Noahopinion: Noah Smith March 11, 2014

Quote:The human race is on the brink of momentous and dire change. It is a change that potentially smashes our institutions and warps our society beyond recognition. It is also a change to which almost no one is paying attention. I'm talking about the coming obsolescence of the gun-wielding human infantryman as a weapon of war. Or to put it another way: the end of the Age of the Gun.

You may not even realize you have been, indeed, living in the Age of the Gun because it's been centuries since that age began. But imagine yourself back in 1400. In that century (and the 10 centuries before it), the battlefield was ruled not by the infantryman, but by the horse archera warrior-nobleman who had spent his whole life training in the ways of war. Imagine that guy's surprise when he was shot off his horse by a poor no-count farmer armed with a long metal tube and just two weeks' worth of training. Just a regular guy with a gun.

That day was the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modernity. For centuries after that fateful day, gun-toting infantry ruled the battlefield. Military success depended more and more on being able to motivate large groups of (gun-wielding) humans, instead of on winning the loyalty of the highly trained warrior-noblemen. But sometime in the near future, the autonomous, weaponized drone may replace the human infantryman as the dominant battlefield technology. And as always, that shift in military technology will cause huge social upheaval.

The advantage of people with guns is that they are cheap and easy to train. In the modern day, it's true that bombers, tanks, and artillery can lay waste to infantrybut those industrial tools of warfare are just so expensive that swarms of infantry can still deter industrialized nations from fighting protracted conflicts. Look at how much it cost the United States to fight the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, versus how much it cost our opponents. The hand-held firearm reached its apotheosis with the cheap, rugged, easy-to-use AK-47; with this ubiquitous weapon, guerrilla armies can still defy the mightiest nations on Earth.

The Age of the Gun is the age of People Power. The fact that guns don't take that long to master means that most people can learn to be decent gunmen in their spare time. That's probably why the gun is regarded as the ultimate guarantor of personal liberty in Americain the event that we need to overthrow a tyrannical government, we like to think that we can put down our laptops, pick up our guns, and become an invincible swarm.

Of course, it doesn't always work out that way. People Power has often been used not for freedom, but to establish nightmarish tyrannies, in the Soviet Union, Mao's China, and elsewhere. But Stalin, Mao, and their ilk still had to win hearts and minds to hold power; in the end, when people wised up, their nightmare regimes were reformed into something less horrible.

But another turning point in the history of humankind may be on the horizon. Continuing progress in automation, especially continued cost drops, may mean that someday soon, autonomous drone militaries become cheaper than infantry at any scale.

Note that what we call drones right now are actually just remote-control weapons, operated by humans. But that may change. The United States Army is considering replacing thousands of soldiers with true autonomous robots. The proposal is for the robots to be used in supply roles only, but that will obviously change in the long term. Sometime in the next couple of decades, drones will be given the tools to take on human opponents all by themselves.

Meanwhile, technological advances and cost drops in robotics continue apace. It is not hard to imagine swarms of agile, heavily armed quadrotor drones flushing human gunmen out of buildings and jungles, while hardened bunkers are busted with smart munitions from cheap high-altitude robot blimps. (See this video if your imagination needs assistance.)

The day that robot armies become more cost-effective than human infantry is the day when People Power becomes obsolete. With robot armies, the few will be able to do whatever they want to the many. And unlike the tyrannies of Stalin and Mao, robot-enforced tyranny will be robust to shifts in popular opinion. The rabble may think whatever they please, but the Robot Lords will have the guns.

Forever.

Where this scenario really gets scary is when it combines with economic inequality. Although few people have been focusing on robot armies, many people have been asking what happens if robots put most of us out of a job. The final, last-ditch response to that contingency is income redistribution if our future is to get paid to sit on a beach, so be it.

But with robot armies, that's just not going to work. To pay the poor, you have to tax the rich, and the Robot Lords are unlikely to stand for that. Just imagine Tom Perkins with an army of cheap autonomous drones. Or Greg Gopman. We're all worried about the day that the 1% no longer need the 99%but what's really scary is when they don't fear the 99% either.

