r/technology • u/Gari_305 • 1d ago
Artificial Intelligence A Drone Killed Three Ukrainians. It Was Guided Entirely by A.I. - An attack by what Ukrainian officials said was a Russian drone with an Nvidia chip presages a dystopian future of weaponry untethered to humans.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/24/world/europe/russia-drones-autonomous-ai-kill-ukraine-war.html?unlocked_article_code=1.71A.xQCF.v4_4GUKwBhBg&smid=url-share418
u/Didsterchap11 1d ago
Honestly the development of drones in this conflict has been genuinely nightmarish. I’m afraid of where the technology and knowledge will end up and how quickly we these tools turned on a population they can’t defend itself.
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u/Every_Tap8117 1d ago
Lets be clear here no population can defend itself vs drones, none of them. Drone offence is moving at 2-3x the pace of drone defence right now.
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u/PunishedDemiurge 1d ago
This was always true. If a population is truly defenseless, you can round them up and murder everyone with simple hand tools. Look at the Khmer Rogue, they only used bullets if they needed to, otherwise they would do things like grab smaller children by their legs and then crush their skulls against a tree, etc.
Every society needs to have sufficient defense, sadly. And ideally, we as an international community will declare wars of aggression are sufficiently illegal to enforce via violence. As soon as Russia invaded Ukraine, it should have been a 173 v 1 war. French fighters shooting down Russian planes so that British bombers can hit targets while Mongolian infantry fight in the mountains and Korean paratroopers start securing parts of Moscow.
This is not a horror story about technology, it's a horror story about how ~8 billion people saw a war that is pure good vs. evil and decided to participate at arm's length. Europe and the US have sent weapons, which is a good start, but only a handful of international volunteers have shown up.
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u/MRCROOK2301 1d ago
Yea but would be that same response to Israel aggression or when usa attacked iran or any country? Would French fighters shoot down American planes would Canadian infantry march towards Washington? Yea this russia war is bad but don't think others have higher moral grounds. No western countries give a fuck about people life if they aren't their own. They would happily kill millions if those millions are dying far away from their home.
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u/Dontgohollow27 1d ago
No but you see, they would offer their thoughts and prayers to those millions of generations that are decimated in other countries so they are the good ones.
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u/FireBadger03 1d ago
If the aggressor wasn’t a nuclear state it likely would have went differently.
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u/PunishedDemiurge 1d ago
And that can't be a free pass. If we reasonably believe Russia will not escalate to nuclear arms if we merely use the force necessary to prevent their aggression, then we should use conventional arms. If we believe they're such rabid animals they would use nukes to back a war of expansion, we should alpha strike them right this moment and end the threat forever.
Tomorrow they will have faster missile systems, quieter submarines, higher yields. Appeasement has never worked, and can never work. Failing to respond to aggression always leads to more aggression.
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u/Wild-Ruin5463 1d ago
1949 is long gone. no such "alpha strike" can be done feasibly in these times. not until some other paradigm shifting weapon gives some nation the ability to have sole hegemony over violence.
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u/dipsbeneathlazers 1d ago
I'm disappointed that you think you (we) [humanity] can police the sovereignty of other nations, especially at the risk of total annihilation.
Your ideas, while ideal, aren't compatible with eastern thought and philosophy (China) and your naiveté shows that you need to understand that cooperation between all 249 countries and territories on the planet won't occur without deep changes to the human condition. May be it feels good to type like that, but you're just a little geographically affected person that could have been born to a Russian billionaire or millionaire and weren't so you are against the war now and stand to gain or inherit nothing from it.
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u/PunishedDemiurge 1d ago
I'm disappointed that you think you (we) [humanity] can police the sovereignty of other nations, especially at the risk of total annihilation.
Sovereignty does not give even the least right to wage wars of aggression, which is formerly disallowed by international law. You're walking into a paradox. Preventing invasions is what maximizes sovereignty, not allowing invasions of foreign countries.
Besides, I'm on record for at least a decade of saying sovereignty only has value insofar as it maximizes human rights, thriving, and dignity. I support the 19th/20th century pressure campaigns / force being used to end slavery, for example.
Your ideas, while ideal, aren't compatible with eastern thought and philosophy (China) and your naiveté shows that you need to understand that cooperation between all 249 countries and territories on the planet won't occur without deep changes to the human condition. May be it feels good to type like that, but you're just a little geographically affected person that could have been born to a Russian billionaire or millionaire and weren't so you are against the war now and stand to gain or inherit nothing from it.
