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Comment by tonylemesmer | Hacker News Reader

Love this:

“Once countries like China start exporting these, they’re going to be everywhere really quickly. Within the next 10 years, every country will have these,” Noel Sharkey

How about you change "China" to "USA" - Basically the same right? What's so wrong about China having drones that he singles them out?

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Because it's the common perception that USA would never sell their weapons to terrorists or third world countries where there is little to no control over them, but China lacks such a moral compass and will sell to anyone who is willing to pay. A completely wrong perception, but there it is.

I don't think it's the US's moral compass (more likely it's strategic compass) that's at work here.

I agree - I guess my beef is that the USA have already "exported" them. Whether that's physically or just the idea of drones in general. Having said that, whoever comes up with an idea for a deadly product first and shows it to someone else is ultimately responsible, not always these so-called rogue nations.

Old joke - how does the US knows there are WMD in Iraq - they keep the receipts.

US armed both Iraq and the Taliban in the 80s.

"such a moral compass" seriously?

I thought the sarcasm would be obvious without the /s tag.

Dang sorry, I was really just skimming and haven't read the a article :P But yeah it's a ridiculous notion and won't take long to start coming up

I'm not sure he says it's wrong that China have drones - but china is already a well known supplier of technology and they havn't signed an international agreement against exchange of drone technology.

Thus, you're more likely to see China manufacturing and exporting drones to whomever wants to buy than the US.

The commenters [in the article] seem to be largely avoiding phrasing these in moral terms. It's more that the Chinese are far more willing to spread these systems than the US (at present). China's making huge inroads across the globe by spreading their technologies (for economic or military or other uses). The US already established itself as a global power. China is still growing in that regard and is trying to woo nation-states that the US or others have held or still hold significant influence over.

He's not saying it's wrong. He's saying it's likely that China would do it rather than USA.

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