Look at it another way. People involved in deadly combat have a kill or be killed mentality. Extreme caution for personal risk means you have to shoot first and ask questions later in a war zone. Not so for robots. Send them in to take prisoners. If they are destroyed, build another. Charge them until the enemy runs out of bullets. Send them close enough to use non-lethal rounds or wound legs and move on. And forget about looting and rape. Forget about collateral damage caused by bombing city blocks from the sky and hoping most inhabitants are bad. Imagine if we could shut down ISIS with $500M worth of material and no lives lost.
Agreed. The real problem is not on the existence of this technology (that was inevitable) but the misuse of it as other's pointed out. In a lot of countries (esp USA), civilians are effectively not allowed to put any limitations or guidelines on how the military or intelligence organizations use new technology. This is the actually alarming story.
If a piece of technology allows the military to capture instead of kill a supposed terrorist, will they do so? What is legally binding them to?
I think this is a really important discussion, and there are a lot of different aspects, making a simple solution hard. If we always attempt to capture instead of kill terrorists, and then we have to detain them, does that cause more or less terrorists in the future? Or do we capture, put on trial, and possibly execute (and if so, what happens if we pass legislation to ban executions). Or, as we generally do now, do we just kill known terrorists?
After you step beyond what's humane for the person, the question of what's humane for society looms (and at that point, we have to consider who's society we are talking about). It's obviously more humane for the individual if we capture instead of kill outright, but if that's noticeably worse for society through negative externalities (I'm not trying to assume, just posing the question), then is it better or worse?
> (esp USA), civilians are effectively not allowed to put any limitations or guidelines on how the military or intelligence organizations use new technology
You do, of course, realize that the President is a civilian? And as Commander-in-Chief he absolutely does have the ability to put limitations or guidelines on how those groups use their equipment. And let's not forget congress, which is comprised entirely of civilians and could financially neuter military and intelligence programs if desired.
There are plenty of countries where there is no civilian oversight for the military, but the US is not one of them.
> If a piece of technology allows the military to capture instead of kill a supposed terrorist, will they do so? What is legally binding them to?
That's a good question. I think the preference would always be to capture if there is a possibility of gaining intelligence from the captive. If you were interested in bargaining with adversaries, it would be wise to capture at least some of them (prisoner exchanges, that sort of thing). However, if the intelligence gain would be minimal and you already have a stable of bargaining chips, it might be worth more to have a guarantee that this particular terrorist won't be in the fight any longer.
As to what's legally binding, the 1907 Hague Convention says that it is forbidden "to declare that no quarter will be given." This would suggest that surrenders from any lawful combatant would have to be accepted. To take the current example, I do not think ISIL fighters would be considered "lawful combatants" primarily because they do not respect the international laws.
As a creator of this kind of technology, handing it over to agencies that are constantly battling all levels of oversight seems sketchy to me. I would understand why some people would want to ban this technology outright as an overreaction. Instead, maybe we should try and enforce controlled civilian oversight.
But yes, I am not expert on the legalities of oversight or the treatment of captured terrorists
I guess nobody's really an expert on that. I guess there's some precedence going back to the golden age of piracy, but then again most of those policies would have predated many instances of international law. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a dozen JAGs working out exactly what the US's policies should be right this instant (if they haven't already).
Unless they are leaders or have some needed knowledge, the lives of 'the bad guy' will be valued at less than the cost of the robot. Ask Joe Taxpayer how many taxes s/he is willing to spend to capture alive a low level terrorist instead of killing them in combat, especially when we consider that any money spent on this could have been used to improve things at home.
$500M spent to take them down alive or $100M spent to take them down dead.
The other possibility is the irresponsible over use as with drones. If they aren't too expensive you could just strap a bomb on one of these and run it towards any possible threat. I agree with your assessment and look forward to the onset of more nonlethal warfare. I'm just saying the opposite effect is also possible.
A single AGM-114 Hellfire missile costs over $100k, on top of the costs of arming and launching an aircraft for sortie. I have to think a Spot-derived, four-legged land-missile that can be launched from a truck would be price-competitive.
We already have irresponsible over use of drones and so far all we have are ones that can fly around and drop bombs on people. And the government goes to great lengths to make sure people are totally emotionally uninvolved in the decision and execution. Once these end up in the military it'll only be a short while before they also end up on our police force. You think the cops are bad now? Wait until they've got a small army of drones to do their bidding. It's entirely possible that that never comes to pass but the US' current direction doesn't instil a ton of confidence.
I don't really. And the same benefits would apply. When cops stormed the room of Amadou Diallou and thought they saw a gun, their only option was shoot to kill. Send in a robot, and now you don't care.
Nor does the US' past direction. Since the 1950s it has toppled two democracies and thwarted another. The (final) overthrow of its own democracy may become possible through such technology.
