4 ms·

There's so-called "nuclear breakout time" for how quickly a non-nuclear nation could create nuclear weapons.[1] Time for a similar "slaughterbot breakout time.

by mLuby 5y ago

There's so-called "nuclear breakout time" for how quickly a non-nuclear nation could create nuclear weapons.[1] Time for a similar "slaughterbot breakout time."[2] However unlike with nuclear weapons, this is something a small team or even individual could soon achieve and then hold as a deterrent or use for sociopolitical aims.[3] It's easy to imagine an arms race between drones and the tiny point defense turrets (likely lasers, maybe kinetics or even EMPs) trying to disable them, both systems operating far faster than humans can react. In a strange way, wars fought like this may involve less loss of life, with soldiers surrendering to a cloud of slaughterbots that destroyed the automated defenses in seconds. This forthcoming ability to intimidate and harm precisely, anonymously, robotically, and at scale makes autocracy more likely and more durable. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_proliferation#Breakout_capability [2]: "Slaughterbots TED talk." https://youtu.be/9CO6M2HsoIA [3]: "Hated in the Nation" Black Mirror Season 3 Episode 6 (Netflix)

angelzen 5y ago
> wars fought like this may involve less loss of life Western audiences forget why wars were often fought to the last man. Mass murder could often be the merciful option. Vae victis. A military superpower unwilling to impose its will through sheer brutality is a huge historical outlier. As Pax Americana disintegrates, new powers will arise in its wake. ISIS was a brief glimpse into the future.
- jillesvangurp 5y ago
  The trick is going to be improved friend/foe detection. Historically, wars simply ended when the victor would kill all remaining enemy soldiers and enslaved their families and other people inside the areas they were defending. Brutal but effective. The last century since basically WWII and especially the Vietnam war, we've seen increasingly less brutal wars where harming innocents is seen as a negative (in the case of Vietnam, that was what eroded the will to fight). Lately, we're seeing a type of asynchronous war fare where huge armies are effectively powerless because an insignificant opponent is hiding among civilians delivering very minor attacks with no strategic relevance. There are a whole range of stale mate situations across especially the middle east where the attacking side is simply hard to root out without lots of undesirable casualties among civilians. Just ask the Israeli's. They live tens of kilometers away from people willing to die to risk launching rockets at them, despite the fact these rockets rarely hit anything. It's been the status quo for the last decades. Their military is big enough that it keeps foreign countries from trying to invade but domestically, it's clearly not able to end the conflict. Stalin would have ended that conflict in no time. There would be no-one remaining to figut, the local language would be Russian, and there might be a new Palestine presence somewhere deep in Siberia. His successor Putin has fared less well in Chechnya mainly because he would suffer internationally if he did it the Stalin way. Guerilla warfare is dependent on the other side being humane enough or unwilling to not want to cause unnecessary casualties. As long as attackers manage to hide, they can't be hunted down without large amounts of innocents dying. WWII style leveling of entire cities is very much frowned upon now. I live in such a city (Berlin). However, the ability for guerilla fighters to hide after an attack is time sensitive and critical to their survival. Drones swarming an area would make that a lot harder. Urban warfare particularly is dreaded by armies because of high casualty rates related to simply not knowing where the enemy is and the need to fight door to door to find them. This could fix that. It could be over in minutes. It won't end all wars but it will make particularly guerilla warfare a lot harder. ISIS could be a thing of the past. The next engagements with the likes of those might be short, brutal, and effective. Minimum (but not less) loss of life, maximum effectiveness. It would follow months of covert mapping the territory, inventorying its inhabitants, and tracking all their movements followed by a few minutes of mayhem. Some people find that scary but they forget what decades long of conflict or a real war looks like.
