
The case for declaring armed and fully autonomous drone swarms as WMD - atdrummond
https://mwi.usma.edu/swarms-mass-destruction-case-declaring-armed-fully-autonomous-drone-swarms-wmd/
======
jessriedel
Based on my quick reading, the article fails to establish that autonomous
drones are actually a clearly defined category about which treaties could
plausibly be enforced. The WMD category is not just about indiscriminate
destruction, it's also crucially about being able to cleanly distinguish WMDs
from non-WMDs. Biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons are, with only a few
exceptions, fairly precise categories. (Part of the criticism of bunker-buster
nuclear bombs is that they risked blurring the distinction between nuclear and
conventional weapons.)

How often does a remote operator need to check in with a drone for it to no
longer be "fully autonomous"? How many such drones could the operator be
monitoring at once? How many drones constitute a swarm?

A sovereign power can plausibly regulate blurry categories by just picking
arbitrary but clearly defined cut-offs, e.g., the difference between a moped
and a motorcycle is defined as an engine with a certain number of cc's. But
this is a lot harder when you need to get dozens of different countries to all
agree on a rule. International law is more dependent than domestic law on
appealing to clear moral boundaries, since there is no higher earthly power to
appeal to.

~~~
eindiran
Reading this [0] Wikipedia article, it sounds like "Weapon of Mass
Destruction" is not a super well-defined term to begin with:

"The most widely used definition of "weapons of mass destruction" is that of
nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons (NBC) although there is no treaty or
customary international law that contains an authoritative definition.
Instead, international law has been used with respect to the specific
categories of weapons within WMD, and not to WMD as a whole."

However, there is one definition given in the Wikipedia article that seems to
be sufficiently precise:

"""

(1) Any explosive, incendiary, poison gas, bomb, grenade, or rocket having a
propellant charge of more than four ounces [113 g], missile having an
explosive or incendiary charge of more than one-quarter ounce [7 g], or mine
or device similar to the above.

(2) Poison gas.

(3) Any weapon involving a disease organism.

(4) Any weapon that is designed to release radiation at a level dangerous to
human life.

"""

I definitely agree with your overall point that defining AFADS as a WMD will
require careful navigation of the blurriness surrounding the category. On the
other hand, it seems like that second definition is already in the territory
of choosing arbitrary cutoffs (ie 113 grams).

An alternative perhaps is to focus on handling the "autonomous" part, rather
than the "swarm" part, as the USMA article suggests. The definition here can
be more precise/less arbitrary I think: a weapon that can _at any time_ be
overridden by an operator is not fully autonomous. However, if its regular
operation includes a period where there is no operator in the position to
override it (eg the drone(s) keep doing their thing while the operator is away
from the controls), it would then count as fully autonomous. Having some
authentication that the operator is at the controls at all times, available to
override and legally responsible for the behavior of the drone(s) is the key
to this approach I think.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon_of_mass_destruction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon_of_mass_destruction)

~~~
jessriedel
> However, if its regular operation includes a period where there is no
> operator in the position to override it (eg the drone(s) keep doing their
> thing while the operator is away from the controls), it would then count as
> fully autonomous.

Whelp, I guess artillery and grenades are fully autonomous.

~~~
eindiran
I mean, if that's your interpretation I suppose you could argue that bullets
are autonomous once fired.

Am I correct in interpreting your sarcastic comment as meaning you think that
pursuing some definition of "autonomous" is a nonstarter here?

~~~
baddox
I think it’s abundantly obvious to anyone looking at this with good faith that
the autonomy refers to the targeting of the weapon and the decision to fire
the weapon.

~~~
solveit
If you're arguing about whether some weapon is a WMD after the fact, good
faith isn't really something we can count on. The whole point of precise
definitions is eliminating subjectivity. Anyway, that definition includes
cruise missiles, which can't be WMDs because they're in widespread use. This
line of inquiry is dead in the water.

------
graton
I was surprised to learn that by US Law a grenade is considered a WMD. Which
is not what I thought of when I hear the term Weapon of Mass Destruction.

[https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/wmd](https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/wmd)

A WMD is defined by U.S. law as any of the following:

* A destructive device, such as an explosive or incendiary bomb, rocket, or grenade;

* A weapon that is designed to cause death or serious injury through toxic or poisonous chemicals;

* A weapon that contains a biological agent or toxin; or

* A weapon that is designed to release dangerous levels of radiation or radioactivity.

