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Drones: Haven't drones already been used in wars? Like I remember a huge furor about drone strikes during the Obama presidency? Self-driving: Can you elaborate

Drones: Haven't drones already been used in wars? Like I remember a huge furor about drone strikes during the Obama presidency? Self-driving: Can you elaborate on this a little more? You mean having self driving trucks on supply routes makes it much harder to break supply lines? EVs: I think this one is already mainstream. Not in the sense that most people already have or are buying EVs but everyone from car manufacturers to bureaucrats are on the train already and it is only a matter of time.

nostrademons 6y ago
Drones: They have, but this is like how in WW1 the role of aircraft was to spot targets for the army & navy, while in WW2 air power was the decisive factor in the war and the army / surface ships would come mop up after your bombers had flattened the enemy forces. Right now we use drones as support craft for reconnaissance & assassinations. It's likely that the next "big" war will be fought almost entirely between drones & robots and humans will come in afterwards to mop up after one side has a decisive advantage (or get hunted down by a rogue AI gone wild - personally I think that outcome is more sci-fi than real though). Armenia/Azerbaijan gives us a taste but the drones in use there are still largely manually-controlled consumer craft rather than fully autonomous swarms. Self-driving: Right now, the biggest problem with self-driving car adoption is that when anyone dies at the hands of a self-driving car, there's a huge press outcry and the whole program gets shut down. That calculus changes dramatically if the other side is actively trying to kill you. Then, it becomes a huge advantage to not even send drivers into the war zone, and resupply with automated logistics lines. Instead of becoming an invention that potentially kills people, it becomes an invention that saves lots of people, because the baseline shifts from "nobody ever dies young" to "young people are actively trying to kill each other". It also gives a huge advantage to the side that adopts it, because they can resupply as quickly as they can build materials instead of losing costly human lives in the effort, and the vehicles themselves can often follow evasive routes that wouldn't be practical for a human crew.
- rakejake 6y ago
  Drones: Interesting. But I think the very nature of drone warfare precludes any sort of big war. I think drone warfare, like nuclear warfare becomes an arms race and countries will quickly realize its futility. Adversaries will continue to use more mundane techniques like propaganda, misinformation etc like we have seen in the past decade. Autonomous drones will be useful in guerrilla-style warfare though because of their suitability to reconnaissance. Drones (like nuclear weapons before them) make war a lot more expensive. I guess only the top 5-7 armies in the world will have the technology and expertise to maintain drones. So a conflict like the one in Iraq will have a swift conclusion, but the calculus among the big nations will remain mostly unchanged IMHO. Self-driving: I think the biggest problem with self-driving in this scenario is the very moniker "self-driving". But it is very likely there are vehicles being tested today that are programmed to avoid minefields, use sophisticated path planning algorithms to avoid detection, minimize fuel consumption etc. Sort of a jeep-sized roomba that traverses a region instead of your living room.

nostrademons 6y ago

Drones: They have, but this is like how in WW1 the role of aircraft was to spot targets for the army & navy, while in WW2 air power was the decisive factor in the war and the army / surface ships would come mop up after your bombers had flattened the enemy forces. Right now we use drones as support craft for reconnaissance & assassinations. It's likely that the next "big" war will be fought almost entirely between drones & robots and humans will come in afterwards to mop up after one side has a decisive advantage (or get hunted down by a rogue AI gone wild - personally I think that outcome is more sci-fi than real though). Armenia/Azerbaijan gives us a taste but the drones in use there are still largely manually-controlled consumer craft rather than fully autonomous swarms. Self-driving: Right now, the biggest problem with self-driving car adoption is that when anyone dies at the hands of a self-driving car, there's a huge press outcry and the whole program gets shut down. That calculus changes dramatically if the other side is actively trying to kill you. Then, it becomes a huge advantage to not even send drivers into the war zone, and resupply with automated logistics lines. Instead of becoming an invention that potentially kills people, it becomes an invention that saves lots of people, because the baseline shifts from "nobody ever dies young" to "young people are actively trying to kill each other". It also gives a huge advantage to the side that adopts it, because they can resupply as quickly as they can build materials instead of losing costly human lives in the effort, and the vehicles themselves can often follow evasive routes that wouldn't be practical for a human crew.

rakejake 6y ago
Drones: Interesting. But I think the very nature of drone warfare precludes any sort of big war. I think drone warfare, like nuclear warfare becomes an arms race and countries will quickly realize its futility. Adversaries will continue to use more mundane techniques like propaganda, misinformation etc like we have seen in the past decade. Autonomous drones will be useful in guerrilla-style warfare though because of their suitability to reconnaissance. Drones (like nuclear weapons before them) make war a lot more expensive. I guess only the top 5-7 armies in the world will have the technology and expertise to maintain drones. So a conflict like the one in Iraq will have a swift conclusion, but the calculus among the big nations will remain mostly unchanged IMHO. Self-driving: I think the biggest problem with self-driving in this scenario is the very moniker "self-driving". But it is very likely there are vehicles being tested today that are programmed to avoid minefields, use sophisticated path planning algorithms to avoid detection, minimize fuel consumption etc. Sort of a jeep-sized roomba that traverses a region instead of your living room.