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Comment by jsty | Hacker News Reader

It's going to be interesting to see how the circle is squared regards defending against autonomous weaponry. There's probably a large design space of offensive autonomous weapons that could only effectively be countered by a system with no human in the control loop. If the design / use of autonomous defensive systems is also prohibited, that would give an overwhelming advantage to any aggressor willing to defy any such a ban on offensive systems. If they're not banned, then the difference between a weapon designed to auto-target other weapons and one designed to auto-target humans is so blurry as to be virtually indistinguishable in terms of verifiable arms control.

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> If they're not banned, then the difference between a weapon designed to auto-target other weapons and one designed to auto-target humans is so blurry as to be virtually indistinguishable in terms of verifiable arms control.

There's no such thing as purely defensive weapon. I don't remember who said it, but I recall a quote that went similar to: "if your weapon can shoot enemy planes over your cities, it can just as easily shoot enemy planes over their cities".

Well, what if your weapon is a fixed turret built on top of your city hall?

Put that turret on a trailer truck and drive to enemy town.

Or put your city hall on a trailer truck, if that's what it takes.

That's much easier to do if you develop a mobile turret from the beginning. The idea is that there are technologies which are fairly harder to use offensively than others.

Then you put it on a train, like Big Bertha

See: electric fences

I’m pretty sure banning autonomous defensive weapons won’t happen because we already have them deployed. The Phalanx CIWS mounted on US Warships has a fully autonomous mode where it will fire on targets automatically.

It is there already but limited. Hospital ships are antsy about missles because CIWS are still considered weapons and they can't have them and at least one missle strike occurred at harbor because turning it on there would lead to unacceptable collateral damage to their backstop.

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