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Comment by j_baker | Hacker News Reader

This isn't surprising. I think the future of warfare will be massive armies of drones controlled by algorithms. If we can remove the pilot from the equation, we can drastically increase the size of our military. That's not to say that algorithmic warfare will be good. I'm merely saying it is inevitable.

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Can't we just do that in a computer and pretend that things were destroyed and killed? Maybe calculate the transfer of wealth that would have occurred as a consequence of inferior algorithms leading to the destruction of your virtual societies?

Then you'd need a real army to enforce the victory.

I'm sure the financial sector is ready to take on such a challenge.

Wasn't this already answered in an episode of Star Trek from the 1960s?

That was the basis of these thoughts, except for the fact that in that episode they would calculate the casualties and vaporize them; my idea is based on the pure transfer of 'wealth' that would have occurred through the destruction and re-allocation of the 'resources' from the 'loser' to the 'winner'. No actual death need occur directly due to violence but only through purely economic and financial means (job loss, starvation), similar to what has already happened after the last 'Financial Crisis' in developing countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon

This only works when both sides are sufficiently advanced and willing to take part in the system. You would still need an army for when enemyCountryX decides that they can just pummel you because you're busy playing video games.

“We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them”

― Albert Einstein

ie. We are peaceful, they are not, so we must not rest lest they destroy us while we sleep, and we must destroy them while they are.

Why would there be anything past the first "battle" - terrorist fill drones with dirty radioactive dust, launch from sea into US, slowly release payload.

Game over, half the population on the east or west coast becomes extremely ill or develop cancers, food and water sources permanently tainted.

Instead of making drones we should be making drone detection and capture systems.

"radioactive dust" does not work that way. You should run some numbers and see if your movie-plot threat is plausible before proposing it as a risk. (hint: it's not)

US soldiers and others near battlefields overseas are constantly getting ill from dust from the (badly named) depleted uranium ordinance that the US uses (and white phosphorus weapons).

That's what leads me to believe this is plausible.

> US soldiers and others near battlefields overseas are constantly getting ill from dust from the (badly named) depleted uranium ordinance that the US uses (and white phosphorus weapons).

No, they aren't. What's your source claiming this? Why do you say depleted uranium is "badly named"? And if you took some of this dust and spread it on "the east coast" or "the west coast", wouldn't that dilute the concentration by more than a factor of a million and turn an already speculative and unproven risk into a truly truly insignificant risk?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Studies_indic...

Did you purposely link to heritage or was that an accidental result of google?

Because that is pretty much a showstopper as they are wild right-wing nuts.

Okay now you are using wikipedia. Read the rest of the page and realize that only the US, UK and Israel say the DU is okay, the rest of the UN says not. I wonder who has DU ammunition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Chemical_toxi...

Australia, too, and the IAEA. I think you are in too much of a hurry to make your point.

*ordnance

It's a shame US tank designers also use DU tank armor to protect soldiers. They're actually killing them with the radiation!

As a psychological weapon it's extremely effective; sure the actual dose of radiation would be less than you'd be exposed to flying cross-country.

But the fear?

That would be very effective. A terror weapon in multiple senses of the word.

You seem to be missing my point.

Should those drone detection and capture systems be controlled by humans or algorithms? Just because you remove the word "drone" doesn't make algorithmic warfare any less inevitable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto

http://www.merkle.com/pluto/pluto.html

You have stumbled across an idea older than nuclear weapons. Heinlen's "Solution Unsatisfactory" was written with a very similar solution in mind ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solution_Unsatisfactory ).

That said, that is perhaps the silliest way of using drones if one meant business.

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