The future of war will be fought by machines, but will humans still be in charge?
Drone swarms. Self-driving tanks. Autonomous sentry guns. Sometimes it seems like the future of warfare arrived on our doorstep overnight, and we’ve all been caught unprepared. But as Paul Scharre writes in his new book Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War, this has been a long time coming, and we’re currently the slow culmination of decades of development in military technology. That doesn’t mean it’s not scary, though.
Scharre’s book provides an excellent overview of this field, tracing the history of autonomous weapons from early machine guns (which automated the firing and reloading of a rifle) to today’s world of DIY killer drones, cobbled together in garages and sheds. As a former Army Ranger and someone who has...