Original subtitles

Eliminate all thoughts about your life...

and death.

Only then, you will disregard your earthly life totally.

A loyal fighting man is a pure-hearted son.

Be empowered to focus your attention

on eradicating your enemy with unwavering determination.

When you take this walk, be aware of your surroundings.

This airstrip is the key to the success or failure

of your mission.

You feel that you

are suddenly floating in the air.

At that moment, you see your mother's face.

She's not smiling or crying.

You must exert your full might

for the last time in your life.

The kamikaze were the first directionable munition.

They inspired the kamikaze drone.

The rise and use of drones has created a fundamental shift

into how contemporary combat is being fought today.

There's less risk of a son, brother, or a father

not coming home to their family.

They fear what might come out of the sky.

Getting the drop on the enemy is crucial in warfare.

From reconnaissance to inflicting damage,

the side that can see the battlefield

controls the battlefield.

So, in the area of modern warfare,

to dominate the ground, you need to control the sky.

Horizons have always been really important

for military leaders.

From Alexander the Great onwards, what they needed was

a sense of perspective over the battlefield.

They didn't know what was in the dip in front of them,

over the hill to the side or behind them.

And that's what air power really started

to provide for them.

But in terms of remotely piloted capability,

you're looking at Nikola Tesla

with his remote controlled boat.

Thereafter, we're talking about aerial reconnaissance

undertaken by the British during the First World War.

Today, that invaluable battlefield perspective

is largely provided by drones.

The definition of a drone is a system which doesn't carry

an operator in the cockpit.

There can be all kinds of drones, naval drones,

underwater, ground drones,

most of the time being called "robots."

The most commonly known type of drone

is an unmanned aircraft.

In military terms, it's always been

around the dull, dirty, and dangerous work

that you don't want to risk soldiers going into.

Aerial drones can be divided into four basic groups.

Kamikaze, or loitering munitions drones.

ISR, which stands for intelligence, surveillance,

and reconnaissance drones.

Armed drones,

and combat drones.

The first type of modern military drones were inspired

by the Japanese use of kamikaze.

Aerial bombardments were notoriously inefficient.

Around 1935, the UK's Royal Air Force started to use

the de Havilland Queen Bee, a remote controlled drone

that was specifically used for target practice.

The US Drone Program started about a year later

after a visit by a US Admiral, Standley Curtiss,

who went across to see the Queen Bee in operation.

He started to develop the Curtiss N2C-2

remote controlled drone.

We move on to a remotely controlled drone

built by an actor, Reginald Denny.

From there, drone technology really plateaued

for a while until about 1973, where we see the use of drones

extensively during the Yom Kippur War

by the Israeli Defense Force.

But these initial ones were very expensive to make.

This led to the development of ISR drones,

which could return to base.

These vehicles were largely used

for surveillance and scouting.

This is really what kickstarted

the Israeli Defense Forces drone program,

Surveillance drones are drones that carry surveillance

equipment, photo cameras, video cameras, and the like,

and are used to locate targets on the ground.

By 1985, the US had really started to scale up its program,

and by 1996, the Predator had arrived on the scene,

The Predator is part of the so-called "MALE" drone group.

MALE stands for "Medium Altitude, Long Endurance."

It could stay in the air for a long time and can therefore

fly over a target for several hours, if not longer.

During the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan,

we saw the increasing use of drones as the West came

to rely more and more on technology to deliver

an edge against a furtive and deceptive adversary.

In the CIA, we started using the drones

to gather intelligence on high-value targets.

They were game changers.

Drones intelligence-gathering shifted the focus of war

away from body count and toward precise, targeted missions.

In Iraq, they changed the face of warfare

because warfare suddenly had a face.

During the global war on terror, the strategy was

to attack and find and kill

individuals responsible for attacks.

A special forces team in a helicopter,

coming from the other horizon, could be heard and found.

A drone could loiter almost silent above the battle space,

spending hours, perhaps days, airborne, seeking out

the individual and eventually targeting them with a precision

and a lack of risk that the West had previously

been unable to achieve.

In 2001, in Tora Bora, we were hunting Bin Laden

and his close associates.

Late one night, we saw lights in the bottom of the valley,

about 1,000 meters below us, moving around.

And we were in a very vulnerable position,

and were afraid that they were maneuvering to outflank

and overrun us.

We called for aerial support, but nothing was available

except an unarmed Predator drone.

