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Killer Robots: Who Profits?

Posted June 3rd, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

movierobotI don’t know why this took me by surprise. Maybe because I’m not a big sci-fi reader — with exceptions made for the likes of Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick and Stanislaw Lem and William Gibson. And Robert Heinlein and Mary Shelley and H.G.Wells and Ray Bradbury. And Margaret Atwood and Neil Stephenson. And how could I have not led with one of my literary heroes, Jorge Luis Borges? But still, you get my point (I think), which is that I don’t usually think in terms of science fiction becoming applied science.

More fool I.

Last week, Christof Heyns, the man burdened with the unenviable title of “United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions,” called for a global moratorium on the testing, production, and use of armed robots that can select and kill targets without human command.

They are known as “lethal autonomous robots.” And yes, this is indeed a nightmarish killer-robot movie come marching off the screen and into all too non-virtual reality.

Yet the report of Heyns’s call didn’t even make the front page of America’s “newspaper of record.” Soothingly buried on an inside page of the New York Times, and calmingly including the reassurance that such robots weren’t “yet” in production, it elicited little comment. It seems our alarm systems have been lulled by the use of drones, so conveniently deployed halfway round the world in all sorts of places most Americans can’t even find on a map.

Drones, it’s now clear, are only the warm-up stage. Think of lethal autonomous robots as drones with minds of their own. Just program them and set them loose, secure in the knowledge that nothing can possibly go wrong. No way their electronics will go haywire. No way they’ll become just a little bit too autonomous. With the kind of fail-safe electronics that exist only in android dreams, humans can sleep secure. So long as they’re not the targets.

But wait just a moment: who gets to say who the targets are? Who’s going to program the robots? And according to what criteria? Will they be programmed to search out “suspicious behavior,” as human drone operators do? But then what makes behavior suspicious? The skin color of the person doing the behaving? Anyone with a beard? Anyone moving too fast, or maybe too slow? In too large a group or suspiciously alone? Animal, vegetable, or mineral?

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are all over this, leading a new coalition of groups in the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, officially launched just two weeks ago.

But it seems to me that an important question to ask here is this: Who is going to be raking in the billions on these robots? Who exactly is doing the research and testing, and will presumably get the huge military contracts? Consider this report last year from San Diego public radio station KPBS on who’s profiting from the $12 billion drone industry (yes, you read the last five words correctly — that’s for the years 2005 to 2011). The top three? How could you possibly not guess? Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrup Grumman. It’s enough to make me ashamed of ever having gotten my pilot’s wings.

And then consider the lengthy, detailed report on the military robot market (mind-numbingly referred to as “Military Ground Robot Mobile Platform Systems of Engagement”) prepared by an outfit called WinterGreen Research. Here, in the kind of mangled grammar that seems to accompany lip-smacking anticipation, is a short extract from the press release:

Even as the US presence in Iraq and Afghanistan winds down, automated process implemented as mobile platform systems of engagement are being used to fight terrorists and protect human life. These robots are a new core technology in which all governments must invest. Military ground robot market growth comes from the device marketing experts inventing a new role as technology poised to be effective at the forefront of fighting terrorism. Markets at $4.5 billion in 2013 reach $12.0 billion by 2019. Growth is based on the adoption of automated process by military organizations worldwide.

Twelve billion a year by 2019? Counter-terrorism is huge business. And so long as influential news outlets like the New York Times play that down, the chances of killing that business — killing the killer robots — are not good.
But if the killer robots can’t be killed, they can at least be hacked.
Anybody know some really good hacktivists?
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File under: war | Tagged: Tags: Amnesty International, Boeing, drones, Human Rights Watch, killer military robots, KPBS San Diego, lethal autonomous robots, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, The New York Times, United Nations | 2 Comments
  1. John Sterns says:
    June 5, 2013 at 4:28 pm

    I disagree that defense contractor greed is the main force driving the change to UAVs, although they certainly don’t want to be left out of the new market.

    Unmanned systems are being driven by a very compelling dynamic – they allow the “War on Terror” to proceed, even as our troop strength is drawn down and finances become more constrained. No need for tough decisions containing medical care costs for the Armed Forces. No need for system procurement reform to prevent over priced, overly complex manned systems like the F-22 or F-35. Congress can cut the defense procurements overall, while still specifying pet programs and bases be kept open over the DoD planners’ objections.

    Consider the 2012 allocations in http://comptroller.defense.gov/defbudget/fy2012/FY2012_Weapons.pdf, for example. It shows $2.9B for the V-22 Osprey, which has had numerous safety issues during development, and $9.5B for the F-35. These are much higher “average sales price” items than the UAVs, the 2012 allocations for these two programs equal the $12B UAV market cap in 2019. The “profit motive” of Defense Companies would dictate more of these high priced, high margin systems, not the lower priced UAVs whose new technologies and smaller investments make the entrance of new competition possible.

    No, I don’t think Defense Contractor greed is driving the change, as you imply,

    It’s Congress, who can avoid making policy changes on national defense, can avoid reforming defense procurement, can avoid making budget changes for sustainable medical care of our troops, and still rely on the President to order drone killings to advance the War on Terror. They can claim to their constituents they are being kept safe and they’re supporting the troops, while doing nothing in legislation to actually help the troops or make us any safer.

