How Long Have Autonomous Weapons Existed?
Palmer Luckey says autonomous weapons have existed for thousands of years. He defines them as weapons that carry out what you program them to do, independent of the operator or the engineer, and he says a new set of technology is only making them better.
Dave Blundin asks who unleashes the weapons if drones fly instead of pilots, and whether that call is made on the aircraft or sent back to headquarters. Palmer Luckey says the change is not as large as people think. Weapons have been making their own kill decisions for decades. The Aegis system on destroyers has a fully autonomous mode. Flip a button and it shoots down anything inside a programmed range, with no human confirmation. CIWS and SeaRAM can do the same against incoming missiles, mortars, artillery, and speedboats. In Vietnam, aircraft launched missiles that flew over the horizon, looked for the radio signal of a surface-to-air missile site, and struck it. A person still chooses the area and the signal.
He also points to pitfall traps that let people walk across and then catch the heavier commander on a horse, poison traps that kill people with some traits and not others, or that spare animals, and many land mines, sea mines, and torpedoes. Myths about golems sent to fight or defend a city fit the same idea. His argument is that autonomous weapons have been around for a very long time.
