Deadly swarm bots...
approved for mass production.
Brainboxes in New York say they have made progress on one of the knottiest conundrums facing the technology of humankind today: that of constructing mechanical ornithopters able to fly – and specifically to hover – as well as insects can. This wouldn't be of use at the scale of today's manned aircraft: nobody's that interested …
While I agree that death bringing is hardly a noble application of technology, don't forget that lots of today's bread and butter technologies came from military research. These tiny flying kill-bots might well become valuable tools for the police, or for searching collapsed buildings in rescue operations.
The civilian research community ARE given the same budget. Government provides a brief to a group of civilian companies that specialize in a particular field of technology. Government pays for the R&D, then awards the contract to the company that comes up with the best solution.
Seems like the mantra of a developing Skynet. Don't worry meatbags, these new additions to the hive are only being created for your benefit.
Given how many earthquakes there are, and then how many buildings collapse in those earthquakes, and how many of those buildings have people in them, and how many of those people become trapped, and then how many of those trapped people could possibly be saved, you could count the lives saved annually by these new tiny flying kill-bots in the handfuls, maybe. Meanwhile on the battlefield...
Also reminds me of the old copyright saw: just because there are possible non infringing legitimate uses for your technology, that doesn't mean that it is good / allowed to exist.
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