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Comment by jMyles | Hacker News Reader

> If you are a major power with the capability to make 100K+ killer drones or similar per year, going to be hard to get you to sign this.

Surely the individual decision-makers are, as with all human beings, averse to a world swarming with killer robots.

That states make indefensible decisions with much greater frequency than their individual statesfolk is so obvious at this point; it's time to simply stop tolerating their existence and move more swiftly into the next stage of information humanity.

I'm a citizen of one of the states you mention and I can assure you: amidst all the disagreement and political polarization, there is complete consensus on not wanting a world dominated by killer robots.

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What action can actually be taken towards that goal? Your own country can avoid creating these robots. But you can't know that any other country isn't pursuing them. Even if you could, the political capacity to sanction them for it is quite limited. So the most likely outcome of trying to ban them is that every country assumes every other country is still building them in secret, and thus every country still builds them in secret. Eventually, the fact that they are building them in secret becomes public, and ultimately nothing is done about it. Having a world with killer robots in it is bad, but a world where your enemies have killer robots and you don't is far worse. The decision makers will all be very cognizant of that fact.

This kind of reasoning is circular. It justifies any and all escalation on the chance that others are doing the same. Also baked into the assumption is that fire fights fire.

I don't want my state to produce killer robots. Even if other states do. I can only impact my own. It's no secret that the US disproportionately engages in this "warfare" (read: asymmetrical slaughter) and even under a "liberal" head of state (Obama) civilian casualties of our drone program was 90%.

You're also assuming regulating killer robots means a ban, when the international community could restrict deployments or justifiable uses. It's much more realistic even if rogue drones are created.

The decision makers are duly elected representatives of their constituent body and it is beyond time they acted like it. Otherwise we're going to keep having more Vietnams, more Afghanistans, more pointless civilian death.

It's possible to be more cynical about this, but yet to come to a more optimistic conclusion.

If the world's great military powers publicly swear off "killer drones" (let's assume we can meaningfully define such a thing), then they will continue to develop them in secret, but they won't use them in every little border skirmish: every Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, or Crimea. They'll keep them for the big game.

This has two good effects (assuming further development of killer drones is bad). Firstly, those of us unfortunate enough to be caught up in the horrendous bloody conflicts I callously described as "border skirmishes" won't additionally suffer from killer drone attacks. Secondly, development of the drones and the military doctrine surrounding them will be stymied: you can do a lot in the lab but any technology develops so much faster with the feedback loop that comes from using it in anger.

Moreover, if there's a big war we're all screwed anyway. If that's your focus, you need to argue that drone availablity makes a big war more likely I'm not convinced that it does - making war cheap makes small war more likely, but all the decision makers know the cost of a big war.

Edit: compare to anti-personnel landmines, or chemical weapons. Both of those see less use because of weapons bans. You might say no, they see less use because the great military powers no longer need them - but you're missing a step. The great powers no longer need them, they decry them as inhumane, they sign bans, and then (almost) everyone stops using them.

Kill-bots change the moral calculus too. As an example, it's one thing to rush a cop on the assumption that human cop won't just gun you down. It's another to rush a programmed kill-bot. The latter case is obviously just suicide, which is morally on the person committing it, not the tool they use to do it.

I'm well aware there are many different ways besides the above one could argue it, but my key point is that automatons change the moral calculus, no matter what other premises you accept.

> The great powers no longer need them, they decry them as inhumane, they sign bans, and then (almost) everyone stops using them.

See for example Bret Devereux: https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...

I think we need an outright ban, but I also understand how workable this strategy is.

Drones have the power to make WWI look like a football match. They could already be in larger use than people realize, it isn't like one would hear about it. There would be nothing to report.

> But you can't know that any other country isn't pursuing them.

Indeed, what would happen is that if such a treaty was signed, some other countries would develop them anyway, as hidden modes for the use of their otherwise non-autonmous UAVs and UGVs. So any such treaty would essentially be handing the world to countries that cheat -- which would likely include Russia and China.

>I'm a citizen of one of the states you mention and I can assure you: amidst all the disagreement and political polarization, there is complete consensus on not wanting a world dominated by killer robots.

