Modern warfare has become too techno-ish for my sensibilities.
War has become an affair of machines...and soldiers are little more than clever mechanics.
Many, who should know better, think that wars can be decided by soulless machines, rather than by the blood and anguish of brave men.
A.I. should not be weaponized, and any A.I. must have an impregnable 'off switch.'
In my world of the people who study war and defense issues, we simply did not talk about robotics. We do not talk about it because it's seen as mere science fiction. It's cold, hard, metallic reality.
Cyber Leader: Daleks, be warned. You have declared war upon the Cybermen. Dalek Sec: This is not war - this is pest control! Cyber Leader: We have five million Cybermen. How many are you? Dalek Sec: Four. Cyber Leader: You would destroy the Cybermen with four Daleks? Dalek Sec: We would destroy the Cybermen with one Dalek! You superior in only one respect. Cyber Leader: What is that? Dalek Sec: You are better at dying.
In the Age of the Almighty Computer, drones are the perfect warriors. They kill without remorse, obey without kidding around, and they never reveal the names of their masters.
If we can’t stop fighting with one another, maybe we can delegate the job to robot soldiers fighting robot enemies, thereby destroying hardware instead of killing people!
Battles, in these ages, are transacted by mechanism; with the slightest possible development of human individuality or spontaneity; men now even die, and kill one another, in an artificial manner.
The automation of warfare has, then, come a long way since the Persian Gulf War of 1991.
We're opening the doors to people launching missiles and dropping bombs by taking the human out of the decision chain for deciding how we should respond to these threats. And this is something we're seeing more and more happening in the traditional means as our methods of warfare become increasingly automated and roboticized such as through drone warfare.