  - iSnow 5y ago
    IDK. First, I don't believe there will be any kind of surgical precision with autonomous weapons systems. Human drone operators have taken out way too many weddings for my liking, and the German army obliterated a lot of people gathering around a stuck tanker. Second, with a delay of say 10 years, swarm autonomous drones will be in the hand of insurgents. We've seen how ISIS took out tanks and troop by dropping tank shells from drones. They are not dumb and will happily adopt drone swarms. The science and IT is out there. It is true that armies have a harder time carpet-bombing cities, but at the same time, what modern armies hate even more is losing their own guys. Even a semi-capable killer drone swarm could make it real hard to take and hold cities if seemingly out of the blue your buddies drop dead. Insurgents typically will not care that much if there's dead civilians if they can terrorize invasion forces.
XorNot 5y ago
The problem with the Slaughterbots narrative is it's not actionable. We can choose not to build nuclear weapons: they're weapons with lots of weapons specific research associated. But drones aren't. The technology is general use: it's a natural consequence of a couple hundred incremental improvements, and the only difference between "weapon" and harmless is a software parameter and a payload. "Find and kill this person" is indistinguishable to a search and rescue AI, just with "on found and centre camera" triggering a bullet or a spike or a bomb and not text notification.
- f7ebc20c97 5y ago
  Guns are also "easy" to manufacture, but are successfully restricted. The clear outcome of this is the current ptb enslaving the world without needing so much as a police force.
  - XorNot 5y ago
    No they're not. On an international scale guns aren't restricted at all in any practical sense. Nuclear weapons can have international conventions and treaties because they're difficult and obvious to build. Mass producing cheap drones and downloading an AI from the internet to run on a repurposed Android phone is not only normal, it's already happening now.
    - vidarh 5y ago
      You also don't need a proper gun. A gun is a big advantage if you can't safely get close enough to someone without them getting a chance to react. But if you can fly a drone or a number of drones up to someone too fast for them to react, there are any number of other ways to kill them with easily obtainable materials.
      - pzo 5y ago
        Totally agree. Each drone already has 4 sharp blades. Easy to replace them to be slightly bigger, sharper and from e.g. titanium instead of plastic and covering with poison/venom. Enough to slit someone throat/wrist and wait until bleed to death or detect someone eye and stab with nail.
raxxorrax 5y ago
I would take my chances against a slaughterbot everytime compared to more mundane things like mustard gas. A slaughterbot obviously needs melee weapons and needs to be athletic. Ballistic platforms are probably far more effective, but it doesn't send the right message.
- WA 5y ago
  I would bet on the 1,000 Slaugherbots coming for you. Why do you assume it has to be only one? Slaughterbots could carry a small explosive, just like in the video. Doesn't have to be melee.
- dan_mctree 5y ago
  Why would they need melee? Just attach a lightweight single use gun barrel on top
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    It just wouldn't be the same dystopic feeling when they use guns.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    Because then people would realize that soldiers are just as lethal or perhaps even more lethal than drones.
- pzo 5y ago
  1) current small racing drones have speed >80mph, that's 35 meters per 1 second. You won't even have time to hear them and react while under attack. 2) current drones already have 4 tiny knives (blades). Enough to make it slightly larger/sharper and/or from titanium instead of plastic. That's enough to cut your throat or wrist and let you bleed to death ... 3) ... cover those blades with some venom or poison for "extra efficiency" 4) ... they probably don't even need some bullet - enough to detect your eye and stab you with a nail covered with venom/poison I doubt you would have any chance with just a dozen of slaughterbots. edit: formatting

