The Revolution Has Arrived 3 Military robots have become a part of international conflict in the twenty-first century. While the technology is still evolving, there is little chance that it will disappear, because it has simply proven too useful to be abandoned. As Mark Bowden notes, The drone is effective. Its extraordinary precision makes it an advance in human- itarian warfare. In theory, when used with principled restraint, it is the perfect counterterrorism weapon. It targets indiscriminate killers with exquisite discrimi- nation. But because its aim can never be perfect, can only be as good as the intel- ligence that guides it, sometimes it kills the wrong people—and even when it doesn’t, its cold efficiency is literally inhuman.7 Of course, there are downsides to the use of advanced technology. One unnamed intelligence official put it quite succinctly, stating, “But there are two big ways we can make mistakes,” he added. “One is to forget that sometimes a light footprint can cost you more in the long run than going into a place with a much more decisive force—that was the lesson of Afghanistan. And the second is to fall in love with a whiz-bang new technology, because it’s easy to justify relying on it more and more. And that’s when a tactical weapon can begin defining your strategy.”8 Thus far, there have been enormous successes in the War on Terror, and there have been abject failures. The use of military robotics has contrib- uted to both.9 PURPOSES AND AVOIDANCES This book seeks to provide context to the rise and deployment of mili- tary robotics. It raises issues with the legality and morality of using these advanced systems and critiques the ways in which they have been used in recent conflicts. This book is not an attempt to reverse the path of the development of military robotics—such an outcome is almost impossible to imagine and is well beyond the capabilities of the author. However, it points out that on a number of occasions, short-term political gains were sought at the cost of magnifying long-term dangers, and at times there seems to have been almost no thought given to the precedents set by the United States in its War on Terror. As James Sullins notes, “It is prob- ably impossible to contemplate the alternative anymore, but we should have avoided arming robots in the first place.”10 What has been done cannot be reversed—but the worst potential consequences might still be avoided with the application of significant forethought and strategic planning. This work is primarily centered around the behavior of the U.S. govern- ment in its current conflicts. This is in large part because the United States
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