I appreciate your comment and footnote about knowing WWI history better. I read “All Quiet on the Western Front” for the first time (along with my kid’s 10th grade English class last year) and then watched the movie after, and I was completely gutted. Horrors upon horrors. We tend to think of the Nazis and Hitler’s rise to power as an historical aberration. He didn’t appear out of nowhere. Context is everything people! I recommend listening to Dan Carlin’s “Hardcore History” on WWI, great way to step back in time and revisit the Wehrmacht before it was corrupted by the Nazi party. A telling lesson for us today.
Every technological advancement is going to be used for killing people and then refined until it's better at killing more precisely or indiscriminately. Which isn't great!
Robotic assassinations are something I hadn't considered before, but someone's going to figure out how to do this and upload the plans to the internet so that any freak with enough time, determination, and instability will be able to make their own little robot killing machine.
As someone who has spent a lot of time on this technology, I have two reactions to your (well-written) piece: 1) Yes, winning the trade is easier when your life is not on the line and a lethal drone is far more powerful than just a gun. In fact, this is the current military doctrine of several nations with the right capabilities. When you don’t have human losses, military strikes become much easier.
2) I think your fears will not come to pass. Drones, unlike bullets, need a guidance system with external communication links (the “External” being the key word) to reach its target. Enough military contractors have worked on blinding these drones with electronic countermeasures, and many of them are active in sensitive locations today. While bullets are “fire and forget”, both for the attacker and the victim, the drones are far more liable to be intercepted before the potential victim even realizes a threat.
Of course, technology can take us down either path, but for now.. I am more optimistic. Interesting piece, regardless. Thank you!
Thank you for your kind words and your response. I'm glad to hear that. I think I'm less worried that this possibility is imminent - particularly for the countermeasures you talk about - and more that it's possible and underdiscussed. But I always love hearing from the people on the ground with these technologies!
On second thought, your concerns may still be valid. Electronic countermeasures are expensive and only some governments can afford it, but random warlords or leaders of unstable nations? May be a problem. I don't work in this area anymore, but I like following authors who write about the intersection of science and society, because I am trying something similar. Great job! Especially your Netflix piece. G'damn streaming model ruined all the fun.
Hi Dan, as one of the older generation and nowhere near as informed as you I am finding your posts very informative and straight to the point in a clear and concise way. I send them onto our youngest Grandson who has a similar mindset to you, hoping he will also subscribe. You are right about the drones, it is pretty scary with what they can already do.
Interesting take, and for sure there will be lots of problems when people can create swarms of lethal drones. And those gun dogs are awful.
But I don't think the big issue will be assassinations. If anyone ever even gets close to pulling that off on a leader of a rich country (and didnt someone try to kill Maduro in Venezuela with a drone at a public event?), leaders will just be more walled off from the public until public appearances are holograms.
At the same time, there won't have to be a new Patriot Act for government surveillance to become absolute. They can already do that, and if the threat increases, people will allow it to quietly become perfected.
Also, the payoff will become less and less obvious. As you show, it may not actually accomplish anything already, but more and more we are ruled by systems. The days of regicide are behind us.
If anything, these new killing techniques will be used *by* rulers (and their police forces and armies) not against them.
Thanks for the article and the insight about walking your non-weaponized dog. (the only work of fiction I ever wrote was a legal farce about a stray dog that was put on trial, and it was 100% inspired because I had the pleasure of walking a friend's dog for an hour every day for about a year.)
There’s a good episode of Black Mirror that touches on these themes. In a unspecified post-apocalyptic future, the main character inadvertently triggers a dormant drone which has been preprogrammed to hunt and kill whoever finds it. The drone relentlessly pursues the main character for the rest of the episode, terminator-style. After much peril, she eventually destroys it. This should be a happy ending of sorts, before we realise that prior to its perishing, the drone has remotely activated dozens more just like it. The main character (/all humans) has no chance.
Incidentally, it was a different Black Mirror episode this made me think of, the one with the drone bees that are used as killers. But that episode definitely made the robotic dogs seem less cuddly.
Well this was a thought-provoking and persuasive article about something I’ve never thought about before. Sobering too. I’m sharing it with my historian son, who will find it interesting, and not just because he agrees with you about WW1. He will also love your adorable dog. (I love him too!)
One question: Why is Slovakia in your list of most developed countries, but not the Czech Republic? That seems weird. I have to speak up for my Czech friends!
It is such a weird chart! There was actually a huge amount of resentment in Slovakia after the velvet divorce, because Czechia got much more mineral wealth and industry and is quite a bit richer than Slovakia.
I appreciate your comment and footnote about knowing WWI history better. I read “All Quiet on the Western Front” for the first time (along with my kid’s 10th grade English class last year) and then watched the movie after, and I was completely gutted. Horrors upon horrors. We tend to think of the Nazis and Hitler’s rise to power as an historical aberration. He didn’t appear out of nowhere. Context is everything people! I recommend listening to Dan Carlin’s “Hardcore History” on WWI, great way to step back in time and revisit the Wehrmacht before it was corrupted by the Nazi party. A telling lesson for us today.