Take a look at countries where the government makes its money from natural resources instead of human laborSaudi Arabia, Russia, Iran. Look at the money and effort those governments spend making sure their people don't rebel. What will those countries look like when repression starts getting cheaper and cheaper? And why will America and Europe and East Asia be different? Isn't a nation where the rich can get everything they need from robots essentially suffering from the same "resource curse" as Saudi Arabia?

When we think of the "rise of the robots," we usually think of Skynet and Agent Smiththe evil of artificial intelligence. But that's not who we should be worrying about. A.I.'sif they ever existmay or may not have any reason to dominate, marginalize, or slaughter humanity. But we know that humans often like to do those things. Humans already exist, and we know many of them are evil. It's the Robot Lords we should be afraid of, not Skynet.

Libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, and rugged individualists have always based their visions of a capitalist paradise on the idea that the state is the main threat to the power and freedom of the individual. And in the Age of the Gun, that was true. But in the Age of the Drone, that is no longer the case. When the rich hold unlimited military power in their own two hands, who's going to stop them from just taking the property of everyone else? If you're a card-carrying National Rifle Association member, you should ask yourself whether you're going to be one of the Robot Lords … or one of the rest.

We can carry this dystopian thought exercise through to its ultimate conclusion. Imagine a world where gated communities have become self-contained cantonments, inside of which live the beautiful, rich, Robot Lords, served by cheap robot employees, guarded by cheap robot armies. Outside the gates, a teeming, ragged mass of lumpen humanity teeters on the edge of starvation. They can't farm the land or mine for minerals, because the invincible robot swarms guard all the farms and mines. Their only hope is to catch the attention of the Robot Lords inside the cantonments, either by having enough rare talent to be admitted as a Robot Lord, or by becoming a novelty slave for a little while.

This sounds like nothing more than a fun science fiction story, but why shouldn't this happen? Human civilization was somewhat like this for most of our historyaristocrats feasting in their manor houses, half-starved peasants toiling in the fields. What liberated us? It might have been the printing press, or capitalism, or the sailing ship. But it might have been the gun. And if it was the gun that liberated us, then we should be very worried. Because when the Age of the Gun ends, the age of freedom and dignity and equality that much of humanity now enjoys may turn out to have been a bizarre, temporary aberration.

The problem I see with this scenario is that the 1% will still need the 99% (or at least the majority) to work for wages - meagre though they may be - so that they can spend their income on things sold by the 1%. The ultra wealthy few can't sell their own products to themselves and make a profit.

So it seems to me that future robocop technology will be used to enforce, and not to replace?

David Guyatt Wrote:The problem I see with this scenario is that the 1% will still need the 99% (or at least the majority) to work for wages - meagre though they may be - so that they can spend their income on things sold by the 1%. The ultra wealthy few can't sell their own products to themselves and make a profit.

So it seems to me that future robocop technology will be used to enforce, and not to replace?

Short term: robocop.

But for those playing the long game? Replace.

My read, the very existence of the 1% is an affront to the godlike superiority of the heirs of the Black Venetian Nobility. The ultimate solution to the 1% problem is alteration and replacement. Alteration would mean bioengineering human beings to tolerate slavery. A relatively small group would be bred for brilliant pacifity and would continue to conceive and engineer technological innovation.

The very thought of an economy that depends on the 1% would have to be rethought.

While walking my dog yesterday, I came across a man flying a six-propeller drone. I watched for some 20 minutes until he landed it. It flew very fast in any direction his two joysticks dictated. It had a positionable webcam he could view on his hand-held controller [or could transmit via wifi anywhere else]. It had a range of about a Km [.65 mile] and could lift a rather hefty load. Its battery pack alone was heavy and huge! I looked at a local large computer store and they were selling a similar one for about $400. I can only imagine what a few thousand dollars can buy these days....and what capabilities they might have. Brave New World or Hellish Electronic Nightmare?::

Quote:Brave New World or Hellish Electronic Nightmare?::

Use some imagination and take your pick.

