"I’ve heard various estimates from the Ukrainians themselves that any given drone typically has a life span of about four weeks."
Maybe if referring to the Mavic scouts or bombers... Because the FPVs and Cessna-based drones have a lifetime based on mission duration. They have an outsized impact, however. I also must say that expensive gear from Anduuril is a drop in the bucket compared to homegrown sea and air drone assets. It has become a diy drone war through and through. Nothing like 2022.
This guy is great. Companies like Anduril are what we need to protect America in the next war. Defense procurement has eaten us alive and made a relatively ineffective fighting force. We need to be capable of creating liberty ships again. And the UAV and USV tech that Anduril pioneers will hopefully lead to a bunch of copycat companies that push low cost weaponry.
High production wins wars. We did it last time. We just have to get it back into action again.
The Thiel collective has reached VP and Pres candidates. If they make it to the White House, this particular pathway is going to open. American hegemony can be preserved and the World can be at peace.
The whole part about civilizing the Middle East and Africa sounds dumb. But it does really ring true for Europe, Korea, and Japan. My Polish and Estonian coworkers really do enthusiastically support Pax Americana. Because when you have a hostile (or potentially hostile) country on your border, you actually have to take a sobering look at your country's survival.
Even for WWII, Hitler was a specifically German character, and it wasn't as if though he lacked opponents, so he didn't even represent all of Germany, and he was actually inspired by the US and by Turkey rather than by European thought.
The US has actually been the source of some very recent and significant barbarism in Europe, for example, the torture that happened at Bromma airport despite promises, and after quite extreme threats against Sweden's trade, the torture prisons in Poland, Lithuania and Romania, etc.
So I actually think it's almost the complete other way around.
But it's always nice to have allies against hostile powers like Russia, and I think that's what the Estonians appreciate.
You must be incredibly blind to basic modern history to not see exactly how it does ring true for Europe. It was specifically the U.S. and its support for other western countries in Europe that eventually freed them from the grip of the Nazis and later from being counter-occupied by the USSR crushing its way westward. This potential invasion was stopped mainly by a U.S. supported presence in the west.
Whatever Hitler's inspirations for the management of his genocide, it was uniquely his in a way that nobody could sanely blame on the United States.
Finally, your picking a specific, Bush-era rendition programs as an example of recent barbarism in Europe, vs an entire, full-scale fucking war started by the Putin government in the east is laughable as an example of barbarism being more the fault of the Americans and their domination in Europe.
>You must be incredibly blind to basic modern history to not see exactly how it does ring true for Europe. It was specifically the U.S. and its support for other western countries in Europe that eventually freed them from the grip of the Nazis and later from being counter-occupied by the USSR crushing its way westward. This potential invasion was stopped mainly by a U.S. supported presence in the west.
What freed them from the grip of the Nazis was the destruction of large numbers of Nazis forces in the Soviet Union. Stalingrad alone involved greater losses for Germany than on the entire western front.
>Whatever Hitler's inspirations for the management of his genocide, it was uniquely his in a way that nobody could sanely blame on the United States.
That's not an absolutely unreasonable view, but do take the same view of Turkey's part?
>Finally, your picking a specific, Bush-era rendition programs as an example of recent barbarism in Europe, vs an entire, full-scale fucking war started by the Putin government in the east is laughable as an example of barbarism being more the fault of the Americans and their domination in Europe.
This happened a couple of years ago. The torturers and planners almost certainly still work at the CIA. Many of the lower-level participants probably aren't older than 45.
These people were here in Sweden, torturing people that had been handed over after an explicit promise to the Swedish government that they wouldn't be tortured.
I picked this particular act because it figuratively almost happened almost right in front of me-- in places that I regularly visit. If I'd been at the flight school at Bromma and happened to be there at the right time I could potentially have seen it with my own eyes.