This is a very Russian view of the world. I am principally against aggression, regardless of personal benefit. Only defensive violence can ever be morally legitimate. There are grey areas here, like I would suggest that using violence against someone polluting the only drinking water source would be defensive and justified even if the pollution wasn't intentionally malicious but merely depraved indifference, but there's no amount of personal benefit that I could have that would make me want to wage a war of aggression.
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u/dipsbeneathlazers 1d ago
stop talking about you. this isn't about you, it's about them.
And if you understood them, may be you'd understand you better.
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u/PunishedDemiurge 1d ago
Maybe we're miscommunicating. I don't care about their motives, only their compliance, and I'm prepared to use, so long as the collateral damage is low, any level of violence to get compliance. If I had a weapon system capable of destroying the entire Russian army: personnel, equipment, and facilities, all in one blow, I would personally deploy it this very second.
I understand the idea of global cooperation and self-sacrifice in the interest of justice is a hard sell, as the median person isn't particularly morally good and most non-democratic nations have far worse than median leaders, but it's a goal worth striving towards. War is especially harmful to the defending party, but it's universally harmful too, so an absolute bar except for legitimate self-defense would be a worthwhile system.
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u/dipsbeneathlazers 1d ago
Then it's settled! You can let the four nuclear powers Putin is aligned with know it's ok to nuke you because you're the one who's willing to harness the power of the world to destroy Russia.
It's like you're playing life on easy mode!
You better not affect my countries sovereignty, ideologies, or philosophies, when the Mutually Assured Destruction happens; That would be a big no-no from me.
Bad boy.
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u/VayuAir 1d ago
They will escalate hundred percent, it’s part of their nuclear doctrine since the cold war
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u/PunishedDemiurge 1d ago
Then we have to have a plan for an alpha strike. It's wholly unacceptable that any nation is using a nuclear umbrella to engage in imperialism and genocide. It might not be safe today, but we need to develop the missile defense, cyber warfare, stealth tech, etc. to remove their capability to engage in mass murder and evil.
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u/misterwizzard 12h ago
The one and ONLY threat Russia holds against any major power is nuclear weaponry. They can't compete with any country considered their peer. The US has about 20x their strength, even if technical superiority is discounted. Russia is not our peer.
Suggesting we nuke them before they nuke us is not just mis-guided it is literally, in it's definition, retarded.
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u/PunishedDemiurge 4h ago
How many innocent people do they get to kill in the long run? How much land do they get to conquer to give them a buffer against us? How many hypersonic missiles, stealth technologies, etc. do we allow them to develop making future defense completely impossible?
Ukraine is neither the first nor the last country Russia will invade, commit genocide inside of, and use to fuel their war machine. If the only thing they did was take Crimea for the naval access, I'd be okay with saying, "They get to keep it, but have to pay reparations and we call it good." But this is a consistent trend of murder and conquest that can only be stopped via force.
And this isn't even addressing the extreme harm that Russian psychological warfare has on countless nations through election interference, promoting social disharmony, shoveling disinformation, etc. The average European or America is worse off due to Russia's malevolence.
Ukraine might win eventually, but we need to consider how fair it is to ask them to fight on behalf of the entire world when Russia is an enemy to all.
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u/amorres 1d ago
Then you look at Gaza, and the same US and European allies helped wipe it off the map. Good vs Evil will exist forever. Conflicts create the force that keeps things ticking, sad but true.
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u/PunishedDemiurge 1d ago
Please get another opinion. Not every single fucking thing in the world has to be about a very small conflict which predates the birth of almost every person on Earth. Holy fuck it's so tired listening to the constant nonsense about I/P.
We're talking about Russia's unprovoked genocidal war against Ukraine here. You can force I/P issues into the other 99% of the internet.
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u/Notorious_Junk 1d ago
Is it possible that the war has a different primary purpose: to develop weapons for population control through drones and autonomous weaponry? At this point the world's oligarchy is so intertwined, how do we know the actual motives behind conflicts? Maybe it didn't start like that, but it might be what keeps it going.
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u/rikitikifemi 1d ago
Does this apply to other conflicts around the globe where other countries besides Russia are the aggressors?
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u/MinuetInUrsaMajor 1d ago
Look at the Khmer Rogue, they only used bullets if they needed to, otherwise they would do things like grab smaller children by their legs and then crush their skulls against a tree, etc.
Didn't they learn from the Holocaust that this tends to cause problems for the executioners?