    “If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.” H.L. Mencken

    In this case, every UAV approved by Congress is that much money saved on equipment and personnel costs, so they can continue to serve their constituents the “payola” of bases and production lines not wanted the Armed Forces. They can prosecute war through drones and have none of the policy brakes that come with body bags and wounded warriors. Their voters are happy, because American “greatness” is projected globally. Meanwhile, all the downsides of war have been “outsourced” to Pakistani, Yemini and Afghan civilians.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      June 5, 2013 at 5:01 pm

      Thanks John — you argue your points so well that I agree with your disagreement. When it comes to political decision-making, any remnant of rationality seems to go out the window as soon as the word ‘terrorism’ is uttered. We’re still stuck in the George W. Bush era.
      Meanwhile, I’m struck by how little comment there’s been (here and elsewhere) on this issue. Heyns issues a wake-up call, and nearly everyone hits the snooze button. It’s as though we can’t quite grasp what autonomous drones are (in fact most of us don’t really grasp what the guided ones currently in use are). Either that, or we just don’t care so long as they don’t turn on us. Which of course, one way or another, they will.

“For The Greater Good”

Posted May 18th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

This came in as a comment from someone called Bob.  It seems to be a response primarily to my previous post, Guilt By Drone, and the earlier Armed to the Eyeballs.  I’m running it as a separate post with a kind of wondering bemusement at its rather low level of literacy and humanity, and its rather high one of piety and righteousness.  Am particularly intrigued by his saying “too many guns and killing of children by drones, and all I see are complaints,” and by the almost delightful non sequitur of his concluding with “thank you and God bless.”

I read some of the posts like guilty by drone and armed to the eyeballs and I thought, wow are these people serious, to much of an military to many guns and the killing of children by drones and all I saw we’re complaints. Well if your not happy with the free, great country America than why don’t you leave I mean come on your lucky to have such a dedicated military like ours and truly I don’t know if you’ve realized this but the only way to gain peace is through war I’m sorry but that’s basically how no doubt about it. Our military keeps this country safe and under our lord and savior and keeps us the nation we are. No ones perfect and we can’t make everyone happy in this world sorry, and what are we just gonna sit back and watch our country get attacked like 9/11 saying o please don’t hurt us let’s make peace well wake up not everyone wants that and the reason we send drones and kids die is because unfortunately that’s how it has to be why I don’t know and neither do you but each decision we make has a impact and is for the greater good so give thanks to who we are and how great of a military we have and how much you and I have. Thank you and God bless

————————————————————

Later:  novelist Michael Gruber posted a brief but cogent analysis of Bob’s thinking on my Facebook page.  Here it is:

“The statement arises naturally from the characterization of 9/11 (which we owe to Mr Bush) as an act of existential evil, rather than as a political act with its own logic. The man’s premises are that the USA is an exceptional nation under the special protection of Christ, and thus any attack against it is not a political act but a move in a cosmic contest, in which an apocalyptic response by the American military is not only justified, but required.

“The logic moves from the legitimate desire to punish the organizers of the attack, to the desire to punish those who are “like” the attackers, which results in killing those associated with those who are like the attackers, to, ultimately, the punishment of the societies who produce those who are like the attackers.

“A similar progression characterized WW2, in which the world was shocked when the fascist nations bombed cities, after which it was considered legitimate to bomb the cities of the fascists into rubble. This at least had the amoral logic of tit for tat. But in the present situation, some militants kill their own people in pursuit of sectarian triumph, and we drone kill the militants and their kin, so that . . . And here we lose the last scraps of logical policy. At some level we [I’m assuming he means US policy-makers — LH] sort of agree with this bozo.”

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File under: absurd, Christianity, US politics, war | Tagged: Tags: drones, God, gun control, Michael Gruber, US military | 6 Comments
  1. Abdulrazak Ibrahim says:
    May 18, 2013 at 2:17 pm

    Wow! What could make a person think and write like this?

  2. sohail says:
    May 18, 2013 at 6:51 pm

    It is really sad that Bob has a vote in the American elections.

  3. zummard. says:
    May 19, 2013 at 5:16 am

    A little too drunk and no ‘speech writers’ on hand. I am glad some important people from the past read your posts too. It reminds me of what Shakespeare said so well.
    “LIFE IS A TALE TOLD BY AN IDIOT, FULL OF SOUND AND FURY, SIGNIFYING NOTHING.”
    I am left with the thought – everyone in the world needs education, not just those on the other side of the fence. Let’s start from ‘home’. Keep up your mission, Lesley.

  4. Nasir Khan says:
    May 19, 2013 at 7:31 am

    Ah, what to say! Suffice it may be that the 9/11 was an inside job. Buildings dont come down like that and debris dont melt away and vanish, unless there is an inside job…

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      May 19, 2013 at 12:33 pm

      Any New Yorker who detests Bush, Rove, Rumsfeld etc far more than you do can tell you that this is just conspiracy-theory nonsense. Kindly keep it off this blog.

  5. Gustav Hellthaler says:
    May 19, 2013 at 12:42 pm

    And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
    The way to dusty death

    Mr Khan,
    Take a cubic foot of molten aluminum and pour it into a cubic foot of water as Alcoa did many years ago, and watch your laboratory disappear. Take an hundred tons of molten aluminum and have it flow down stairwells to where the sprinklers are working and watch several floors disappear with a lot of intact building above. The impact of the falling upper floor would make the base structure buckle. No conspiracy necessary.

    Gus Hellthaler

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