Hacker News Reader

Comment by devy | Hacker News Reader

This is a dangerous precedent and it would be just a slippery slop to get to Autonomous Weapons[1]. Unfortunately the technology is readily available with low barrier of entry.

[1]: https://autonomousweapons.org/

View on HN

Yea, it's still cheaper, faster and easier to use a 12 man hunter/killer team of knuckle draggers or even crayon munchers than to use what's described in the article. When Israel bombed a heavy water facility in Iran, they did a press release that the Israelis did an unprofessional fly over in Iranian airspace and the Iran air force intercepted and chased the Israelis away... no, they bombed the facility and got out of there before the Iranians even understood what happened. Oh, and Israel had, I think one or two teams on ground. They got picked up and evaced just as fast as well. Iran doesn't have the best history of telling the truth when it comes to their failures.

I don't mean to be crass but it's amusing to think there's some sort of distinction between "knuckle draggers"and "crayon munchers."

That said - if it was done with a gizmo or a bunch of guys the remarkable thing is that they got it or them into and out of the country. That the says something either about the competence of perpetrator or the incompetence of the Iranians.

Dangerous precedent no matter what the technology. If every country starts to selectively kill people in other countries perceived to be hostile where do we stop or draw the line? Do it just because you can? If China or Russia did it in other countries sure as hell the US or Israel would be "up in arms" about it. And draw the line where? Someone is employed by agency that develops new technology that could be harmful....let's kill her/him? Or just because s/he said something critical on TV? Back to the stone age everyone - with high tech of course.

Precedent? Hi, welcome to planet Earth. We humans are literally the most dangerous organism on this planet. After we perfected murdering other animals with spears and arrows, we took to killing each other. That got boring so we started boring into mountains to kill them too. That's when we then learned about explosives, oh buddy did we start killing big ass mountains too, disappearing them from the landscape for coal. That got boring so we started murdering microscopic creatures. All while we still kill each because they wear a different flag, said something we dont like or are the last pizza slice.

We've been assassinating for thousands of years. Theres no precedence. This event will be forgotten in a week and probably will never be in a history book due to how mundane the killing was. The term assassin is old as hell for a reason.

> If every country starts to selectively kill people in other countries

> If China or Russia

If? It's been happening forever

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Israeli_assassinatio...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soviet_and_Russian_a...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_and_Kill_First

Just in very recent history, and we only know about them because they were high profile:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Sergei_and_Yuli...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Qasem_Solei...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Jamal_Khash...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com