
Military robots are getting smaller and more capable - prostoalex
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2017/12/14/military-robots-are-getting-smaller-and-more-capable
======
LMYahooTFY
Something even more terrifying to me is illuminated by a talk from John Sotos
who served as Chief Medical Officer for Intel.

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

"...defensive technology always lags offensive technology. So you know, the
cancer moonshot I would propose is dual use, just like nuclear weapons and
nuclear power, two sides of the same coin. The ideal cancer treatment someday
is going to be the doctors biopsy your tumor, get a sample, send it down to
the lab, the lab will figure out the genetic signature of your exact cancer
tumor. Then somebody will build a virus, that using that if-then statement,
only targets the cancer cells in you. They'll put that virus inside you,
you'll feel like you have a cold for a few days, the virus will go to work
destroying your cancer, and then you'll wake up cancer free. That's a pretty
good deal, we all want that to happen.

But notice this exquisite targeting overcomes that big drawback against
bioweapons. So the new technologies are going to allow incredibly targeted
bioweapons. So think about three different axis. Who might you target?...you
could also target a family, like the royal family. You could target a group of
people, or an entire species."

He goes on to describe examples of what he asserts will be possible to do,
which is target virtually any identifiable characteristic among a life form,
or cause practically any sort of deficiency or alteration within cells.

He also points out that Biotech is currently outpacing Moore's Law, and this
technology will likely become extremely cheap extremely fast.

~~~
Swizec
I have a friend who's doing a PHd in building logic gates in bacterial DNA so
you could program, say, E. Coli to do specific things in the body. Learning
about her research is astounding, fascinating, and terrifying all at the same
time.

~~~
samstave
Nearly ten years ago I ran into a researcher from UCSF who was working with
StemCells where she had designed a fluid-matrix that she 3D printed, then
wrote a python program to control valves which released certain proteins to
the cells to determine how to get them to express into a certain type
tissue/organ cell.

I just point out how cheap off the shelf tooling that we take for granted in
our industries and hobbies are also fueling this wave of change and how
readily available they are

The tools and materials to build something like this are free and open to
literally anyone on the planet. So it makes sense that given enough exposure
to human ingenuity, with the right tools freely available, any reality is
possible.

~~~
johnchristopher
I'll be that guy and ask: ten years later, are there new treatments based on
that field that we didn't have at that time ?

~~~
simonh
Probably not. Most radically novel technological approaches to problems fail,
but as the range of new tools and techniques available expand, their possible
combinations increase exponentially. Most will still fail, but hopefully many
of them won’t just as with startups.

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maxxxxx
It will be interesting to see how this plays out once robots get more capable.
If the people who planned the Iraq 2003 invasion had had robots available they
may have just invaded more countries. Losing their own soldiers' lives is a
strong incentive for politicians to limit military adventures. Once the cost
to invade a country is only financial they may be tempted to be more
aggressive.

~~~
ryanmarsh
_once robots get more capable_

There’s a common misconception that robots are not yet capable enough. This
obscures the present, unexecuted, reality.

It is well within the budget of many nations to build grenade carrying swarms
of drones capable of autonomously patrolling and attacking human targets. The
fact that we have not seen this on a wide scale has no bearing on present
capabilities, or that which is within reach. If you search YouTube you can
already find examples of ISIS using remote piloted inexpensive drones to
attack armored targets with devastating effectiveness.

This is here, now.

As a former light infantry grunt I have a visceral feel for the breathtaking
transformation of the battle space we may soon witness. Within an AO it is
very challenging to deny access to light infantry, even in the most foreboding
terrain. Autonomous drones can and will effectively deny infantry access to
large areas. This fundamentally changes ground warfare, even guerrilla.

Use logic. Can a drone recognize someone holding a weapon? Can a system be
devised to demark areas of friendlies? Are all nations as cautious as the US
when it comes to each weapons release?

~~~
lowbloodsugar
1500 rounds in a Phalanx, so need 1510 drones (catapults, radar, any aircraft
on deck), at, say $5000 each. $7.5m to take a carrier out of the battle. I
hope the Navy has wargamed this or demonstrated the phalanx software wont shit
itself with that many targets.

~~~
imrelaxed
Check out the US Navy’s new laser cannon!

~~~
raducu
It would be a shame if those drones were covered with mirrors,wouldn't it?

~~~
ntsplnkv2
That means more weight, more cost, for something that is ultimately
disposable.

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Pxtl
We have had the technology to have something the size of a remote controlled
car that could murder every person in sight in a blink of an eye for some
time.

Modern warfare is much more about deciding who to shoot than it is about
effectively shooting them.

~~~
pixl97
That's only because we are trying to avoid total war, hence the release of
nuclear weapons. If nukes didn't exist, I think technology along these lines
would be far more terrifying than it is now.

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kartan
An interesting video talked about in the article:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA)

~~~
themagician
I’m honestly surprised that these don’t exist already. I know the IDF was
working on facial recognition for combat drones back in 2009, and I’m
surprised this hasn’t been seen in the wild yet.

~~~
Eridrus
We definitely don't have good enough face recognition for use in combat. We
have face recognition that mostly works if you've got a small pool of faces
and a clear photo. Not really sure why you would want to put face recognition
on military robots though.

~~~
sitkack
Our ROE are fluid enough that detection will suffice, orders like "kill all
the faces in this geofenced region" wouldn't seem out of the ordinary.

~~~
icebraining
It will certainly be quite surrealist to see a bunch of people standing
around, just covering their faces with their hands, waiting for the drone to
pass.

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sorokod
There is no doubt that as the technology advances it will spil over to the
civilian umm... "market". A truly terrifying prospect.

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amai
Don't forget about all those simple
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_countermeasure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_countermeasure)
devices.