by mLuby 5y ago

angelzen 5y ago

> wars fought like this may involve less loss of life Western audiences forget why wars were often fought to the last man. Mass murder could often be the merciful option. Vae victis. A military superpower unwilling to impose its will through sheer brutality is a huge historical outlier. As Pax Americana disintegrates, new powers will arise in its wake. ISIS was a brief glimpse into the future.

jillesvangurp 5y ago
The trick is going to be improved friend/foe detection. Historically, wars simply ended when the victor would kill all remaining enemy soldiers and enslaved their families and other people inside the areas they were defending. Brutal but effective. The last century since basically WWII and especially the Vietnam war, we've seen increasingly less brutal wars where harming innocents is seen as a negative (in the case of Vietnam, that was what eroded the will to fight). Lately, we're seeing a type of asynchronous war fare where huge armies are effectively powerless because an insignificant opponent is hiding among civilians delivering very minor attacks with no strategic relevance. There are a whole range of stale mate situations across especially the middle east where the attacking side is simply hard to root out without lots of undesirable casualties among civilians. Just ask the Israeli's. They live tens of kilometers away from people willing to die to risk launching rockets at them, despite the fact these rockets rarely hit anything. It's been the status quo for the last decades. Their military is big enough that it keeps foreign countries from trying to invade but domestically, it's clearly not able to end the conflict. Stalin would have ended that conflict in no time. There would be no-one remaining to figut, the local language would be Russian, and there might be a new Palestine presence somewhere deep in Siberia. His successor Putin has fared less well in Chechnya mainly because he would suffer internationally if he did it the Stalin way. Guerilla warfare is dependent on the other side being humane enough or unwilling to not want to cause unnecessary casualties. As long as attackers manage to hide, they can't be hunted down without large amounts of innocents dying. WWII style leveling of entire cities is very much frowned upon now. I live in such a city (Berlin). However, the ability for guerilla fighters to hide after an attack is time sensitive and critical to their survival. Drones swarming an area would make that a lot harder. Urban warfare particularly is dreaded by armies because of high casualty rates related to simply not knowing where the enemy is and the need to fight door to door to find them. This could fix that. It could be over in minutes. It won't end all wars but it will make particularly guerilla warfare a lot harder. ISIS could be a thing of the past. The next engagements with the likes of those might be short, brutal, and effective. Minimum (but not less) loss of life, maximum effectiveness. It would follow months of covert mapping the territory, inventorying its inhabitants, and tracking all their movements followed by a few minutes of mayhem. Some people find that scary but they forget what decades long of conflict or a real war looks like.
- iSnow 5y ago
  IDK. First, I don't believe there will be any kind of surgical precision with autonomous weapons systems. Human drone operators have taken out way too many weddings for my liking, and the German army obliterated a lot of people gathering around a stuck tanker. Second, with a delay of say 10 years, swarm autonomous drones will be in the hand of insurgents. We've seen how ISIS took out tanks and troop by dropping tank shells from drones. They are not dumb and will happily adopt drone swarms. The science and IT is out there. It is true that armies have a harder time carpet-bombing cities, but at the same time, what modern armies hate even more is losing their own guys. Even a semi-capable killer drone swarm could make it real hard to take and hold cities if seemingly out of the blue your buddies drop dead. Insurgents typically will not care that much if there's dead civilians if they can terrorize invasion forces.

XorNot 5y ago

The problem with the Slaughterbots narrative is it's not actionable. We can choose not to build nuclear weapons: they're weapons with lots of weapons specific research associated. But drones aren't. The technology is general use: it's a natural consequence of a couple hundred incremental improvements, and the only difference between "weapon" and harmless is a software parameter and a payload. "Find and kill this person" is indistinguishable to a search and rescue AI, just with "on found and centre camera" triggering a bullet or a spike or a bomb and not text notification.

f7ebc20c97 5y ago
Guns are also "easy" to manufacture, but are successfully restricted. The clear outcome of this is the current ptb enslaving the world without needing so much as a police force.
- XorNot 5y ago
  No they're not. On an international scale guns aren't restricted at all in any practical sense. Nuclear weapons can have international conventions and treaties because they're difficult and obvious to build. Mass producing cheap drones and downloading an AI from the internet to run on a repurposed Android phone is not only normal, it's already happening now.
  - vidarh 5y ago
    You also don't need a proper gun. A gun is a big advantage if you can't safely get close enough to someone without them getting a chance to react. But if you can fly a drone or a number of drones up to someone too fast for them to react, there are any number of other ways to kill them with easily obtainable materials.
    - pzo 5y ago
      Totally agree. Each drone already has 4 sharp blades. Easy to replace them to be slightly bigger, sharper and from e.g. titanium instead of plastic and covering with poison/venom. Enough to slit someone throat/wrist and wait until bleed to death or detect someone eye and stab with nail.

raxxorrax 5y ago

I would take my chances against a slaughterbot everytime compared to more mundane things like mustard gas. A slaughterbot obviously needs melee weapons and needs to be athletic. Ballistic platforms are probably far more effective, but it doesn't send the right message.

WA 5y ago
I would bet on the 1,000 Slaugherbots coming for you. Why do you assume it has to be only one? Slaughterbots could carry a small explosive, just like in the video. Doesn't have to be melee.
dan_mctree 5y ago
Why would they need melee? Just attach a lightweight single use gun barrel on top
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  It just wouldn't be the same dystopic feeling when they use guns.
- imtringued 5y ago
  Because then people would realize that soldiers are just as lethal or perhaps even more lethal than drones.
pzo 5y ago
1) current small racing drones have speed >80mph, that's 35 meters per 1 second. You won't even have time to hear them and react while under attack. 2) current drones already have 4 tiny knives (blades). Enough to make it slightly larger/sharper and/or from titanium instead of plastic. That's enough to cut your throat or wrist and let you bleed to death ... 3) ... cover those blades with some venom or poison for "extra efficiency" 4) ... they probably don't even need some bullet - enough to detect your eye and stab you with a nail covered with venom/poison I doubt you would have any chance with just a dozen of slaughterbots. edit: formatting