Russia Says It Will Ignore Any UN Ban of Killer Robots (ibtimes.com) 132
According a report from Defense One, a United Nations meeting in Geneva earlier this month on lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) was derailed when Russia said they would not adhere to any prohibitions on killer robots. "The U.N. meeting appeared to be undermined both by Russia's disinterest in it and the framework of the meeting itself," reports International Business Times. "Member nations attempted to come in and define what LAWS' systems would be, and what restrictions could be developed around autonomous war machines, but no progress was made." From the report: In a statement, Russia said that the lack of already developed war machines makes coming up with prohibitions on such machines difficult. "According to the Russian Federation, the lack of working samples of such weapons systems remains the main problem in the discussion on LAWS... this can hardly be considered as an argument for taking preventive prohibitive or restrictive measures against LAWS being a by far more complex and wide class of weapons of which the current understanding of humankind is rather approximate," read the statement.
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Going to? Obama was jerking off every night with the hand-me-down drones.
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I'm no great of fan of his by upping Bush's drone and special forces strikes against Islamists was one of the few things he did I liked.
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joshua (Score:2)
is ok just as long as it can't launch missiles.
Just like anything the UN manadates (Score:5, Insightful)
If a nation truly wants to ignore the UN, it can ignore it. The repercussions for Russia are negligible because they're on the Security Council as a permanent member, they'll veto any resolutions that have any teeth attempting to sanction them.
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I doubt you can "kick off" a permanent member.
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I doubt you can "kick off" a permanent member.
China.
Re:Just like anything the UN manadates (Score:5, Informative)
China is still a permanent member. It was never kicked off at any time.
What did happen was that the UN switched which government was recognized as representing the state of China. Instead of considering the government of the island of Taiwan as representing the entire nation of China, in 1971 the UN switched to recognizing the government of the entire nation of China, except Taiwan. But there has always been a permanent seat for China.
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People reading this should note that this account is an infrequent poster, who basically focuses all posts on trolling with pro-russia or anti-US comments. Don't fall for propaganda.
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Comrade, i don't care if Russia occupied Crimea and i don't care if Russia occupies eastern Ukraine. Afterall, Ukraine is already colonized by the Russians, America shouldn't care about it. But the Russians shouldn't have shot down an European passenger plane. So, tell your owners, watch their missiles.
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They probably haven't. The way I see it they have lent a SAM to unqualified people - these who have served in the Soviet Army would have been over 40 and at that time, having lost their skills and these who have served later - the Ukrainian Air Defence training was, well, lacking [wikipedia.org]. It is generally not a good idea to give modern weapons to monkeys [youtube.com].
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...nukes that Saddam was proven to have?
Who said Saddam had nukes? I remember the "slam dunk" on WMDs. I remember intel that said they had a nuclear weapons program in the 80s. I don't remember anyone claiming proof that Iraq had nukes.
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Re:Just like anything the UN manadates (Score:5, Interesting)
If every country agrees to not honor their veto they are essentially kicked off.
Another way could be for everyone else to start a new UN with blackjack and hookers.
Either way would be contrary to the purpose of the UN.
The UN is often described as toothless because of the veto situation, but it was created in a political climate where countries would stop talking to each other and go to war instead.
The purpose of the UN is to have a forum where dialogue can continue between counties even during a world war so that there at least is a chance to resolve matters without killing everyone.
For that to be possible it is necessary that those counties feel that it doesn't put them at disadvantage.
The veto ensures a toothlessness that is necessary for UN to perform its function.
For a similar reason you often see members of the Human Rights Council that you would typically not associate human rights.
The purpose of this is to put them in a position where they have to assign a person that has to take a lead in improving human rights and they will do so from the perspective of their own culture.
This does a lot more to help their people than someone from another culture on the other side of the planet telling them what they should do.
There might be a need for an organization that plays harder with misbehaving countries, but it would be a mistake to transform UN into that organization because then it wouldn't be able to fulfill its current role.
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Indeed sir, or madam... although the venue might indicate a predisposition to the former.
The mere fact that a League of Nations could even survive our propensity for tribal warfare between countries, derived of little more than political lines in the earth, it is encouraging.
Diplomacy must remain at arm's length from armed combat, and even if the exercise at times feels toothless, men playing at peace is infinitely an improvement over men playing at war.
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Doesn't sound like it's working. Case in point: there's a Hitler-style war going on right now: concentration camps, mass-bombing civilian cities with no military presence whatsoever, etc. And US and UK are helping.
And, do you even hear a word about Yemen in the news? Likewise, the Wikipedia article has a table of "alleged" war crimes that lists a bunch of one- or two-digit incidents, without a mention of those with thousands.
