For centuries in human warfare, one side or the other has always managed to lull themselves into thinking they have some sort of built-in edge for their warriors and armies. Be it religious, intellectual, racial, spiritual, or technological. Now as they slowly start taking humans out of the cockpit and turret it looks to be slowly devolving to "my robot can beat up your robot."
We obviously haven't achieved the dark vision of the
Terminator's Skynet or
The Matrix yet
, where machines make the decisions on when and where to go to war. Nor is the human role disappearing from war, or old technology going away soon. But it is clear that something important is afoot in the interaction of humans, technology and armed conflict. The human role is slowly shifting from being "in the loop" of decision with our machines, making all the key calls to, as a U.S. Air Force report described it, "on the loop" of decision, where our role is more to manage than to direct the operations of robots. The looming debate then is whether that human role will ever move ultimately "out of the loop". I'm sure many will be deeply concerned by these developments, arguing that it should be nipped in the bud, just as many wish the concept of an "atomic bomb" had never been invented.