computer scientist Stuart Russell has vividly described how a small group of malicious agents might engage in omniviolence: “A very, very small quadcopter, one inch in diameter can carry a one-or two-gram shaped charge,” he says. “You can order them from a drone manufacturer in China. You can program the code to say: ‘Here are thousands of photographs of the kinds of things I want to target.’ A one-gram shaped charge can punch a hole in nine millimeters of steel, so presumably you can also punch a hole in someone’s head. You can fit about three million of those in a semi-tractor-trailer. You can drive up I-95 with three trucks and have 10 million weapons attacking New York City. They don’t have to be very effective, only 5 or 10% of them have to find the target.”
Manufacturers will be producing millions of these drones, available for purchase just as with guns now, Russell points out, “except millions of guns don’t matter unless you have a million soldiers. You need only three guys to write the program and launch.” In this scenario, the K/K ratio could be perhaps 3/1,000,000, assuming a 10-percent accuracy and only a single one-gram shaped charge per drone.
craigr wrote:
Many years back I had considered writing a fiction novel and one of the assassination methods was going to be a swarm of drones with small explosive devices. It would basically be unstoppable with today's technology.
I actually think the future of anti-personnel warfare is likely to have micro-drones targeting people. Think of a truck going to the outskirts of a town. The back opens and out come tens of thousands of tiny drones with fragmentation devices attached. The drones have onboard cameras and AI and are programmed to fly over and explode on anything with two legs. Or maybe they are told to go into an area and land and watch for movement. When they see anything move, they activate and attack.
You could clear out a town of all inhabitants with virtually no risk to your own people.
That kind of stuff is coming.
Kriegsspiel wrote: ↑Thu Aug 25, 2016 3:41 pm
That's all in Kill Decision, by Daniel Suarez. Well, his were drones with shotgun shells that crashed into you to set them off, not explosives.
Wow, very similar indeed.
I do remember you mentioning Suarez in the past. I read a book of his called ‘Daemon’ (sp?) that had a lot of murder by automation.
There’s a Black Mirror episode with lethal insect-sized drones as well.
If that’s coming, than I guess anarchy and statelessness is coming. Either that or a police state to thwart it.
computer scientist Stuart Russell has vividly described how a small group of malicious agents might engage in omniviolence: “A very, very small quadcopter, one inch in diameter can carry a one-or two-gram shaped charge,” he says. “You can order them from a drone manufacturer in China. You can program the code to say: ‘Here are thousands of photographs of the kinds of things I want to target.’ A one-gram shaped charge can punch a hole in nine millimeters of steel, so presumably you can also punch a hole in someone’s head. You can fit about three million of those in a semi-tractor-trailer. You can drive up I-95 with three trucks and have 10 million weapons attacking New York City. They don’t have to be very effective, only 5 or 10% of them have to find the target.”
Manufacturers will be producing millions of these drones, available for purchase just as with guns now, Russell points out, “except millions of guns don’t matter unless you have a million soldiers. You need only three guys to write the program and launch.” In this scenario, the K/K ratio could be perhaps 3/1,000,000, assuming a 10-percent accuracy and only a single one-gram shaped charge per drone.
Oh well. Sleep well tonight.
Wow, that is extremely scary...with these, no need to commandeer passenger jets and fly them into buildings.
There have been similar vulnerabilities pointed out in the past though, that fortunately haven't attracted any terrorist intentions. Best example I can think of: the city of Los Angeles relies for its water supply on a narrow open canal running from the Sierra Nevada through a hundred or so miles of desert, with long uninhabited stretches and conveniently close to a highway. It would be quite easy for a truck loaded up with barrels of, say, cyanide or some agent not filtered out by city water treatment plants to pay a quick visit.
It'll happen eventually, WiseOne. And an attack on the power grid, and the destruction of satellites.
I hope we don't wait too long to start improving defenses and countermeasures.
