PW Singer on Military Robots

I often tell people that if you want to see what the future of warfare and of state control over people, one only need to watch movies and TV shows like Terminator, Star Trek, Total Recall (a favorite of mine), etc. I clearly understand that many of these things will be implemented by convincing the people that it will make them "safe" from whatever boogie man the state can conjure up. It's always just a matter of time before that which is used "over there" becomes in use "over here." The overwhelming attitude that will be used to justify these things will be "If you're not doing anything wrong, then why are you worried?" This presumption that a citizen who does not want to surveilled, RFID'ed or whatever, MUST be engaged in some sort of activity that is illegal is one of the most perverse ideas to have taken hold in the US today. To this end I offer up this video from TED:



There are a couple of problems with this presentation. Problems which underscore the importance of the issue being discussed. P.W. Singer states at time 2:00:

A robot revolution is upon us. Now I need to be clear here. I'm not talking about a revolution where you have to worry about the governor of California showing up at your door a-la The Terminator

But in fact we do. It is interesting that prior to Singer making this statement there were mulitple clips of automated robots firing relatively large arms in some conflict. Take a look at Terminator 3 and we see that the "original" terminators did not look all that different from the images presented in this clip. Furthermore we see in this clip, soldiers throwing a mobile unit into a building to look for bad guys. How long until local law enforcement show up at citizens homes with such things a la "minority report"? Before the 1970's it was pretty much taken for granted that police and the military were different in terms of what they did and the armourments they had. Now looking at the Binghamton shootings for example, the local police have SWAT teams that are essentially military. What's the point of a Posse Comidus Act if the police have essentially the same training and equipment as the military? Of course the justification for this militarization of the domestic police is "safety" because the bad guys have all these sophisticated weaponry so we must adapt.

Similarly in NYC there are squads of special police that are heavily armed as if they are going to prevent a plane crashing into a building. At Penn Station there are a plethora of monitoring devices in use and a squadron of police on each corner down to about 30th street. And the people don't bat an eye at it.

Another point of contention is where Singer states (time 5:43):

The second is that we are going to see an expansion in the realm of terrorism. The future of it may be a cross between Al-Qaeda 23.0 and the next generation Unabomber." Another way to look at that is, you don't have to convince a robot that they're gonna receive 72 virgins after they die."

Well the entire presentation is a problem when we look at this statement. The whole presentation is about soldiers who, for example, from a desk in Nevada control a plane that kills people thousands of miles away in order to affect what kind of government they want. How is that any different than Al-Q sending people to fly planes into a building? Who is the terrorist? It is clear that Singer believes that the terrorist is defined as the Arab Jihadi. But who is sending unmanned planes to kill people? Who is it that feels that collateral damage (that's innocent people to you and I) is acceptable for the US but not acceptable for non-state actors? Of course it depends on who one agrees with and who has the "power." Of course that is the real problem here. More than the means by which the killing is done but the WHY killing is done that presents the problem. The jihadi believes that the use of suicide bombers is justified given his or her relative weakness and the rightness of their cause. The US military similarly sees that killing people remotely in countries not even adjacent to the state actor, is justifiable by his or her own ideaology. Both parties believe themselves to be correct and so the killing continues. So the related statement for Singer is that the Robot does not have to be convinced that Jesus is on his side and has blessed his country to defend the Christian world. Or the robot does not have to be convinced of the rightfulness of Zionism and the right of Jews to the land of Palestine. It's all about perspective.

Ultimately, if looked through the lens of the Terminator movies, and excusing the time travel, The lesson of the Terminator is that the machines take over because humanity, specifically those of the European West are so hell bent on control of the world and doing so with as little personal loss as possible, allow machines to do the killing for them. In the end the machines become intelligent enough to realize that they have the power particularly since they are not burdened with "morals". With the amount of cyber hacking that is going on, these intelligent killing machines are going to pose a serious threat to humanity.

Something to think about.