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US Military Moving Closer To Automated Killing
Doofus writes "A recent article in the Washington Post, A future for drones: Automated killing, describes the steady progress the military is making toward fully autonomous networks of targeting and killing machines. Does this (concern|scare|disgust) any of you? Quoting: 'After 20 minutes, one of the aircraft, carrying a computer that processed images from an onboard camera, zeroed in on the tarp and contacted the second plane, which flew nearby and used its own sensors to examine the colorful object. Then one of the aircraft signaled to an unmanned car on the ground so it could take a final, close-up look. Target confirmed. This successful exercise in autonomous robotics could presage the future of the American way of war: a day when drones hunt, identify and kill the enemy based on calculations made by software, not decisions made by humans. Imagine aerial "Terminators," minus beefcake and time travel.' The article goes on to discuss the dangers of surrendering to fully autonomous killing, concerns about the potential for 'atrocities,' and the nature of what we call 'common sense.'"
Landmines do automated killing every day!
I read somewhere recently a quote that, IIRC, was from Churchill. It was something about avoiding war, but if you must fight, fight with severity, for that is the most humane. I think that applies here. Though it sounds incredibly cruel, if people are not dying in your war, there will be no incentive for either side to stop.
Of course, Gadhafi, Hussein, Stalin, and similar madmen are somewhat of a counter example in that they don't give up no matter how many of their side are killed. Yet Japan in WWII is an example of the ruthless severity (nuclear bombs) causing an immediate and complete cessation of any attempts to create war.
Even modern times with Gadhafi and Hussein, the invasion of Iraq was much more severe than the Libyan rebels, thus the shorter amount of time to cause the government to capitulate. (Getting the rest of the population to stop fighting, much harder... we'll see how Libya does without the outside intervention.)
Anyway, the point is that robot vs robot is war by proxy. Without the violence, the bloodshed, the impetus to end the war just won't be the same. They'll drag on for longer and longer, and resolution will be even less certain than it is today. I'm not sure that's necessarily such a good thing.
All power comes from the barrel of a gun. Aimed at you - to make you comply. Willingly, or otherwise.
All power comes from being able to make someone happy. Really, think about it. A gun is no guarantee that someone will comply. If they feel certain you will shoot, then it has almost no power at all. The power of a gun comes from the fact that you MIGHT make them happy by not killing them.
If your goal is to get people to do something, you'll do much better paying them than trying to threaten them. And if you can make them happy in other ways, you may be even more powerful than merely with money.
Obama didn't obtain the most powerful office in the world by threatening to kill people (King George tried that, and got a revolution). He got votes by giving people hope for change. How much change he delivered is a different thing (certainly he delivered some), but people were happy to believe that it might be true. So they voted for him.
The reality of power is different than what a lot of people think.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Just politically correct. The US already has policies in place that effectively meet and exceed the goals of the Ottawa treaty.
We stopped selling mines, we destroyed old stockpiles. we have spent over a billion dollars clearing mines and helping victims (usually not our mines). Our new mines are self-destructing or self-disarming, and policy is to not place one without its position being recorded, and that it be removed from any battlefield after its need has passed.
Even with that, the only place we actually use them is in the Korean DMZ. The last time we used them in combat was the Gulf War, in limited use. These were scatterable mines, fired or dropped to a specific grid coordinate to deny use of that small area to the enemy. Since this was their first use we did make mistakes, as apparently not every shot was recorded and reported for later easy cleanup. Rules for their use have since been changed, and by now they should be converted to self-destructing or self-dearming anyway.