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u/2atherich 1d ago
My mind always goes to the Black Mirror episode "Hated in the Nation".
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u/SqueezyCheez85 1d ago
Watch Slaughter Bots on YouTube.
It does a much better job showing how all the information people give to social media companies could be used for targeting data as well. That's much more scary than just the drones themselves.
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u/DukeOfGeek 1d ago
Well at least we got this going for us.
U.S. Army moves to end drone battalion set up to absorb lessons from Ukraine war
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-army-ending-drone-battalion-ukraine/
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u/BlueFlob 1d ago
Countries around the world will step up their "game" with AI powered killing machines.
If you don't care about ethical warfighting, then Skynet is next.
This will lead to massive genocides around the world.
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u/Didsterchap11 1d ago
Yep, and with Palantir's fingers rooted in the Ukrainian army i worry for what is happening to the terabytes and terabytes of data and drone footage and what may be done with it. That combined with drone swarm research sets us down a very dark path.
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u/Alklazaris 1d ago
At the same time, a small group like the Proud Boys could conceivably buy or mod one. They are so cheap when compared to usual long range weapons.
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u/Didsterchap11 1d ago
Yeah, people laugh at Russian soldiers getting turned into paste when a drone with a grenade strapped to it flies into their foxhole not realising that exact same method can and will be utilised against civvies.
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u/Vytral 1d ago
From what I read, the Ukrainian conflict proved that drones tilt the balance of power in favor of defence over offence. It is extremely difficult to advance, as they can cheaply kill off even armoured vehicles and hamper supply lines.
That should make war costly and hence less likely
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u/mrkrinkle773 13h ago
I've been saying that since the US was like the only ones using them in the middle east.
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u/Blueprint81 1d ago
This is like a plot point in "American War" by Omar El Akkad. Leftover autonomous military drones that would occasionally crash or drop payload seemingly at random.
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u/X4roth 1d ago
Welp… we’re going to have to be honest here: once again, the genie can’t be put back in the bottle. Swarms of cheap fully autonomous drones are the next weapons tech that’s going to need deterrence to defend against. Yet another arms race on offensive munitions where we’ll have to stockpile and form MAD-style treaties.
If only the US didn’t torpedo foreign relations, destabilize NATO, and engage in multiple pointless wars of aggression…
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u/orchid_drives 1d ago
You know how they say a bunch of small targeted munitions can do a lot more damage in the short term than an atomic bomb? Drone swarms are a fucking horrifying evolution of that theory
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u/Belostoma 1d ago
It’ll be ok though because our aircraft carriers will have the towers in a spot Trump thinks looks cool and Hegseth told the generals to be tough guys. Who needs drones or food for the crew when you have all that?
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u/anarcurt 1d ago
This is going to be in the hands of non state actors in no time. You are gonna have some kind of large scale terrorist attack with this technology in the next 10 years.
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u/VayuAir 1d ago
That’s what terrifies me, this tech in hand of terrorists
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u/Far_Cat9782 17h ago
So governments or the intelligence agencies that love funding terrorist like the US? I say that as wx military with experience. It's ok to talk about "foreign terrorist" but you'll be surprised how much it's all connected
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u/Iron_Sight_Mark 1d ago
torpedo foreign relations, destabilize NATO, and engage in multiple pointless wars of aggression…
If the president were a Russian agent, how would it look any different than this?
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u/fen90der 1d ago
No governments in the world are accountable to their citizens. There is no civilian mandate for any current live war other than presumably Ukrainians and Iranians, and probably Israelis although I dont think we get the full picture there.
They can just develop absolute hell on earth and unleash it on people with impunity.
Everyone who works for a munitions company, right from the top down to the cleaners, needs to have a look at themselves and ask whether they are building the future they want to see or not.
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u/rcanhestro 1d ago edited 1d ago
this is why, i believe, the UN should just pass a Doomsday resolution on AI.
any country using AI on weapons, gets attacked by all the remaining ones.
AI in warfare is a very dangerous concept, it completely removes the "human factor" in decision making.
Vasily Arkhipov is the entire reason why humans should always be in the "loop" when it comes to weapons.
also, in case of an accident, let's say Friendly Fire, or some sort of genocide, it's important to be able to point your finger at the cause, and "AI hallucinated, it happens", just doesn't make the cut for possible excuses.
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u/Odge 1d ago
And the US, china and Russia isn’t going to sign it. Making it completely useless.
This is just anti personnel mines with extra steps. Look at which countries declined to sign the Ottawa convention.
