Bob Koure
1 min readDec 16, 2023

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Computer chips meant for household appliances are powerful enough to run a lot of things including missiles and drones. Those chips are faster than, say the old intel 80286 - and Raytheon used EMP-hardened versions of those in the Minuteman missile system which I *think* (Dylan would know) had a MIRV (multiple warhead) system. I'm aware of this as I was a x86 machine language whiz, interviewed with Raytheon back in 82 or so - and the people I interviewed with had code puzzles for me that pretty clearly were guidance modules. So I asked what they were part of. Turns out I wanted no hand in creating weapons of mass destruction. Go figure. Hadn't really thought it through beforehand.
The more powerful chips made today are necessary for things like expert systems (what we're calling AI these days) that require massive parallelism. China was looking to turn those into weapons of war - so now neither Russia nor China has access (major victory on the part of the Biden administration, which they don't seem to have gotten credit for - but IMO they might have averted Chinese Skynet).

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Bob Koure
Bob Koure

Written by Bob Koure

Retired software architect, statistical analyst, hotel mgr, bike racer, distance swimmer. Photographer. Amateur historian. Avid reader. Home cook. Never-FBer

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