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Comment by aogaili | Hacker News Reader

At this point might as well just play strategy video game and call it a day?

Both sides staring at screens, controlling drones fighting each other.. why use physical drones at all? abstract it away and play video game?

In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively, and those who can't produce any more drones, lose.

If you think about, we moved human one-on-one battles to MMA and combat sport, this allowed channeling individual human aggression in a controlled environment. The future war might be not very different, swarm of drones fighting other swarm of drones while others watching on the news, who can build, manage and deploy smarter and more effective drones. If one side economy collapses and their manufacturing collapse, then what is left? they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat.

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> abstract it away and play video game?

What happens when one side wins? In the real world, they actually win. In the video game, nothing happens

> In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively

In other words, in the near future it might work the exact way it has always worked.

> they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat.

Your ideas are based on the idea of winning in a closed-system game. War is waged by people. Some people actually want the other people to die.

Yes, but it not like before.

We (as humans) are getting more strict about losing people's life. We don't allow genocide, we don't allow colonization and enslavement, at least the majority of nations agree that this is not acceptable.

So it is NOT like before. And the logical conclusion, as those drones get better and more widely adopted, is that war will be nothing more a video game with real economics and supply chain. So we basically made the cost of genocide or colonization too high to absorb. Previous wars, people got away with it.

We don't allow? Who doesn't? And what are they going to do about it?

The majority of nations? majority of people on earth? We are going to a multilateral world and to win a war you need secure the appeal of majority. If the majority think your war is illegal they can cut you off from the world economy.

It is a distributed consensus-based algorithm, and the young people who are writing those algorithms will shape the future of governance.

The majority of the world thinks the Russia-Ukraine war is illegal.

The majority of the world thinks the Israeli/US-Iran war is illegal.

You are arguing today. This is the first kind of wars we are seeing of this nature.

But Iran is hitting exactly where it hurts, global supply chain, and now the US will be pressured by the global economy to either retreat or commit a genocide.

And if all the war was drones and anti-drones today (which is not) we would have saved many lives. Look at UAE/Iran, UAE lost no live despite being hammered with drones/missiles, this is an example of drones/anti-drones future. The reason why we don't have this with the US, is because the US needs a defeat for the legacy system to die, and it seems they will get that defeat soon. Actually they are already defeated, Trump said he is retreating in 3 weeks while achieving nothing but destruction.

Your casual usage of the word “genocide” doesn’t apply to Iran.

Iranians are dramatically in favor of removing the theocratic Islamic regime. Iranian expats the world over celebrated Khamenei’s death.

My Iranian mother-in-law living in Tehran has literally been saying “get the mullahs out” every time we’ve spoken for the last year. Millions of Iranians inside Iran are thankful that the US (and even Israel despite the complicated relationship) is attacking the regime.

This is a regime, after all, that killed thousands of its own people. That requires girls to fully cover themselves. That doesn’t allow singing or dancing in the street.

Achieved nothing? Go talk to a real Iranian, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Iranians the world over have felt hope for the first time in over 40 years that they may get their country back. And we absolutely should not stop trying to help them.

Yeah, I grew up in Iraq, under more ruthless dictator that fought Iran. You are naive if you thank Israel/US are here to free Iran.

A government won't last that long if there were to genuine supports. The fact you are outside of Iran and have some people there, doesn't make you more knowledgeable, it makes you westernized and you voted to leave with your own feet.

From my conversations, Iranians don’t really care if Israel/US are specifically there to “free Iran”. Iranians are pragmatic, they understand that US/Israel have their own motives.

As long as the regime is being destroyed, that’s a win. And that’s happening, big time. That’s why Iranians danced in the street when Khamenei was killed.

Hoho ho. Hardly helped anyone in Bakmut eh?

And hardly how China or India are likely to work too.

That future you seem to think is inevitable is very far from it:

What this had to with with my arguments regarding the nature of future warfare, the emerging world economical order?

