The beers of Iwakuni: Echigo Pilsner and the Robot Apocolypse

I went to the Westa car show in Hiroshima a couple of days ago with an MCCS but trip. Good time, walked around with an open Asahi extra dry and basked in the glory of Japanese Western mod culture. Which oddly enough is not just Western cars (There were a surprising number of low riders), but also includes older model Japanese cars (all Showa era). This show is where I knew I wanted an early 70's Nissan "pigs but" Laurel .

And it's not just cars, the music as well. There was a mix of Hip Hop, Girl band Pop, 1950's American Rockabilly (surprisingly popular in Japanese counterculture), and alternative Punk. On the way back we stopped at the You Me mall, where I hit up the super market and got a number of Japanese beers I cannot find on base. This is one of those beers.

It took a little bit of research as the label is almost entirely in Japanese characters aside from the deceleration that it's from Japans first microbrewery and that it is a premium beer. The brewer in question is Echigo, which started as a brewpub in 1995 thanks to Japanese licensing and capacity laws changing two years prior. They are currently the largest craft brewer in Japan and they have won a number of international awards, that number I have yet to determine as there is not allot of info about this brewery in English, but it's at least six or more. Promising, but I prefer to let the beer do the talking. And the beer that will do that talking is their pilsner, who (according to the Google translate version of the companies web page) is brewed with Zatsu hopps, the original hop of pilsner (also barley malt). I think they mean Zatec hops, as in the city of Zatec in the Czech Republic, which would mean the variety is actually Saaz. Other than that it is 5% ABV and has an IBU of 26, oddly enough making it one of there most bitter brews. The can is a golden color as it seems to be a theme with this brewery to color code their cans. For instance there stout is a completely black can and their red ale is a red can. Time to open.

 It smells more like a wheat beer from the can, kind of like a fresh ear of corn with a little sourness. Color is golden, slightly amber with a frothy, but quickly dissipating head. Nose from the glass is faint but it actually smells like a pilsner. It has a touch of sourness to it but not enough to drive me away. It has a malty sweetness that I would say is the beers main character. It is kind of a light mid body with low acidity. It's not notably carbonated, but there's some life inside of the glass. Finish is rather dry.

So, I'm rather dismayed by the utter lack of information there seems to be with a simple internet search on defeating robots. There is article after article about how we're designing killer robots and how soon we could have disposable killer robots made to kamikaze their way to any target that meets specific criteria.

I had no idea as a teenager that this would actually be a reality of the world I lived in.

I saw an interview with Adam Savage and Jamie Hineman (of Mythbusters fame) where they were asked the question and their answer was to install kill switches and fail safes. That's all well and good if it's you're own robot, but what about someone else's swarms of small, cheap, flying drones that are essentially flying smart grenades coming for you? Have we entered a realm where skeet shooting with an automatic shotgun is a necessary military survival skill? 

I've finished this beer, but I really want to keep talking about the real robot problem that nobody wants to talk about, so final thoughts on this beer and then I'm switching to a Westmalle tripel. It's a decent pilsner, not the best, not even the best Japanese one, but worth trying. I'll give it my blurry seal of approval.

So anyways, killer robots and how we're all doomed. I suppose it will be necessary to replace the focus the infantry has on anti-personnel to anti-material, as our enemy's increasingly become automations. The obvious route is to counter automated combatants with automated combatants and make them the center of a rifle squad. What this will look like is anyone's guess at this point, but in the near future you'll be seeing things like this:

yea right, always accompanied by a soldier, we'll see how long that lasts. I think using the M240 machine gun was a little naive though, kind of like the idea of  magazine cutoffs in bolt action rifles at the turn of the 20th century. These machines would absolutely function better with a main gun designed around them and not a human. Maybe the army really believes that robots will never replace human soldiers on the field.  Maybe in the near future, but you know that's not going to last. It's kind of like this socket set I got from my Grandfather, it ways made in the late 50's-early 60's and it says "made in Japan under American supervision". How long until everybody realized that the Japanese were probably better at making those sockets than their supervisors? How much longer until until the Japanese took everything we taught them about manufacturing and American businessed harder than American business. (I've run out of the Westmalle and have switched over to a LaTrappe Dubbel). The Human operators are just to give people a warm and fuzzy, just like the American supervising the Japanese that would eventually employ them. Everybody from the Engineers to the operators know these machines could make perfectly good decisions on their own, probably better than their human operators. It reminds me of  a story I read from a couple of years ago about the automated turrets that guard the De-militarized zone between the DPRK and the ROK. They were armed with .50 caliber machine guns and made to take down trucks (or people, but the article strategically neglects to mention that). It scanned its area perfectly, issued warnings to potential targets, and could automatically execute almost perfectly accurate direct fire on its target, but would only fire if a human overseer pressed a button and approved the action. Do you think that kind of restraint would really be used if  the DPRK decided to charge across that three mile strip and assault the ROK's position? Absolutely not,  after a single wave they would set that machine to confirm its targets and then terminate with extreme prejudice. Before WW2 people were uncomfortable with the idea of mass bombing. Now, if you follow our mission against ISIS, we prefer it to sending actual people to combat. I figure we have one good conflict until people almost completely accept robots making the decision to kill a person.The problem is that, for some people, I'm that person.
So what do we do? I, for one, say we should not shy away from automated combatants, because God knows our enemy's won't. Ultimately war is about imposing you're will over someone else, they teach you about that in Corporals course and I wish they would hammer it in a little bit throughout the Marine Corps a little more. It's not exactly a Libertarian ideal, but what are you to do when you are ultimately defending the idea of personal liberty? We should not go running to them as fools, as they are very dangerous, but as an undeniable reality of our world. Just like when we created the bomb, a reasonable and educated person knows that the Genie has been let out of the bottle and we cannot take it back. We have stumbled upon a way to cheat the previously known system with an incredible tool and we cannot forget it. I remember when I changed my Facebook profile picture to a nuclear blast from back in the 50's my great aunt Frieda Hatfield Tong commented that most Adults when she what a child did not like the bomb, but saw it as a necessity. I don't see why automated combatants should be any different.
So I think it is clear, we have our cold, emotionless, logic driven killing machines and they have theirs. There isn't anything anybody can do about it without reverting to feudalism. We tread the edge of oblivion and have since the day you were born (presuming you were born after 1945). We could all say that we should all get along, but I think we all know that's not possible. We must act with full knowledge of the position we are in. If it comes to oblivion, than that's a risk we must take, for what do you're beliefs really mean if you are not willing to risk all in their defense. Life will persist somewhere in a twisted perversion of what we knew. We have a creed in Ordnance: "In God and Ordance we adore, in times of trouble, not before. The schedule met, all troubles righted. God is forgotten, Ordnance slighted.". God is forgotten as we do truly do not know a single day without him, unless we are put in a situation where we have only ourselves and our evil hearts. I think we will not forget the automatic combatants and the ordnance they bring because we do not know a single day without them.You will tell you're children of the days unmanned Arial vehicles roamed the sky with AGM-114 Hellfire missiles and how that was a big deal, and they will think "how pedestrian".
Wow,that got really, really dark. So, long story short, I'm looking for a mid 1970's Nissan laurel (Or 1980's Nissan sunny truck) in southern Honshu if anybody knows of anything.