Racist Robots for Iraq
DB: Now we have a flying videocam - the latest in a series of robotic enhancements to the war experience. Latest in a line of machines manufactured by the established players and hungry startups seeking a slice of the 'perpetual war' economy - big boys toys protecting our guys as they go about their business of razing cities, shooting up civilians and generally creating havoc - in order to bring freedom to an unfree world. I have yet to encounter an article that fails to adopt an annoying attitude of wide eyed wonder and schoolboy enthusiasm to these scrapyard-challenge pieces of junk - the idea of military robots never fails to bring out Maxim man in reviewers. In reality these things aren't robots at all - they require a skilled gamer-soldier to control the fun. But they do serve to show us where we are heading.
Robotizing war certainly has the potential for reducing risk to troops or 'taking the human out of the loop' as the military optimistically puts it [the victim doesn't count as human stupid] . As the war without end rolls forward, and further investments are made into this technology, it is inevitable that sooner or later we will be watching DoD videos of dark-skinned people being cut down by a resoundingly successful robot deployment - the audience of hacks will cheer as the enemy gets it. The robot killers will be hailed as a means of, ultimately, eliminating the inconvenient and wholly negative notion of 'the body bag' - and the media will lap it up. Then the DoD will start spending some serious money on developing these things and it will quickly take off and become a multi-billion dollar industry. Mission statements of specialist technology companies will prattle on about saving lives.
If there were a concern in all of this it would be that once you take the 'body bag' [our side only] out of the equation what will be the brake on the aspirations of the worlds little Hitlers? Where will be the political line in the sand beyond which would be a possible anti-war backlash? I am not saying that 'body bags' seem much of an issue in the current climate. The US citizenry seems to be adopting a strategy of 'out of site out of mind' - and the US media are happily accommodating this need not to know. However certain actions have been avoided in Iraq no doubt due to the likely unacceptable levels of carnage [our side]. Without these irritating political considerations what would be the limit on that which we are prepared to do to achieve our aims? The death rate of the enemy? I don't think so, the Iraq war has been utterly brutal, by design - if 100,000 insurgents had been stupid enough to occupy Fallujah during the recent operation to save the city then I have no doubt that all would have been slaughtered, for example.
Its been well documented that racism is rife amongst the US forces - the evidence for this can been seen in the treatment that Iraqi prisoners have been subjected to. For them the Iraqis have become that which the Slavs and the Gypsies and the Jews became for the Nazis - a subhuman species. Protesting prisoners get shot dead, detainees are routenly tortured to death, residents are regularly subjected to petty and sadistic acts of cruelty. The US military is riddled with war criminals from the top down. These people are unlikely to offer much restraint if ever they are in the position to engage in a remote robot-war.
So my guess is that when they get these killer-pissbots working effectively, they will be wielded without mercy - by smiling video-assassins. Asimov's First Law of Robotics - "A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." - will become the reverse of reality.
Robotizing war certainly has the potential for reducing risk to troops or 'taking the human out of the loop' as the military optimistically puts it [the victim doesn't count as human stupid] . As the war without end rolls forward, and further investments are made into this technology, it is inevitable that sooner or later we will be watching DoD videos of dark-skinned people being cut down by a resoundingly successful robot deployment - the audience of hacks will cheer as the enemy gets it. The robot killers will be hailed as a means of, ultimately, eliminating the inconvenient and wholly negative notion of 'the body bag' - and the media will lap it up. Then the DoD will start spending some serious money on developing these things and it will quickly take off and become a multi-billion dollar industry. Mission statements of specialist technology companies will prattle on about saving lives.
If there were a concern in all of this it would be that once you take the 'body bag' [our side only] out of the equation what will be the brake on the aspirations of the worlds little Hitlers? Where will be the political line in the sand beyond which would be a possible anti-war backlash? I am not saying that 'body bags' seem much of an issue in the current climate. The US citizenry seems to be adopting a strategy of 'out of site out of mind' - and the US media are happily accommodating this need not to know. However certain actions have been avoided in Iraq no doubt due to the likely unacceptable levels of carnage [our side]. Without these irritating political considerations what would be the limit on that which we are prepared to do to achieve our aims? The death rate of the enemy? I don't think so, the Iraq war has been utterly brutal, by design - if 100,000 insurgents had been stupid enough to occupy Fallujah during the recent operation to save the city then I have no doubt that all would have been slaughtered, for example.
Its been well documented that racism is rife amongst the US forces - the evidence for this can been seen in the treatment that Iraqi prisoners have been subjected to. For them the Iraqis have become that which the Slavs and the Gypsies and the Jews became for the Nazis - a subhuman species. Protesting prisoners get shot dead, detainees are routenly tortured to death, residents are regularly subjected to petty and sadistic acts of cruelty. The US military is riddled with war criminals from the top down. These people are unlikely to offer much restraint if ever they are in the position to engage in a remote robot-war.
So my guess is that when they get these killer-pissbots working effectively, they will be wielded without mercy - by smiling video-assassins. Asimov's First Law of Robotics - "A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." - will become the reverse of reality.
posted by exoplanet at 6:16 PM
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