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EMPs make robot war between states of similar capability pretty unlikely. Robots are only particularly interesting against enemies who can't wield meaningful el
by superuser2 11y ago
EMPs make robot war between states of similar capability pretty unlikely. Robots are only particularly interesting against enemies who can't wield meaningful electronic countermeasures, like protesters and other domestic uprisings.
We often mark the fall of a regime at the point where its army and secret police take off their uniforms, climb down from the guard towers, and join the protest crowd (or go home). Robots can remain loyal to the central command structure to the very end.
Human police forces are liable to defect if not paid, likely to refuse suicidal engagements, and may even refuse immoral engagements. With good enough engineering, a regime's drones will remain ruthlessly efficient even when it runs out of money, is obviously on the wrong side of history, and is obviously going to lose.
I'm not sure whether the final outcomes of revolutions would change, but their endings will certainly be longer and more painful. A Berlin Wall capable of defending itself indefinitely without human intervention would not have fallen so easily.
- alecco 11y ago> EMPs make robot war between states of similar capability pretty unlikely Hmm, they can just shield the control modules (cpu and memory). And use optical storage or similar for large amounts of data and basic programming. Also, EMPs usually last only a couple of seconds and can only be effective in a small area. Maybe the robots can just reboot and wait for a valid command a few seconds later by some flying drone.
- superuser2 11y agoEMPs burn out circuits, so equipment can't just be turned back on. Also, not an electrical engineer, but my understanding is that shielding involves grounding, which is relatively difficult for things that fly.
- Phlarp 11y agoAlso worth noting that "shielding" electronics is not a binary field-- The damage that occurs depends on both the strength of the magnetic field produced and the specific electronics in question. A strong enough EMP, perhaps one from a coronal mass ejection on the sun, might require a mountain of shielding to adequately protect sensitive electronics. On the flip side, a vacuum tube calculator would be much more resilient than an iphone.