There is no point in history where we had such connected economies and this kind of autonomous war technology. All previous wars were fought by human bodies. We are witnessing the first generation of wars that becoming completely autonomous.

There seems to be an assumption of ‘power to the people’, and ‘just world’, that just doesn’t seem to match reality at all.

That’s what I am responding too.

Where is the assumptions? it is not just world. It is a world ruled by constrains and for better or worse human nature.

There is no people involved at all, in fact my argument is that there will be no people involved in wars..I'm just extrapolating on the what we are seeing today. Also nobody really understands reality fully not predict the future. We are just speculating here on what might happen. You surely don't understand reality and you said you can't imagine anything else.

Alright, so in your mind the world and future war will stay the same, regardless of drones, robotics and AI. Frankly, I don't understand what your argument is other than saying fantasy and doesn't match the reality that somehow you know more.

The goal of war is to subjugate others to your will through suffering.

That will not change, and I'm not sure how you expect that to work with zero human involvement.

Again, you don't understand my argument at all.

Of course the goal of the war is to make others to submit by force and pain. That's obvious

But you missing my point.

If in the near future multilateral system, governed by AI, drones and robotics. A war is nothing more than a war of attrition between economies, then in a global interconnected economy with scarce energy, it will become an absurd proposition because one nation can't cause significant bleed in other without bleeding itself.

Without human involvement and other players forces energy leakage in the global economy, it's not hard to see how. In fact we are seeing right now. It's why Trump is pulling back.

Except that is not what is happening at all.

Trump started the war to distract everyone, and we’ll all keep dealing with the fallout while he moves on to create another distraction.

It isn’t going to actually end anytime soon.

"Trump started the war to distract everyone" that is your opinion.

The war in middle east will not end soon, I agree with that. The question is whether the US will stay or not and how it will be rearranged. Trump is telling people he is will end it soon, but he will leave troops there. But the issue is Iran will keep hunting the economy, and he is now throwing the problem at the European. But what what will the European do? They have no option but to listen to Iran, and what does Iran want? end of the US bases to the region. So basically the US will retreat.

But with regards to the nature of the war itself. It is turning to drone vs drone wars, it is happens as we speak, and this is the first two wars of this scale we witnessing. I'm not sure why you think it is not happening? this is exactly what is happening. And the only reason why Iran is able to pull this off is because of the drones and guided missiles which is allowing them to bleed the globe economically, and an interconnected world, an AI driven speedboat hits a tankers near the shore of Iran, causes the tomato prices to raise at grocery store in California. And people will say, this has always been the case with war, and my argument is that we never had that level of interconnectedness before, we seen weapons that be produced cheaply at scale and can keep inflicting pressure on the other side and we have never lived in a multilateral global world order before. This is truly a new era in human history.

Uh huh.

Thanks for the conversation and helping to refine my thinking.

Frankly, you didn’t seem to care if I was here or not.

Why you said that? I truly appreciated the conversation. But you I don't care if you here or not, I don't know you.

> We don't allow genocide, we don't allow colonization and enslavement, at least the majority of nations agree that this is not acceptable

Literally all of these things are happening as we type this. What the majority of nations do or do not want is irrelevant.

Think in the future, I speak about a future, and you repeat it is happening, yes of course it is happening today, this tech is just being adopted.

So…. Fantasy?

So future = fantasy in your mind? you can not speculate anything beyond the present? well, that is limitation in your thinking.

More like the first two definitions of the word - literally. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fantasy

Again, poor argument. You can't speculate or think of the future..so if I do what you do, I say you are retarded - literally https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/retarded.

But that is not argument, that just us name calling each other, and I was hoping you have something of substance.

Bwahahahahahaha

So you want this system to stay? You are advocating for loss of life?

It is interesting that people give downvoting, so either they enjoy having the current wars continue and people physically killed, or they basically gave up on seeing a better future.

Both cases, it is sad.

Ukrainian invasion was attempt at genocide and colonization. Israel did anoyher genocide last year. And then there is yemen which may not be genocide, I dunno, but has super high unchecked amount of victims. Saudi made sure no one is watching.