Russia being bad does not mean that the US has a place in Europe, or should have influence here, or is something civilisation-promoting. I see the US as an active destabiliser of certain countries and quite untrustworthy. When the US was done with Iraq there were probably more Syriacs in Sweden than there.
The satire is good, but beneath it, in the reality of modern history and today, you do realize just how genuinely, barbarically cruel the Japanese Empire was? To put it another way, if you truly, genuinely had to start living under it as of tomorrow, would you genuinely prefer that the dominating hegemony be enforced by a country like the old Japanese Empire, or say modern Russia, or China, or the Modern Middle East, vs one dominated by the United States?
Many people who snidely show disgust at U.S cultural, social and economic/political domination of the world, or at least major parts of it, do so while voluntarily living in countries influenced by that same domination and not countries under the control of a rival power structure.
>"And the companies that did have expertise, like Google, like Facebook, like Apple, were refusing to work with the U.S. national security community."
Idk if this is true. I suspect they--at a minimum--cooperate with the "soft" side of the defense industry (e.g. NSA). However, if they don't, I think there will come a time when we will have to bring them to heel. The world won't have the luxury of supporting fat corps who aren't aligned with respective hegemons (e.g. US, China, Russia). They will find themselves supporting the effort or cut off from resources and unable to continue operating.
Who is “we” in “we will have to”? As a citizen, I would strongly reject any increased national security involvement in tech; and as an employee, this may be the thing that pushes me to unionize.
We = The people with guns who control the nation and access to the inputs and trade networks (e.g. ports, sea-lanes, highways), and informations systems (e.g. fiber) that these companies rely on.
I also have no doubt that you personally might refuse to participate, but enough of your peers will re-orient to enable the corporation to keep moving.
At least for now, these kinds of things are decided by voters and their representatives, not “people with guns,” and plenty of those voters reject increased proliferation of the national security apparatus. I would argue that if that ever changes, this country will no longer be worth defending.
I don't control any of that. I work for one of those big name tech cos.
My comment isn't about being tough, it's about facing the reality that these companies won't be allowed to remain neutral (and my original comment expressed doubt that they're even neutral right now).
edit: my comment makes less sense in light of your edit
There was a period of time where employees of companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google were protesting in order to prevent their companies from taking military contracts.
That seems to have mostly died down and all of those companies have contracts with the DoD.
Ultimately, I agree with your sentiment. Alibaba can't tell China no. And while US corporations have that freedom. It isn't one they should exercise because the US military's ability to remain competitive is in the vital interest of all that live in the US. Even if you don't always agree with the government's use of the military.
Contrary to that viewpoint I think there is much to be said for separating peaceful non military companies from military ones. Some reasons:
Google FB etc are inherently global. Military is inherently regional.
Mixing military and civilian tends to cause messes. See Boeing doing military stuff and now their planes and ISS shuttles don't work. Also so Cheney transferring the military biodefense budget to Fauci and the NIH and now we have lab leaks and covid.
> Google FB etc are inherently global. Military is inherently regional
Military is often global, too. We have the term "world wars" for a reason. Boeing has been doing military work long before it's contemporary issue. Most aerospace companies do. In fact a lot of tankers and airborne radars are built on top of civilian aircraft frames.
Google had an employee revolt over project Maven. However, there were suggestions that this was overblown and mostly driven by foreign national employees. Which, to be clear, does not make their opinions invalid but it does mean it's not necessarily representative of the whole if for example lots of mainland Chinese employees aren't enthusiastic about working for American military capabilities.
Then what are you saying? If I as an individual don't want to "work with the national security community", that's my right. If they want to compel me to do so, they have to go through the judicial system and get a warrant. At what organizational size should a corporation be "brought to heel" and the right to refuse to do something for the government (without sufficient legal reason) go away?
Many (most? all?) nation-states have compulsory service, either triggered in a "draft" or always ongoing (e.g. all young people serve in some way after high school). So no, I don't believe that you as an individual have the right to not work with your nation's national security apparatus, regardless of where you reside. You may think this is only for young people but I think that's just been typical practice/need, not a matter of law.