Peter Lemkin Wrote:While walking my dog yesterday, I came across a man flying a six-propeller drone. I watched for some 20 minutes until he landed it. It flew very fast in any direction his two joysticks dictated. It had a positionable webcam he could view on his hand-held controller [or could transmit via wifi anywhere else]. It had a range of about a Km [.65 mile] and could lift a rather hefty load. Its battery pack alone was heavy and huge! I looked at a local large computer store and they were selling a similar one for about $400. I can only imagine what a few thousand dollars can buy these days....and what capabilities they might have. Brave New World or Hellish Electronic Nightmare?::

Like all things, it's a double edged sword that can be used to heal or to hack.

But we know what it most likely will be used for don't we.

Quote: David Guyatt

The problem I see with this scenario is that the 1% will still need the 99% (or at least the majority) to work for wages - meagre though they may be - so that they can spend their income on things sold by the 1%. The ultra wealthy few can't sell their own products to themselves and make a profit.

So it seems to me that future robocop technology will be used to enforce, and not to replace?

You got it right.....

Published on Thursday, June 19, 2014 by Common Dreams

World's First Fleet of Riot Control Drones Ordered by Secret South African Company


Fears raised that the drones will be used to crack down on legitimate protest, with potentially lethal consequences

- Max Ocean, Editorial Intern



Striking mineworkers gather outside the Anglo-American Platinum mine in Rustenburg, South Africa. (Credit: cc/soundofheart.org)

A South Africa-based company will be selling 25 units of its crowd control drones to an undisclosed South African mining company likely for use against protesting workers, BBC News reported on Wednesday.


The drones, originally unveiled by their maker Desert Wolf at a trade show near Johannesburg last month, sell for nearly $50,000 apiece and are equipped with four "high-capacity paint ball barrels" that can each shoot a total of up to 80 paint, pepper, or plastic balls per second, with a full capacity of 4,000 balls. In addition to a generic on-board high-definition camera, it has a thermal camera for use at night, as well as "bright strobe lights, blinding Lasers and on-board speakers" that can be used to warn crowds, according to the company's website.


"Our aim is to assist in preventing another Marikana, we were there and it should never happen again," the website states, referring to the 2012 miner's strike that led to the infamous massacre that resulted in countless injuries and the deaths of 44 people.


The purchase by the unnammed company comes in the midst of strikes sweeping South Africa's mining industry. The country possesses over 80 percent of the world's known platinum reserves, and the mining industry has seen continuous protest and striking since the deadly Marikana massacre. Just last week, the three major platinum producers that workers have waged a 21-week wage strike against announced that they had reached a deal "in principle" with the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, but Wednesday it was reported that the AMCU had refused it.


While Desert Wolf argues the selling point of the drones is their ability to stop future tragedies like the
Marikana disaster by controlling "unruly crowds without endangering the lives of the protestors or the security staff," Noel Sharkey, chair of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, says that drones such as the skunk will be used to suppress legitimate protests with potentially dire consequences.


"Firing plastic balls or bullets from the air will maim and kill," Sharkey told BBC News. "Using pepper spray against a crowd of protesters is a form of torture and should not be allowed. We urgently need an investigation by the international community before these drones are used."


Desert Wolf Managing Director Hennie Kieser said that the company "cannot disclose the customer, but [can] say it will be used by an international mining house." Kieser reportedly also told the BBC that police units and a "number of other industrial customers" have expressed interest in the product.

Tim Noonan, spokesman for the International Trade Union Confederation, voiced concerns of the international labor community over the news.

"This is a deeply disturbing and repugnant development, and we are convinced that any reasonable government will move quickly to stop the deployment of advanced battlefield technology on workers or indeed the public involved in legitimate protests and demonstrations," said Noonan. "We will be taking this up as a matter of urgency with the unions in the mining sector globally," he added.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/06/19-5

Keith, I am sure we will be assured that these drones will be moral drones -- programmed with the morality of the 1%.

the riot control drone.

