So that's the SF novel we've entered!

[elfs]

Now that we're in the SF movie with the black president and the flying killer robots, James Poulos adds:

I have to say, there's something about drones that makes me queasy. Maybe it's the whole robots-with-guns thing. We're a long ways away from the day when machines programmed to kill fight wars so human Americans don't have to, but I think the following principle is important to keep in at least the back of our minds going forward: war is something awful, serious, and dangerous enough that real people should have to do the bulk of it. Assassinating evildoers in remote locations is one thing; getting in the habit of outsourcing death and destruction to the bots is another.

Comments

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

Not to state the obvious or anything, but war is awful, serious, and dangerous because real people do the bulk of it: not the killing, necessarily, but the dying always. What's monstrous is murdering other human beings being a normal part of how we do politics, whether we do it with robots or bombs or young men with rifles. If it were robots vs. robots rather than robots vs. people, it would be a sport, not a war, and may we all live to see the day.

[lemur123.livejournal.com]

Today, my company got the contract to make the sensor modules for a flying robot that will detect and kill up to ten humans per minute. FML.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/planes-uavs/4313331

[dossy.livejournal.com]

Without death drones, how will we get one step closer to SkyNet?

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

Two possibilities:

1. "A Taste of Armageddon" from ST:TOS

2. Skynet, terminators.

[(Anonymous)]

A worrying prospect is a world where some countries are able to produce or buy drones to do their fighting, while other countries are not. A truly horrific situation is one where wars become too easy to fight because you aren't risking soldiers but where humans still get killed, either human soldiers on the other side or collateral damage. I could imagine this kind of one sided situation happening in the Journal Entries, the Pendorian military generally isn't too concerned about the risk of losses when coming down hard on a planet because of decisions its government made. That is slightly different, drones remove the need for humans to fight directly while the Pendorians have such tech that the risk of a casualty is very low, the end result is pretty similar though. There's a reference in one Journal Entry to a Pendorian dropship being nuked after all, and all it did was piss them off.