by Aleš Čermák

 
[0] ↔ AiS&SiA
 
 
While world maps render space in x- and y-axes, no linear geometry without thick verticality could represent the most entrenched geopolitical conflicts, rational and irrational alike.*
 
 

I.

 
Each black hole is inhabited by the eye of a different animal. All black holes fall into [a single point of accumulation] representing the focal point located somewhere behind all eyes. [Black holes] may resemble faiths conforming to various situations. [A virus] is a tool, a symptom, a character, a diagnostic, attempting to disrupt the organization of both the animate and the inanimate by claiming that everything is inert and dormant, aiming to expand itself.
 
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[Geometry is the necessary foundation of an elaborate expansion of state power in space and time] → on the other side of the border, somebody else is building war machines → there is no power which could control rivers.
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Invisible movements → apparitions inserted into the myriads of industrial products → flowing one over the other. Magical captivity needs no weapons → it usurps → it binds, impeding each contest. Sci-fi has been a reality for a long time. As a form of mass distribution. Faces may appear redundant. The end of the world may therefore not signify the end of the world but rather [our own end][1]. What may follow will probably be more of an instrument than a [person][2].
 
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[Grains, tablets, simple units of arithmetic have merely an anonymous role][3] → a collective role or a role of the third person.
 
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[He] ↔ may be a man → a woman → a flea → a bee → a mechanical setting ↔ [a game] → a war with no battle lines, no clash, and no retreat. Just pure strategy. The distribution of forces in open spaces and the ability to appear in any other spot. Constant movement with no destination and no objective.
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[AlphaGo & Go][4] → [AlphaGo vs. AlphaGo][5]. A different justice → a different movement → a different timespace.
 
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They come like destiny. Without cause, without reason, without any regard and objection… It is impossible to understand how they got all the way to the inner city and yet, there they are, and every morning it seems that there is more of them. – “Luc de Heusch”.
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Each [active] player dreams of the never-ending expansion of gaming areas until it gets to the point where they encompass the whole world. In this way, the player molds exceptionality into a new form of object. Everything must be possible in the game, including the possibility to confront individual segments of mechanical setting with the role of the third person → with the initiator and also the outcome of [the vertical travels][6].
 

 

II.

 
The twenty-first century is turning out to be a unique mixture of incompetence and brilliance → of state-of-the-art technology and primitivism → of softness and brutality. The twenty-first century is a landscape of swords and magic. The world has become coarse, ignorant, and at the same time wonderfully sophisticated → intelligent. All of this can coexist. (The production of recreational drones has made significant technological progress in the past five years. The drones have become reliable and, more importantly, affordable. The parallel advances made in the area of miniature cameras and smartphones quickly transformed these objects into a vital part of military strategy.)
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In October 2016, two Kurdish soldiers were killed by a grenade in a manner only seldom seen beforehand. Nowhere else is this incongruity clearer than on the [Syrian battlefield][7] → the video shows [the new tactic of the prepared drones][8]. There is a special mechanism attached to the airframe of the drone into which a 40mm grenade is inserted. The mechanism is located above the point of destination, it is released, and the grenade launched at a particular target. [ISIS][9] began to use recreational drones to approach, unseen and from above, their enemies and attack them. The Iraqi military forces in Mosul are their primary targets. ISIS are not the only group to have started using the easily accessible drones as weapons. [The first video][10] surfaced already in September 2016. [Another one][11] in October. The Hezbollah group is accredited with the first attacks of this sort. Hezbollah claim that they have already [used this strategy in 2014][12] in Lebanon. Nonetheless, it was ISIS that began using this strategy on a mass scale. The image of the world has in many places brilliantly evolved into mutual comparisons between the primitive → still modern and covered and still [sophisticated image][13]…
 
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The 2D-to-3D conversion expands the fight for another dimension. Drones are tiny [magical objects] → [forms of casting spells]. Things whose function escapes us. An enemy who never loses sight of the sky. Drones are indiscernible from magic.
While the Russian TV station [RT][14] released [a video][15] of a bombed out eastern part of the city of Aleppo → the Syrian Department of Tourism posted [shots][16] from the other side of town, which was untouched by the conflict. These shots were accompanied by music from the HBO-produced show [Game of Thrones][17]. [The life with the regime was quite normal, but the life with the rebels was hell] ↔ [0] ↔ [Asymmetry is strategy & strategy is asymmetry.]
 
 
 
The West became too much of a place of magic → in the end it has become alienated. These asymmetries are particularly amazing. Unequal order being born out of the chaos in places ruled by instability – where creative mutation enables the creation of new forms and events → [chaoplexic warfare][18]
 
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[The reveal of depth becomes apocalyptic] because it aims towards the dynamic conclusion of world dimensions. [Terror is nothing but the porous nature of the earth.] → it wreaks havoc in the polarity of the surface globalization. A story about the technopolitics of global capital.
 

III.

In January 2017 [the Al Jazeera station released][19] a propagandist video in which ISIS introduced their new strategy.
 
