain reaction and projection bias challenges. Perhaps the most interesting cases arise in the middle ground between cyber-offense and cyber-defense, such as automated cyber-exploitation responses. In those situations, much depends on the finer details of the response, the context, and the adversary. Importantly, however, the operationalizations of the three challenges provide a clear guide for decision-makers to assess the moral permissibility of automated responses that could potentially be implemented.     

纳米级定位的简单化设计——采用滚珠球轴承的扭轮摩擦传动

作者在前面的文章中报导了扭轮摩擦传动能实现亚纳米级的定位分辨率。然而,这套装置在结构上的复杂之处就是在于采用了静压轴承支撑扭轮。本文指出了扭轮摩擦传动在结构上如何可以简化为采用球轴承支撑扭轮。在简化之后,实验表明定位分辨率小于1纳米。本文得出结论,采用球轴承的扭轮摩擦传动对于在洁净环境下要求实现纳米级定位的制造过程变得更为方便,而且可以取代滚珠丝杠以及常规摩擦传动方式。     

塑性状态下光学及电子镜面的亚纳米级精密磨削

本文讲述了由PC机控制的多用途超精机床(MPUMT)的设计及光学镜平滑表面的加工。已研制出的机床可用于磨削、切削、研磨或抛光塑性状态下的硬脆材料。作为建立新的加工系统的关键部分,采用了大型磁致伸缩调节器(GMA),在没有放大器元件的情况下,它具有大功率的输出和大于压电陶瓷调节器几倍的纳米级的位移。切削DOC的深度和控制塑性状态过程的微塑性区域能够被调节器设置为具有高于1nm的精度,并能用金刚石磨削砂轮研磨。在当前研究中所用到的镜为多晶体、非晶体,也有加固玻璃。磨削实验的结果表明,已研制出来的超精机床能够实现对塑性状态下的玻璃和陶瓷材料的加工。材料特性参数和微裂纹之间的关系已被检测到,适用于大多数被研究玻璃的脆性到塑性磨削方式的转换已经确定。运用AFM、SEM和ZYGO对磨削表面进行了分析,例如BK7和TRC5(新材料;加固玻璃)的磨削表面分别具Ra=0.15nm和Ra=0.32nm的表面粗糙度。     

‘The People are Revolting’: An Anatomy of Authoritarian Counterinsurgency

Rather than win hearts and minds, authoritarian counterinsurgency is said to rely heavily on coercion. It has a reputation for effectiveness, if also for its amorality. Still, the research into authoritarian counterinsurgency is surprisingly lacking. By distilling common features from key cases, this article concludes that this approach goes beyond the indiscriminate violence that typically captures the imagination. Like their democratic counterparts but differently, authoritarian regimes also engage in mobilisation, create narratives, and turn military advantage into political gain. The analysis explains how these tasks are undertaken and, by contradistinction, sheds light on more liberal approaches as well.     

Order-preserving allocation of jobs to two machines

In this paper, we consider the problem of minimizing the mean flow time of jobs to be processed on two machines. The jobs have a predetermined order, perhaps reflecting the order of arrival, and each job has a known processing time. We wish to assign the jobs to machines so as to minimize the mean flow time, with the constraint that the original order must be preserved within the subset of jobs assigned to each machine. An efficient algorithm based on dynamic programming is developed.     

Toward optimal bidding strategies

In this paper we investigate a form of rational behavior in response to an oligopoly pricing problem where only one buyer is involved. We investigate the problem from the standpoint of the seller who wants to maximize his gain from the transaction. In particular, we deal with the problem of one seller's response to an invitation to submit a sealed (i. e., noncooperative) bid to a government or other dominant purchasing agency for supplying a specified bundle of goods and services for which either (1) no other demand exists, or (2) the terms or quantities involved cannot, at least in the short run, be obtained from another source. Although treated from a normative standpoint, i. e., what bid the supplier should make, the paper also has implications for the buyer's behavior and oligopoly-monopsony pricing in a more general sense.     

Determining the most vital link in a flow network

The most vital link in a single commodity flow network is that are whose removal results in the greatest reduction in the value of the maximal flow in the network between a source node and a sink node. This paper develops an iterative labeling algorithm to determine the most vital link in the network. A necessary condition for an are to be the most vital link is established and is employed to decrease the number of ares which must be considered.