Just Finished Reading: Wired for War – The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21^st Century by P W Singer

At last I’m catching up with my Christmas reading! Yes, I’m that far behind the review curve. But Christmas was the ideal opportunity to dive into this long anticipated and surprisingly substantial book (despite its mere 436 pages).

Of course my regular readers will know that I’m interested in (and have a bug-bear about) the use of military robotics. I’ve certainly posted enough articles on the subject here for that to be obvious. So it was nice, and rather refreshing, to have something much more sizeable to get my teeth into. Singer has certainly produced an important work here. He manages to cover a huge area of both established and emerging technology in military robotics without losing focus or going off into (too much) scientific hyperbole regarding the capabilities of the devices been used today in Iraq and Afghanistan by allied forces and without enthusing (too much) about weapons yet to come. Focused very much on the machines themselves and the men and women who design, manufacture and use them this book is a state-of-the-art exposition of what is in the field today and what we can expect in the near future. Thankfully the author didn’t just focus on the tech stuff. Although I’m pretty much a Geek where this kind of thing is being discussed there’s only so much hardware and software description I can take. A significant part of the books narrative considered the ethics of using autonomous and semi-autonomous robots as well as the psychological effects (at both ends) of warfare at a distance. One thing did surprise and somewhat disappoint me about the book however – the apparent blind-spot (or rather fuzzy spot) where fighting against machines was concerned. There were several mentions of robots basically being ‘kidnapped’ in the field, hacked, and sent back to attack allied troops (something that I was unaware of happening) and the odd brief mention of other nations – outside the US – eventually developing sophisticated fighting machines of their own but then the thought sort of just fizzled out. OK, I wasn’t exactly expecting a whole chapter about the dangers of future Terminators turning on their designers and bringing about the apocalypse (AKA Judgement Day) but I did expect the author to give it a bit more consideration. But I guess that’s just me….

What the author did do very well indeed was to highlight exactly what is going on in the world of military robotics and bring many disparate items together to create a cohesive whole. Once the big picture can now be seen it’s far easier to notice the way things are moving ahead. An increase in the numbers and use of autonomous and semi-autonomous robots by US and other allied forces is inevitable. Western militaries, after initial scepticism, are falling over themselves to have more and more such devices in their respective arsenals. In the near future the ubiquitous UAV will have its ground, sea and probably space equivalents. As the technology progresses the scope of activities undertaken by these machines will increase. Despite assurances to the contrary eventually humans will need to be taken out of the loop as they will be incapable of responding at the necessary machine like speeds on the battlefield. Like all technology – no matter how advanced or sophisticated – that of autonomous and semi-autonomous robots will spread with more and more nations and non-state actors getting hold of, developing or hiring out the devices as required. We are not too far away from machines fighting machines in future wars. Maybe we are indeed at the beginning of the end for human involvement in warfare – except at the very highest and the very lowest levels. What will war mean then? That is a question the author leaves us with. Without human soldiers what will future conflict mean? Will it simply be another form of entertainment, a sort of more visceral computer game where the enemies and the blood is real but the danger (for us at least) is not? Such a scenario is almost as frightening as the idea of Terminators sent by our enemies to infiltrate our societies and kill targets of value. Of course one option is that we stop here are say ‘this far and no further’. Both the author and I agree that this is the most unlikely option of all. Despite my few and trifling reservations I found this book to be highly informative and very thoughtful. If you have any interest in technology and particularly military technology or in the future in general this is definitely the book for you. Highly recommended.