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The first piece of news from the other side appeared on Twitter on 1 March 2017 saying: Footage of Iraq’s Federal Police conducting weaponised quadcopter strikes on Da’ish in central Mosul. The military analyst [Nick Waters][20] published a commentary to the ethical aspects of this strategy. With the drones being surprisingly accurate, the number of collateral deaths actually decreases. They can truly be [more ethical than your regular weapon systems].[21]
 
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The following day, three new videos surfaced. [Drone DJI Matrice 100],[22]  which was identified in one of them, is the same kind of drone as the one photographed on 02/02/2017 by the French reporter [Sara Hessein].[23]  It is not completely clear, though, what the position is of the [DJI] Company. On the one hand, they disapprove of their drones being used as weapons, but on the other they view this fight positively because the drones are used to fight against ISIS. A DJI spokesperson said that this is [an interesting moment in time]. Our position is such that the DJI Company manufactures consumer drones for creative and peaceful purposes.
 
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The world is not led by rational notions but rather by the powers of the affectionate, mystical, and collective origin → the real combat leaders are immaterial forces.
The militarization of the world is architectonically and visually paradoxical → too paradoxical to be schizoid → and too schizoid to be paranoid.[24]
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[To Protect and Infect] → Horse in a desert, running backward Together we fall → Together we fall deeper
Nothing is to end our ecstatic conquest
 
Undoing all that was said and done before we came Unseeing everything with our eyes
We do not live in the same place We weren’t introduced
Please don’t send us flowers → [Send secret] → [Age of invention] → [Killer applications][25] → [The Ghost Army]
 
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When we realize that observation is made possible by light travelling at a limited speed, then all objects observed in the past are all the more distant the further away from us they are situated → we do not yet comprehend visual language because we have a different setting → we do not have enough respect and regard to what the images express → [to bring the sun into each picture – Akhenaten’s chant goes as following: The Sun creates myriads of appearances] → [the first victim of war is always our grasp on reality].
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[Obsession with death] is always highly intensive when military states are founded or restored → if memory is literally a science to the warrior, it cannot be considered a collective memory comparable to the memory of the national culture founded on the basis of common experiences, but rather a → [parallel memory]→ [erroneous localization in time and space] → [illusion – déjà vu].[26]
 
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We trust our eyes and that’s why every light seems like the [light of truth] to us. The violence we create springs from our memories, not from what we can see. [Paranoia is preparing her own terrorist attacks which she will then justify.] → [everyone is in everyone else’s social graph] → [paranoia’s answer is always the same] → [paranoia wants to survive] → [paranoia represents a disavowal of existence itself and leads to endless wars.]
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[Intense obsession] with death is mixed with [a series of exchanges] and an office handover between [male warriors and their logistical wives].[27]
 

IV.

 
How can scenarios be modelled, and who should be modelled exactly? Bodies are included into the war of battle assemblies merely as means of operation → they are ambiguous and diffusive. [The drone] → is a case study of a system of today’s inhuman vision → a study of battle techniques and the corresponding effects → the future of the global battlefield lies in its mutual overlapping. [The drone] is being fascinated by the unknown → by the search for the truth. But the truth, it seems, is but a virus → a memetic grey warzone.
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[People did not create technology, they are just a specific biotechnological apparatus, nothing but a logical circuit etched into silica].[28] With every humiliation comes [personal and unique trauma]. Decentralization of our own rationality represents one possible end. The aim of the inhuman vision is to evolve and to imagine → and to involve various forms of the inhumane and thus to ponder the meta-logic of the game, which will change the configuration of its own rules from the point of view of the rational world of things.
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She is a Drone → a drone is a male bee.
 
 