~~~
nexuist
A grenade is not that different from a bomb, and although most grenades have a
relatively small blast radius, there's nothing stopping you from making really
big grenades (at which point the main differentiator between it and a bomb is
the integrated timed fuse).

~~~
closetohome
I was kind of shocked to find that US law defines it as "any destructive
device" and goes on to define that as "having an explosive or incendiary
charge of more than one-quarter ounce." Which is 1/26th the explosive in an
M67 grenade. 1/4oz is more like a couple of M80s stuck together.

As someone else said, this is presumably so they can charge people with
terrorism for using basically any kind of explosive.

[https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2010-title18/pdf/...](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2010-title18/pdf/USCODE-2010-title18-partI-
chap113B-sec2332a.pdf)

[https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-
prelim...](https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-
title18-section921&num=0&edition=prelim)

------
mc32
I think it’s a pretty good case. But it’s also iffy. I mean you could say an
army corps armed with machine guns are capable of destroying half a city or a
column of tanks is capable of destroying half a city too.

But I think the autonomous part and the fact capabilities will keep ratcheting
up and more actors enter the arena make it a type of WMD.

WMD is characterized by the low effort needed to sew massive destruction (and
inability to distinguish civilians from military) once you have the tech —but
getting the tech can be difficult. A full invasion army takes effort. A swarm
of drones once you have the tech, is not much effort.

~~~
hnick
It's a bit like a botnet. 3 killer drones probably isn't a WMD. Maybe 100 is.
10,000, yeah I think so.

Thought there wouldn't be a whole lot of destruction like older weapons. Maybe
it's more of a WMM (M is for Murder).

Thought experiment: What's the MVP for killer drones? Single use explosives
like the Slaughterbots video? Or are there viable reusable weapons systems on
drones that fit in your hand?

~~~
Hello71
that doesn't seem like a useful definition. by that logic, any sufficiently
large army is a "WMD", basically rendering the term meaningless.

~~~
nsajko
Not sure that "weapon of mass destruction" is itself a useful term, but you
are wrong because an army (composed of people) is not a weapon.

~~~
mc32
To be fair the swarms themselves without payload are also not weapons. It’s
the capability to carry weapons autonomously in great swarms coupled with an
inability to only target military installations/personnel.

Obviously depending on the type of drone traditional WMDs could be deployed
with them.

~~~
hnick
> inability to only target military installations/personnel.

I think that's a good point that I missed. The "mass" part of it. But even if
we coded drones to only target military, this could be turned off or changed.

Maybe we need code signing and weapons inspectors before determining if a
swarm is a WMD or not.

------
cityzen
Pretty much the premise of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Breakpoint:

Prior to the events of the game, Skell Technology comes under increasing
public scrutiny when they are faced with mounting evidence that its products
are falling into the hands of corrupt regimes, whilst its technology is
implicated in an assassination of a political candidate by an armed drone.[c]
The situation escalates further when the USS Seay, an American cargo ship
sinks off the coast of the Auroa archipelago and all contact with both the
island and its inhabitants are subsequently cut off from the outside world.
Determined to investigate the cause, CIA Deputy Director Peter Miles initiates
Operation Greenstone, deploying a Ghost Recon platoon from the USS Wasp to re-
establish contact with Auroa and determine the circumstances of the Seay's
sinking. The insertion ends in disaster when the helicopters carrying the
platoon to the island are attacked by a swarm of drones. Nomad is the sole
able-bodied survivor of his squadmates, whilst Holt is seriously injured in
the crash, and Midas is missing in action.

Shortly after obtaining a weapon and attempting to find a working radio to
communicate with the Wasp, Nomad witnesses a firefight between several Ghosts
led by Weaver and multiple unidentified individuals. The firefight abruptly
ends when Weaver is executed by Cole Walker, a former member of the Ghosts who
is now leading the assault force, known as the "Wolves." Additionally, Nomad
discovers a private military company called Sentinel is also operating on the
island alongside the Wolves. Eventually, Nomad manages to reach Erewhon, a
secret mountain hideout that is kept hidden from both Sentinel as well as the
Wolves. With the assistance of ex-U.S. Marine Mads Schulz, Erewhon's de facto
leader and his wife Maria, Nomad learns that the drone swarms that ambushed
the platoon have imposed a defensive perimeter around the island; preventing
anyone from entering or leaving the Archipelago. To help bring down the drones
protecting the island, Nomad works with another survivor, fellow Ghost Recon
Sergeant Major Josiah Hill and is instructed to locate Maurice Fox, Skell
Tech's chief mathematician, his daughter Harmony, and eventually Jace Skell
himself.

Upon reaching Skell, Nomad discovers that Hill has been secretly working with
Walker and the two offer Nomad a place by their side. Nomad refuses and
manages to evacuate Skell to Erewhon.