If what people "want" is a nice sounding sentence slapped on a roiling pile of inconsistent sub-wants, then good things aren't going to happen.

Sure, nobody wants "a world dominated by killer robots".

Nobody wants "90% civilian casualties" from those killer robots either.

But if people are asked "would you rather Bob down the street get killed fighting in X or let a drone take the risks", what are they going to say? Yes, screw Bob? And that's assuming that the person asked isn't going to be drafted because there are enough volunteers.

If people are asked, "would you rather use drones and kill civilians, or use other methods and kill many more civilians", what are they going to say? Yes, more is better?

> Surely the individual decision-makers are, as with all human beings, averse to a world swarming with killer robots.

The history of the use of land and sea mines in warfare suggests to me that this is not a universal we can assume.

> there is complete consensus on not wanting a world dominated by killer robots.

That and nukes. It is ok to not want these things, but to survive as a nation state, these things will become necessary developments in order to survive. If GP is correct about some of the capabilities we're likely to see, then any nation state without these will need to begin development in order to ensure survival. Is that an arms race waiting to happen? Yes. Is there a better way? No. The alternative to an escalating arms race is actual war.

We will never be done with power hungry ideologues, we will never be done with Communists whose sole mission is dominion over the whole world, we will never be done with petty despots (looking at you, Putin) who so wish they could play a meaningful role on the world stage. All of these have every reason to develop a new super weapon to tilt the balance of power in their favor.

Iran, for example, has started its centrifuges again. They also have some new ones that spin at 10x the speed of their old ones. They are very close to possessing a nuclear bomb. Up until the end of the Trump presidency they had halted production of uranium and talks were going well. Biden has about the weakest foreign policy of any president in the last half century.

Part of that effective foreign policy is the military might the US has. (Why do we have 5 carrier battle groups? Why does Britain only have one? Why does Russia have a single carrier that's in rather poor repair?)

If killer drones are an effective war-fighting tool (an it appears they are), they are inevitable. What we need to ensure is that they are used as humanely as possible.

> That and nukes.

Yeah, good point. But I can absolutely envision - without much difficulty - a megatons-to-megawatts motion swiftly bringing an end to this period in Earth's history.

And more generally: maintenance of arsenals of weapons of mass destruction is _very_ costly. Economics of energy production and storage are perhaps a viable mechanism to add pressure in favor of disarmament.

> (Why do we have 5 carrier battle groups? Why does Britain only have one? Why does Russia have a single carrier that's in rather poor repair?)

We can also summarize questions of stagnant geopolitical asymmetry this way:

How long will the internet abide states as nodes of economic and social standing?

Trying to shoehorn a previous world order into an information age society seems like a colossal waste of time in service of nostalgia.

> nostalgia.

Nostalgia does not guarantee me personal autonomy. Neither does it guarantee me a right to self defense. Nor does it guarantee a free practice of religion, free press, or a right of association.

Ensuring the survival of a nation state that adheres to the US Constitution will guarantee those things.

> How long will the internet abide states as nodes of economic and social standing?

Take a look at China and their authoritarian take on "the internet". "The internet", that is the masses that make it up, do what they're told, consume what they are allowed to consume, demonize those they are told they should demonize. Goebbels would be jealous of the machine the modern world has developed.

> Nostalgia does not guarantee me personal autonomy. Neither does it guarantee me a right to self defense. Nor does it guarantee a free practice of religion, free press, or a right of association.

> Ensuring the survival of a nation state that adheres to the US Constitution will guarantee those things.

This is _precisely_ the uncultured nostalgia I'm suggesting is unworthy of our defenses.

I absolutely support your right to bear arms in your defense. To be free in your religious exercise and associations and speech and press, and in the security of your effects against intrusion.

But the US is not, as you say, a nation state that adheres to the US Constitution in any broad and universal sense.

We have two million people living in cages. Five million more living under supervision of a system of slavery rebranded as carceral rehabilitation. Drugs and medicines and sacraments subject to capricious regulation at best, and often outright prohibition. Fiat currency. Arms which are practical as tools of self-defense unavailable to a quarter of the population.

