> We’ve all seen enough movies to know this is how it starts … but of course it could be useful in rescue or combat circumstances as well.
Uhhh the latter is exactly what we're worried about
Uhhh the latter is exactly what we're worried about
Traditionally it has been very hard to force the will of the few onto the many, without at least having some of those many taking part in the game. There are technologies with the potential to massively alter that equation.
If you develop such a technology like this one you can be sure it might be used precisely for this purpose: powerful men now need fewer poor men to stay in power.
Maybe it is me living in Germany, but the imagination how the Nazis would have put to use the technology we are currently developing makes me shiver. Many of us create technology as if our democracies are built forever. And they are — until they are not. Or they are not — but not where we live, so we don't care.
I get, that it is hard to find any technology that couldn't in some way be abused in a horrendous fashion by the next authotarian society — however there certainly is a gradient there. And we decide where we feel comfortable to put ourselves.
The atomic bomb is a good example, a lot of the scientist working on it wouldn't have if there weren't fears that Nazi Germany was going to build it first.
This also reminds of the prisoners dilemma. If both parties choose not to build these systems we would be all fine, if one builds it and the others doesn't the other is screwed. If both build it they are both screwed but not as much.
In the last 100 years (and probalbly even further back) it has been incredibly difficult to fight an opponent who was fortified in a (bombed) city. Ukraine is a great example of what a few organized soldiers with anti-tank weapons can hold off.
Swarms of jamming resistant drones would completely trivialize urban fighting for the attacker. I'm worried about the future if attacking becomes easier than defending.
But you mentioned the anti-tank weapons. These didn't exist and before and a column of tanks would have an easy time with even a large and organized force of infantry soldiers. This is what happened in Poland during WW2.
So I'm hopeful that we will have a counter for these new systems like we now have counters to tanks.
https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...
> why ‘we’ – and by ‘we’ here, I mean the top-tier of modern militaries…
I don’t think either of my examples were top tier militaries, which is presumably why they resorted to chemical weapons to both win and subjugate the civilian population.
Edit:
I read the article you posted now. I don’t think I and the article disagree. I think chemical weapons are of use against civilian holdouts / paramilitary. This is especially the examples I used. The goal of this last phase of the war is not to kill everyone, but to make them lose hope and surrender.
Fighting them upright is a bad deal. You can overwhelm civilians but every tank they destroy boosts morale to the point you have to just destroy the city and kill hundreds of thousands to get them to give in. Chemical weapons disrupt life, injure civilians, and give them no proper enemy to fight back against for morale boosts. That they are ineffective is a positive in this scenario as from your POV, this is just a “police action” against “rebels”. You don’t want more effective weapons, since you believe you already won, and doing more is just wasting the population and resources you came here to conquer anyways.
I agree 100%, this is why we need more people working on getting 3D printing and other fabrication techniques into the hands of as many people as we can. The right to bear arms holds no water in the US as the DoD so massively outweighs any possible resistance the populace could offer; the only way to safeguard our democracies is to bring the scales back to level.
Different technological innovations in warfare have sometimes been leveling (eg guns as “the great equalizer”, anti-tank missiles) and sometimes had the opposite effect (e.g. attack helicopters and fighter jets). It does seem plausible that robotic weapons will favor those with vast resources, even when they lack manpower. It’s not impossible that it could go the other way, though. Actually, I can see drones going both ways.
It sounds like you are making the argument that collateral damage will make people more likely to rebel against an authoritarian regimes. Is that actually true?
I said: Certain technologies make it easier for the few to force the many. I did not say that certain technologies are the only way to do so.
Also: this is about numbers. The vast majority of Russians are in support of their president. Now imagine it would be less, lets say 30% or 10%. Or maybe 1%? At some point a threshold is crossed at which those in power cannot sustain themselves anymore.
And there are technologies that move that threshold down, because less people can control more people. Imagine e.g. how guns helped to sustain control of huge populations of colonized or enslaved people by relatively few oppressors. At this point in times guns pushed down the percentage of people needed to yield power over others.
At some point more people got guns and things leveled out a bit. Because ot was something multiple parties of a conflict could eventually use. But here comes the point: you still need people to wield those guns and willing to put their lives at risk. Sure you can trick them into doing that — but if you push your luck too much they can turn on you at any moment. For a swarm of killer drones you need less people and they don't need to risk anything.