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Jean-Luc Szpakowski's avatar

Arnaud Bertrand has posted soem grest robot videos, including of one that beat ihumans in a half-marathon. https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cz0e54yrppno

Rick Mccloskey's avatar

This is interesting, compelling even, Wilkerson is not.

John Fisher's avatar

In some ways the Ukrainians have more complex drone warfare. They are operating a battlefield with coordination of many drones and vehicles, in spite of jamming and anti-drone weapons. Possibly they are close to more autonomous drone attacks that can't be jammed. Their attacks on infrastructure seem to be able to hit individual components, like key valves and such.

The short range drones are civilian tech with software. This means they can follow the computer business arc of rapid mass manufacturing. ( but not as fast as China of course) The longer range weapons are more specialized, and probably require mostly military-only hardware, but you'd think the software would be flexible and re-usable.

the suck of sorrow's avatar

I see our generals perched on a branch above mine, making book on whether my branch gets subsumed.

Our foreign wars should be over. Sending kids into zones that are totally unprotected like West Asia, East Africa, and Eastern Europe is tantamount to executing them.

On the domestic side a low intensity war with dead end Trump followers taking a side is something we have coming.

May our generals take front-line positions should such a conflict ensue. Best if they do not all pick the same side. Let a fair coin pick.

Ian's avatar

Yes. China is America in 1940. Massive civilian industry which could be retooled not for thousands of drones, but MILLIONS. Right now it's a tech of the weak (as I predicted over a decade ago) but it scales with industry, and China is the industrial lead who also LOVE drones and robotics and didn't make civilian aerial drones essentially illegal the way America did.

Thomas Neuburger's avatar

Exactly, Ian. Exactly

Brian A. Graham's avatar

Since Ian has compared China to the United States in 1940, I’d like to compare the United States to Japan six months after they launched their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. We are the aggressor who is about to get ground up by an emergent superpower’s industrial might.

Thomas Neuburger's avatar

Scary, Brian, but probably right.

Mitchell Gershten MD's avatar

Why would we expect any forward thinking, let alone full prescience or wisdom when the ‘leaders’ of our military are dark triad maniacs with at least one of them believing that a squirt of testosterone is all we will require to be the virile no quarter badasses he salivates over. If this weren’t our lived reality, it would be hilarious !