And I'm not sure that anybody other than (some) white men have _ever_ had these things securely in their civic possession.

So the question is: _can_ a state be the bearer of insurance for these things? Especially now? Why can't we protect each other? Engage in commerce regulated (which is to say, made regular) by the internet alone? I have no idea what the benefits are of the continued existence of the US State, but the downsides are absolutely evident and very real on a daily basis.

> Take a look at China and their authoritarian take on "the internet".

I take your point, absolutely. But doesn't China and the Great Firewall also provide us with an example of failure of authoritarian tendencies as they apply to the internet?

May 35th lives on largely as an internet meme. The official truth may dominate in circles where it can be violently maintained, but those shrink in the face of connectivity, no?

You've hit the nail squarely in your comment. The US is hideously broken. Notice I said "a nation state that adheres to the US constitution". I am not unaware of the failures of the United States, its abuses of power, and the hideous humanity expressed by its elite class (pedophilia, child sacrifice, etc.).

> _can_ a state be the bearer of insurance for these things?

Yes, but it requires the governors of the state to be moral. The peoples of the US have completely failed in passing moral ideologies to their children and grand-children. This moral failure has led to every disintegration of orderly running in the bureaucracy of the US and its states. If the pieces (the people) are immoral, so is the machine.

> And I'm not sure that anybody other than (some) white men have _ever_ had these things securely in their civic possession.

We pretend the opportunity is still to be had. But taxes and inflation steal most of the commoner's earnings. Taxes and inflation see to it that wealth (not necessarily dollars) flows to the elite class. Regulations ensure no one can fight the loss of wealth.

I think people may sometimes forget thag, so far as 95% of the population goes, the internet is still a communication and commerce channels, with endpoints in meatspace. some endpoints are in liberal democracy, some in totalitarian regime. to overthrow the latter you need revolution or nationstate interference.

Policy change-politik-is a function of political will and political efficacy.

the internet is just an information conduit, end of day

I think you're forgetting that the only thing the internet does is make communication easy. The material realities of where we live, our cultures and belief systems determine how we split into groups like countries.

So while the internet certainly enables us to be more connected as a species, it doesn't eliminate what makes having nations a valuable construct for human societies. As long as our physical environment matters, nations or similar constructs will be around.

> I can absolutely envision - without much difficulty - a megatons-to-megawatts motion swiftly bringing an end to this period in Earth's history.

I can't figure out if you're talking about a nuclear war changing the world, or a nuclear disarmament process that somehow also leads to energy production.

> I can't figure out if you're talking about a nuclear war changing the world, or a nuclear disarmament process that somehow also leads to energy production.

My apologies - the latter.

I found the rest of jMyles' comment equally baffling. My advise to people is to talk as simply and clearly as you can.

> It is ok to not want these things, but to survive as a nation state, these things will become necessary developments in order to survive.

Yes, exactly.

> If killer drones are an effective war-fighting tool (an it appears they are), they are inevitable.

I have come to the same conclusion.

I see the Cold War never ended in the US. The communists you're decrying engaged 80% of the German army and were responsible for 7/10s of Nazi deaths on that front.

It wasn't the USSR that dropped two nuclear bombs (one uranium, one plutonium) on Japanese civilian targets when the Japanese were willing to surrender on the sole condition that they keep their emperor (a religious figure)

In the name of "stopping the spread of communism" the US overthrew popularly-elected governments, sent death squads into Latin America, and killed millions of civilians besides the ones they permanently maimed. This is besides the typical "make their economy scream" that kills civilians as well, in a way harder to quantify. Cuba is still the victim of this decades after the failed Bay of Pigs.

We have technically been in a state of emergency since the 50s with the undeclared Korean War, and for what? The permanent wartime economy hasn't benefited anyone besides the military-industrial complex. American imperial designs in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, Yemen, Syria, etc. were all enabled by this escalation mentality and the crimes against humanity that were committed there are a permanent stain on humanity

> the Japanese were willing to surrender on the sole condition that they keep their emperor

Heh, that's quite the narrative.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident

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