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Riot control drone armed with paintballs and pepper spray hits market

Published time: June 19, 2014 23:42 Get short URL

Skunk Riot Control Copter at the IFSEC security exhibition outside Johannesburg, South Africa (courtesy Desert Wolf)



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Drones, Police, Protest, SciTech, South Africa

With drones designed to contain unruly crowds' and violent protests', a South African company is bringing riot control to a whole new high-tech level. The unmanned aerial system is able to shoot pepper spray and non-lethal paintballs to mark offenders.
Desert Wolf, based in Pretoria, has begun selling its Skunk Riot Control Copter, a drone it says "is designed to control unruly crowds without endangering the lives of the protestors or the security staff."
The UAS has four high-capacity gun barrels, capable of shooting up to 4,000 paintballs, pepper spray balls and solid plastic balls at rates of up to 80 balls per second. The company notes that the frequency should usually be between one and 20 balls per second, and that the high frequency of 80 "will only be used in an extreme Life threatening situation'."

Skunk CAD design (courtesy Desert Wolf)

The paintballs can be used to "mark" people in the crowd. "The operator has full control over each marker. He can select the RED paint marker and mark the protester who carries dangerous weapons, he can select the BLUE marker to mark the vandalising protestors," the Desert Wolf website said.
The Skunk Copter can also employ strobe lights, "blinding lasers" and on-board speakers to send verbal warnings to a crowd, though New Zealand's 3News notes that the Geneva Convention prohibits the use of loudspeakers and laser pointers in combat. The UAS also uses a thermal camera with night-vision capabilities and two full-HD video cameras to record events as they unfold. The eight powerful electric motors with 16-inch propellers allow the drone to lift up to 45 kilograms (99 pounds).
"Our aim is to assist in preventing another Marikana, we were there and it should never happen again," the Desert Wolf website said. Marikana was a wildcat miners' strike at a South African platinum mine in 2012, where 44 people were killed in the violent protests. According to autopsy reports, many of the deaths occurred when strikers were fleeing police.
READ MORE: S. African police open fire on thousands of striking miners (GRAPHIC)
The company sold 25 drones to a mining company after it unveiled the Skunk at the IFSEC security exhibition outside Johannesburg in May.
"We cannot disclose the customer, but I am allowed to say it will be used by an international mining house," Desert Wolf's managing director Hennie Kieser told BBC News. "We are also busy with a number of other customers who want to finalise their orders. Some [are] mines in South Africa, some security companies in South Africa and outside South Africa, some police units outside South Africa and a number of other industrial customers."
The International Trade Union Confederation, which supports workers' rights, told the BBC it was horrified by the new technology.
"This is a deeply disturbing and repugnant development and we are convinced that any reasonable government will move quickly to stop the deployment of advanced battlefield technology on workers or indeed the public involved in legitimate protests and demonstrations," International Trade Union Confederation spokesman Tim Noonan said.
"We will be taking this up as a matter of urgency with the unions in the mining sector globally," he added.
The International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC) campaign group is also speaking out against the use of the Shark Copter and similar technology, such as the CUPID drone that employs an 80,000-volt taser dart.
Noel Sharkey, chair of the ICRAC, told the BBC he is concerned that the deployment of such drones risks "creeping authoritarianism and the suppression of protest."
"The use of remote-controlled drones to police or attack civilian individuals or groups with violent force is an offense against human dignity and a threat to democratic sovereignty," Mark Gubrud, a physicist with the ICRAC, told 3News. "It is also a potential precursor to scenarios in which the robots would operate fully autonomously, choosing their own targets outside of human control."
"These weapons cannot be sufficiently well controlled to avoid causing serious injury, especially to eyes," Gubrud told CNet. "Many existing non-lethal' crowd-control weapons can and often do kill."
The first batch of drones, which cost about 500,000 South African Rand ($46,000) apiece, will be deployed to South African mines later in June, according to the Verge. Strikes against three of the country's top three platinum producers have been going on for the last five months, though a wage deal between the mining companies and unions is imminent, Reuters reported on Friday.

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