We had them fly that drone down low so that the people

in the valley would hear it.

They did, and it worked.

The lights went out, and nobody messed with us

that night.

I knew at that time that drones were gonna make

a huge difference on the battlefield.

But sometimes it's not enough if you don't have

the capability to then strike a target you have identified.

In fact, there was an incident before 9/11

where drone operators thought they had identified

Osama Bin Laden on the ground,

but the strike that was ordered basically arrived too late.

It was the unique challenges presented by the war on terror

and people hiding in villages and in remote,

inaccessible places that really put the pressure on us

to develop drones capable of carrying munitions.

From this requirement, we saw the arrival

of the Reaper drone.

The MQ-9 Reaper.

MQ-9 Reaper.

And flying the new MQ-9 Reaper.

Its payload capacity makes it more of a hunter-killer.

Aircraft can become a vital weapon.

It's changing the way we see the combat arena.

We're setting the bar,

and I think we're setting it pretty high.

The Predator was soon modified from a surveillance drone

to an armed drone.

They put two Hellfire missiles under its wings.

The first time they carried out the tests, they were actually

worried that the missile would be too powerful for the fragile

airframe of the Predator and rip off its wings.

That didn't happen.

This then led to the development

of the MQ-9 Reaper drone.

It was in 2006 when the US Air Force

really began an effort to absolutely control the skies.

And once you control the skies, then you dictate

the tenor of battle on the ground.

When people think of drones, we picture the Reaper,

which became known to everyone during the wars

in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Through its success in both war zones,

the drone became commonplace on the battlefield.

The catalyst for the Reaper drone was the sheer number

of targets that the global war on terror

delivered for the military.

How to service these was a perfect storm requiring

range, weapons, surveillance,

all in one platform.

It can carry more armament, more missiles.

It can also stay in the air for longer,

so 27 or more hours in the air.

It flies higher, which means it can evade anti-aerial systems

more easily.

And it has a top speed of up to 550 kilometers per hour.

The MQ-9 Reaper drone has changed the face

of how warfare is waged.

Remotely piloted via satellite links

from Creech Air Force Base in Nevada,

teams of people watch 24 hours a day,

365 days a year, ready to take out threats.

During the war on terror, Gary Harrington saw firsthand

the effectiveness of the Reaper drone.

Our role at that time

was to locate the top tier of Taliban

and Al-Qaeda that were on the most wanted list.

But these high value targets weren't out in the open,

So the time window was real small

in which you could strike them.

The Reaper drone gave us the capability to, one,

make sure that it was the intended target,

and two, that it was the right time to strike.

We started changing the warhead that came on them.

We could dial that warhead up to take out a bunker,

or reduce it to hit a building or a vehicle.

It was like being able to put a sniper on the ground

in places you couldn't get a person and be able

to leave them there for long periods of time.

It's the perfect weapon for an age of perpetual warfare.

The CIA says seven of its employees were killed

and six others wounded in a suicide bombing.

The bombing took place in the city of Khost in a province

that borders Pakistan and is a Taliban stronghold.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the bombing.

This is the Shahidi attack will be the first of the revenge

operations against the Americans

and their drone team.

The CIA released a letter from President Barack Obama

in which he says the victims come

from a long line of patriots.

That attack was devastating, and the US

immediately wanted Al-Qaeda to know that we were

coming for them.

Quickly, the US policy towards terrorists became that

of cutting the head off the snake.

And in late 2009, when Al-Qaeda conducted a successful suicide

attack against the CIA base in Khost, killing seven

CIA officers, it was believed that al-Yemeni was the head

of that particular snake.

In late 2009, when Al-Qaeda conducted a successful suicide

attack against the CIA base in Khost, killing seven

CIA officers, it was believed that al-Yemeni was the head.

The CIA leadership desperately wanted to find the perpetrators

and planners of this act.

They notified the ops center that this superseded all other

ongoing targeting operations and it was all hands on deck.

They wanted eyes on al-Yemeni and his accomplices, ASAP.

The NSA intercepted communications from Al-Qaeda

congratulating al-Yemini on the success of his operation.

That call came from the area near a compound

in Miran Shah, Pakistan.

They wanted someone with experience running operations

in that area.

I was actually asleep one night,

and got a message from the embassy

because it had received a NIACT message.

NIACT stands for "night action required."

That indicates that this message requires immediate

attention or action regardless of the time of day or night.

