Wired for war
A military expert reveals how science fiction is fast becoming reality on the battlefield, changing not just how wars are fought, but also the politics, economics, laws, and ethics that surround war itself.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
8mentions
8people
2009–2023years
25% recommend75% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Wired for War came out in 2009 and if you are new to this topic I would recommend giving it a read. It focuses on offensive military uses rather than civilian "accidents" discussed in this article. I do think there are crossover ethical dilemmas at play with both.
- The book Wired for War is also good.
- That last cite actually answered my own question:
"The future of robotic policing can now be found in developments within the military.(54) The military has used remote controlled robots for more than a decade.(55) The Department of Defense is preparing for a future in which nearly autonomous robots will play a central role in warfare.(56) Consequently, the military is spending the most money and attention on robotics."
(54). [P.W. Singer, Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the Twenty-First Century (2009)], supra note 20, at 78 (observing that the “military sets the agenda in AI”).
- I think that it is intuitively quite clear, that it is possible for 'cyber operations' to be part of acts of war. [1] And the perpetrators are therefore combatants and legitimate targets. But since I read P.W. Singer's Wired for war I have the strong feeling that the second order effects of 'cyber' and drone operations are quite poorly thought out. So for example a drone pilot is by this standard a combatant. And this reduces the protections international law has for his house and the civilians within ( his family).
So I think, that the dominant military power ( or in case of the NATO, military alliance) should try to limit the use of potentially disruptive developments, already out of self interest.
[1] I will not argue in this about the morality of war or the logic of warfare. Here I will simply argue within this framework.
- Reminds me of the democratization other security technologies such as described in:
P. W. Singer's "Wired for War"
Perhaps even Chris Anderson's DIY Drones:
- No idea what "extraordinary" means to you, but the scenarios reported in Peter Singer's recent book on military robotics, Wired for War, represent some potentially huge shifts. They may not "improve our lives" though.
