I’m concerned that these efforts are just delaying the inevitable. (Which is still very worthwhile!!) But in the longer run, we’re just doomed!
Like, the people in the military and defense contractors developing autonomous drone navigation systems are doing the exact same thing as probably dozens of university researchers, drone agriculture technology companies, Amazon, etc. In fact the latter are probably doing it better!
So ideally we want a high technological barrier between what’s legal and the weapons that we don’t want to exist, otherwise anyone can immediately build the weapons. What’s the nature of that technological barrier? Right now it’s the navigation / AI, but again that’s not gonna last, unless we block drone navigation AI at companies and universities which is not politically feasible. What else is there? The drone hardware? Nope. The weapon carried by the drone? I mean, with some string etc., a quadcopter can carry a handgun or little bomb or whatever, so this doesn’t seem like much of a technological barrier, although it’s better than nothing, and certainly it’s better than having a nicely-packaged armed drone directly for sale. So yeah, I’m inclined to say that we’re just doomed to have these things for sale, at least by organized crime groups, sooner or later. I don’t know, that’s just the conclusion I jump to with no particular knowledge.
As with chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, it will/would be difficult to forestall determined people from getting their hands on them indefinitely — and probably more difficult than any of those cases since there’s indeed lots of dual use from drones, and you won’t (probably) fear for your life in building one.
Nonetheless I think there is a huge difference between weapons built by amateurs (and even by militaries in secret) versus an open and potential arms-race effort by major military powers. No amateur is going to create a drone WMD, and we can hope that at some level nation-state level anti-AW defenses can keep up with a much less determined program of AW development.
I’m concerned that these efforts are just delaying the inevitable. (Which is still very worthwhile!!) But in the longer run, we’re just doomed!
Like, the people in the military and defense contractors developing autonomous drone navigation systems are doing the exact same thing as probably dozens of university researchers, drone agriculture technology companies, Amazon, etc. In fact the latter are probably doing it better!
So ideally we want a high technological barrier between what’s legal and the weapons that we don’t want to exist, otherwise anyone can immediately build the weapons. What’s the nature of that technological barrier? Right now it’s the navigation / AI, but again that’s not gonna last, unless we block drone navigation AI at companies and universities which is not politically feasible. What else is there? The drone hardware? Nope. The weapon carried by the drone? I mean, with some string etc., a quadcopter can carry a handgun or little bomb or whatever, so this doesn’t seem like much of a technological barrier, although it’s better than nothing, and certainly it’s better than having a nicely-packaged armed drone directly for sale. So yeah, I’m inclined to say that we’re just doomed to have these things for sale, at least by organized crime groups, sooner or later. I don’t know, that’s just the conclusion I jump to with no particular knowledge.
As with chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, it will/would be difficult to forestall determined people from getting their hands on them indefinitely — and probably more difficult than any of those cases since there’s indeed lots of dual use from drones, and you won’t (probably) fear for your life in building one.
Nonetheless I think there is a huge difference between weapons built by amateurs (and even by militaries in secret) versus an open and potential arms-race effort by major military powers. No amateur is going to create a drone WMD, and we can hope that at some level nation-state level anti-AW defenses can keep up with a much less determined program of AW development.