Based on my years of experience looking for Taliban

and Al-Qaeda in the Pakistani tribal areas,

I was directed to report to the Ops Center.

As I walked into the control center, a boss shook my hand

and said, "We have a suspected safe house location,

"but it's connected to what appears to be

"an apartment block.

"And we're not sure if al-Yemeni is actually in it.

Can you take a look?"

The suspected location was in the middle of the town.

There were a lot of innocent people in close vicinity,

and you couldn't either drop a bomb

or land something like SEAL Team Six.

So the decision was made to use a Reaper drone.

It took a long time to confirm that it was al-Yemeni

beyond the shadow of doubt.

But with the Reaper, we were able to observe people

coming in and out of the safe house.

And importantly, we could also verify that women and children

were coming in and out of the adjacent building,

while only men were going in and out of the safe house.

We also regularly saw armed men on the rooftop

of the suspected location.

The problem was, how could we find if al-Yemeni himself

was inside the compound?

This is where the Reaper's increased sensors

came into play.

It was cold weather, and we could see individuals

as bright, glowing dots.

It was a two-story building with multiple rooms,

but one of the upstairs rooms had a heater in it,

that we could see on infrared.

One of the glowing dots did not go out much,

was alone more often, and slept alone.

By watching the dots for a long period of time, we could tell

that there was deference to one that the others seemed

to come to and leave from.

We determined that that must be the leader.

When we felt comfortable that we had identified al-Yemeni

in this compound, we then watched and waited until we got

a group gathered because we knew we were only gonna get one shot.

And if he and the other planners were not taken out,

they would go into hiding, and we may never find them.

The command kill chain was notified.

They quickly stood up and asked, "How can we take

"this shot without injuring the civilians that are

on the other side of the wall?"

The decision was made to try to attack with the drones

through the roof instead of a wall.

This prevented more lateral penetration of the shrapnel.

Due to the Reaper's capabilities, we could

with confidence say, "Yes, it's time to take the shot."

Several missiles were fired, and all the people that were

in the room with al-Yemeni at the time were killed...

...but no innocent civilians were harmed.

We have taken away their infrastructure.

So we are chipping away at Al-Qaeda.

We're making progress in our major goal,

our central goal in Pakistan and Afghanistan,

and that is disrupting and dismantling,

and we are gonna ultimately defeat Al-Qaeda.

The strike on al-Yemeni was an important moment

in the history of drone warfare.

It was in the late 2000s that everybody started talking

about targeted killings.

Basically strikes outside official battle spaces

and in countries such as Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

In December 2009,

drones were used to take out Saleh al-Somali,

who was Al-Qaeda's external operations chief.

Drones were used to take out Al-Qaeda's number three

and number eight.

The Reaper was a great tool on the battlefield.

It also helped in the political realm because you did not have

to send people in harm's way or in hostile territory

to take out a target.

People in the region knew that drones were flying overhead,

but they were flying so high that most of the time

they couldn't hear or see them.

That had a big psychological impact.

They were fearing the sky at any time.

We've struck several terrorist training camps,

most of the airfields.

We believe we are now able to carry out strikes

more or less around the clock.

The strike against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda,

this is a very deliberate attack.

The degree of destruction varies depending on what

the desired effect is. We're inflicting severe blows.

I can report to the American people and to the world,

the United States has conducted an operation that killed

Osama bin Laden,

leader of Al-Qaeda and a terrorist who's responsible

for the murder of thousands of innocent men,

women, and children.

The killing of Osama bin Laden will lead to revenge attacks.

The remaining leaders of the network will seek

to commemorate bin Laden's death

by pulling off attacks in his honor.

We are gonna ultimately defeat Al-Qaeda.

This idea of decapitation captured Western leaders'

imaginations, whether political or military.

And yet its use in military terms,

in campaigns over the last 25 years,

whether against ISIS or the Taliban

or destroying Russian military headquarters and their generals

in Ukraine, it hasn't been enormously successful.

This decapitation strategy relies on a military

that is commanded from a single supreme commander,

one individual who runs everything else.

But the reality is that Al-Qaeda was not following

some rigid military structure with one head.

It wasn't like a snake. It was more like a hydra,

that had multiple heads, and every time you cut one off,

two more would grow in its place.

The Pentagon says all it took for insurgents in Iraq

and Afghanistan to hack into video feeds

from US Predator drones was a $26 piece of software.

The first case of American troops killed

by a missile strike from a US drone.