And they all get away with it.

Today yes, unfortunately.

But my argument is for the future that we are starting to get a glimpses of. I'm not negating the currently genocides, I'm hoping for a future in which we don't have war at all due to the absurdly of it. And I'm arguing that there is a path forward and it is very realistic.

You missed my point, please read my other comments.

> In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively

This has been the assumption for over a decade now.

> those who can't produce any more drones, lose

Already the norm. Even the Taliban has been operating a drone mass production program for a couple years now [0][1].

> If one side economy collapses and their manufacturing collapse, then what is left? they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat

This abstraction of warfare isn't as peaceful as you make it out to be. Operationally, you still need to take out dual use infra which in a number of cases is civilian in nature.

The reality is, countries have increasingly accepted that civilian casualties will occur and it doesn't matter because they don't impact tactical goals.

[0] - https://www.themiddleeastuncovered.com/p/inside-the-talibans...

[1] - https://thekhorasandiary.com/en/2026/03/13/taliban-strengthe...

Yes, but what you are missing the cost of total elimination of the other side.

For example, in Iraq, Saddam was able to use chemical weapons and wipe out the resistance, this is no longer an accepted solution by majority of people on earth.

So there is no real way to actually win a war. If you can't kill or enslave the other population, and the world is not accepting refugees, if you hit one economy completely you might the global economy. So what do you do? there is actually no real way to win a war as those constraints become strong and stronger. You are left with the only option of nulling the other's economy down and hope they would resign, by better co-ordinating your drones and managing your economy, which is a video game in the real world.

> You are left with the only option of nulling the other's economy down

How do you (detest this phrasing, it very glib) null the other side?

Most weapon systems aren't developed in entirely separate supply chains - they use off-the-shelf components that are available for commercial usecases as well.

To successfully take out an opponents operational capacity when they are using dual use technology means the barrier between "civilian" and "military" is nonexistent.

It basically means the return to total war doctrine.

And what is your point? you just re-enforced my main assertion?

My point is that this assertion is wrong - "they could easily kill the people, but other nations won't allow it, so it will stop at economical defeat".

It is predicated on the assumption that the new (but in reality old) iteration of war would lead to less civilian casualties.

How is it really old when we have completely new AI/Robotics enabled warfare that would allow nations in the not distance future (not today) to engage in a war without human involvement? We never had anything like this before?

How would a war like this look like? what does winning really mean? and if your entire drone army depends on a global economy of suppliers, then you can easily cut off.

How is it that old? we never had wars like this..sorry, this is very stupid argument.

> In the near future, war might be about who can build faster/better and hit the other economy more effectively, and those who can't produce any more drones, lose.

This has always been the case.

It's very common for a war to be lost by the side that runs out of resources first -- whether soldiers, oil, missiles, or whatever the limiting factor is. Right now a major question in the Iran war is how many drones and missiles Iran has left.

What you describe as "playing strategy video game and call it day" is essentially democracy, and why democracies generally don't declare war on each other. Mostly, they trade goods and play football (soccer) against each other instead.

You are missing the point again. That has not always been case.

Read my other comments why it's the same. But basically with AI/Drones + Global Interconnected Economy + Multilateral world order + Global Information = new system.

We never had anything like that, and the argument that this has always been the case is missing my point entirely. But if you don't get, well, you won't get it.

"Again"? When did I miss the "point" the first time?

I don't get it because you haven't explained what is different now. Writing out some equation isn't an explanation. If you don't explain something clearly, and then try to blame people for not understanding, you're not going to have a good time.

You're proposing that wars being decided based on who runs out of resources first is something new. I'm telling you, this has been a major factor in warfare for millenia.

Orignal Star Trek did an episode on this - "A Taste of Armageddon". The war was a video game - fought on a computer. But if the virtual bombs hit your area, you were declared dead and had to a report to a disintegration chamber. If you can get past the dated special effects - the concept is the same.