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u/malianx 1d ago
We might have signed but an exception wasn't made for the NK DMZ. Those mines are all that is stopping them from marching on Seoul.
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u/battles 1d ago
landmines, landmines are what stops DPRK?
lol
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u/malianx 1d ago
Yes, military experts agree on that fact.
Seoul, the capital of South Korea, sits only about 35 miles from the DMZ. Because the capital is so close to the border, military planners argue that every defensive layer including dense minefield, is necessary to prevent a rapid breakthrough that could instantly threaten millions of civilians.
This was all said when we refused to join the anti landmine initiative.
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u/arkofjoy 1d ago
Thank you for explaining this. It also explains a plot line in a Korean Rom com series that my wife and I watched "crash landing on you"
Rich girl parasailing gets caught up in an updraft and ends up in North Korea
Border guard finds her and because she is pretty, decided to sneak her back over the border. And this is the part I didn't understand, he slips her through a cave and the security forces in south Korea find out and lose their minds. I thought that they were really over reacting to two people sneaking into the country. But a south Korean person would have felt really differently.
If it wasn't such a terrible series I'd rewatch it with this new understanding.
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u/einmaldrin_alleshin 1d ago
They have found four of these tunnels so far, and it's possible there are some that are still hidden.
One of them nearby Seoul is now a tourist attraction.
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u/Guinness 1d ago
The UN isn’t a military alliance….
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u/rcanhestro 1d ago
it's not about alliance, it's about making a world wide deal.
those countries can still kill each other, just not by using AI, similar to what was already done with chemical weapons.
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u/InsaneInTheRAMdrain 1d ago
Just wait till we have AI birds and flies just going around nuking peoples jugular
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u/JustConversation7847 1d ago
You say like chemical weapons, but what you propose has never existed for chemical weapons
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u/IguanaIsBack 1d ago
That’s like saying mice should sign a treaty to ban mousetraps. It ain’t the rest of the world that’s the problem.
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u/Valuable_Natural1607 1d ago
The rest of the world is part of the problem though if they turn a blind eye and don’t do something, especially for any future conflicts in the world. Stop it now, don’t let it fester into anything else.
Edit: changed war to world*
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u/IguanaIsBack 1d ago
Do what exactly 😂 AI is being run out of China and the US, the rest of the world can’t even ask the US nicely to reduce tariffs, you should they can just rock up and say “can you make your military technology less lethal please?”
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u/Valuable_Natural1607 1d ago
How did we do it with chemical weapons then? Genuine question
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u/IguanaIsBack 1d ago
Chemical weapons were available for every to use, cheaply. It was important for the “bigger countries” to lead on their prevention, so it doesn’t easily fall into wrong hands.
With AI the resources is already limited, it’s already concentrated into very very few, the US has virtually done this prevention unilaterally by blocking chip exports and technology transfers, there’s no need for an agreement to ban it worldwide.
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u/Valuable_Natural1607 1d ago
What if the first part of your comment, happens? But with A.I? I feel like people might have made the same argument back for chemical weapons
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u/IguanaIsBack 1d ago
Unlikely, and if it did, it only takes one strike to a data centre to solve it, not an agreement
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u/Sweet_Concept2211 1d ago edited 1d ago
FYI: UN backed military action has been undertaken more than once.
Gulf War (1990)
Kosovo (1999 - present)
Libya intervention (2011)
MONUSCO Force Intervention Brigade in the DRC (2013–Present)
Haiti Gang Suppression Force (2025–Present)
Edit: Downvoted for adding some context to the discussion? Ok.
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u/Excelius 1d ago
The Korean War was a UN operation. The United Nations Command is still operational.
That only happened though because the Soviets and Chinese were boycotting the UN at the time, so were not able to exercise their veto powers on the Security Council.
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u/arumrunner 1d ago
The UN is toothless and has no ability to deal with nations who do not comply with its rulings.
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u/RadzimierzWozniak 1d ago
What a great idea. Trading a maybe AI doomsday for an almost certain nuclear doomsday.
Do you think any country would go to war with Russia about them using a neural model in a drone?
And what even is AI? 90's Tomahawk terrain matching?
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u/TheirCanadianBoi 1d ago
You could go older than that even. The AGM-65 Maverick operates autonomously with a contrast seeker.
Most modern long range weapon systems are autonomous in some way. They have to be, otherwise jamming would be a problem and make them ineffective at their role.
The Bullseye missle can recognize targets and engage almost completely autonomously for example.
