PW Singer on Wired for War

By Jackie Randles

This article was published in Living Ethics: issue 82 summer 2010

In Wired for War, Peter Warren Singer took us through a chilling inventory of contemporary use of robotics in warfare to ask what is right and wrong in a world where our wars are increasingly being handed over to machines.

There is no doubt that science fiction has become battlefield reality as more and more robotics are being used in warfare. The revolution that is taking place on the battlefield is starting to change not just how wars are fought, but also the politics, economics, laws, and ethics that surround war itself.

How do we relate to robots at war? This was the central question put to us by PW Singer. Throughout his fascinating presentation, a slide show presented dozens of unmanned, robotic warfare devices that are used in all kinds of military scenarios.

What is even more disturbing is the fact that many such devices are operated by young men and women sitting on computers, in offices, miles away from the battlezone. Kids who have grown up playing computer games are perfectly placed to move into modern warfare with minimal training.

Singer described how, in the midst of suburbia, advances into robotic warfare are being made by nerdy kids who have a knack for online gaming.

Military pilots today can fly combat missions from their office cubicles just outside Las Vegas against Iraqi insurgents who are their targets.

Showing how this upheaval is already afoot, Singer gave examples of remote-controlled drones taking out terrorists in Afghanistan, while the number of unmanned systems on the ground in Iraq has gone from zero to 12,000 over the last five years.

But it is only the start. New prototypes will soon make human fighter pilots obsolete, while the Pentagon researches tiny robots the size of flies to carry out reconnaissance work now handled by elite Special Forces troops.

The massive change in how we use technology for the purpose of war will no doubt continue to change the experience of war itself. According to Singer, this is leading some of the first generation of soldiers working with robots to worry that war waged by remote control will come to seem too easy, too tempting.

More than a century ago, General Robert E Lee famously observed, “It is good that we find war so horrible, or else we would become fond of it.” He didn’t contemplate a time when a pilot could “go to war” by commuting to work each morning in his Toyota to a cubicle where he could shoot missiles at an enemy thousands of miles away and then make it home in time for his kid’s soccer ­practice.

With robots taking on more and more roles, and humans ever further out of the loop, some wonder whether human warriors will eventually be rendered obsolete.

As our weapons are designed to have ever more autonomy, Singer asks deeper questions. Can the new armaments reliably separate friend from foe? What laws and ethical codes apply? What are we saying when we send out unmanned ma­chines to fight for us? What is the “message” that those on the other side receive? Ultimately, how will humans remain masters of weapons that are immeasurably faster and more ‘intelligent’ than they ­are?