Human Rights Talks » Wired For War:  The Robotics Revolution and 21st Century Conflict

An amazing revolution is taking place on the battlefield, starting to change not just how wars are fought, but also the politics, economics, laws, and ethics that surround war itself. This upheaval is already afoot -- remote-controlled drones take out terrorists in Afghanistan, while the number of unmanned systems on the ground in Iraq has gone from zero to 12,000 over the last five years. But it is only the start. Military officers quietly acknowledge that new prototypes will soon make human fighter pilots obsolete, while the Pentagon researches tiny robots the size of flies to carry out reconnaissance work now handled by elite Special Forces troops. These new machines will profoundly alter warfare, from the frontlines to the home front. When planes can be flown into battle from an office 10,000 miles away, the experiences of war and the very profile of a warrior change dramatically. Singer draws from historical precedent and the latest Pentagon research to argue that wars will become easier to start, that the traditional moral and psychological barriers to killing will fall, and that the “warrior ethos” ­ the code of honor and loyalty which unites soldiers ­ will erode.

Peter W. Singer is the director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative and a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution. Singer’s research focuses on three core issues: the future of war, current U.S. defense needs and future priorities, and the future of the U.S. defense system. Singer is the author of several books and articles, including Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, and Children at War. Singer was recently named one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2009 by Foreign Policy magazine.