In this excellent TED presentation PW Singer talks of military robots and the future of war, being depersonalised by the massive growth in robotic military hardware being employed in the Iraqi war. Perhaps the motivation of GW Bush to go to war was in part to satisfy battlefield testing of a great deal of new technology that the military industrial empire of America was sitting on. Perhaps it was his motivation when early in his presidency, before 9/11 he absolved American’s from war crimes in the theatre of modern war he wanted never to be considered for conviction at the world court.

By introducing mechanical toys and sophisticated robotics into the theatre of war, the forced imitation by the perceived enemy will mean that a condition of mutually assured destruction will also inevitably be reached, the “warning” sounded in the ridiculous “terminator” concept of machines having the logic to notice its masters were the real problem is not the future I see, it is more a wasteland of horrific pollution and scrap metal jungles that inevitably deadlock as attrition sets in.

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