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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

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.

afarrell 8y ago
> Rarely do human actors have any discretion in the field That seems like a very strong claim.
omginternets 8y ago
>Rarely do human actors have any discretion in the field Spoken like someone who's never been anywhere near the military. In case I wasn't clear enough: this is patently false, as any combat veteran can attest. ROE often explicitly allow for discretion in target engagement.
- javajosh 8y ago
  How does a drone pilot, or a pilot in general, show discretion?
  - dogma1138 8y ago
    Most orders to fire will be discretionary, in both if, when and with what to engage it’s fairly rare for an order to engage to be explicit and in those cases they can still request confirmation including from higher up in the chain of command (depending on who is actually commanding the mission) only if it’s a direct order would they have to follow it at that point unless it’s an illegal order. Pilots drone or not have the best situational awareness and they often scrub missions and even abort after launch if the situation changes to what they would consider unacceptable. Essentially any type of “fire at will” order is discretionary. Pilots didn’t sign up to blow up schools and hospitals and they can and are directly liable for any collateral damage and civilian casualties they can and do question the intelligence and information which lead to authorizing the strike they’ll asses the strike package and they will assess the situation and the target to the best of their abilities before engaging. Shit does happen, mistakes are made but they are by far not the norm.
    - GordonS 8y ago
      > Pilots [...] are directly liable for any collateral damage and civilian casualties Serious question, are you aware of any cases of US pilots ever being punished for collateral damage or hitting the wrong target?
      - dogma1138 8y ago
        Do you know of any cases where pilots intentionally hit the wrong targets? The laws both national and international that govern military operations don’t put civilian lives a head of military operations in all cases. I’m not American but from my experience we had to do a lot of work for risk reduction when planning missions, essentially we perform and throughly document the process in which we reduce the risk of collateral damage that came in form of selecting a strike package to minimize the damage, choosing a time that would ensure minimal non-combatants in the AO and also providing the parameters of engagement to the pilots based on the value of the target. I can say that out of the approved strikes close to 50% of them were aborted last minute and even after munition launch due to the pilots giving us the no-clear in the last moment and then essentially missing the window of opportunity.
        GordonS 8y ago
        > Do you know of any cases where pilots intentionally hit the wrong targets? I'm not involved with the military in any way, shape or form. My guess would be that if such a thing happened, it would be buried (see Chelsea Manning, Abu Ghraib etc). You did say though that pilots are directly liable for any collateral damage, so I was curious as to whether that had any real meaning - would a pilot actually face charges (military or criminal) if they, for example, negligently fired upon the wrong building, or failed to abort launching against a pre-approved target that it later turned out was obviously a school, hospital, wedding party, etc?
        dogma1138 8y ago
        Pilots for the most part don’t take on missions that are in clear violation of the military code of conduct and international law, mistakes happen but they are mistakes. If a pilot tracks a school bus that loaded a bunch of kids and heading into town and calls it a military target and blows it up they will be charged. Investigations also happen quite often, quite often they don’t result in anything because everyone did what they were supposed to do to reduce the risk and make the best judgment call based on the information they had. You can’t charge people for making a mistake as shitty as you might think it is war gets people killed by definition and for the most part professional soldiers do what they can to make sure that the people who die are combatants.
  - omginternets 8y ago
    Infantryman here, so I can't quite speak to how pilots make their decisions (and I think the sibling comment answers this pretty well). However, I can attest that pilots routinely provide us infantrymen with information that we weigh very heavily in our decision to engage. Moreover, it is often the case that air-strikes fall under the "close air support" (CAS) category, which in turn means the aircraft shoots where and when the ground troops request it. In other words: discretion is what separates the professional soldier from the disorganized militia.
winceschwab 8y ago
Actually, if anything, that means everything that happens next matters now more than ever. Put another way, if we think of 1960's era ICBM technology as entry level autonomous warfare, it's the least effective example of this kind of technology. That alone should give a bit of pause. That is how potent this technology is, and it should be regarded with no lighter wariness. It is more precise, more durable, more accurate, and worst of all, requires fewer people per intervention, indicating that it can be operated with a hair trigger, leaving the capacity to react with force more prone to emotional decisions. If it seems that ordinary guns make it easier for ordinary civilian citizens to lash out at tens of victims, this technology will expand that ability even further. But, put in the hands of unrestrained organizations and institutions, operating with the capacity and constraints of nation-state authority, no less than World War III is on the table.
- Jugglerofworlds 8y ago
  What about defensive measures? Can these things be taken out with electromagnetic interference or a net? Maybe some sort of autonomous laser turret to melt the propellers of the drones?
  - imrelaxed 8y ago
    US military has a lot of anti drone weapons including lasers. If you’re worried about facial recognition then masks or makeup are what you’re looking for.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
KineticLensman 8y ago
> Rarely do human actors have any discretion in the field It's precisely because people do have discretion that we have the concept of the strategic corporal [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Block_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Block_War
unit91 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
  - imrelaxed 8y ago
    There’s no race war in America, only a misguided drug war, stop disseminating nonsense.
    - Abekkus 8y ago
      The drug war has always been a cultural and class war, and of course it cuts along racial lines, as well as political ones. Not nonsense at all. https://youtu.be/sXPOw2unxy0?t=238 https://youtu.be/sXPOw2unxy0?t=238
  - ryanmarsh 8y ago
    > 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.

