5 ms·
> Line of sight free space optics can be immune to many many forms of jamming. I’m a bit of two minds about this. Obviously jamming resistant high bandwidth co
by krisoft 2y ago
> Line of sight free space optics can be immune to many many forms of jamming.
I’m a bit of two minds about this. Obviously jamming resistant high bandwidth communication enables some scarry possibilities.
But the lack of it is what drives and will drive militaries around the world to put more and more autonomy into weapons. It doesn’t matter what kind of treaties we write on paper to prohibit technologies. During a war if your drones/loitering munition are less effective than those of your enemies because your control signals are jammed you will give in and make your weapons find their target without that control signal. That leads to an arm race of ever more sophisticated autonomous weapons. That is scarry for many reasons, and probably a worse outcome for all of us.
On the other hand if communication is possible that puts a leash on this dynamic and ensurers that a human mind can remain in the loop. So… maybe being better at jamming resistant communication is actually better for humankind?
- BurningFrog 2y agoI got seriously terrified by reading a PKD SF story at 15 about the few surviving humans hiding from war drones still hunting people long after the war had ended.
- stevenwoo 2y agoSecond Variety, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Variety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Variety I've commented this before but it is closer to Terminator than the Harlan Ellison story IMO.
- BurningFrog 2y agoYeah, that was the one. Really burned itself into my mind. The movie was OK, but you can only get shocked once.
- stevenwoo 2y agoSimilar but reverse, I felt unfortunate to have read the novelette after watching Terminator because part way in the story I thought - this is almost all of the AI/self replicating autonomous robot points of the Terminator movie just without the time travel. The movie addition of time travel adds a bit of hope to an otherwise totally bleak story resolution.
- rstuart4133 2y agoHaven't read the book, but I did see "Screamers". Wikipedia says: "Future Imperfect: Philip K. Dick at the Movies, writes that the film is more faithful than most other adaptations". I can't comment on whether that's true, but the movie still haunts me. Odd, since as Wikipedia says "it received a mixed critical reception and failed at the box office". There was nothing mixed about my reception of it.
- BurningFrog 2y agoIt's pretty wild that PKD imagined AI controlled combat drones in 1953, and 70 years we'll soon have them.
- falcor84 2y agoI haven't read that one, but it reminds me of Black Mirror's "Metalhead", which absolutely terrified me.
- yownie 2y agoThe movie Screamers (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114367/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114367/) is based off it, decent sci-fi.
- red-iron-pine 2y agodraws from the same well, intellectually. terrifying stuff, that BM episode is, too.
- lynx97 2y ago[dead]
- femto 2y ago> On the other hand if communication is possible that puts a leash on this dynamic I'm a bit more pessimistic than that. I think the driver for autonomy will be that the speed at which things happen on the battlefield. People being attacked with automated weapons might not be able to make response related decisions fast enough. The automation will be in place to enable a rapid response. It will become an arms race involving speed of attack and response. It will be the military equivalent of high-frequency trading, involving things like swarms and directed energy weapons.
- ethbr1 2y agoThe phrase you're looking for is OODA loop, popularized in the 80s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_(military_strategist)#OODA_loop https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_(military_strategi...
- dataviz1000 2y ago> Boyd’s Law of Iteration: speed of iteration beats quality of iteration [0] [0] https://blog.codinghorror.com/boyds-law-of-iteration/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/boyds-law-of-iteration/
- ethbr1 2y agoAlso, Patton's classic 'a good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week'
- genewitch 2y agoI personally won't worry until microwave ovens are regulated. I'm still sore that I didn't publish a decade ago. c.f. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6XdcWToy2c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6XdcWToy2c
- thfuran 2y agoWhat?
- proaralyst 2y agoUkraine's drones are already partly automated because of the jamming environment: they can visually lock the drone onto a target from up to 10km away.[0][1] They're also using drones that trail a fibre optic over several kilometres to avoid jamming.[2] [0] https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2025/03/12/ukraines-embrace-of-drone-warfare-has-paid-off https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2025/03/12/... [1] https://www.csis.org/analysis/ukraines-future-vision-and-current-capabilities-waging-ai-enabled-autonomous-warfare https://www.csis.org/analysis/ukraines-future-vision-and-cur... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2024/11/07/ukraine-fields-reboff-unjammable-fiber-optic-fpv-attack-drone/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2024/11/07/ukrain...
- dwighttk 2y agoDang what does a drone carriable several kilometer fiber spool look like?
- j245 2y agoPrevious article has pictures https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41143322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41143322
- pjc50 2y agoThe lower canister in the last of the three links, https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2024/11/07/ukraine-fields-reboff-unjammable-fiber-optic-fpv-attack-drone/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2024/11/07/ukrain... Difficult to judge scale, maybe the size of a drinks can or food can? Fiber is pretty thin.
- bprater 2y agoHalf a can of soda. The main electronics controller visible in the photo is likely 20x20 or 30x30mm, the standard for FPV style drones.
- temp0826 2y agoI was pretty shocked to find out that wire-guided missiles were(/are?) a thing. This seems easier than that.
- selfmodruntime 2y ago> Obviously jamming resistant high bandwidth communication enables some scarry possibilities They are not obvious to me. Care to explain?
- LeifCarrotson 2y ago"People with blue and yellow patches are the enemy. I won't be able to communicate with you after you leave the forward base, but you need to navigate about 1 mile southwest then kill the people you find with a blue and yellow patch for as long as you can." Then the quadcopter/Atlas/Spot/a Terminator/a tank driven by AI starts rolling across the landscape, while humans flagged as suspicious by Google because we lack sufficient tracking data in our browsers fill out reCaptcha images that say "Select all images that contain [soldiers] in this set." Nearby, a scared local child distracts themselves from the distant horrors by drawing a picture of the sun in the sky with their crayons. Some time later, the robot is able to transmit back a few bytes of telemetry to base, which publishes a press release that describes the number of enemies slain.
- throwpoaster 2y agoThis is an example of the lack of connectivity, not the horror of too much.
- ahazred8ta 2y agoObligatory xkcd: click on all the photos that show places you would run for shelter during a robot uprising https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2228:_Machine_Learning_Captcha https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2228:_Machine_Lea...
- mab122 2y ago> Obviously jamming resistant high bandwidth communication enables some scarry possibilities. This sounds like you would also be in favor of backdoored encryption. I disagree. It's a tool / improvement like any other, how you use it makes it scary. BTW this is nothing new, it's just packaged nicely and (I assume) massively improved technology. DIY and open source solutions were possible in 2001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RONJA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RONJA (static ones tho)