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China developed attack drones, but has not used them in any attacks yet themselves. They have sold drones to middle eastern states, where they were purportedly

China developed attack drones, but has not used them in any attacks yet themselves. They have sold drones to middle eastern states, where they were purportedly used against "terrorists" (i.e. the same people the US commonly drone strikes). Given the US has made numerous drone-strikes that have been confirmed to kill quite a few civilians, and china has 0... yeah, China's track record is wildly better. There's literally a full wikipedia page estimating civilian causalities from US drone strikes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_from_U.S._drone_strikes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_from_U.S._... There's a reason that no such page exists for any other country with drones. > isn't that offset by China targets being way more likely to be good guys? That seems naive to me. Both the US and China are in the UN, are part of the "UN Security Council", and thus generally try to follow the military norms set out there. In practice, the US and China can both flaunt the rule of international law some due to their size, though in practice I don't know of china violating it significantly in relation to war, while the invasion of iraq by the US was done in violation of UN policy/international law. I'll again reference a wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_the_Iraq_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_the_Iraq_War To be clear on all this, I am not sympathetic to China. They've committed atrocities domestically and I'm not claiming they're a good country. I do think the evidence isn't so black and white as to say that China is likely to "target good guys" or any such thing.

josephcsible 4y ago
> China [...] has not used them in any attacks yet themselves. > China's track record is wildly better. Consider a new driver who just got his license, versus someone who's been driving for 20 years and has been at fault in one fender bender. Would you consider the former to be the safer driver of the two? Or consider an 18-year-old who has no credit history yet (and so no late payments), vs. a 50-year-old with a well-established credit history who made a credit card payment a few days late once 5 years ago. Which one of them has better credit?
- ok_dad 4y ago
  > Consider a new driver who just got his license, versus [..] one fender bender. More like a new driver versus a quintuple-DUI alcoholic who just got shitfaced again and mowed over a dozen members of a wedding party.
- TheDong 4y ago
  > Consider a new driver who just got his license, versus [..] one fender bender. The baseline here should be zero civilian casualties though. You could just as easily say "consider a new driver who got a car, and hasn't used it yet, vs someone who has killed an innocent bystander over 50% of the several hundred drives they've been on". I'd obviously rather take the new driver since the expected outcome in driving is closer to an accident every 20 years or so. We don't have information from more than just one country, so we don't actually have a good accepted baseline to say a "new drone-having country" is good or bad... other than the fact I feel very comfortable saying that drones simply should not be used unless there can be greater than a 99.9% chance of killing zero civilians.
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    > The baseline here should be zero civilian casualties though. But there have always been civilian casualties in war. Why do drones need to be perfect in this regard, when nothing else in war ever has been? This feels like using airliner reliability as the standard that self-driving cars need to meet, instead of accepting that they're a net benefit as soon as they're safer than cars driven by humans.

josephcsible 4y ago

> China [...] has not used them in any attacks yet themselves. > China's track record is wildly better. Consider a new driver who just got his license, versus someone who's been driving for 20 years and has been at fault in one fender bender. Would you consider the former to be the safer driver of the two? Or consider an 18-year-old who has no credit history yet (and so no late payments), vs. a 50-year-old with a well-established credit history who made a credit card payment a few days late once 5 years ago. Which one of them has better credit?

ok_dad 4y ago
> Consider a new driver who just got his license, versus [..] one fender bender. More like a new driver versus a quintuple-DUI alcoholic who just got shitfaced again and mowed over a dozen members of a wedding party.
TheDong 4y ago
> Consider a new driver who just got his license, versus [..] one fender bender. The baseline here should be zero civilian casualties though. You could just as easily say "consider a new driver who got a car, and hasn't used it yet, vs someone who has killed an innocent bystander over 50% of the several hundred drives they've been on". I'd obviously rather take the new driver since the expected outcome in driving is closer to an accident every 20 years or so. We don't have information from more than just one country, so we don't actually have a good accepted baseline to say a "new drone-having country" is good or bad... other than the fact I feel very comfortable saying that drones simply should not be used unless there can be greater than a 99.9% chance of killing zero civilians.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  > The baseline here should be zero civilian casualties though. But there have always been civilian casualties in war. Why do drones need to be perfect in this regard, when nothing else in war ever has been? This feels like using airliner reliability as the standard that self-driving cars need to meet, instead of accepting that they're a net benefit as soon as they're safer than cars driven by humans.