Frightened villages being mistaken for the enemy.

Last night, the United States carried out an airstrike.

General Milley called it a righteous strike.

And admits that drone strike was a tragic mistake.

General McKenzie now says that strike was a mistake.

This strike was taken in the earnest belief that it

would prevent an imminent threat, but it was a mistake.

And I offer my sincere apology.

It is a hard fact that US Strikes

have resulted in civilian casualties.

For me and those in my chain of command,

those deaths will haunt us as long as we live.

There were several incidents

where civilians were killed.

One particularly shocking case was in the last year

of the US presence in Afghanistan.

The MQ-9 operators were following an individual

for more than eight hours, suspecting that he was

a member of ISIS-K.

After the strike, they determined

that the suspect was actually the employee

of a US-based company.

And that strike cost the lives of ten innocent people,

seven of whom were children.

What was needed was a more precise weapon, something that

would respond to the political and military demands

of campaigns as they evolved.

On Saturday, the United States successfully concluded

an airstrike and killed the Emir of Al-Qaeda,

al-Zawahiri.

After a 21-year manhunt, the breakthrough came in Kabul.

US Intelligence agencies had tracked al-Zawahiri

to a safe house downtown.

Significant blow to Al-Qaeda

and its global network of affiliates.

He is getting the same justice from our maker

that bin Laden got.

At 6:18 AM Sunday morning, he ventured onto the terrace,

and a CIA drone fired two Hellfire missiles

at the building.

The Americans say no civilians were killed in the strike,

which used blades, not warheads,

to slice rather than blow up the target.

The Reaper carrying RX-9 modified Hellfire missiles

was used in the targeted strike on al-Zawahiri.

This missile doesn't detonate, but instead,

blades open just before impact,

slicing through the target.

These are so accurate,

they have flown through windows,

eliminated targets, and left little other damage

to the room or vehicle.

Drones were, for decades, an exclusively

military technology.

But then, in the 2010s, civilian drones,

commercially used drones, really took off.

In 2006, the Federal Aviation authority allowed drones to be

used for the first time in the US homeland.

This was largely due to requirements

in Hurricane Katrina.

Hurricane Katrina is closing in on the Louisiana coast now.

Where we saw Predator drones being used for the first time

to search for survivors and look at damage to provide

to US Authorities about what was happening on the ground.

And within four years, we had surveillance drones

controlled by smartphones, the ability to stream video

in real time down to individual phones

owned by individual people.

The drone technology has evolved significantly,

where there are so many uses beyond just the battlefield.

Whether you're talking about last mile logistics

and delivery for Amazon or for UPS,

or you're talking about some cutting-edge cinematography

in the movie industry

or to do remote surveillance of crops or oil pipelines.

You're seeing an explosion of opportunities for drones

to be used in the commercial space.

There are drones going over the prison

and dropping drugs into the prison.

A loot carried by two drones over prison.

The number of banned items dropped into London prisons

has doubled.

Harsher sentences to deter criminals

from this escalating crime.

Well, that's the downside of technology.

In the wrong hands, it can be used for wrong deeds.

You're starting to see cartels use drones to smuggle drugs

across the border or into prisons.

You're starting to see criminals use drones to case

a potential target.

Civilian drones are now returning to the battlefield.

Non state actors, in particular, such as ISIS

in Iraq and Syria, have been using drones for surveillance

and reconnaissance, and then started to booby trap

their drones to attack enemy soldiers.

The sheer number of small drones that meet the individual

soldiers can be targeted in a way

that they have never been before.

It has changed how war has had to be fought.

Drones have become ubiquitous on the battlefield,

playing a major role in global hot zones

like Syria and Ukraine,

and also in territorial wars

such as between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

And on the front lines, it is a mix of old school trench

warfare and modern drone technology,

the ultimate reconnaissance and targeting tool,

especially in mountainous terrain.

Even in Nagorno-Karabakh, we had a demonstration

of how soldiers have become reliant, if not dependent,

on aerial coverage for surveillance.

For almost two decades, both sides were at a stalemate

with the Armenians basically holding ground

in a very mountainous region called Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Armenians had been strongly supported

by advanced Russian artillery and anti-aircraft systems.

What happened, though, is the Azeris took basically

commercially modified drones, mounted them with ordinances,

both cameras, but also explosive devices, were able to identify

these positions and for really next to nothing

from a financial spend standpoint, able to neutralize

a significant amount of advanced Russian hardware.

