Autonomous drones: looks like I was right

 

A week ago I put up an article titled "Drone warfare developments - it's a scary future".  In it, I looked at autonomous AI-guided drones that found targets with a minimum of human input, then made the kill/no-kill decision on their own without a "man-in-the-loop" to make the final call.

It's happening already.

Three Ukrainian civilians were slaughtered by Russian drones that were guided by artificial intelligence, marking an ominous escalation in warfare’s robotic age.

Tetiana Bubynets, 19, a university student, and two others were blown to bits last month at a gas station in the city of Zaporizhzhia by a drone outfitted with an experimental artificial intelligence system that decides, without a human operator, where to strike, the New York Times reported.

The drone, which looked like a model airplane, was programmed to fly towards the gas station, but once it closed in, an AI system autonomously chose its target — most likely propane tanks —  based on its training to recognize such objects, experts and military officials told the paper.

“This is a risk for the whole world,” said Col. Serhiy Minaiev, the commander of Ukrainian air defenses in Zaporizhzhia.

“In a few years, we will be living in a ‘Terminator’ movie. It’s no joke. Machines are making decisions to strike.”

Debris recovered from the gas station and other strike sites around the city revealed that the drones were running on Nvidia minicomputers that determined where the drone would detonate, officials and experts said.

There's more at the link, including photographs of Russia's autonomous AI-guided drone.

What's particularly ominous about that report is that the drone deliberately targeted three civilians, who would not have been wearing uniform and would not have been in a military location.  Instead, they were at a "gas station", where "an AI system autonomously chose its target — most likely propane tanks —  based on its training to recognize such objects".  Those three civilian deaths can't be classed as "collateral damage", as so many official statements so often label such incidents.  They were deliberate damage, selected by the AI in accordance with its programming, because they happened to be convenient targets to spread terror and fear among the local populace.  Furthermore, the NVIDIA chips powering those Russian drones are officially not allowed to be exported to that country . . . but they got there anyway.  If governments can smuggle them through embargoes, so can non-governmental threat groups and criminals.  It's not all that difficult to do.

What's worse is that AI-driven drone technology, and the tactics to use it, are now spreading from Ukraine and Russia to the rest of the world.  For example, Finland is buying and using Ukrainian drone technology, and hiring battlefield-experienced Ukrainian experts to show them how to use it.

Finland is directly integrating Ukrainian battlefield data into its defense industrial base, with President Alexander Stubb emphasizing that Kyiv possesses unprecedented expertise in modern high-intensity warfare.

Speaking on the strategic value of frontline data, Stubb noted that Ukraine holds more real-world combat insights than the rest of Europe combined. Helsinki is now actively applying these hard-learned lessons across its defense sector, drawing critical data on the tactical deployment of drones, missile systems, unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), and combat casualty care under modern fire conditions.

By systematically absorbing Ukraine’s operational data into Nordic defense manufacturing, Helsinki is rapidly adapting NATO’s northern flank to modern, sensor-saturated combat without having to learn those lessons through direct conflict.

Again, more at the link in the X thread - read the many comments from others.  Nor is Finland alone in such measures.  As mentioned last week, a US company is now supplying Ukraine with AI guidance systems for its drone hardware, making them much more deadly on the battlefield.  I've seen reports from at least a dozen countries talking about how they need to learn from Ukraine, and/or buy drone hardware and software from Ukraine, in order to ensure their own national security.  (One of them is Taiwan, which is arming itself to repel a threatened Chinese invasion.  Imagine what a cross-beach amphibious landing would suffer, in terms of both lives and matériel, if it were attacked by a hundred thousand or more autonomous drones before even one enemy soldier had set foot on shore!  Needless to say, China isn't terribly enthusiastic about this.)

It's time we all faced up to the reality of this threat - not just from nations, but from terrorists, and cross-border criminal enterprises such as drug cartels, and even from internal dissident groups such as ANTIFA, BLM and others.  Many of them are extremists, and won't hesitate to garner publicity for their cause by murdering their opponents, or anyone whom they perceive as an enemy.  Think how this might impact routine law enforcement activities.

• A drug cartel in Mexico might find it useful to send a few autonomous drones across the border to attack local, state and federal patrols, so they could sneak their illegal wares into the USA under cover of all the fuss as law enforcement tries to help its comrades.  They're already murdering their own police in Mexico, so why should they hesitate to do the same to ours?
• Rival gangs such as the Crips, the Bloods, the Mexican Mafia, etc. would probably not hesitate to use such weapons against each other (and possibly even against local law enforcement agencies) in their ongoing, never-ending fight to control urban territory for their criminal activities.
• Extremist political groups could use them to attack rival groups and/or individuals.  For example, Charlie Kirk was killed by a sniper while addressing a public gathering.  What if a future speaker could be killed by a high-explosive autonomous drone?  The "shooter" could launch it from several miles away, and be in little or no danger of detection or arrest.

Those are just a few possible examples, and they're all entirely feasible.  I think that in as little as three to five years from now, we're going to see attacks on civilian targets by autonomous drones in many countries, from who knows how many sources.  There's no guarantee that we, personally, might not become a victim of them.

Peter