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| ▲ | bastawhiz 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Sure, until someone says "hey can we stick this on a truck and use it against cars?" "Hey can we stick this on the belly of a plane and use it on a building?" "Hey what happens if we do a flash of this at protestors?" | | |
| ▲ | Alive-in-2025 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Which will happen because it always happens | | |
| ▲ | breppp 40 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Then when that happens that might be morally objectionable. But probably like any other weapon that already exists, a rocket, missile or gun. While not everyday a new defense systems is invented that is targeted at statistical weapon that terrorizes civilians. | | |
| ▲ | slfreference 17 minutes ago | parent [-] | | In Batman Begins, the villian just makes the drinking water toxic. With todays AI and Biotech, one can create a new bacteria or virus and cripple water supply of cities. I am sure a suitable trained AI can get more creative with such low cost attack vectors. |
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| ▲ | wat10000 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It’s not going to do anything useful against cars, let alone buildings. It would blind people, and that would be bad, but it’s a very expensive way to hurt people. I think this one is for what it says it’s for. | | |
| ▲ | bastawhiz 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | "It's a very expensive way to hurt people" has historically never been a real deterrent to motivated nation states to bring costs down | | |
| ▲ | bawolff an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Countries dont generally invest in shitty weapons when they already have good weapons. Bombs & missiles already exist and are much better than lasers if your goal is to destroy a stationary target. | |
| ▲ | wat10000 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | The point is, why would they bother when there’s cheaper and easier ways to do it? A high tech laser system is great for shooting stuff down because it replaces missile systems that cost even more. If you want to cripple people, why would you use it instead of a cheap gun or baton? “It could be used to hurt people” doesn’t mean much. You at least need “it could be used to hurt people, and it’s better at it in at least one way than what’s already available.” | | |
| ▲ | noomer2 4 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Does anyone really think the country that spent millions of dollars building explosive-laden pagers that blinded and maimed children, then spent tens of millions of dollars gloating about it in public, gives a solitary thought to the cost-benefit ratio? They have rules that say it's okay to kill 100 civilians as long as a single "operative" is also killed. This is a country whose leadership cares only about executing terror. Just like the USA. |
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| ▲ | jmyeet 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There is no such thing as a defensive weapon. You might be tempted to say "what about a missile shield?" but such a thing allows the owner to act with impunity with levels of violence we arguably haven't seen since 1945. As a real example of this, the only reason a deeper conflict didn't develop with Iran this year was because Iran demonstrated they could overwhelm the various layers of Israel's missile shield and Iran seriously depleted the various munitions used by those air defense systems (eg interceptors, THAAD) and those take a long time to replenish. | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 15 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > There is no such thing as a defensive weapon I agree if we reframe it as “purely defensive,” though there is a bit of tautology invoked with the “weapon” qualifier. That said, there is legitimacy to developing defensive arms, even if one doesn’t like the ones doing it. > the only reason a deeper conflict didn't develop with Iran this year was because Iran demonstrated they could overwhelm the various layers of Israel's missile shield This hypothesis is not sustained by Iran’s reduced firing rate throughout the conflict. All evidence suggests Iran lost its war with Israel and would lose it again if they go for round 2. | |
| ▲ | belorn 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If you want society to be more vulnerable to military action, then the biggest innovation is health care. Improved health care is what allowed nations to create and maintain larger military forces. Through out history, disease and malnourished caused more death by a large margin than actually violence in combat, and many war campaign stopped suddenly because one or both sides became unable to continue. | |
| ▲ | jstummbillig 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > You might be tempted to say "what about a missile shield?" but such a thing allows the owner to act with impunity with levels of violence we arguably haven't seen since 1945. I would still say "what about a missile shield?". If a missile shield is a weapon, because of its affordances, then any object is a weapon. And while that's marginally true I don't think we get anywhere by entertaining category errors. If something enables aggression, because it makes counter attacks unreasonable, that seems like a fairly nice thing to have more of, in a world where destruction is far too easy and construction is fairly hard. | |
| ▲ | drnick1 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > As a real example of this, the only reason a deeper conflict didn't develop with Iran this year was because Iran demonstrated they could overwhelm the various layers of Israel's missile shield and Iran seriously depleted the various munitions used by those air defense systems (eg interceptors, THAAD) and those take a long time to replenish. Lol no, Iran was utterly humiliated in this conflict, and outed as a paper tiger. | |
| ▲ | wat10000 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That’s gross. You’re basically saying that hundreds of millions of people need to be held as hostages to ensure good behavior, and that trying to rescue those hostages is morally wrong. | |
| ▲ | oytis 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] | | |
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| ▲ | cogman10 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Could definitely be used in an offensive capacity. I don't think it'll be a red alert 2 style prism cannon, but I do think it can be used to gain air superiority. With a long enough runtime, this thing could definitely take out a plane. That said, it's pretty tame. We can already take out planes with flak cannons. This is just more efficient. |
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