* Benjamin H. Bratton, The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty, MIT Press, Cambrigde 2016, p. 53.
[1] Inhumanism is an explicit commitment. Accordingly, to understand the commitment to humanity and to make such a commitment, it is imperative to assume a constructive and revisionary stance with regard to human. Insofar as humanity cannot be defined without locating it in the space of reasons (the sapience argument), committing to humanity is tantamount to complying with the revisionary vector of reason and constructing humanity according to an autonomous account of reason. This is how we can view the rationality of the so-called middle road, which is built upon the dissolution of humanity as the arbiter of reason. Its inevitability is already fixed. Reza Negarestani, „The Labor of the Inhuman, Part I: Human“, e-flux Journal #52 (2014).
Accessible at: http://www.e-flux.com/journal/52/59920/the-labor-of-the-inhuman-part-i-human/.
[2] Donna Haraway, When Species Meet, Minnesota, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2006, p. 11.
[3] Roy van Rijn, „How Google DeepMind conquered the game of GO“. Published 11. 11. 2016.
Accessible at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=derC33ODrME.
[4] „DeepMind, Exploring the mysteries of Go with AlphaGo and Chinaʼs top players“. Published 10. 4. 2017.
Accessible at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_r9smp4-0U.
[5] AlphaGo is a deep model of learning which has recently beat the world champion in Go. Nowadays these models are being actively picked apart by the players of Go.
AlphaGo vs. AlphaGo: These techniques may be used to clarify or specify artificial intelligence. For instance, should two neuron networks play a game of Go against each other, their connection would represent an educational proces (of growing) in itself. Complex phenomena are created by connecting networks. Anil Bawa-Cavia, „The Inclosure of Reason“, Technosphere Magazine (2017).
Accessible at: http://technosphere-magazine.hkw.de/article1/6aefb210-0ee6-11e7-a253-d9923802c14e.
[6] Benjamin H. Bratton, „The Black Stack“, e-flux Journal #53 (2014). Accessible at: http://www.e-flux.com/journal/53/59883/the-black-stack/.
[7] Published 3. 9. 2016.
Accessible at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KDBwpbJc4w.
[8] Published 8. 2. 2017.
Accessible at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCgypb6tJ7k.
[9] „Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant“, Wikipedia.
Accessible at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant.
[10] Published 3. 9. 2016.
Accessible at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KDBwpbJc4w.
[11]   Published 9. 8. 2016. Accessible at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLnRt9CZz58&feature=youtu.be&t=1.
[12] „Hezbollah Drones Target Al-Nusra Frontʼs Position at Syrian Border“, Fars New Agency. Published 21. 9. 2014.
Accessible at: http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13930630001247.
[13] Archiv fotografií, které pořídil dron těsně po svržení nálože. „IS Drone Strikes – 01 February to 31 March 2017“.
Accessible at: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/iqp82841q83j05a/AAClAAn7ICqYbA2aJk5Y1Sana?dl=0.
[14] „RT (TV network), (formerly Russia Today)“, Wikipedia.
Accessible at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_(TV_network).
[15] „Drone footage captures devastation of east Aleppo“. Published 13. 12. 2016.
Accessible at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH6xRh6K7-4.
[16] „Aleppo Will of Life 2016“. Published 3. 10. 2016.
Accessible at: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=4DWLUhoW5O0.
[17] „Game of Thrones“, Wikipedia.
Accessible at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_of_Thrones.
[18] Antoine Bousquet, „Chaoplexis warfare or the future of military organization“, International Affairs (2008).
Accessible at: https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/977349/8a181049153b545179607165543ee0da.pdf.
[19] Published 25. 1. 2017, Al Jazeera Arabic.
Accessible at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LNFlEL_LZU.
[20] Nick Waters, Twitter Account, @N_Waters89.
[21] Ben Sullivan, „Iraqi Federal Police Weaponize Off-the-Shelf Drones, ISIS-Style“, War is Boring. Published 6. 3. 2017.
Accessible at: http://warisboring.com/iraqi-federal-police-weaponize-off-the-shelf-drones-isis-style/#.yvar98jr0 .
[22] „DJI Matrice 100 – Matrice 100 Unboxing and Setup“. Published 4. 2. 2016.
Accessible at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Mji_y8uhI0.
[23] Sara Hussein, Twitter Status.
Accessible at: https://twitter.com/sarahussein/status/834760699142402048? ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw.
[24] Oss2vasz4, „#1“, (2017).
Accessible at: http://ossz2vasz4.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/1.html.
[25] P. W. Singer, „The Ethics of Killer Applications: Why Is It So Hard To Talk About Morality When It Comes to New Military Technology?“, Journal of Military Ethics, Vol. 9, No. 4, 200–312 (2010).
Accessible at:
https://media.wix.com/ugd/36f9f6_104f9cab4119447c8950b89c9b0c7896.pdf.
[26] „Déjà vu“, Wikipedia.
Accessible at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Déjà_vu.
[27] During migrations and skirmishes the woman, trained and controlled by the man, carries the load, allowing him to specialize in a homosexual duel, i.e. becoming the killer of men, a warrior. Conflicts which have so far been muted by the decreased mobility of ethnic groups can therefore spread to wide areas. The woman allows the warrior to go boldly forward, enables economic management, hands the man his projectile weapons. Thanks to the invention of this labor force the man has what is in the military commonly referred to as “good piercing quality”. On this level, at least until the domestication of horses, heterosexual groups were much more fearsome than the homosexual societies. The woman thus helps the man to come into this world twice. First she gives birth to him, and then she makes him a warrior. She is also the primary means of transportation of the species and their first logistical support. She gives rise to war by relieving the man of the necessity to supply food, which for instance explains why the Greek military forces revolve around the character of Athena, transgressing the male/female gender opposition and the sexual irrealism of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Paul Virilio, Válka a film: logika vnímání, Červený Kostelec: Pavel Mervart,2007, str. 80–81.
[28] So the question before us can instead be reformulated: Does the reasoning produced by AI lie within the jurisdiction of the human? Diagonalization casts severe doubt on this, while inhumanism remains deeply skeptical in matters of jurisdiction, having traded the static demarcation of „human“ into the service of reason. Inhumanism regards AI itself as a misnomer – we need only be reminded by Jean-François Lyotard that humans did not invent technology, we are merely a specific „biotechnic apparatus“, no more „natural“ than logic circuits etched into silicon. Jean-François Lyotard, The Inhuman: Reflections on Time. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992, p. 12.