Editor's Blog
In the future, security guards won’t be chubby failed cops getting minimum wage. Instead, they’ll be metal death machines that can spray 900 bullets per minute if you’re intruding without proper ID.
Robotic sentries are presently patrolling Israel’s 70-kilometer Gaza border, and South Korea’s 250-kilometer DMZ. Russia has developed a remarkably lethal beast — the MRK-27-BT — touted as superior to the USA’s SWORDS in Iraq, and Australia shot into the market with its ferociously-named "Redback Metal Storm."
Border protection is just the beginning job for these brutal ‘bots. Additional employment will be found at airports, banks, and all facilities critical to a nation’s security: nuclear power plants, oil platforms, military installations, desalination plants, dams, harbors, etc.
Ethicists are concerned about humanity’s trend towards letting robots do the killing for us, but enlisting metal soldiers has an economic upside in South Korea. The long border with the hostile hermit North presently requires two human sentries every fifty yards, rotating every two hours. Immense manpower is wasted guarding this hotspot, necessitating SK’s mandatory 2-year military service. Far better, I believe, to have the meatbags working for Samsung and Hyundai. Robots also never sleep, eat, freeze, frag superiors, worry their parents, or end up homeless in wheelchairs on the streets.
The military has outgrown bows & arrows, catapults, and cavalry. The next transition will be from "Grunts -To-Geeks" — robots blasting each other while programmers safely manipulate them in air conditioned chambers thousands of miles away.
See Also
Wired For War: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Let Dystopian SF Movies Inspire our Military Bots
Can Terminators Actually Be Our Salvation?
Robots in War: Is Terminator Salvation an Oxymoron?
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4 Comments
There was this one incident, three years ago…
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/10/robot-cannon-ki/
P.S. So glad h+ is back! We missed ye!
… I guess it’s better than “…damn dirty apes…”…
Alt. comment: “Klaatu berata nicto.”
Permaybehaps we could start with non-lethal ordnance…..(“Don’t tase me, bot!”)
>The next transition will be from “Grunts -To-Geeks” — robots blasting each other while programmers safely manipulate them in air conditioned chambers thousands of miles away.
As if these robots wouldn’t be used to blow away or incapacitate human targets exactly like predator drones are.