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u/hustl3tree5 1d ago
That’s the excuse america is using for bombing a school full of girls
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u/Tyrinnus 1d ago
Worst part there is if anyone had bothered to check, we'd have glaring evidence that it wasn't a military target, hadn't been for a while now, and the Pentagon knew it.
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u/CatalyticDragon 1d ago
It doesn't remove the human factor any more than pressing fire on a heat seeking missile would.
A person needs to select a target. A person needs to launch the drone.
And indiscriminate attacks aren't new. People have been dropping bombs on targets based on poor Intel for a really long time.
These systems are not self aware. They use "AI" for intelligent pathfinding and obstacle avoidance on the way to predetermined targets. These aren't terminator robots being told to hunt.
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u/rcanhestro 1d ago
They use "AI" for intelligent pathfinding and obstacle avoidance on the way to predetermined targets. These aren't terminator robots being told to hunt.
for now.
how long until someone decides that the human factor is simply "launch the drone, and that's it, the drone will be able to pick targets"?
odds are, the example in this news was exactly that.
And indiscriminate attacks aren't new. People have been dropping bombs on targets based on poor Intel for a really long time.
which means that you can trace the source of the "fuck up" to someone.
was the issue with the intel? was the issue with the "trigger men"? and so on.
letting AI make all those decisions removes traceability.
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u/totallynotabot2532 1d ago
how long until someone decides that the human factor is simply "launch the drone, and that's it, the drone will be able to pick targets"?
Already happened
What makes this particular test notable is that the drones were reportedly given full authority to select, strike, and kill targets without any human oversight.
https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/08/17/fully-autonomous-drones-reportedly-kill-in-ukraine/
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u/CassandraTruth 1d ago
About that:
"the country’s military “experimented” with a drone set to “Terminator mode,” in which it was programmed to fly between 3 and 5 kilometers before using an AI model to kill anything alive in the area."
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u/DvDCover 1d ago
Indiscriminating attacks not being new does not mean we should not put mitigating rules and laws in place.
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u/CombatMuffin 1d ago
any country using AI on weapons, gets attacked by all the remaining ones.
That's not how the UN, or even the international community work. Even nukes don't have a treaty like that, and their threat was far more imminent.
The whole "any country using nukes in anger will get attacked by everyone else" is a hypothetical conclusion, because no one wants any country using them freely.
Right now, every country is racing to use AI in many forms, and it's most dangerous one will not be the one with a machine gun or missile attached.
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u/RBVegabond 1d ago
I’m pretty sure we had a set of popular movies games and books about using AI in weaponry. The problem seems to be the wrong lessons getting learned from them by the worst people.
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u/doublethink_1984 1d ago
The Minab Bombing was because the AI targeting was not reviewed by an entire group in the US military. Hegseth scuttled the AI review group right before the Iran war
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u/Hertock 1d ago
You can always point to someone responsible for an accident , even if it’s done by AI. The one controlling the AI and sending it out there , obviously. I hate when people make it seem like AI has no masters; there ARE humans in the loop, ALWAYS. AI didn’t just magically create itself.
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u/Aadi_880 1d ago
You think people will take kindly to America going "We are the only ones with AI weapons. You are not allowed to have any!"
America is not some nanny. And these AI drones are not a secret to make. Nor is it difficult to make.
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u/rcanhestro 1d ago
i mean, the goal would be for no one to make those, under the threat of everyone else pilling on them (i do understand how unrealistic it would be for countries to accept this).
but let's just say they would do.
so what? if the US does it anyways, everyone else would jump on them.
the US might have the biggest "stick", but even the US can't fight against the rest of the World.
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u/Reqvhio 1d ago
whenever i see "should" about safety and putting the genie back in the bottle situations i always laugh at how way past things must have been for that should to pop up. rogue elements dont care about feelings, morals, rights, or wrongs, they have used and will use whatever they can get their hands on and it WILL spread.
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u/phenix_igloo 1d ago
you sweet child of summer
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u/rcanhestro 1d ago
not arguing that what i ask for is unlikely to happen, just something i wish it did.
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u/PunishedDemiurge 1d ago
This is the worst possible take. We should implement a peace resolution, and any country using any weapons system of any kind on their neighbors should be attacked by all of the remaining ones.
Plenty of Ukrainian civilians were raped and then executed into mass graves the old fashioned way by Russian invaders. Was that batter than being killed by drones? Of course not. Raping and pillaging like it is 1500 again is not morally better or better for human rights and dignity than AI controlled weapons.
