Explorations in
Cyber International Relations (ECIR)
Taking Machine Intelligence to the Next Level
Patrick Henry
Winston
Conference on Cyber International Relations: Emergent Realities of
Conflict and Cooperation | October 14, 2010
Explorations in Cyber International Relations
OSD Minerva Research Project at Harvard & MIT
Why are we different?
The Story Hypothesis
• Micro culture
• Fairy and folk tales
• Experience
• Parables
• Family
• Narratives
• Macro culture
• Religion
• School
• Precedents
• Propaganda
• Cases
• Science and engineering
• History
• Law
• Literature
• Business
• Medicine
Which two are the same?
Genesis story understanding system
Parser
Domain
independent
English
Semantic
analysis
Syntactic
relations
Question
expert
Commonsense
analysis
Semantic
events
Situation
onset
expert
Reflective
analysis
Elaboration
graph
Precedent
retrieval
expert
Thoughts
about
thoughts
Analogy
expert
The Russia-Estonia Cyberwar
Estonia and Russia are countries.
Estonia believed computer networks are
valuable. Estonia built many valuable computer
networks.
Estonia insulted Russia because Estonia moved
a war memorial.
Someone damaged the valuable computer
networks of Estonia after Estonia harmed Russia.
The damage of the computer networks included
the defacement of the web sites. The defacement
of the sites showed that someone did not respect
Estonia.
Estonia created a center to study computer
security. Estonia believed other states would
support the center.
The end.
All knowledge in English
• Commonsense
If xx insults yy, then xx harms yy.
If xx damages yy's artifact, then xx harms yy.
• Reflective
"Teaching a lesson" occurs when:
xx's harming yy leads to yy's harming xx.
xx's harming yy leads to xx's harming me.
Video omitted.
Exciting future!
• X anticipates Y’s reaction, avoids blunder
• X intervenes to prevent Y from acting
• X understands Y’s point of view
• X negotiates with Y
• X explains situation to Y in Y’s terms
• X teaches Y how to interpret situation
• X shapes Y’s reaction
Video omitted.
The Russia-Estonia Cyberwar
With Katz’s START parser:
With Finlayson’s Story Workbench:
Estonia and Russia are countries.
In 2007, Estonia chose to relocate The
Bronze Soldier of Talinn, a controversial
statue, from the city center to a nearby
cemetery. While a seemingly innocuous
event, it ended up causing massive
political backlash. At the heart of the
matter was the controversy around the
statue itself: to Russia and ethnic Russian
immigrants, it symbolizes the victory of the
Sovient Union over Germany in World War
II, whereas to many Estonians, it
symbolizes Soviet occupation and
repression following the war. As such,
when the plan to move the statue was
announced, many russians were furious at
Estonia, leading to the largest instance of
state-sponsored cyber-warfare since Titan
Rain. …
Estonia believed computer networks are
valuable. Estonia built many valuable computer
networks.
Estonia insulted Russia because Estonia moved
a war memorial.
Someone damaged the valuable computer
networks of Estonia after Estonia harmed Russia.
The damage of the computer networks included
the defacement of the web sites. The defacement
of the sites showed that someone did not respect
Estonia.
Estonia created a center to study computer
security. Estonia believed other states would
support the center.
Revenge emerges from experience
In 1998, Afghan terrorists
bombed the U.S.'s embassy in
Cairo, killing over 200 people
and 12 Americans. Two weeks
later, The U.S. retaliated for
the bombing with cruise missile
attacks on the terrorist's camps
in Afghanistan, which were
largely unsuccessful. The
terrorists claimed that the
bombing was a response to
America torturing Egyptian
terrorists several months
earlier.
In early 2010, Google's servers
were attacked by Chinese
hackers. As such, Google
decided to withdraw from
China, removing its censored
search site and publically
criticizing the Chinese policy of
censorship. In response, a
week later China banned all of
Google's search sites.
Contributions
• Suggested the Story Hypothesis
• Argued for humanlike thinking at cyber speed
• Demonstrated the Genesis system
• With two persona
• With question answered
• With situation onset detected
• Illustrated scaling ability of Story Workbench