Artificial intelligence is not new to me. In the 1980s, I invested (your) money and (my) time in several artificial intelligence projects, most of which remain classified (I link to two unclassified papers below).  In that era, military intelligence struggled with  1) vast US intelligence data bases hosted on non-interactive mainframes, 2) the skeptical (and oh-so-touchy) US intelligence analyst (Ain’t nobody kin fool me!), and 3) a sophisticated and centrally controlled Soviet deception program (maskirovka, denial and deception,  active measures, etc.).

I learned late in life that I am dyslexic and suffer (or enjoy) prosopagnosia (1),  cognitive defects that are both advantageous and disadvantageous.  Dyslexia? Friends, when short of time,  do not ask me for information; I examine problems from all over the place.  Face blindness? A military career compensated for an inability to identify a familiar face. For soldiers,  a quick glance at the breast pocket and collar tab  provides first and last name…[prosopagnosia? (huh?) ]

Nowadays, when Patrice and I enter a party, I cling to her like a shy four-year-old. I compensate for dyslexia by memorizing words and passages through my fingers, i.e., by laboriously recopying a foreign phrase 10 times. Neither more nor less disadvantaged than my peers (I speak Russian and German; French is coming along). Humankind develops compensatory strategies, i.e.,  tools – spears, M-1s, B-1 bombers – to compensate for incisors smaller than those of the saber-toothed tiger. There you go.

Grammarly.com AI modified

Before the Great Bronze Cannon, cast to fire upon Tartar raiders at the Oka River crossings beneath Moscow, were parked limousines to whisk away delegates attending the 1973 Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Within the Great Hall were the nomenklatura–the Soviet gentry–socialist in form, Russian Chauvinist in content.  Soviet Army generals were well represented. The Great Fatherland War had scarred the nation, and the Soviet Army had rescued it.  The greatest war generals, the Zhukovs, Chiukovs and Rokossovskys, those 243 raised to major general on the 1940 promotion list to replace the purged, were passing on, but the second tier of promotees, those of the war lists, were the phalanx of uniforms among the delegates attending the speech given by General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Leonid Brezhnev.  Among them was Colonel General Vladimir Zakharievich Yakushin, Deputy Chief of Staff, Group of Soviet Forces Germany, the combat commander of the vanguard formation, the most powerful Soviet Front in history.  He listened to the speech with an attuned Soviet ear.    The General Secretary’s speech was like a well-remembered epic poem.  One listened for the music and rhythm, familiar passages inspiring memories and recollection, variations recognized and attended instantly.

Before the Great Bronze Cannon—which was cast to defend Moscow from Tartar raiders at the Oka River—limousines lined up, ready to whisk away delegates from the 1973 Communist Party Plenum. Inside the Great Hall, the nomenklatura sat alongside Soviet Army generals. These were the Soviet elite: socialist in form but Russian chauvinist in content. Scars from the Great Fatherland War were still visible, as was national pride in the Army’s rescue. The WWII generals—Zhukov, Chiukov, and Rokossovsky — had passed on. They had been on the major general promotion list, created after the 1940 purges. Now, a second tier of generals, promoted during the war, made up the impressive array of uniforms among the delegates as General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev spoke. Colonel General Vladimir Yakushin, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Group of Soviet Forces Germany and commander of its vanguard, also listened attentively. Brezhnev’s speech had the rhythm of a classic epic: familiar, nostalgic, and filled with recognizable variations noted by all.

And no small task it was. During his 1956 General Staff Academy tour, General Yakushin led the staff study of the military manpower requirements for defending the fatherland against a NATO attack.  Manpower did not exist.   It was common knowledge that over 20 million Soviet citizens had perished in the war against fascism.   For his work he had been allowed to see the results of the 1950 census, classified Top Secret.  Twice that number had perished.  The Administration of the State Statistical Directorate had been executed to a man in 1951, agents of the German revanchism, but by the mid-1950s, the results were accepted.  It made sense.   In 1946, he had returned by train to Moscow from Germany, and the landscape resembled that described by a Genoan trader to Kyiv in 1383.   The Italian described a landscape devoid of all life, with only hectares of bleached skeletons as evidence of a once thriving metropolis.   The soldiers who fought the Fascists would not permit this to happen again.

This was no small task. In 1956, General Yakushin led a General Staff Academy study to estimate the number of personnel needed to defend the Soviet Union against NATO. The result was grim: the country lacked people. Official records put Soviet wartime deaths at 20 million, but Yakushin knew from the classified 1950 census that the real figure was double. The State Statistical Directorate was executed for alleged ties to German revanchism; by the mid-1950s, the new numbers were accepted. For Yakushin, this fit his memory. In 1946, returning by train from Germany, the devastation brought to mind a 1383 Genoan account of Kyiv: lifeless, only skeletons marking where cities once stood. Veterans were determined never to see such devastation again.