Drone WMDs Don’t Need Any New Technology

LessWrong is running an essay arguing that weapons of mass destruction built from drones require no new technology, only the willingness to use existing tools indiscriminately. According to the piece, drones costing around five hundred dollars have already reshaped modern war, accounting for eighty percent of casualties in what it calls the bloodiest conflict since nineteen forty-five, even though roughly seventy-five percent never reach their targets. The author, writing originally for a national security audience, contends that the same autonomous navigation and human-tracking capabilities now used to find hostages could be repurposed cheaply to hunt civilians, since indiscriminate killing demands far less precision than striking hardened military targets. The warning is that an arms race against counterdrone defenses is pushing states toward ever-more-autonomous systems, potentially handing rogue actors a nonnuclear path to mass violence.

Listen to this story

Hear this and more stories in a personalized audio briefing.

Open The Chonkerton