Or, when Georgia and Ukraine got invaded by their neighbour bloody dictator, did
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Presenting an argument that the UN is responsible for the drop is a huge undertaking, beyond the scope of this comment. Sorry, I cannot cite sources for that aspect, but I beg you to go research the history and impact of just mee
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Sounds like a self-serving bullshit after-the-fact justification of an organization that has long outlived its purpose. The UN was a good idea decades ago but it's a joke now and needs to be disbanded.
This does a lot more to help their people than someone from another culture on the other side of the planet telling them what they should do.
Funny, this is what the UN does to America (and Israel) and yet nobody apparently has any problem with that. It's only when countries that treat women and non-Muslims
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Sounds like a self-serving bullshit after-the-fact justification of an organization that has long outlived its purpose.
Sounds like you're unable to actually counter any of the logical, factual points made.
Re: Just like anything the UN manadates (Score:2)
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"the veto ensures a toothlessness that is necessary for UN to perform its function", never heard it put that way, but it makes sense at least in a historical context.
At any rate, I see Russia's response as a pretty reasonable one. You can't ban something that doesn't actually exist yet. Even harder is to define exactly what that thing actually is without it actually existing. Depending on how nebulous your wording of what constitutes "autonomous" that could mean any number of things. I know we're all thinki
Re:Just like anything the UN manadates (Score:4, Insightful)
It's far better that it's utterly toothless. At least it allows the world's countries to come together and air their grievances before everyone else.
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It sounds like they'll support said ban, and then ignore it for the upper edge.
Not that they'll veto it.
Re: Just like anything the UN manadates (Score:1)
Wrong. Its to prevent MAD from actually taking place. That's why permanent members all have fancy nukes. You don't want these guys starting another world war.
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"Mr. President, we must not allow a minesW*W*W*W*killer-robot gap!"
Its to prevent MAD from actually taking place. That's why permanent members all have fancy nukes. You don't want these guys starting another world war.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner!
That's exactly the primary purpose it was created. To prevent another world war now that WMDs existed. The pictures of the unprecedented devastation were still fresh and new from Nagasaki and Hiroshima, horribly burnt and radiation-sick survivors of the initial blast still dying in numbers, and it shocked the world to the core.
Certainly, the UN does more than this and it's only common sense to get nations commu
So in other words... (Score:2)
Russia says, "STFU. We WILL build killer robots. Sooner the better!"
Re:So in other words... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm guessing the Russians aren't even going to bother building these robots themselves.
The Russians might just wait until the US creates an army of killer robots, then hack into them and turn them against their owners. This strategy has already worked great when it was applied to our election system.
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The Russians might just wait until the US creates an army of killer robots, then hack into them and turn them against their owners.
No hacking required. If Futurama has taught me anything, it is that a robot will kill its creator and master for a bottle of vodka.
This has to go in stages (Score:2)
Step 2: Ban chemical weapons
Step 3: Build large supplies of VX "just in case"
Upshot-- Buy stock in robotics companies
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Seem pretty obvious the outcome would be like millions of mayflies with ak-47ks vs 10 million USD mini-sats with lasers or whatever. (maybe that actually is a good idea.. And my whole post is incorrect because of course the US would mount guns on that dog and such..)
Translation: They have a LAW program nearly ready (Score:5, Interesting)
It almost sounds like Russia might not want to ban the weapon they have been developing. Or, the headline and summary are complete bullshit. That happens a lot on Slashdot, misleading clickbait headlines.
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Ottawa Treaty (Score:1)
Ironic acronym (Score:2)
lethal autonomous weapons systems)
Does anyone really feel strongly that these advances in autonomous robotics will not be exploited militarily for the extracurricular shortening of human life?
Re:If only we relied on good old fashioned dumb bo (Score:5, Insightful)
The only difference between a cruise missile and a drone is that the drone comes back. I'm not really sure what the uproar over killer drones are.
Then pay closer attention to the word "autonomous". Both the cruise missile and the drone have a human being who decides what the target is. An *autonomous* drone picks its own target.
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Think of it terms of US mil success in Vietnam.
Remove the refugees to camps and try and win the hearts and minds of people kept in camps.
The rest of a nation becomes an autonomous drone patrolled free fire zone.
All the good people are in camps. Only bad people move around outside camps and the autonomous drones will find them all.
A new look Second Boer War idea to sweep a country bare of everything that could give sustenance to bad peo
Isaac sheds a tear, bless him wherever he is (Score:1)
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As we reach the end of the level of population that this planet will support we either learn to live and work together or we are doomed as a species and will be replaced.
Or the birth rates levels off, which I believe is currently happening.
The problem with killer robots.... (Score:3)
Such a war could well last until the end of time.
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resource depletion.
It would become the new form of the castle siege.
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Yet, all war is in some form, resource depletion... it'll simply last longer if the resources are alternatives to human death.
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Its not new form at all. Resource depletion has always been and still is exactly what decides which side wins wars, ever since since the beginning of time.