I love Dan Carlin's WWI series! Great recommendation and I hope everyone listens to it.
I believe Dan is a big Hardcore History fan. Thanks for the rec! I'm just getting into it and don't know where to start.
I started with this episode Supernova in the East I” https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dan-carlins-hardcore-history/id173001861?i=1000415837465
Every technological advancement is going to be used for killing people and then refined until it's better at killing more precisely or indiscriminately. Which isn't great!
Robotic assassinations are something I hadn't considered before, but someone's going to figure out how to do this and upload the plans to the internet so that any freak with enough time, determination, and instability will be able to make their own little robot killing machine.
I'll have to do some thinking here.
As someone who has spent a lot of time on this technology, I have two reactions to your (well-written) piece: 1) Yes, winning the trade is easier when your life is not on the line and a lethal drone is far more powerful than just a gun. In fact, this is the current military doctrine of several nations with the right capabilities. When you don’t have human losses, military strikes become much easier.
2) I think your fears will not come to pass. Drones, unlike bullets, need a guidance system with external communication links (the “External” being the key word) to reach its target. Enough military contractors have worked on blinding these drones with electronic countermeasures, and many of them are active in sensitive locations today. While bullets are “fire and forget”, both for the attacker and the victim, the drones are far more liable to be intercepted before the potential victim even realizes a threat.
Of course, technology can take us down either path, but for now.. I am more optimistic. Interesting piece, regardless. Thank you!
Thank you for your kind words and your response. I'm glad to hear that. I think I'm less worried that this possibility is imminent - particularly for the countermeasures you talk about - and more that it's possible and underdiscussed. But I always love hearing from the people on the ground with these technologies!
On second thought, your concerns may still be valid. Electronic countermeasures are expensive and only some governments can afford it, but random warlords or leaders of unstable nations? May be a problem. I don't work in this area anymore, but I like following authors who write about the intersection of science and society, because I am trying something similar. Great job! Especially your Netflix piece. G'damn streaming model ruined all the fun.
Hi Dan, as one of the older generation and nowhere near as informed as you I am finding your posts very informative and straight to the point in a clear and concise way. I send them onto our youngest Grandson who has a similar mindset to you, hoping he will also subscribe. You are right about the drones, it is pretty scary with what they can already do.
Thank you, I really appreciate that!
Interesting take, and for sure there will be lots of problems when people can create swarms of lethal drones. And those gun dogs are awful.
But I don't think the big issue will be assassinations. If anyone ever even gets close to pulling that off on a leader of a rich country (and didnt someone try to kill Maduro in Venezuela with a drone at a public event?), leaders will just be more walled off from the public until public appearances are holograms.
At the same time, there won't have to be a new Patriot Act for government surveillance to become absolute. They can already do that, and if the threat increases, people will allow it to quietly become perfected.
Also, the payoff will become less and less obvious. As you show, it may not actually accomplish anything already, but more and more we are ruled by systems. The days of regicide are behind us.
If anything, these new killing techniques will be used *by* rulers (and their police forces and armies) not against them.
Thanks for the article and the insight about walking your non-weaponized dog. (the only work of fiction I ever wrote was a legal farce about a stray dog that was put on trial, and it was 100% inspired because I had the pleasure of walking a friend's dog for an hour every day for about a year.)
There’s a good episode of Black Mirror that touches on these themes. In a unspecified post-apocalyptic future, the main character inadvertently triggers a dormant drone which has been preprogrammed to hunt and kill whoever finds it. The drone relentlessly pursues the main character for the rest of the episode, terminator-style. After much peril, she eventually destroys it. This should be a happy ending of sorts, before we realise that prior to its perishing, the drone has remotely activated dozens more just like it. The main character (/all humans) has no chance.
Incidentally, it was a different Black Mirror episode this made me think of, the one with the drone bees that are used as killers. But that episode definitely made the robotic dogs seem less cuddly.
Well this was a thought-provoking and persuasive article about something I’ve never thought about before. Sobering too. I’m sharing it with my historian son, who will find it interesting, and not just because he agrees with you about WW1. He will also love your adorable dog. (I love him too!)
One question: Why is Slovakia in your list of most developed countries, but not the Czech Republic? That seems weird. I have to speak up for my Czech friends!
I plead "I stole that chart" for them not being in there. I don't want to upset any Czech people!
It is such a weird chart! There was actually a huge amount of resentment in Slovakia after the velvet divorce, because Czechia got much more mineral wealth and industry and is quite a bit richer than Slovakia.
The only way forward is to teach your goodest boy how to wield a machine gun, I think.
Let's hear your take about the JFK assassination. I'm highly curious!
Wow, I had not seen that before but I wish I had.