Similarly, corporations have obligations to the state. In the US I believe this largely falls under the "Defense Production Act". My personal assumption is that most companies are more pragmatic than individuals and would accept some suggestions/requests to aid the state rather than risk disruption from a formal order to support the state; and the state has a lot of levers to make themselves persuasive.
> Many (most? all?) nation-states have compulsory service
"The following 113 countries and territories have been identified as having no enforced conscription"
"The following fifteen countries have been identified as having a civilian, unarmed or non-combatant service optional alternative to compulsory military service"
"The following 19 countries have been identified as having no defense forces or as having no standing army but having very limited military forces"
The United States is on the list as having no enforced conscription. I assure you that we do have it. The definition they used for this chart is highly suspect.
Edit: also trying to quantify this using "Count of Nations" rather than "Sum of Populations" is wildly misguided. Saying that Vatican City doesn't have a defense force adds nothing to the conversation.
A company like Google (or Apple for that matter), with their own freewheeling project systems, would rather jump into an olympic pool filled with razor blades and used condoms before taking any amount of money from the hellish morass that is the defense procurement system. The instant you enter the MIC, kiss goodbye to any of your internal business systems - you will be re-writing the way you work every second of every day. And not for the better, I might add. I think Google looked at the costs of that, looked at the contract, and said, nah, thanks, I'm good. Then went back to feeding NSA/NRO for black money delivered by men in coats.
Of course, now, post-ZIRP, things are a wee bit different.
Yeah, that's via an OTA, which is basically - comparatively - free money. It's not a PoR (Program of Record). PoRs are where (many naive people think) all the money is. All those people are incorrect. It is, however, the PoR which will ruin your goddamn business when you sign it. Congratulations, that is now all you do.
Agreed on defense procurement revenue vs their current revenue streams. But they are given national-level amounts of resources (eg gigawatts for their data centers). In a wartime footing that would go away unless they re-oriented to serve common effort.
I thought Google purchased things like gigawatts for their data centers on the open market? Can you link to something that shows its bring give to them from the government for free?
I’ve still not seen any actual proper evidence of Andruils tech being fielded in Ukraine, and I’m in touch with a rather large number of people on drone and EW teams over there.
It’s become kind of a joke of sorts - we see slick promo stuff for Luckeys shit in the press, but we never see the goods.
This guys PR team has been obviously working overtime in the last few months to make him the new musk. I’m taking note of all the organizations being paid to exhaustingly fawn over the cool new kid of death technology
(American here) I don't know anything about Palmer Luckey or Anduril, but I do believe in a strong national defense.
As an individual, I can do approximately zero to stop weapons from being used for offense, rather than defense. That is wildly unfortunate and tragic, but (false dichotomy incoming) I would choose that path for my country 100% of the time over being under-armed.
"The strong do what they will while the weak suffer what they must." I can't recommend being weak so instead I will vote for being strong.
All that to say: I am supportive and thankful that someone out there is actually innovating/delivering in this space and not just an MIC-parasite.
I am a pacifist at heart, and I truly wish it wasn’t so, but it is impossible for any nation that believes in its continued existence [0] not to arm itself and maintain alliances with other like minded nations (including, regrettably, nuclear arms).
I agree with the sentiment around demilitarisation, too. If everyone started getting rid of weapons there would, in many ways and for much of the time be less war and suffering. It feels right, compassionate, and empathetic. It’s what I would want. But it’s wrong.
It only takes one national collapse, one coup, one crackpot dictator, one rogue leader to upend that and walk all over everyone. And we have far more than one, both nascent and incipient, at this point.
This used to be somewhat untested in modern times, making it easier for loud anti-defence voices to be heard and acted on. But Ukraine is living that reality every day and Russia is far from the only would be aggressor.
So yes, we need to build capable militaries and strong alliances, and we need work to promote a more stable world outside those alliances.
