[ExI] Autonomous killer drones will soon be here

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat

Cc: Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ExI] Autonomous killer drones will soon be here

 

On Tue, Jul 1, 2025 at 11:00 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:

I can easily imagine drones being used as targeting vehicles, which identify and laser-paint the target, as missiles with end-game guidance come in seeking that specific frequency of the targeting laser.  Consequence: we may soon see or perhaps have already seen our last major outdoor political rally.

 

>…Let us imagine that this happens.  Some major - at least 1,000 people - outdoor political rally happens.  Drone-launched munitions injure (at minimum, possibly kill) a majority of the attendees…Your thoughts?

 

 

Adrian what I meant was a low-mass targeting drone of perhaps 10kg, which would have little or no radar signature, it would be hard to see, would make very little sound and would do nothing other than identify one particular person and paint him with a targeting laser from a distance of perhaps 1000 meters (some cameras are that good now), to guide incoming rocket propelled projectiles with end-game guidance aboard.  None of that requires huge amounts of funding or anything that couldn’t be smuggled into the country in a form unrecognizable as a weapon designed to take out one specific person.

 

I could see the students had created flying robots with sufficient on-board computing power to identify classes of people.  Some of these teams were very poorly funded, such as ours, where the pacifist students refuse any funding from military, government or any military contractor (which means pretty much every company interested in drones.)  They had a lot of engineering talent (I was very impressed with that) but operating on a starvation budget.

 

I hear Iran has issued a fatwa against that guy who is the current US president, I can’t think of his name at the moment, but he does outdoor rallies.  The Iranians have money and they have plenty of guys already in place.  Result: we may have already witnessed our last outdoor political rally.

 

spike

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20250701/cf1a21f2/attachment.htm>