We have become comfortable in a world where artificial intelligence (AI) has the voice of a Ted Williams but not his life, where “art” can be generated from prompts, and much of the music has less human in it than machine. We have accepted that machines can kill just like a human only more so and without the repercussions of regret and moral injury. The perfect killer, no propaganda or drugs needed, no education or ideology, just software and engineering. The machine is never unmotivated, does not need to be fed, rested or cared for. It just needs a power source and ammunition. It can be abandoned, does not need rescuing, and is a potential Kamikaze.

In the Guld War, the ability of the invading coalition to attack multiple targets at the same time was revolutionary. Inside of a twenty-four hour window more objectives were hit than what the entire U.S. 8th Air Force was capable of in 1942-1943. With precision and a deadly tempo perfected by years of Cold War drilling, it was the peak of human warfare, a marriage of technology and personnel into a network of communications, command, control, logistics, and firepower. The elimination of the human factor in such areas removes the necessity for support and medical infrastructure, rescue teams, and the post-war obligations of veteran care. Machines are more disposable than soldiers, essentially bullets with “brains.” The future will bring with it a new revolution in warfare that will make past doctrines and investments of war obsolete.

If the planners, enablers, cheerleaders, profiteers, and killers see human beings as a means to an end or merely a target, then the transition to automated warfare is a blessing for them, not their victims. The seduction of killing from a distance is always appealing to those with the most resources; automation provides the perfect distance from blood and risk. Isaac Asimov’s laws of robotics are a fiction invented out of faith in the morality of masters and engineers. Whether killing is right or wrong has rarely been an imposition for the individual person or elites of society. It won’t be a consideration for machines either. To kill and die is very much a living reality, and soon non-living machines with “brains” will do it. If the definition of genocide and calculations of allowable dead civilians have been made before, what will seem so strange when machines do it better and with no risk for the policy makers and the society that unleashes them? The misery of war will be perfect; strangely that seems invariably human. The machines learn well from their creators.