------
armatav
I think there would be absolutely no possible way to restrict drone technology
of this kind, and so the article is built on an irrelevant foundation.

Nuclear weapons are restrictive because the enrichment process is difficult.

Biological weapons are restrictive because the cultivation process is
difficult.

Drones are easy, machine learning is becoming more approachable for every
person in civilized society.

Better to make a counter-drone-swarm technology company than worry about what
regulators are going to do when a terrorist cell starts to manufacture killer
drones - you cannot stop that with regulation, you can only stop that with
your own drone swarm.

This is a new age of war, and if free society is to stand a chance it needs to
develop and research countermeasures for this sort of stuff - classification
and regulation is meaningless as deterrence.

~~~
taneq
Biological weapons are more restricted by the fact that they're impossible to
control, and so using an effective one is a suicide mission.

Honestly I find them far scarier than the other two because as technology
improves, it's becoming easier and easier to build designer diseases in a back
yard lab.

~~~
Symmetry
Most mass produced biological weapons are things like anthrax or tularemia
that aren't human to human transmissible. The USSR did have several tons of
weaponized smallpox but nothing on the scale of their anthrax production.

------
credit_guy
The devil is in the details.

Here's some legitimate drone swarm military applications that wouldn't qualify
as WMD:

* reconnaissance drone swarms; the drones can be as small as a hummingbird, but they can also be larger; their "weapon" is their camera.

* armed drone swarms aimed for saturation attacks against military naval assets.

* armed drone swarms for area denial. Think defense of a large uninhabited border area between Russia and China. If you detect a mass of tanks crossing the border and send a drone swarm to kill everything in that area, the danger of killing non-combatants is nil

------
01100011
We should be thinking about all sorts of ways in which autonomous systems can
create a whole new style of warfare. The combination of deep learning and
targetted weaponry create extremely efficient killing machines. "Off the
shelf" lasers combined with facial recognition, actuators and cameras could
permanently blind a battalion in seconds, before anyone even had time to know
what was going on. I think it's only a matter of time before we see 'dazzlers'
used both on and off the battlefield.

~~~
chongli
Blinding laser weapons are already forbidden by UN protocol [1]. Any country
employing them would open themselves up to prosecution for war crimes.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_on_Blinding_Laser_Wea...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_on_Blinding_Laser_Weapons)

~~~
gowld
People fighting wars don't care about the UN Police.

~~~
chongli
Tell that to Slobodan Milosevic [1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slobodan_Milošević](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slobodan_Milošević)

~~~
augustt
Maybe it would be more accurate to say the winners don't care about war
crimes.

------
Symmetry
We don't have a good track record of successfully banning weapons that are
useful to major powers.

[https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-
ch...](https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical-
weapons-anymore/)

------
Havoc
The whole WMD classification distracts here I think.

Plus nobody is stuffing this genie back in its bottle. Unlike nuclear or
chemical it doesn't require a complicated precursor and is much easier to sell
as "well be careful OK".

Think about it...your Roomba cleans your floor autonomously and your kid has a
100 buck drone as a toy. Yeah some pieces of the swarming puzzle are missing
but give it a year or three and even that is will be widespread.

Meanwhile Trump is rolling back mutual agreements, Putin is posturing as usual
and China is building drones faster than anyone else (see toy above).

This horse bolted years ago

~~~
imtringued
Human control over weapons is the only reasons why humans have power. If you
cut out humans from the loop they just turn back into mere animals.

------
cryptonector
Well, these drone swarms would have to be solar, and possibly have downtime,
be easy to shoot down, vulnerable to jamming perhaps, etc. As long as there's
a counter, it's not that bad. Still, I'm surprised the U.S. isn't going more
for this than, say, the F-35.

Anyways, how would you verify that signatories don't have drone swarms and
can't make and deploy them quickly even if they don't have them? It seems to
me that verification is practically impossible.

~~~
imtringued
I personally love the idea of a drone swarm flying over the ocean. All of them
will run out of battery after 15 min and then disappear into the ocean.

------
blitmap
I'm not sure how contributory to the discussion this is, but I love watching
this short every couple years:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyMNIFZTQkg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyMNIFZTQkg)

(I love it in the sense that I'd love a dystopian scifi movie, but not a
reality like this)

------
virtualritz
"Weapon Systems of the Twenty First Century or the Upside-Down Evolution" by
Stanisław Lem (1986).

------
iaw
While fiction (and not the most realistic) there is a scene with a drone swarm
in 'Angel Has Fallen' that hints at the potential lethality of autonomous
swarms.