At the same time we need to try, as hard as possible, to use our democratic power to prevent our nations and their allies overreaching with their military power, given that they must not surrender it.
But the idea that any subset of nations can choose peace by not having weapons in anything like the world we inhabit is, unfortunately, dangerous wishful thinking.
[0] Every nation believes this, regardless of its truth. We can (and should) evaluate the legitimacy and stability of a nation, alongside its governance when forming alliance, but all will rationalise their own existence (however poorly) and therefore their defence.
Seeing what is happening in the world, I agree with you.
While America does not have a perfect history and is not a perfect system, there is no other country in the world right now that i would rather have overwhelming military advantage over others.
If it was really all about non-lethal defense, weapons would look a lot different, and many current weapons would simply be banned, with anyone owning or employing such weapons getting forced -- by non-lethal force -- to give them up.
Warfare is an inherently competitive endeavor. Which is going to win: an army armed with stun batons and pepper spray pitted against an army with machine guns, tanks, and artillery?
Non-lethal defence does not seem possible at our current technology level.
Keeping it about defence only rather than offense is a political problem, with the decision about what sort of weapons you acquire being influenced by the politics, not driving it.
There's a grim irony to naming military technology companies (Anduril, Palantir) after objects from a story written by a survivor of the meat grinder that was World War I.
Neither of these names are ironic. The name Palantir was chosen to remind the company of surveillance's potential for abuse. Anduril was meant to reference th idea of shaking up American defense, disrupting an industry that's become dominated by a few big players on cost-plus contracts that routinely overrun. Because Anduril is the new sword reforged from Narsil.
That Tolkien was a world war veteran doesn't make it any more ironic. The way you o avoid wars is to deter them: countries aren't selfless magnanimous institutions, they need to know that they'll lose in war in order to keep them from trying to wage it.
"I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend."
"AI" weapons have existed for the better part of a century. The first generation sidewinder missile autonomously homed in on a target. It's logic was simple, and it needed a bright exhaust plume to seek, but it's an autonomously guided munition nonetheless.
Making a quadcopter with a claymore strapped to it home in on enemy troops using image recognition and visible spectrum cameras isn't fundamentally all that different. Most of the complaints - e.g. the potential for friendly fire - existed with older weaponry too. That sidewinder is just going to home in on the hottest IR signature , which may be friendly if employed carelessly.
In one example, there (most likely) aren't any innocent civilians hanging around. In the other there will certainly be innocent civilians on the other end.
Are there many civilians in the trenches of eastern Ukraine? Again, the discourse around AI weapons seems to consistently neglect the fact that these are already being deployed.
Better than letting russians rapist rampage through your country. Although I am sure Ukraine will stop any development in return for sufficient war support.
Because drones are overpowered. So the defenders jam. Which means the drones can still fly but can’t be controlled. So they need a pre-programmed target. But things move around on the battlefield so drones need to track. The step from that to automatically identify enemy troops and kill them is just a hop and a skip away.
Drones have proven to be the key differentiator in Ukraine. They’ll be important for the next few conflicts (till we’re fighting with sticks and stones again) and they’ll be more effective the smarter they are.
Necessity is the mother of invention, we don’t know who the father is, but war blew through here nine months ago and the way they looked at each other oughta tell you somethin.
Putting aside all the ai-recommends-you-eat-a-few-rocks-a-day evidence...
Letting machines incapable of empathy, bereft of accountability for themselves or their creators, make decisions to end one or more lives, is a monstrous idea on its face.
Mechanized warfare has been a thing for generations now. What is the difference between AI and a pressure switch? AI can choose to NOT kill the 13 year old playing football in the field 5 years later.
Ukraine stopped the Russian invasion and turned the war into a stalemate primarily through widespread use of land mines. The chance that those will all be removed after the conflict is approximately zero. Many of them were artillery delivered so no one even knows exactly where they landed. No one cares about war crimes when their own survival is at stake.