But the use and availability of drones

doesn't guarantee success.

In the second battle of Susa, the defenders relied enormously

on their drone coverage

for surveillance and warning.

And yet, when the weather closed in, when visibility

was down, the attackers were able to use this, exploit it,

and overcome their adversaries.

The ubiquitous nature of drones in the battlefield

had made the defenders lazy.

Local commanders and soldiers had become reliant on drones.

The biggest development in the area of drones

in the last decade

is the rise of the commercial drone.

And their main advantage is that they are expendable

because they are so cheap. They don't need to come back.

And so we come back to this idea of a kamikaze system,

and indeed we call them kamikaze drones,

because they're one way drones that we send out,

attack a target, and explode with it.

We've seen a real evolution in terms

of how drones have been used.

Modified commercial drones.

And drones play a key role in this.

Widescale Russian drone attack.

Drones were intercepted.

One of the Ukrainian responses to the Russian invasion in 2022

has been to broadcast an enormous number of attacks

and responses on TikTok and social media.

This idea that we are normalizing attacks

on individual troops, on battlefield footage

using drones, attacks on platforms,

means that the use of drones

is becoming normalized not just for soldiers,

but across societies.

During the initial invasion of Ukraine, you had billions

of dollars of Russian armaments pouring into the country

and driving towards Kiev.

All the analysts basically thought

that within a matter of days, Kiev would fall.

Well, in reality, what you saw is a handful of Ukrainian

special operations soldiers on ATVs with modified consumer

available drones with explosive.

For a couple million dollars

worth of training and equipment and manpower were able

to massively nullify, if not eradicate, a billion dollar

armament or convoy that was approaching Kiev.

The Ukrainian invasion has, in some sense, seen the Russians

waging a traditional war of entrenched warfare,

with the Ukrainians simply flying drones overhead

and dropping grenades into those trenches,

causing tremendous amounts of damage.

On today's battlefields, the idea that every drone

gets through is a fallacy.

In Ukraine, they've been known to fly ten drones,

and only one gets through.

But those nine drones that you've flown previously

each require an expensive missile to take them down.

Your adversary is bleeding cash as he takes down your drones

while you still have the tenth one

to get through and kill him.

If you flood the battle space with maximum resources,

you can basically overrun your enemy both economically

but also in terms of sheer numbers.

There is a development towards combat drones,

so drones that are able to engage other drones

or indeed manned aircraft on future battlefields.

We will most likely have drones that are able to autonomously

defend themselves, even against other drones.

As these new drones develop,

so will the strategy for using them.

The term "drone swarm" doesn't just describe

a lot of drones flying together.

Drone swarms means that you have several units--

it can be dozens, it can be hundreds,

that operate together so that

they are able to communicate with each other and fly largely

autonomously and are relatively intelligent.

They can carry out different types of missions.

They can overwhelm enemy air defenses.

Right now, we aren't quite there yet.

We see a lot of drones on the battlefield,

but they aren't necessarily working together.

The reason why there's so much interest in drone swarms

is that it gives you new military capabilities.

You can imagine flying minefields that basically

interdict the territory to the enemy.

You can imagine waves of attacks,

where the first wave of drones is carrying out one attack,

and then another wave arrives.

And you can also overwhelm enemy air defenses.

So drone swarms really give you military capabilities

you didn't have before.

The idea of drone swarms is forcing the military to adopt

new tactics to try to defeat them.

For example, do you go and attack

the communications center on the drone?

Or do you try to interrupt the communications

between the drones?

Or do you attack the drone itself?

Is there a way that we can come up with something that attacks

all three systems at the same time?

I mean, it's not as if drone swarms cannot be defeated.

They can.

Precision airstrikes to destroy two ISIL training camps.

A battle that's been going on for days now...

The airstrikes killed more than 80 ISIL fighters.

Smoke rising from another hit.

In Libya, between 2020 and 2022, the use of counter drone

technologies in an evolutionary spiral of attrition,

measure, and countermeasure,

but swarms can't just be intercepted.

They might be controlled.

You could use a electromagnetic pulse, an EMP, that would

knock out the controlling resistors and microchips

inside each of the drones and make them fall out of the sky.

On the other hand, you could hijack

or take control, potentially,

of the drones and even the swarm,

turning them against the attacker themselves.

The current generation of drones

are relatively vulnerable.

They can be shut down or jammed easily.

