• technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          3 months ago

          USAians already don’t care about any form of violence as long as it’s used on minorities, refugees, prisoners, unhoused, etc.

        • Crikeste@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          Americans will never care until it starts happening to them.

          Outside our borders? Outside my interest in caring.

          Just look at all the liberals selfishly attacking leftists for withholding their votes until the genocide stops. “we nEeD to sAvE MY ‘dEmOcRaCy’, oUr ‘dEmOcRaCy’ is mOrE iMpOrTaNt tHaN oUr bOmBs dIsMeMbErRiNg cHiLdReN!”

  • Troy@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

    I’m actually surprised it has taken this long.

    What surprises me even more is that organized crime hasn’t gotten on board much (yet). Like, screw drive by shootings – drone dropped grenades on rival gangs and such.

    Or that drones haven’t been used for “school shooting” type mass casualty attacks.

    Or that foreign countries haven’t snuck in with a sea can full of drones which fan out and attack infrastructure.

    Imagine a cruise missile as a drone carrier that just scatters anti-personnel drones along a flight path, each just finding a person indiscriminately.

    If there’s anything that Ukraine is teaching us, it’s that we don’t have countermeasures (yet). The autonomous versions are even scarier.

    • einkorn@feddit.org
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      3 months ago

      We do have countermeasures, however many countries mothballed them because we thought them obsolete.

      The Gepard which has been proven to be invaluable in a close range AA role, is being pulled from scrapyards. Yes, the radar resolution has to be increased to effectively track small single use drones, but the technology is there.

    • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 months ago

      The state is incredibly far ahead of any individual mass murderer.

      For example there have been endless “school shootings” using advanced tech. We just call it “the war in gaza” or whatnot. #freepalestine

  • TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com
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    3 months ago

    There are also a number of ethical concerns associated with autonomous weapons.

    That being five sentences after the sentence

    There are worries that these weapons could fall into the hands of terrorist groups if their deployment in Africa is scaled up.

    • Gsus4@mander.xyz
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      3 months ago

      I’m worried that the facebooks and elons out there will build private armies of these, not even the terrorists.

      • Curious Canid@lemmy.ca
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        3 months ago

        That seems to imply that Facebook and Elon are not terrorists. I could make a reasonable argument for Facebook. Elon, I think, has already established his credentials with multiple acts that have led to riots and other violence.

  • shalafi@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Probably going to get on a list here…

    Imagine how easy it would be to setup an even dozen drones in a pickup bed. Drive to a political rally, pop the bed cover, launch, drive away.

    Feed the AI dozens of your target’s images and let slip the dogs of war. Or, even lower tech, have someone controlling an overwatch drone and paint your target with a laser. The drones themselves could be cheap as hell, as long as they have a camera feed going back to, uh, some automagical targeting system. Maybe just point a cell phone at the target as if taking a picture?

    Only defense I got is a powerful, wide-spectrum frequency jammer. No idea what the legalities look like for the government using them as defensive platforms. I doubt there are laws concerning such tactics.

    Am I oversimplifying this? Devil and details and such? Comment and join me on the government’s list!

    Another thought on drone defense, maybe someone can comment. Why aren’t the Russians and Ukrainians carrying 20-gauge anti-drone shotguns? A single-shot unit with a short barrel is super light and the very definition of reliabilty. Seems ideal given that you can tweak a shotgun load 1,000 different ways for spread, distance and weight.

    Don’t know the ideal combat range, but I’ve got 8 shotguns of various sorts and I can get any sort of load, anywhere I want. Playing at my range, it’s fun to see what I get with different barrel lengths, chokes and charges. If you really want cheap, I’ve loaded homemade black powder and gravel. LOL, pretty crappy and messy, but it might do for a drone. Bonus! Now you’ve make a giant smokescreen!

    For example, I’ve got an absolute POS single-shot 20 that weighs nothing, folds in half, never fails to fire and cost about $100. Even has a cheapo red-dot on it, point and click interface. Probably take a day of testing, and a shitload of varied ammo, to shape up an anti-drone weapon. And while we’re at it, I have a 1920s single-shot 20 that would get the job done. Lightweight and you can snap the barrel on and off in seconds, 3 parts total.

    You can even get fancy and make the choke adjustable by twisting. I have such a shotgun from the 1950s, nothing new here. Choke too tight and you missed? Now it’s closer? Yank the choke off and go wide with it.

    Training young soldiers should be easy enough. My neighbor’s 22-yo wife is hell on wheels with her 20-gauge over-and-under. She’s shooting skeet at twice the range I see Russians dying from.

    So again, why not load the soldiers with such a rig? At least 1 man per squad?

    • Eiri@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I imagine by the time you see the tiny drone and are able to aim at it, it’s likely too late. And what if it’s a kamikaze drone and the explosion is bigger than anticipated?

      Telling your soldiers to shoot at that sounds riskier than “take cover as soon as you think there’s a drone”.

      Anyway my understanding is that so far drones are more useful for destroying stuff than killing people.

      A much simpler countermeasure to armed drones is a net.

      As for surveillance drones… I’m not sure militarily speaking they care all that much. The enemy already could be watching them with satellites, high altitude drones or balloons that would be nearly impossible to detect, or plain old binoculars, anyway.

      Unless it’s a covert operation, in which case the enemy launching a drone to find you is already very bad.

    • Angry_Autist (he/him)@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I have been screaming about this exact scenario for years now and I have not been able to get a single person to take it seriously. People leave such huge chunks of identity info online, it would be trivial to target someone with a detection package that could easily fit on a drone.

      There’s no real viable automatic defense options and for the life of me I feel it is only time before some rancid redneck terrorist does this.

  • marshadow@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    The acronym “Laws” is a little too on the nose. I’d ask whether anyone involved in the development of these has seen the documentary film Robocop, but clearly they have and thought it was a great idea.