In theory, I can see that point, in practice, unfortunately, it seems like a good idea.
We're witnessing Russia, a massive country with nuclear deterrence, trying to annex a smaller peaceful country that hasn't provoked any neighbor since it existed - Ukraine. Russia has used genocide in the past, and is now using it again to try to wipe yet another country and culture from the face of the earth.
The vast majority of Russians don't care, and many support this war with a "brotherly nation" (imagine). Others see going to Ukraine to kill Ukrainians as a way to make a better living, for them and their families - they don't see the shortcomings of Putin that led to their misery, but they see the value in making more money killing Ukrainians - go figure!
And Putin made such a strategic blunder, that his existence is now tied to this war - even if that means killing millions of Russians and Ukrainians.
So, what can Ukraine do, or other countries close to Russia or close to China, who are looking to expand borders?
They can no longer rely on US for help because of their own internal division and the resignation from being the "leaders of the free world".
To me, the most obvious answer is:
- GET NUKES - The problem with this is that many countries who have nukes don't want more nukes spread around, because sht can get out of hand and nukes might be deployed - this argument no longer makes much sense given what Russia is doing, they're literally using nuclear deterrence to expand borders. But nukes are expensive.
- AI WEAPONS - Russia is protected from external intervention under the nuclear umbrella, and they have bodies to throw. They're sustaining a lot of casualties, and Russians seem to be motivated to continue to kill Ukrainians for small personal gain, so something must be done in this regard. The accuracy of western weapons seems to have been playing in favor of Ukraine, but clearly it's not enough. So you will need something to balance off high numbers of motivated soldiers in comparison to those defending - here AI seems to be the solution.
- AI WEAPONS + NUKES - this seems to be the safest solution of them all.
Reality check: Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China are developing AI weapons. They're already deploying them for information warfare, so you can only assume they will deploy them as weapons as soon as they can.
Sadly, that's the world we live in, so we have to adjust to the times. I don't think its a matter of "should we", but more "how can we make them in greater numbers and cheaper".
"Terror" is used frequently to mean fear of something that may happen in the future, as opposed to "horror", which is used to refer to a sensation caused by something bad that has already happened.
If these restricted meanings are used, then the 13th century would be horrifying, not terrifying, when remembering it now, and it could be argued that the present is more terrifying than many moments in the past, because at those moments, even if people were afraid of something bad happening, they did not expect anything that could bring a global destruction from which nobody could escape.
Nevertheless, even if there are many reasons that make the present much more terrifying than 10 years ago, from climate change to more and more monopolistic economies to non-negligible risk of nuclear war, most people were much more terrified during the fifties and early sixties of the 20th century, when the risk of nuclear war seemed much higher and the memories of the horrors of WWII were still strong.
The Russian government, while dumb and incompetent to an unbelievable point, isn't dumb enough to try killing on American soil. Besides, it's not like the CEOs of Russian defense companies aren't publicly known.
Donating for Trump doesn't make you racist (well, not directly). Designing and selling mass surveillance systems for borders control that use AI (and all biases and racism that are embedded in most training datasets) makes you a racist.
Also naming your company after Tolkien nowadays scream "I am a far right libertarian or a white supremacist"
This is not at all true. And I'll add that what the man is doing with Anduril -- single-handedly working to modernize defense development and procurement -- is downright heroic. And long overdue, to say the very least.
> Anduril tech is used for mass surveillance on US borders
It's a tool, and almost certainly a more humane tool than the alternatives.
Heroic feels a bit strong, but overdue I would agree. It’s an area that’ll always exist and has been neglected by US industries outside of the company’s that are just government contractors (General Dynamic, Lockheed, etc) as the supply pool for these types of products is very small & not forcing innovations via competition as a result.
When you consider the extent of regulatory capture in the defense industry, the degree to which prime contractors have come to overspecialize in regulatory compliance and lobbying, and the nigh insurmountable barriers to entry for new firms -- you might reconsider.