And so right now, we're seeing a move towards drones

that are more stealthy or can fly higher and faster,

so they can't be shut down and fought too easily.

Many of these susceptibilities of drones and swarms come

because of the requirement to have a human in the loop.

Remove that, give the drones and the swarms autonomy,

and A truly autonomous system of drones and swarms

may arrive sooner than we think.

Artificial intelligence...

Artificial intelligence has enormous potential.

I am optimistic about the future of AI.

I think that AI is going to unlock a huge amount

of positive things.

Alongside the benefits, AI will also bring dangers

like powerful autonomous weapons

or new ways for the few to oppress the many.

The potential to revolutionize many aspects of our life

in ways never before possible.

The rise of powerful AI will be

either the best or the worst thing

ever to happen to humanity.

Autonomous drones may be where we're heading,

as military intelligence embraces

artificial intelligence.

One of the things we're seeing right now is the explosion

of artificial intelligence, or "AI," on the battlefield.

Artificial intelligence is gonna be a significant

force multiplier that's gonna allow for more complex

and more advanced drone systems, whether it's for commercial use

or for more conventional military use

on the battlefield.

One of the problems in modern warfare is time,

the speed at which things are happening.

Do we have time for a human to be in the loop

to make a decision?

Would it be more militarily effective to have

a human outside the loop?

Where does this evolution in drone technology end?

There is no good definition of the difference

between autonomy and automation.

A lot of military systems already do many

things automatically.

That's not just the case for drones, which may be able

to take off or hover automatically, but this is also

the case for other military systems such as the F-35.

As drones become more sophisticated,

they also become more autonomous.

And this isn't just something we're thinking about

for the future.

The Israeli Harpy 2 is sophisticated enough

to be launched against one target

to detect another higher priority target in flight

and redirect itself without human intervention

to destroy the higher priority target.

Some people might call these systems

"Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems," LAWS.

There's a big discussion at the United Nations in Geneva

happening at the moment on LAWS and whether they should be

banned or whether other regulations should be found

to make sure that there aren't being used fully autonomously

on a battlefield.

We're getting to the point that machine learning is rapidly

replacing human decision-making on the battlefield.

It can react much more quickly, but there are three

major concerns regarding lethal autonomous weapons systems.

First is technological.

Second is ethical and moral.

And third is security.

First, there are technological issues.

Question being, do they work as well as advertised?

Are they too vulnerable to sabotage?

Can you even tell if they're being sabotaged?

We actually need to make sure that we're hardening

those systems from a cybersecurity standpoint.

Last thing you wanna do is go into battle with a complex

system of autonomous devices that are supposed

to help you win the battle.

But if your adversary can actually hack them,

disable them, or use them back against you, that's obviously

something that we want to try to avoid.

The second basket is ethical and moral concerns.

Should a machine and artificial intelligence be allowed

to decide over life and death of another human being?

So one of the things you're starting to see now is less

of a reliance on a human being on the battlefield.

That means less exposure for a son

or a father or a mother

being on the battlefield and for them to come home.

But as with any automated system, there's always room

for misinterpretation.

Was that an adult male carrying a weapon

or was it actually a farmer carrying a tool?

Was that a group of terrorists gathering

or was it a number of people attending a funeral?

The counterargument is, if the drone has the ability

to take a shot right there and kill the target,

what does it do?

Machines only learn what we tell them,

and war is ruthless.

The last type of concern surrounding lethal autonomous

weapon systems is security policy.

The procurement of lethal autonomous weapon systems

by states may lead to an arms race where countries feel forced

to acquire and then use autonomous weapon systems

because the opponent does that as well.

And also, there's a danger of flash wars, where

one autonomous system reacts to another autonomous system,

and we may end up in a military confrontation

that no one actually wanted.

Once we remove humans from the fighting,

we change the moral impetus and impediments for war.

The world will become more violent.

We'll see more wars, more casualties,

more civilian deaths, and more collateral damage.

The arrival of AI on the battlefield has only

really been discussed for about the last five years.

Much of the current contemporary thinking

in the West, certainly

at government and military levels,

is there will always be a human in or on the loop

of any weapon system.

There will always be a human pulling the trigger.

The advancements of technology are massive, but they're also

putting more and more power in the hands

of less and less people.

Is that a good thing or is that a bad thing?

It is imperative for us to maintain a true,

uh...

kind of a moral compass and a true north, and making sure

that we have good, strong ethical and moral values

in our decision-making.