>“The problem is that we’re creating an international norm” — asserting the right to strike preemptively against those we suspect of planning attacks, argues Dennis M. Gormley, a senior research fellow at the University of Pittsburgh and author of “Missile Contagion,” who has called for tougher export controls on American drone technology. “The copycatting is what I worry about most.”

How about the fact that we're doing it, period?

http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_richards_a_radical_experiment_i...

Imagine when drones the size of dragonflies carry needles containing poison to assassination targets. Today's drones are very crude in comparison.

Once it becomes plausible that any squirrel, mouse, dragon fly, etc. could be an assassination weapon, it will become necessary for heads of state to travel surrounded by swarms of friendly robots, in all sorts of form factors.

Everything we do that duhumanizes war comes with good ethical concerns (less loss of human life) but this doesn't make war any better.

Drones - save our lives. Cruise missiles - save our lives. An A-bomb saved our lives.

Not getting into as many wars would save the most lives. (Note: Some wars - like WW II are I admit unavoidable, but very few fall under this heading)

I always thought it would be cool if a company built a big bird's nest tower in cities that would host a bunch of flying drones. Then, consumers could rent the video-capture drones online to fly over approved areas, upon which the drones would return to nest for re-fueling. Think maybe you could subsidize the cost (possibly even make a profit) with the video data, or by streaming some feeds for the population to watch. Though have no idea of feasibility (FAA, equipment, real estate), I do like the idea of eyes in the sky for consumer benefit. Maybe something like this could be used for defense - giving population more awareness of airspace.

Obama's job as president was to temper the fantasies of the generals and the CIA. He failed. The future lawless robot wars will be scary.

I'm going to take an optimistic stance on this topic and say that war technology evolves; we shouldn't be scared of it just because it was sci-fi 10 years ago. I think the development of the nuclear bomb was more scary than some line-manufactured drones.

Yes, Obama has been awfully militant lately. He may have thought that it was the best thing he could do in an attempt to get positive approval ratings from the general public. Killing an American citizen w/o trial may have gone too far, even for middle America.

The drone arms race is going to be an economical one. And, given the state of the world economy, no country is going to spend billions of dollars on a drone war anytime soon.

Just like we have a moratorium on the use of chemical weapons we ought to have one on drones. Not that it would ever be ratified.

There is something seriously wrong with the level of detachment drones afford the actors on any battlefield.

Taking a life should be something done with a large level of reluctance and with the 'taker' risking his own through physical presence. Once that balance is lost it becomes all too easy to resort to violence at a much earlier stage of a conflict.

This is all about reducing the barrier to entry for war and that's a very dangerous thing.

"If China, for instance, sends killer drones into Kazakhstan to hunt minority Uighur Muslims it accuses of plotting terrorism, what will the United States say?"

What difference does it make if they used a drone or did it the traditional way?

An attack is an attack it makes no difference how you do it.

I think the scariest part of this drone trend is the opportunity to wage war without losing human life. This shift in risk will dramatically reduce the barrier to starting a war and will further reinforce the power of those already on top.

An area this article does not go into is how the increased use of robotics in the military could cause the military to classify large swaths of it as controlled weapons research. This would limit the ability of researchers and companies to publish or even work in that area.

What I'm waiting for is this technology to be open to business and consumer solutions. I dream of a world where Amazon implements drone technology into their SOA fulfillment centers and makes it possible for orders to be delivered in hours or minutes instead of days.

Imagine being a high school kid and having a job targeting drop zones for Amazon packages as drones make their final approaches. It'd be a heck of a lot cooler then driving a brown UPS truck.

I was tweeting the other day that we now live in a world where the president of the United States can, without judicial review, assassinate with robots an American Citizen living abroad because of their speech and influence on terrorists.

Sounded crazy -- "death by robots" -- but that's about where we are (I don't differentiate between remote-operated vehicles and fully autonomous vehicles because it's not germane) We can't and won't torture a guy we pick up with a rocket launcher in his hand getting ready to kill us, but we can push a button and whack somebody who hangs out with really bad people. Don't forget collateral damage. And we call this morality.

Telemetry and robotics are going to change the world in wildly dramatic ways over the next 50 years. Places like HN are where somewhat knowledgeable people can kick around these ideas now, before everybody and his NGO have their own killer robots.

There was a Star Trek TV episode where two cities fought each other using computers. No spoilers on how it ended.

I'm more interested in the day when there are so many drones, they spend more time fighting each other and forget about the humans all together. We may never even see them, dogfighting above the clouds, save for a the perpetual flutter of broken parts falling from the heavens.

Another possibility.. cities protected by phalanxes of model rocket sized guided missiles scanning perpetually for enemy drones.

And the race to make a working emp generator begins.