My presentation on machine learning security opened the Ground Truth track at the 2017 BSidesLV conference:

When: Tuesday, July 25, 11:00 – 11:30
Where: Tuscany, Las Vegas
Cost: Free (as always!)
Event Link: Hidden Hot Battle Lessons of Cold War: All Learning Models Have Flaws, Some Have Casualties

In a pursuit of realistic expectations for learning models can we better prepare for adversarial environments by examining failures in the field?

All models have flaws, given any usual menu of problems with learning; it is the rapidly increasing risk of a catastrophic-level failure that is making data /robustness/ a far more immediate concern.

This talk pulls forward surprising and obscured learning errors during the Cold War to give context to modern machine learning successes and how things quickly may fall apart in evolving domains with cyber conflict.

Copy of Presentation Slides: 2017BSidesLV.daviottenheimer.pdf (4 MB)

Full Presentation Video:

Prior BSides Presentations

• 2016 Ground Truth Keynote: Great Disasters of Machine Learning
• 2012: Big Data’s Fourth V
• 2011: A Cloud Odyssey
• 2010: Dr. Stuxlove

Just 10 hours after the Pearl Harbor bombing of 7 December 1941, Japanese invaded the Philippines and ran into Captain Nieves Fernandez.

…she used her long knife to silently kill Japanese soldiers during the occupation of Leyte Island…. She commanded 110 native who killed more than 200 Japanese with knifes and shotguns made from sections of gas pipe.

Have you heard of her before? Did you realize she was the inspiration for the Wonder Woman comic book character?

As one American soldier in 1944 explained, after Captain Fernandez demonstrated her technique on him, she impressed easily…

I will now never be surprised again when a qixiannü (a Chinese goddess) tears apart a Japanese soldier barehanded

The American propaganda machine in 1941 was well aware that the promotion of successful and strong women was essential to winning the war against fascism.

The question really becomes whether Americans could admit to taking the story of Fernandez on Leyte island to create a comic-book version of her, given such lethal and effective reputation of a Woman fighting against the enemy of America.

I believe the answer to be an easy and definite yes. The Japanese military certainly did their part to spread news about this woman’s outsized actions, as it was causing them all kinds of trouble, and Americans turned that news into an iconic image of female heroism.

This deceptively idyllic island turned notoriously dangerous for the invading Japanese troops due to… Fernandez.

Why would the Japanese amplify her story widely? They thought it would help stop her, by putting a massive bounty on her head.

Again, just to emphasize what an average view of Tacloban, Leyte looks like relative to the “origin” story of the comic book character:

Perhaps it should be no surprise then, given how US intelligence was picking up Japanese bemoaning a “wonder woman” in Leyte, that Americans started saying things like the “best way to fend off critics would be to create a female superhero”.

A fictional origin story of Wonder Woman comic generated its first cover in January 1942 (a month after Pearl Harbor as US propaganda went into overdrive).

Sadly and without explanation, not only was Fernandez never credited, a Harvard psychologist named Dr. William Moulton Marston was instead credited and he made her a “Greek Amazon” white woman from Paradise Island.

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Update September 2020:

In a weird twist to the above real history a new film Wonder Woman 1984 has the American heroine battle an evil villain based on a real-life American con-man whose name rhymes with cancerous-lump:

Enter Maxwell Lord, a self-made mogul-slash-guru played as a sort of insidious mix of ’80s icons…. “Max is a dream-seller…. It’s this character who encompasses a component of the era which is, you know, ‘Get whatever want, however you can. You’re entitled to it!’ And at any cost, ultimately, which represents a huge part of our culture and this kind of unabashed — it’s greed, It’s f—ing greed, of course. But it’s also about ‘How do you be your best self? How do you win?’ So he’s definitely the face of that version of success.”

Definitely a missed opportunity to cast Wonder Woman as a someone more like Fernandez who battles the racism and misogyny endemic to fascism, far more relevant and real than this basic corruption and greed narrative.

