I used to feel this way until I learned about counter-UAS tech.

That's wishful thinking. Flying drones aren't the only threat, or the main threat, and there isn't such a thing as "counter-UAS tech", only counter-yesterday's-UAS tech. Radio jamming was "counter-UAS tech" until the mass production of fiber-optic-controlled FPV drones starting five months ago, for example. You can still find vendors marketing it as such.

30 milligrams of high explosive is enough to open your daughter's skull, or, more relevantly, your commanding officer's daughter's skull, and there are a thousand ways to deliver it to her if she can be tracked: in pager batteries, crawling, swimming, floating, waiting for ambush, hitchhiking on migratory birds, hitchhiking on car undercarriages, in her Amazon Prime deliveries, falling from a hydrogen balloon in the mesosphere, and so on. And if 30mg is too much, 2mg of ricin on a mechanical ovipositor will do just as well.

All of this is technically possible today without any new discoveries. At this point it's a straightforward systems development exercise. And you can be sure that there are bad people working for multiple different countries' spy agencies who know this; they don't need me to tell them.

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bostik a day ago | parent [-]

> 30 milligrams of high explosive is enough to open your daughter's skull, or, more relevantly, your commanding officer's daughter's skull, and there are a thousand ways to deliver it

While we are talking about flying drones, we are not far off from Slaughterbots becoming reality.[0] Why bother with surgical assassinations if you can blanket entire regions with with swarms of autonomous seek-and-destroy explosives?

After all, as last two years have so amply demonstrated: people are fine with genocide.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU

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godelski a day ago | parent | next [-]

What's important to remember is that we get to Slaughterbots with "best intentions." Trying to feel safer. Trying to kill our enemies. Trying to protect our friends, families, children. Little by little is how it happens. The road to hell is paved, after all.

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kragen a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Slaughterbots is just the beginning; it's definitely too late to prevent that scenario now.

Why bother? For the same reason to bother with surgical assassinations if you can blanket entire regions with nuclear fireballs. Radioactive wastelands are unprofitable! This is a general problem with genocide: it only gets you land, and since the Green Revolution land is abundant. Protection rackets, on the otehr hand, are highly profitable, but only with some exclusivity; if extortionists multiply, the unique Nash equilibrium is multiple gangs that collectively demand many times the victims' total revenues, resulting in ecological collapse.

More generally, the threat of violence is only effective as a form of coercion when you can credibly withdraw the violence as a reward for compliance. Violence provides no incentive to comply to someone who believes they are just as likely to be a victim whether they comply or not.

But swarms of autonomous seek-and-destroy explosives are plausibly the most effective way to provide that surgical-assassination threat, perhaps combined with poisons, solid penetrators, and/or incendiaries. The Minority Report spiders (not yet technically feasible) or a quadcopter can be enormously more selective than a GBU-57, a Hellfire missile, or even a hand grenade, and can choose to avert their attack at the last millisecond upon the presentation of properly signed do-not-assassinate orders, even if long-distance communication is jammed.

	▲	computerthings a day ago \| parent [-]
		[dead]

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gruez a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>After all, as last two years have so amply demonstrated: people are fine with genocide.

Last two years? Try last few decades at the very least. People only care about the war in Gaza more because it's controversial. For non-controversial cases people just agree it's bad but shrug their shoulders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_genocide

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jonah a day ago | parent [-]

What's ridiculous is that it's even seen as controversial by some.

	▲	tomalbrc 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It is will how some people will live in their bubble and not see the controversies

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autoexec 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's sad that it was only months after that video was released that autonomous drones were being used to kill people in war. That video was meant as a warning but it was totally ignored.

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MoonGhost 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> After all, as last two years have so amply demonstrated: people are fine with genocide.

And open war crimes like intentionally killing civilians (TV broadcasters in Iran for example, or Gaza en mass)