afarrell 8y ago

> Rarely do human actors have any discretion in the field That seems like a very strong claim.

omginternets 8y ago

>Rarely do human actors have any discretion in the field Spoken like someone who's never been anywhere near the military. In case I wasn't clear enough: this is patently false, as any combat veteran can attest. ROE often explicitly allow for discretion in target engagement.

javajosh 8y ago
How does a drone pilot, or a pilot in general, show discretion?
- dogma1138 8y ago
  Most orders to fire will be discretionary, in both if, when and with what to engage it’s fairly rare for an order to engage to be explicit and in those cases they can still request confirmation including from higher up in the chain of command (depending on who is actually commanding the mission) only if it’s a direct order would they have to follow it at that point unless it’s an illegal order. Pilots drone or not have the best situational awareness and they often scrub missions and even abort after launch if the situation changes to what they would consider unacceptable. Essentially any type of “fire at will” order is discretionary. Pilots didn’t sign up to blow up schools and hospitals and they can and are directly liable for any collateral damage and civilian casualties they can and do question the intelligence and information which lead to authorizing the strike they’ll asses the strike package and they will assess the situation and the target to the best of their abilities before engaging. Shit does happen, mistakes are made but they are by far not the norm.
  - GordonS 8y ago
    > Pilots [...] are directly liable for any collateral damage and civilian casualties Serious question, are you aware of any cases of US pilots ever being punished for collateral damage or hitting the wrong target?
    - dogma1138 8y ago
      Do you know of any cases where pilots intentionally hit the wrong targets? The laws both national and international that govern military operations don’t put civilian lives a head of military operations in all cases. I’m not American but from my experience we had to do a lot of work for risk reduction when planning missions, essentially we perform and throughly document the process in which we reduce the risk of collateral damage that came in form of selecting a strike package to minimize the damage, choosing a time that would ensure minimal non-combatants in the AO and also providing the parameters of engagement to the pilots based on the value of the target. I can say that out of the approved strikes close to 50% of them were aborted last minute and even after munition launch due to the pilots giving us the no-clear in the last moment and then essentially missing the window of opportunity.
      - GordonS 8y ago
        > Do you know of any cases where pilots intentionally hit the wrong targets? I'm not involved with the military in any way, shape or form. My guess would be that if such a thing happened, it would be buried (see Chelsea Manning, Abu Ghraib etc). You did say though that pilots are directly liable for any collateral damage, so I was curious as to whether that had any real meaning - would a pilot actually face charges (military or criminal) if they, for example, negligently fired upon the wrong building, or failed to abort launching against a pre-approved target that it later turned out was obviously a school, hospital, wedding party, etc?
        dogma1138 8y ago
        Pilots for the most part don’t take on missions that are in clear violation of the military code of conduct and international law, mistakes happen but they are mistakes. If a pilot tracks a school bus that loaded a bunch of kids and heading into town and calls it a military target and blows it up they will be charged. Investigations also happen quite often, quite often they don’t result in anything because everyone did what they were supposed to do to reduce the risk and make the best judgment call based on the information they had. You can’t charge people for making a mistake as shitty as you might think it is war gets people killed by definition and for the most part professional soldiers do what they can to make sure that the people who die are combatants.
- omginternets 8y ago
  Infantryman here, so I can't quite speak to how pilots make their decisions (and I think the sibling comment answers this pretty well). However, I can attest that pilots routinely provide us infantrymen with information that we weigh very heavily in our decision to engage. Moreover, it is often the case that air-strikes fall under the "close air support" (CAS) category, which in turn means the aircraft shoots where and when the ground troops request it. In other words: discretion is what separates the professional soldier from the disorganized militia.

winceschwab 8y ago

Actually, if anything, that means everything that happens next matters now more than ever. Put another way, if we think of 1960's era ICBM technology as entry level autonomous warfare, it's the least effective example of this kind of technology. That alone should give a bit of pause. That is how potent this technology is, and it should be regarded with no lighter wariness. It is more precise, more durable, more accurate, and worst of all, requires fewer people per intervention, indicating that it can be operated with a hair trigger, leaving the capacity to react with force more prone to emotional decisions. If it seems that ordinary guns make it easier for ordinary civilian citizens to lash out at tens of victims, this technology will expand that ability even further. But, put in the hands of unrestrained organizations and institutions, operating with the capacity and constraints of nation-state authority, no less than World War III is on the table.

Jugglerofworlds 8y ago
What about defensive measures? Can these things be taken out with electromagnetic interference or a net? Maybe some sort of autonomous laser turret to melt the propellers of the drones?
- imrelaxed 8y ago
  US military has a lot of anti drone weapons including lasers. If you’re worried about facial recognition then masks or makeup are what you’re looking for.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

KineticLensman 8y ago

> Rarely do human actors have any discretion in the field It's precisely because people do have discretion that we have the concept of the strategic corporal [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Block_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Block_War

unit91 8y ago

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 8y ago
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.
- imrelaxed 8y ago
  There’s no race war in America, only a misguided drug war, stop disseminating nonsense.
  - Abekkus 8y ago
    The drug war has always been a cultural and class war, and of course it cuts along racial lines, as well as political ones. Not nonsense at all. https://youtu.be/sXPOw2unxy0?t=238 https://youtu.be/sXPOw2unxy0?t=238
- ryanmarsh 8y ago
  > 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.