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Update May 2021:

A new book called War and Resistance in the Philippines: 1942-1945, by historian James Kelly Morningstar, gives much more context to the significance of this guerrilla story, even suggesting it “brought down Japan”:

Filipino guerrillas waged a war that denied Japan its strategic goals, altered U.S. grand strategy and helped transform America’s greatest military defeat into Japan’s greatest military disaster. Their fight also laid the foundation for a free and independent nation vital to the post-war order.

On this day in 1886 a Civil War veteran from Texas, Albert Richard Parsons, was falsely accused along with several others of a conspiracy to murder in Chicago, Illinois. By 1893 they were pardoned, yet it was too late to save them from being put to death by police. Why did the American justice system kill them?

Albert was only 13 years old when he volunteered serve in the Civil War for a Texas unit led by his brothers. First he served as infantry for his Confederate captain brother, next a cannoneer and finally cavalry for Confederate colonel William Henry Parsons.

After the “slave-holder rebellion” he joined had been defeated, Albert studied in college and joined “Radical Republicans” working in Central Texas on suffrage for the Freedmen (emancipated slaves); Albert helped register blacks to vote despite threats of violence and exploitation by white supremacists

Here you can see in a newspaper clipping how the KKK threatened to murder white Americans like Albert who enfranchised black votes:

Albert then married (Lucy Parsons) and unable to stay in Texas due to violent threats, they traveled through the Midwest. They settled in Chicago in 1873. In his “auto-biography” published by Lucy he wrote…

I incurred thereby the hate and contumely of many of my former army comrades, neighbors, and the Ku Klux Klan. My political career was full of excitement and danger. I took the stump to vindicate my convictions.

In April 1886 Chicago saw dozens of protests where people were calling for an eight-hour workday. Similar to his prior suffrage work to help the Freedmen, Albert stood up and spoke and wrote about industrial labor conditions as a major cause of unfair voter disenfranchisement.

On the 1st of May tens of thousands walked off their job for better working conditions. After more protests on May 3rd the police responded to a large group by shooting wildly at protesters they had called violent, killing at least one and injuring many others.

The following day on May 4th Albert spoke at a meeting in Haymarket Square and left.

Although Mayor Harrison had instructed the police to stay away by the end of that day hundreds of armed officers marched in and demanded protesters disperse. When a bomb exploded police again opened fire wildly into crowds. Many were killed (reportedly seven police and several protesters all were shot dead by police) as well as injured (sixty police, unrecorded numbers of protesters).

Prominent speakers and writers such as Albert then were charged with murder because protests could be violent, despite Albert not being there during the violence.

After an unfair trial most of the accused were sentenced to death. One died violently in prison, judged a suicide. Then Albert and three others were hanged in 1887.

Albert stood on the gallows and asked openly “Will I be allowed to speak, O men of America? Let me speak…” as the Sheriff opened trap doors to kill him before he could say more.

Two other men had asked and received commuted sentences.

Six years later, in 1893, the Illinois’ Governor Altgeld known for his “patriotic love of liberty” pardoned those convicted in the Haymarket Affair and called the unfair trial methods used a “menace to the Republic“.

Altgeld feared that when the law was bent to deprive immigrants of their civil liberties, it would later be bent to deprive native sons and daughters of theirs as well.

The City of Chicago Haymarket Memorial describes these events as “A Tragedy of International Significance“:

…those who organized and spoke at the meeting—and others who held unpopular political viewpoints—were arrested, unfairly tried and, in some cases, sentenced to death even though none could be tied to the bombing itself.

Police targeted and killed those who advocated for better quality of life and voting rights in poor and immigrant homes. Although Albert had survived having unpopular views in Texas, had opposed the KKK after the Civil War, in Chicago he found himself falsely accused of violence and sentenced to death by the police… for speaking out freely in America on behalf of others, becoming too successful and popular with his anti-racist views.