Re: Baby steps to Skynet, or Berserkers
More prosaically, the bigger short term risk is that wars which do not impose a morale/popularity cost, because there are no coffins coming home, could go on for a long long time.
If the enemies are themselves robots and machines, both sides are just wasting money and resources.
But if it's people getting killed at the other end, then we risk letting ethically dubious foreign policy goals drag us into never-ending conflicts.
There is thankfully little ethical ambiguity with going after ISIS. But look at Vietnam/Cambodia. Or the Central America death squad proxy wars in the 80s (which were bloodless to the US public).
Haldeman, he of 'Forever War', wrote 'Forever Peace', about precisely this kind of remote kill/no home casualties war and the way governments can keep them going. Quite prescient, considered it was written before 2001 and our Predator/Reaper era.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
