Tanks make this a difficult proposition.

Only if you have brainwashed the tank crews (which admittedly does happen in the military).

In this scenario, I'd imagine the tank crews to be automated too.

Yes, this would be a big problem if warfare was to become fully automated.

I guess we have to hope that when the ability to completely automate warfare that the people in power aren't genocidal sociopaths.

In this situation a tank crew would be attacking their fellow country men, so one would hope hope they would be questioning their orders to fire on civilians.

If they didn't question the orders you would have to question whether they were brainwashed into thinking the fellow country men were deserving of attack.

A lot of militaries train their soldiers to not question the orders of their superiors. I believe the US military does allow a solider to question orders, but I would expect that it is not encouraged.

Police fire on and kill civilians every day in the USA, why would someone in the military behave any differently if ordered to do so? They've already agreed to obey to kill at someone else's request.

The precedent has already been set in the biggest country in the world.

The Tiananmen square massacre was committed by the current Chinese government. Do you think they've grown a conscience in the last 20 years? Or does killing over a thousand (1,000) civilians agitating for Democracy just make it that much easier to kill a hundred thousand (100,000) civilians later on?

You don't have to look too hard for a real-life example of this scenario. Just look at what happened in Libya and other countries affected by the Arab Uprising - how military behaved in different countries. They're facing this dilemma right now.

ck2 wrote: Police fire on and kill civilians every day in the USA, why would someone in the military behave any differently if ordered to do so? They've already agreed to obey to kill at someone else's request.

I think we are in agreement. I was just trying to clarify my comment above because I was confused as to why my previous comment had been down voted. +1 for you :-)

US law in this area is largely illusory. It makes reference to "lawful orders", but provides little guidance on what would constitute an "unlawful order". Getting it wrong means prison, and getting it right can still mean prison -- the last case I heard about, the military court basically said "the order is lawful unless you are told otherwise by a superior officer", making the entire question moot.