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I'm also fascinated by the political implications on state formation, state size, and form of government. State formation tends to track the relative military
by nostrademons 1y ago
I'm also fascinated by the political implications on state formation, state size, and form of government.
State formation tends to track the relative military effectiveness of large highly-trained standing armies vs. small distributed arms making. The Roman Empire collapsed when they ran out of money to pay their legions. The smaller tribes and kingdoms of the Early Middle Ages unified into the larger kingdoms of the High Middle Ages as the longbow and mounted knight gave the advantage again to large, highly trained standing armies. These collapsed into the city-states of the Rennaissance because the gunpowder musket rendered all the armor of the knights useless. Then the nation-state took over as mechanized arms and airplanes became military weapons, and needed the resources of a large territory to produce them.
It's likely that the drone, being both cheap to produce, easy to use, and extremely lethal to existing weapon systems, will produce a similar political revolution. And it seems tailor-made for smaller political units: drones can lay waste to an invading army, but they suck at power projection because their range is only ~10-20 miles. Might we see a return to city-states as the primary form of political organization? Maybe all the arguments about whether Russia vs. the U.S. vs. China will come out on top are moot, because the very concept of a nation-state will disintegrate, and instead we'll have Beijing vs. Shanghai vs. Shenzhen vs. Moscow vs. Kiev vs. the Bay Area vs. NYC vs. Washington DC? Drones are also ideal for defending shipping lanes, so perhaps we'll see a loose confederation of economically-bound city-states, but each having their own culture and social laws.
- lukan 1y ago"It's likely that the drone, being both cheap to produce" If you can buy the parts, then yes, but producing a complete drone all on your own is not that easy I think. Still easier than a stealth air plane or a cruise missile, though. So your predictions might come true, because I also see most state armies being really slow to adopt to this new reality.
- heavyset_go 1y agoIMO the supply chain for drones requires the stability and resource extraction on the scale of a state. SoCs, radios, optics, batteries etc all require high tech manufacturing. Guerilla use of drones need off the shelf microcontrollers from somewhere, they aren't fabbing them in their backyard.
- klooney 1y ago> supply chain for drones requires the stability and resource extraction on the scale of a state It's all about China. They have the ability to cut off drone production for the rest of the world.
- hkpack 1y agoNot really. All parts are produced in other countries as well, although with slightly higher prices.
- quanto 1y agoI would like to see evidence behind this claim on two fronts: 1. all parts are produced in other countries 2. slightly higher prices There are countries (including Ukraine) that produce on-board flight controllers, but the controllers themselves often rely on components from China. I actually do think it is feasible to create a passable quadrotor using non-Chinese components only but I do not know of a rigorous study or a manufacturer that does this.
- hkpack 1y agoI would not provide you with links, sorry. I follow different drone manufactures and over the last years they all had periodic issues sourcing components from China including chips for flight controllers so they found alternatives (i.e. not manufactured in China) for all major components AFAIK . I've heard that the most difficult to replace is the camera sensor. Drone cameras are produced now in Ukraine as well, however non-Chinese sensors as far as I know are very expensive.
- rasz 1y agohttps://militarnyi.com/uk/articles/niyakogo-kytayu-ukrayinski-vyrobnyky-blyzki-do-samostijnogo-vyrobnytstva-fpv-droniv/ https://militarnyi.com/uk/articles/niyakogo-kytayu-ukrayinsk... You can source camera sensor from Japan and microcontrollers from France (made at ST Crolles). Your $1 camera becomes $10, $1 micros (s because basic ESC uses 4-5) become $10, $1 Chinese clone IMU becomes $10 TDK IMU, ESC mosfets go from $0.4 to $1.5 (you need 24 of those). Even magnets in the motor are easily doable https://www.kumarmagnet.com/ukraine/neodymium-magnet.html https://www.kumarmagnet.com/ukraine/neodymium-magnet.html All the parts are still manufactured in the West/Japan/Korea/Taiwan. Made in China 2025 just means Chinese clones/substitutes are 2-10 times cheaper. In 2015 people laughed and dismissed MIC 2025 as unrealistic, but here we are in 2025 and Chinese products do in fact come with up to 100% domestic electronic components! One stupid example from today, hackaday article https://hackaday.com/2025/06/08/simple-triggering-for-saleae-logic-analyzers/ https://hackaday.com/2025/06/08/simple-triggering-for-saleae... comment mentions Kingst LA2016. Sigrok wiki https://sigrok.org/wiki/Kingst_LA2016 https://sigrok.org/wiki/Kingst_LA2016 has pictured of same product at v1.3 and v3.2. v3.2 uses COREBAI clone of Cypress FX2LP and Pango Micro FPGA (https://www.pangomicro.com/en/about/index/ https://www.pangomicro.com/en/about/index/) instead of "Intel" Cyclone IV. EEVBlog did a Deye SUN-5K-SG04LP1 5kW hybrid solar inverter teardown some time ago, almost every semi component made in China https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0_cTg36A2Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0_cTg36A2Q