The Russians had quite some success in Syria using
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasukha_(electronic_warfare_s...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasukha_\(electronic_warfare_system\))
. ([https://thedefensepost.com/2018/05/01/russia-syria-
electroni...](https://thedefensepost.com/2018/05/01/russia-syria-electronic-
warfare/))

All those sensitive electronic robots are useless in a real war. Makes me
wonder who really needs them?

~~~
yorwba
Jamming communications doesn't make robots useless. It just means that they
can't be controlled remotely, can't use GPS to navigate and can't provide
real-time surveillance.

That can be worked around by pre-programming a fixed route or an objective to
be fulfilled autonomously, by using celestial navigation or geographical
landmarks, and by having surveillance drones return to base to deliver
recordings using a physical connection.

~~~
ntsplnkv2
Are there drones that use celestial navigation?

What if it's cloudy?

~~~
yorwba
I don't know about drones, but it is in use for missiles
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_guidance#Astro-
inertia...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_guidance#Astro-
inertial_guidance)

Cloudiness would be a problem, but in that case you could still fall back to a
combination of other systems.

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pontifier
can't read the article as it's behind a paywall, but I've recently become very
paranoid. Just a few minutes ago I was thinking about small autonomous drones
that are just big enough to infiltrate a building and insert themselves into
the usb port of otherwise secure machines then escape with sensitive
information.

I think I'll start printing some usb port covers as a countermeasure.

~~~
earenndil
There was a post recently about a computer that could fit inside of a usb
port, little arm chip. It was meant as an open yubikey substitute, but you
could easily hide one of those inside of a mass-produced cell phone charger,
and suddenly you have something doing arbitrary computation. It didn't have a
wireless chip, but on the other hand it was $30, if you made it using off-the-
shelf consumer parts. I'm sure an industrial complex would be able to shave
the size down and potentially add a wireless chip. Scary stuff.

~~~
icebraining
USB Wifi adapters have been tiny for years, and they have a wireless chip
(obviously) and certainly some computation.

------
javajosh
Violent action is already mediated by compute devices: police and soldiers are
dispatched by computer command to capture or kill people they don't know and
have never seen before. Rarely do human actors have _any_ discretion in the
field, so the fact that a human constitutes "the tip of the spear" wouldn't
seem to matter much.

~~~
unit91
Afghanistan combat veteran here. You've seen WAY too many movies.

Discretion is everything. Any time we'd hit a compound, we would pore over the
intelligence, assess whether this was a likely badguy, whether they were a key
player or just a low level radical, etc.

Equally important, are the people around said badguy likely also bad or
innocent bystanders? If they're probably bad we want to capture them all
together. If they're probably innocent we want to wait until the dude wanders
off to minimize the risk to civilian life and property, even if that means
greater risk to us.

Once you actually get to the target location, it starts all over again, only
with less time and information. _Is that a shovel or an RPG? I can 't quite
tell from here. Looks like an RPG -- what if I'm wrong? There's a house behind
him, what's the risk if I wait 30 seconds...?_

It's a real profession that takes real expertise by people with real emotions.

~~~
wolf550e
Unfortunately, it seems the ROE of American occupation forces in Afghanistan
is more civilian-friendly than the ROE of American cops fighting the drug/race
war.

~~~
ryanmarsh
> Unfortunately, it seems the ROE of American occupation forces in Afghanistan
> is more civilian-friendly than the ROE of American cops

You had me until race war but yes. This is true in my exp.

~~~
thedailymail
Related question – a relatively high percentage (~20%) of police officers are
ex-military. It does seem that military ROE is more stringent than what we've
seen from recent evidence of problems in police/citizen interactions. Do you
think there is a cultural problem within police departments that engenders a
weakening of discipline wrt use of force? Or is it just that the problems that
occur domestically in the US get more coverage, and the rate of misapplied
state violence is similar?

~~~
ryanmarsh
Ex-military is not ex-combat veteran. Having been adequately trained for and
employed in the use of deadly force (vs. refueling trucks or counting bullets)
are two very different things. 1 in 10 soldiers are actually in a combat job.

It all comes down to training and experience. Police training budgets are
tight, officers roll in single squad cars (little safety), sometimes physical
fitness standards aren't upheld (fat cops can't scrap with someone they have
to use a device to subdue them), and mental health issues abound (the job can
be quite stressful and boring at the same time).

I've watched a lot of body cam footage of (legitimate) police shootings. I
wonder how many of these one on one situations would have turned violent if
the perp knew there were two officers bearing down on him instead of one?

------
scotty79
I wonder how NRA prepares to defend guns as anti-dictatorship constitutional
tool against government that has thumb size drones that can inject lethal dose
of botox in your left butt cheek on demand.

~~~
noonespecial
I suspect the same way they always do. The people who send thumb sized drones
to kill have to go home and live somewhere.

What's a bullet but a really fast, low tech thumb sized drone that can kill?

~~~
scotty79
> The people who send thumb sized drones to kill have to go home and live
> somewhere.

All 12 of them? They may live on their private islands.

Or even in the Whitehouse. Do you think approaching Whitehouse with a gun will
be easier in the world of military thumb sized drones than it is today?

~~~
icebraining
Those 12 people don't actually send the drone, they just tell someone (to tell
someone, etc) to send the drone. Until we have full Skynet abilities, they
will need a bunch of people on the ground to do the work.

~~~
scotty79
Tech companies require less and less people to operate. Military will become
tech company once small drones make infantry obsolete.

~~~
icebraining
Right, but even tech companies have a lot of people. Google has 85000
employees, plus many, many more that produce supplies they depend on (like
most of the hardware). It's not 12 people on private islands.

