Marc Palmer

It is a harbinger of all that is wrong in this world, that the US is now using an armed robotic killing machine in Iraq. You can bet that at least a dozen decision makers have looked at that thing and said "Huh… that’s so cool!".

You can also see how it goes at Neocon central: "Damn those pesky bereaved families. Now we have to spend millions on robot drones instead, but hey each one that gets blown up is another ton of cash for the arms firm I have shares in. It’s like one of those computer game things my kids play, except when we lose a ‘life’ I gain a pension!"

Some of the most worrying quotes:

The machines had a tendency to spin out of control from time to time.  That was an annoyance during ordnance-handling missions; no one wanted to contemplate the consequences during a firefight.

Most importantly, the machines now come with kill switches, in case there’s any odd behavior.  "So now we can kill the unit if it goes crazy," Zecca says.

And this is where in my professional capacity I get really alarmed and angry. How can a representative of the company even talk in those terms. How many companies have you worked at where everyone, or even a majority of the people were truly excellent at their job? Not many eh. There’s often a lot of people who just shouldn’t be there, or are frankly dangerous (to the business). This is not a game people. I imagine the development team weren’t sent out to live unarmed in Baghdad for any length of time to see how it would feel.

So why are we to think the military of any country are special here? Employment perks like building devices to kill people and a pension make sure only the people with the very best skills turn up? I don’t believe it for a second and that is the really, really scary part. If there’s only 1 person in a 10 man team who is a bad programmer, you better hope to hell they have the best code reviewing project in the world.

I find it hard to believe, given the quotes above.

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