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Killing machines: how Russia and Ukraine’s race to perfect deadly pilotless drones could harm us all
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
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The article gives a good overview of the situation. I have only a few things to add.
war is a match of game theory (finding moves that harm the opponent) and accelerated evolution of the technology and methods for doing so
if a weapon works, choosing not to use it typically increases chance of defeat
there is no doubt that autonomous weapons work
about the only thing which seems to prevent some weapons (e.g. of mass destruction) from being used in some wars, is threat of being targeted with the same kind, or a large coalition of opponents forming and intervening
so, only continued development of international law (collective agreement on behalf of a large coalition of states, representing most of human population) has any chance of restraining use of autonomous weapons
sadly, I don't see states wanting continued development of international law
restraining production of autonomous weapons is probably hopeless, a reasonably good competition robot can be weaponized with some success
So, future will have states threatening each other with swarms of autonomous weapons, and terrorist entitities using them at a smaller scale. Weapons that destroy electronics (EMP, microwave, lasers for frying cameras) will be highly sought after for defense. Air defense and antidrone systems will be much more common than today. At some point in history, there will be a war where a large swarm of autonomous weapons is used for mass destruction (maybe against civilians too). Quite possibly, a response will be given with a different weapon of mass destruction (e.g. nuclear EMP used to disable the swarm). Regulation is unlikely to succceed since states are nowhere near agreement (in fact, fighting new and avoidable wars among each other).