2023-09-12 19:45:00
DISPATCH — Will robots soon wage war for us? In any case, this is what the “Replicator Project”, announced on August 28 by the Secretary of Defense of the United States, Kathleen Hicks, suggests. In short, it is an army of intelligent and autonomous drones, planned for 2025 at the latest. One more step in innovation that raises many questions.
The objective is clear and undisguised: to counter Chinese power, while the threat of an invasion hangs over Taiwan. With the Chinese People’s Liberation Army having the advantage of numbers, whether in soldiers or equipment, the United States wanted to upgrade. This is where the “Replicator” project comes in.
Pentagon launches autonomous systems project to counter China’s military
The U.S. military is embarking on an ambitious “Replicator Project,” aiming to deploy thousands of autonomous systems within the next two years. pic.twitter.com/oWsriXAZJH
— Spotlight on China (@spotlightoncn) September 2, 2023
By establishing partnerships with defense and tech companies, the Pentagon plans to bring into the world a fleet of several thousand soldier drones, powered by artificial intelligence. These robots should be able to perform many specialized tasks, ranging from reconnaissance to communication, including target designation… and attack.
For Kathleen Hicks, it’s very simple: “We must ensure that Chinese leaders wake up every day, assess the risks of aggression, and conclude that today is not the right day. And not only today, but also in 2027, 2035, 2049, and beyond.”
By using robots to materialize the threat, the United States ensures that it preserves its own people — who do not fight — while putting others in danger. Therefore, as written by Philosophy Magazine, there is “no longer any reflexive distance between the weapon and the person holding it, because no one is holding the weapon anymore”. For the philosopher Grégoire Chamayou, author of the “Drone theory” in 2013, the door is open to limitless violence: “Dying for one’s homeland was certainly beautiful, but killing for her, she who now exempts us from this heavy price, is much more so.”
As good Terminator experts, we might think that the robots would create chaos by disobeying, but the opposite could be worse: “[…] that they never disobey.” Gone are the doubts, the dilemmas, the hesitations, which cause a soldier to be led to ask questions.
Like the invention of the atomic bomb, recently brought to light by the release of the film Oppenheimer, this type of innovation removed from reality could well have devastating effects.
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