Found it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8-I9nRAnDk

This is like the future after the scenario I describe happens. But I diff, is that we keep the game, but change the medium. Humans are war oriented by nature, like chimps, but I think as the world becomes more connected, the cost of destroying one place is causing impact on other..yet there is a desire to resolve conflict in violent way.

> yet there is a desire to resolve conflict in violent way.

There is a desire to resolve conflict in an incredibly violent way because there are no consequences for that violence.

There could be, but there are large emergent systems which work hard to ensure that powerful people don't face consequence for their actions.

We, as... Not powerful people can push back on that, but there's a collective action problem.

Interesting, need to watch that.

Finally, my years of playing Starcraft have real-world use! Also: Everyone will soon bow to S. Korea :D

Just gotta worry about the network lag

>> At this point might as well just play strategy video game and call it a day?

Do you agree in case your team lose to be relocated to the remote territory and also be stripped of your language, history and national identity?

6 weeks equates 84 average sized US highschools worth of people dying on the Russian side and twice as many coming back with life altering injuries. I'm not sure how a country can survive that.

It seems to me that the Russian attitude is that life is a cruel joke, which is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The country has had terrible government and an oppressed population for hundreds of years. Russian influence operations are using their intimate knowledge of destructive attitudes to drag down the competition to their level.

The difference is you can appeal or ignore a game result. If Ukraine lost a strategy game tournament, would they give up their territory? Or fight to hold it still?

Yes we are not fully there yet, but we are getting there.

We are seeing the transition right in front of our eyes.

Vladimir Putin doesn't dare to indirectly strike through Iran at the sources of fire power production powering suicide drones and targeteering data at Russia. He is too weak.

Finally!! https://youtu.be/wgKqKggYdDE?si=x6FFPqSKETIPYqiu

Ideally you'd have some sort of diplomatic solution and no war. But these things don't always pan out.

Agreed.

Unfortunately, diplomatic conflict resolution is prone to failures and the cost of failure is really really high.

What Iran is doing is telling the empire that their war has a cost on their economy and reputation. And the only reason they are able to do so is because of drones/missiles (basically automated Kamikaze pilots) and I would also argue GenAI since they producing a lot of PR videos which used be expensive to make. If Iran had to fight the war with their people, US would have won due to the imbalance of destructive power.

In other words, we are witnessing a new kind of system for conflict resolution. Not war and not diplomacy. More of drones/AI/robotics systems hitting economies while trying to avoid human life losses in order to win the narrative war. This no where similar to any war of the past. The key change is waging wars without people, i.e the automation of warfare. Which is closer to a video game than traditional wars.

But people think of my statement as reductionist to the current causalities, which is not my point, obviously we are far from having fully automated warfare but we are seeing the first generation. The closest example is the fight between Iran/UAE basically a network of digital systems defending against another.

And if my reasoning hold, we might end up in a more peaceful earth.

So like the old League of Legends lore before their Institute of War retcon?

Yes exactly. Like an arm wrestle, those who can demonstrate they have the better swarms, better AI, better supply chain, better innovation, win the war. And the other nation surrender. There is for resolving extreme national conflicts. If one side decides to go further and use drones to commit a genocide or completely destroy the other side economy/resources. Then other major players will join the game by using more drones and overwhelm the aggressive nation production and end it.

> At this point might as well just play strategy video game and call it a day?

> Both sides staring at screens, controlling drones fighting each other.. why use physical drones at all? abstract it away and play video game?

But then how will you gain new territory for oligarchs and billionaires? Are you really ready for the sacrifice that their next yacht will be smaller instead of larger? Do you really want them to withdraw from London's real estate market?

> At this point might as well just play strategy video game and call it a day?

No.

Young men being slaughtered in their hundreds of thousands.

Not a game

I know it is not.

I'm just saying in the future if all became drones war and we disallow genocide, then what do you think will happen?

Of course I acknowledge real life is lost right now, all I'm saying give politicians a video game to play instead of having drone wars.

Would you rather have politicians commit genocides and destroy real economics or play drone like video games? which side are you with?

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