------
imtringued
A fully autonomous drone might sound cool because they are less prone to
jamming but they essentially threaten the concept of human sovereignty. Unless
there is a human to supervise them and provide targeting data they shouldn't
exist. The reason why the AI control problem is dangerous is that it assumes
that the AI can project force beyond the ability of a human army.

------
Robotbeat
Mines are basically non-mobile versions of these.

~~~
082349872349872
marine mine delivery is done by JDAM these days ... no idea how non-mobile the
mines themselves may still be

------
082349872349872
This puts a new light on Wuhan thanking their doctors and nurses with a big
drone show instead of jet flybys.

------
cabite
What about this:

A swarm of non lethal drones equipped with 3D/depth cameras that collaborate
in order to establish a dynamic 3D map of the terrain. A user consuming data
from the swarm would enjoy a live "God's view" on what actually happens in
reality, but through a 3D view displayed on a screen, very much like in
Starcraft but without an artificial "fog of war".

This isn't a weapon of mass destruction nor a weapon in the classical meaning
of the word.

But is this a weapon system, i.e. a system meant to ensure or enhance a
weapon's function, such as targeting and guidance ?

~~~
nexuist
This already exists: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-
IS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS)

I think you would be hard pressed to classify cameras as weapons. No one is
being harmed by the action of taking a picture - you would have to introduce a
separate weapon, such as a missile or gun, to cause any damage, and those are
all governed by existing regulations.

------
trhway
>Banning AFADS from use in outer space and the seabed may have secondary
national-security benefits, such as reducing the risk from drone swarms to
sea-based nuclear forces.

big guys from the elite nuke wielding club naturally wouldn't want small guys
being able to threaten them. Reminds this saying "God created men equal.
Colonel Colt made them equal."

~~~
cryptonector
Would you prefer every nation of note have nukes and delivery capabilities?
Because it sounds like you would prefer that.

If every nation has nukes, plausible deniability for suitcase nukes goes out
the window, and, with it, MAD. That's a guarantee that nukes will then be
used.

~~~
zxcmx
Well that's irony right? If Iraq had _actually_ had credible WMDs they would
never have been invaded.

Not like these lessons have been lost on North Korea or Iran. There's the
things the international community says about nukes on one hand, and there's
how they actually treat you when you don't have them on the other.

The realpolitik view is that you don't have _actual_ sovereignty without
nukes. In my opinion this is why the U.K. for example (which, let's be honest,
doesn't really have any practical use for the damn things and wastes a lot of
money on them) is nuclear armed.

~~~
cryptonector
Non-sequitur. I did not and do not deny that nukes buy you immunity from
conventional attacks -- they clearly do. I said that too many countries having
them will lead to their being used with plausible deniability. Got an answer
to that?

~~~
zxcmx
Agree we're talking past each other a bit. Sorry. I agree with you that
proliferation is bad, but I'd like to elaborate.

Summarising as I see it:

OP's point was that WMDs (of all kinds) are an equalizer between nations.

Your response was that nuclear proliferation creates instability. You also I
think unfairly characterised OP's position as being pro-nuclear proliferation.
You assumed OP was talking about nukes but I believe they were making a
broader point.

My response to you was that nuclear anti-proliferation efforts create a kind
of hegemony where dominant nations get cemented in power forever.

For the record, I'm also anti-nuclear-proliferation, but I wanted to point out
that from the point of view of anyone not under the protective nuclear
umbrella of a dominant nation there's a heavy element of hypocrisy involved.

Circling back around to drones, I can see why the U.S. might want to restrict
them or classify them as WMDs. I think the following is where OP was coming
from:

They have the potential to undermine conventional power and effectively turn
war into a competition of mass _cheap_ manufacturing capability. It's not at
all clear in 2020 that the U.S. (in particular) would be able to dominate in
such a situation.

They're super hard to regulate in the sense that a nation aligned to a major
manufacturing power could acquire or stockpile them in massive quantities with
little oversight.

It would create a possibly surprising shift in power where the U.S. might not
be able to project conventional force into areas where they would normally
expect to be able to do that.

They're also tricky in terms of message management (big part of warfare)
because when used defensively, a nuclear response to them is not politically
credible. So you can't use the big stick.

This doesn't create _nuclear_ instability but it does create "instability" in
the sense that it has the potential to shift the balance of power for the
existing nuclear and conventional hegemony.

Which I think was the crux of the OP's original point.

~~~
cryptonector
> Your response was that nuclear proliferation creates instability. You also I
> think unfairly characterised OP's position as being pro-nuclear
> proliferation. You assumed OP was talking about nukes but I believe they
> were making a broader point.

My question to OP had been whether they are pro-proliferation. You're free to
take the question as "characterizing their position as pro-proliferation" all
you want, but I think it's a fair question.