Before Anduril was established, nobody was certain whether a company like that could even exist. A company, focused on defense projects, that doesn't just make software, but makes real things in the real world -- and that company operates along modern lines and isn't a bloated old MIC dinosaur. The odds were stacked heavily against them. But they're winning.
The fact that a company selling the most unethical ideas ever: unmanned, automated killing machines, is "winning" is the scariest thing ever. There is nothing heroic in selling weapons.
In centuries past, armored knights considered crossbows and early firearms unethical and unsporting. That didn't stop the armies of the time from employing them -- and warfare adapted, as it always does.
Today, all major powers are experimenting with, or already utilizing, "unmanned, automated killing machines" -- in addition to AI for C4I and other purposes. A responsible Department of Defense has literally no choice but to keep pace, and it would be the height of irresponsibility not to attempt to outrun its competitors. They don't have the luxury of closing their eyes and pretending that the world is at peace and that swords must now become ploughshares -- they have to take the world as it really is, not as they might hope it is.
The bottom line is simply this: The desire of peace-loving people to spare the world from militarism and war must include a commitment to maintain a strong and capable defense.
Besides, military procurement in the USA is slow as molasses, captured by lobbyists and a clique of prime contractors, and red-tape laden to a degree that people working in the tech sector can hardly comprehend. Anduril, in its way, is working to fix that extremely serious problem.
I feel that's in bad taste as Ukraine is defending against a foreign invasion. You can tell Russia to stop the war, they can just go home. Ukraine does not have that luxury.
Ukraine is the exception. It seems that most of the other wars the US got involved in were done with a bullshit pretext and the real reason seems to be that the US has economic/military interest in that territory.
The US might not even care about the Ukraine people. It might just be a proxy war against Russia. I mean, the US doesn't give a shit about Gaza. You can tell ~~Russia~~ Israel to stop the war...
You can be pro-Ukraine and against the always growing military-industrial complex.
Of all my colleagues I've had the chance to have a real talk with, defense was the only vertical where the developers more-often-than-not had a robust understanding of the moral and ethical questions their products posed.
I might disagree with their choice to work there, but I respect that choice 1000 times more than the unexamined position.
The default attitude I see elsewhere is that everyone has decided their employer is benign, and they'll figure out the "why" part later (or never).
Submarines aren't exactly disposable plastic bags or straws; I don't expect they'll be mothballed that quickly, and there are doubtless secondary uses for them in research and undersea exploration. (Including industrial "exploration" for mineral and gas deposits.) The kind of fast material production you call a nightmare gives rise to all sorts of positive possibilities.
Besides, there aren't that many unused tanks and planes in the West right now.
We're in the midst -- and perhaps even just the beginning -- of a military purchasing frenzy, especially in Europe.
Sealab 2021 for real when? It's the perfect training for space colonization, and we gotta get off this rock for our survival eventually. (Especially by the time bioweapons start getting loose accidentally.)
Hello? These are missile drones, made by a comically grotesque "Tony Stark" goofball who yells at people about Dungeons and Dragons while his shit is used for global supremacy. Is everyone completely stupid?
I don't understand why OP made that comment (it doesn't seem like a big deal) but the US military has a bunch of boneyards for every branch. They are more like "neatly parked until salvage wants them" rather than dumped.
Yeah, that’s my point. It’s not like they’re dumped onto the side of the yard, when they get decommissioned they end up going into these or parts can come out of them.
People make these comments then have no problem swapping their car out every 4-5 years and it’s like what do you think happens with those eventually?
Maybe if referring to the Mavic scouts or bombers... Because the FPVs and Cessna-based drones have a lifetime based on mission duration. They have an outsized impact, however. I also must say that expensive gear from Anduuril is a drop in the bucket compared to homegrown sea and air drone assets. It has become a diy drone war through and through. Nothing like 2022.