Usually the resource is money in the form of superior tech and sheer volume of supplies, and just the size of your mass of people that are prepared to line up and be cannon-fodder.
PErfect example is how the Soviets took back Stalingrad in WW2. The Nazis were encircled and firing 1200 rounds a minute from each of hundreds of strategically placed and dug-in
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My reference was to the siege, not that resource depletion was a new thing.
In a traditional siege it was simply waiting out the opponent's stored provisions, there was little (if any) direct combat. a fully automated war would bring us back to little if any (human) direct combat, so would be again like a siege. Not the best analogy, but I think serviceable.
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Definately agree about the prisons.
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Such a war could well last until the end of time.
Such a war would lack the horrors of war. Which is the problem of course. Wars need loss of life, horrific atrocities and anything else terrible to encourages both sides to negotiate. Robot wars would be pretty boring, they wouldn't last until the end of time either. People would realize they're not getting anywhere with just robots and start putting humans back in harms way to tip the balance back in their favor, then the other side does the same. Then we get the horrors of war, which will mean it wil
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Could you imagine how much better Vietnam would be right now if instead of massacres, and toxins, and armies rolling back and forth, they instead still had hordes of killer robots fighting?
Or all of the land between Germany and Russia if instead of millions being killed in the war, there were still hordes of killer robots?
Tl;Dr
War sucks, endless war with no soldier deaths probably sucks more.
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So there were no armies, agent orange, or massacres?
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It's not the same without Craig Charles.
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There will
Humans will be targeted (Score:2)
The first country will build a robot to kill the humans in the opposing army. Eventually they will justify the killing of civilians using one of the typical excuses like destroying their will to continue the war or that the civilians are aiding the war effort.
Except for chemical weapons, every weapon ever invented has been used to kill civilians (and Saddam may have crossed the line on that one).
Re: The problem with killer robots.... (Score:1)
That would be even worse. Robots cost more $$$ than humans (usually). Remember war is about $ not human rights.
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It won't be that neat and tidy. ICBMs and hypersonic missiles area already impossible to reliably shoot down. The robots will target humans more than other robots, simply because the other robots will be too stealthy or too fast to do much about. It won't be like Terminator, it will be you sitting in your office writing code for a military asset management system and suddenly it explodes.
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Sounds like a Star Trek episode.
This is a good thing... (Score:1)
This is a good thing - or rather, it could have been much worse.
Anyone remember the Washington Naval Treaty? World powers sign agreement to limit the size of battleships, and several powers secretly ignored it, most notably Japan. This arguably contributed to the length of the Pacific theatre as the US had to play a little more catch-up than they otherwise would have.
At least Russia is being upfront about it.
we're safe (Score:1)
Too Late (Score:5, Insightful)
There already are "killer robots". What do you call a Tomahawk cruise missile that can fly hundreds of miles and independently identify it's target then dive in and blow up. What do you call an AEGIS cruiser in full "auto" mode that identifies threats and fires off missiles as required to neutralize them. The only thing worth discussing is exactly how much automation would be permitted.
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But those missiles look nothing like terminator!
They are missiles!
Missiles are ok! ..
Terminator is a scary future!
Re:Too Late (Score:5, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
South Korea uses it at the border with North Korea.
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There already are "killer robots".
Came here to say this. There was even (at least) one for strategic nuclear weapons, [wikipedia.org] developed by the USSR. Supposedly, it is still around but switched off. This makes the irony of "We have to build a weapons system in order to ban it" even more apparent.
Furthermore, any nation-state with a decent hacker cadre already has "Lethal Automated Weapons Systems." If a hack can kill someone, it's a lethal system. Any code monkey can take an existing hack and automate the trigger. All that is open to debate is wheth
Shocked I say . SHOCKED ! (Score:4, Insightful)
Show of hands . . . .
Who here believes ANY COUNTRY is going to adhere to a " terminator " ban ?
I'm pretty sure none of them will. . . . . they just won't be as blatant about it :D
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Who here believes ANY COUNTRY is going to adhere to a " terminator " ban ?
It seems Namibia and Mauritania do adhere to the ban.
So according to Russian logic ... (Score:2)
... we first have to build the Terminator so that we understand how to regulate it.
weak argument, but interesting (Score:2)
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honesty (Score:2)
At least they say it openly.
You think any UN treaty would stop the US military? The only effect would be that the research is done secretly. You simply cannot afford to not have these things, at least on paper, when the enemy potentially does.
It is reason to be proud (Score:2)
Since 1991 I've seldom felt so proud of my country.
as when reading this news.
Of course killer robots will happen (Score:3)
Anyone who thinks differently is deluding themselves into thinking this world is something it's not. In war, it's the winner who gets to write the rules, and in war for survival, any country is going to use every resource humanly possible to do so.
Criminals always ignore authority (Score:2)
This is no different that a bunch of legislators passing yet another gun control measure.