War has been a constant force in human history up to and including the present day. I would greatly prefer that if such weapons exist that my society has access to them if others are sure to follow.
For that reason I think it’s ethical to work on weapons technology. You could be a principled pacifist, but I think that’s self defeating. Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons, that did not bring them peace. Arguably if they had nukes, they would not be at war.
It does not require the development and realization of a technology to create a defense against that technology. We don't fight bombers with bombers, nor do we fight ICBMs with ICBMs, nor nukes with nukes (OK, perhaps not the best example, but only because MAD is a political deterrant against rational actors (which one can argue Putin is not)).
> Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons, that did not bring them peace. Arguably if they had nukes, they would not be at war.
Only if they were depraved enough to use them. At which point they have to concede that they too will be annihilated. The threat of nukes alone does not prevent a country from being attacked - especially by madmen.
Whatever your weapon of choice, the counter is AI <something>. We test this theory every day with Bots vs Humans in any number of computer games. Bots will kill you every time, as long as they can recognize you. Hence AI Vision (and sensing in general) being the last hurdle.
Not at all. You can't hit an ICBM with an ICBM. All you can do is retaliate.
> The counter for a bomber is another plane.
Realistically, the counter is RADAR. Once you see the bomber, you can use any number of tools against it, including aircraft, SAMs, surface-to-air artillery, blacking out cities, etc.
> missiles are simply rocket-based drones
For an incredibly specific definition of a drone, sure. But in that case, so are bombs, satellites, and steerable ballistic projectiles.
> and they will have to become smarter too.
They have.
> the counter is AI
Not at all. An AI still has to operate a craft within the bounds of physics, and an aircraft flown at any speed will still follow a predictable path. Getting close enough with hypersonic shrapnel has proven effective throughout the years.
> We test this theory every day with Bots vs Humans in any number of computer games.
Bots in games don't need to follow the laws of physics. Their performance doesn't degrade with damage or environmental conditions. They have perfect information beyond just their vision.
Also, bots in games that require more information than "see avatar shoot avatar" - i.e. RTS games - have to cheat to outwit humans.
The Six Day War was won by an inferior fighting force when Israel used bombers to attack bombers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Focus
> nor do we fight ICBMs with ICBMs
Our only viable methods of defense against ICBMs is ABMs, which are basically the same thing in every way except the targeting systems and maybe payload.
An ABM is not a ballistic missile - which is to say it does not travel in a ballistic trajectory. It's a specialized SAM designed for attacking ballistic missiles. In addition to the targeting systems and payload other thing that's different is the motor - providing a greater propulsive force with a shorter overall range - which is basically the entire missile.
Let's put them in charge.
It's going to be a bunch of software developers wearing t-shirts and shorts that eventually bring us to nuclear war. You know, "to keep their daughters safe."
Fuck all of you.
Authoritarian states have been the default for most of human civilization. Freedom is a good, but it doesn't "auto-win". It can lose, and in fact it has lost, over and over and over again, throughout human history.
Native American tribes were arguably more free than Europeans at the time the new world was discovered. Unfortunately, they didn't have guns and horses, and the Europeans did. I would prefer not to end up on the side without the guns and the horses the next time a paradigm changing military technology is discovered.
If we want to keep the society we prefer, we have to fight for it. That's not because we like fighting, that's simply the only way it's been made to ever work at any point in history.
There are benefits, for example, to making the use of mines and chemical attacks in war illegal.
2. In general, the tech transfer tends to work the other way: military develops and uses the tech first then come the civilian applications.
Speaking of 2, Boeing has developed autonomous drones that are deployed in Ukraine.
[0]: https://fortune.com/2022/03/29/artificial-intelligence-drone...
For example a small country can't maintain a top modern air force, and thus for example Russia dominates Ukraine airspace. Autonomous drones would make it a contested situation at least.
Targeted drone strikes are at least somewhat less brutal than WW1-style trench combat or hand-to-hand melee combat with swords and spears. Wars in general are getting more precise, with fewer fatalities, over time (https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace). For all this talk of killer robots, the Rwandan genocide killed more with machetes than our drones.
Is it necessarily a bad thing that we're replacing boots on the ground with robots in the air? Eventually, one would assume, our opponents would catch up as well, and maybe at some point in the future, battles will be more drone-vs-drone than fighter pilots dogfighting it out. Our killer robots against theirs.
Maybe wars are getting more high-tech, but if their body counts are lowering, isn't that a good thing?
The worry is that such distancing increases the risk of collateral damage, or simply mistaking of targets. There were accusations during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that the US were bombing weddings and civilian homes.
It seems to me collateral damage making the news is a big improvement over the old days. In the past, when giant armies clashed, entire cities were razed, the countryside left barren, huge populations were displaced, women and children enslaved, etc. Now it's a big deal when a single wedding or child is hurt... what used to be so commonplace as to not even be worth mentioning now makes headlines. That's an improvement, isn't it?
The ability to perform "surgical" assassinations with precise targeting should be overall less damaging than rolling in with tanks and napalm and carpet bombs.
IMO the "facelessness" of drone war is sort of virtue signaling... why should it matter whether you can see your opponents before you kill them? It's not like you're giving every opponent a fair trial with a jury before you kill them. It's war. More precise targeting of a smaller number of targets, even with a higher error rate, should still end up killing fewer people overall than an indiscriminate total war.
Now, more selfishly, from a US national security perspective: When we're expecting big powerful states again as opponents (as in, China or Russia instead of Afghanistan or Iraq), frankly, we'll need all the help we can get. It's one thing to mourn innocent Afghan civilians lost during a small-scale conflict, it's another thing to be ill-equipped to handle the bigger threats of the future against enemies who aren't at all concerned with human rights.
I don't think it is realistic to expect a peaceful, utopian future for our species in the near-term. All signs point to conflicts escalating as resources diminish, democracies wane, authoritarianism rising, and climate change exacerbating divides. As cold wars heat back up and proxy wars proliferate, we'll either be sending in more technology or more troops. Personally, I'd rather it be American drones than American lives.