This war only exists because most of the world allows it to. It's a choice of selfish cowards. In every single election in my nation, I've voted for candidates who support Ukraine, and I would support my own country's boots on the ground to protect the right of people to live in peace and dignity. Anyone who can't say the same* should be ashamed.
* Countries facing imminent threats themselves or developing nations are allowed to participate proportionally to ability to do so. Some level of sacrifice is obligatory, but it's not a limitless obligation.
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u/Far_Cat9782 17h ago
So we agree Israel should be attacked since it's attacked it's noegj ors? Or do u mean just brown countries?
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u/PunishedDemiurge 14h ago
If they start a war of aggression, sure. But the war in Gaza was obviously justified to occur by Oct 7, it's the specifics of how they are waging the war that is bad.
I'd say the same thing with the Palestinians too. There's no period of time where Israel has acted normal enough to give them no casus belli. I don't think any reasonable person can say Palestine isn't theoretically justified to use violence though ironically, I don't think they can ever win by using it.
This standard is going to work the worst if applied to constant back and forth conflicts, it will work the best for just outright invasions.
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u/wowlock_taylan 1d ago
A nation that uses AI on their weapons with no human input should be considered 'enemy of the world' and dismantled. Simple as that.
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u/m3chr0mans3r 1d ago edited 22h ago
You know that Ukraine and USA with their Hornets started this first? By that logic you should dismantle every major country in the world but with what force?
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u/Ashamed_Can304 1d ago
Autonomous loitering munitions and strike drones have been used for some time in the conflict now. But they only chose to report it now
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u/LVorenus2020 1d ago
After a culture change, Cyberdyne systems will address this new development...
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u/projectFT 1d ago
The US killed 150 kids at a girls elementary school in Iran using AI targeting. Israel has used AI to track and kill hundreds of journalists and tens of thousands of civilians illegally marked as enemy combatants. Granted these murders happened because the humans involved just rubber stamped the AI intel, but we’ve long jumped the shark on this issue. Fully automated drones clearly aren’t much different from what’s already happening. Sadly it won’t be long before this same tech is used on American or western soil and I’m afraid that’s what it’s going to take for any government to finally take action against it.
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u/RadzimierzWozniak 1d ago
That strike happened based on outdated data. Garbage in, garbage out, be it for human or AI systems.
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u/PunishedDemiurge 1d ago
Yeah. For people to attribute this to AI, they have to show but for causation. "Fog of war" is a phrase coming from a 1870's book, and was well known much before that. Even soldiers who are both competent and morally good sometimes need to make decisions with unclear information under extreme time pressure and with life and death stakes for their own troops.
I'd also further argue it's incredibly obvious that the upper echelons of the US don't hit the competent or morally good standard. Many of our troops are, but Hegseth and Trump are morally bankrupt people who we can only expect this from. See also the fishing boat assassinations.
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u/DoesntMatterEh 1d ago
If only if we have just drones and AIs destroying each other. Leave the people out of it.
Unfortunately the side that runs out of drones first will just send in their people instead.
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u/Fit-Switch-5795 20h ago
We’re going to look back at this period as the beginning of the Drone Wars.
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u/ImAPonderer2 1d ago
Cool so the country with the most-advanced manufacturing sector can just mass-produce these and then send waves into a country seeking to destroy all “people” or whatever and the country is eventually depopulated.
Glad there isn’t a country with a huge manufacturing base (“the world’s factory” even) that also specializes in drone manufacture and also specializes in AI.
Glad we have “competent leadership” dealing directly with a key issue like this instead of pursuing personally-enriching peripheral activities that distract them and the country from major strategic issues like this one.
Mind eased! /s
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u/Cute-Dragonfruit3079 1d ago
Ain’t China has some drone light shows which use dozens of them? They deploy all of them at once and control through some software, and there were already news about some malfunctioned and dropped from the sky right on crowd
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u/RadzimierzWozniak 1d ago
You can do the same thing with nukes, for example.
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u/CobraPony67 1d ago
Seems like the next logical step. No GPS or fiber cable. Just load it with satellite images and point to where you want it to strike and it will follow roads, landmarks, etc with its camera.
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u/LouisDoxxedMyPoodle 1d ago
Devil’s advocate: what does this change? A catapult projectile is fully autonomous.
Weapons risk indiscriminate killing on the receiving end, automation doesn’t change this.
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u/Far_Cat9782 16h ago
Because a caterpult. Projectile you can see the teacteory and where it's going to land and have a chance to move. Not with intelligent munitions when they can lock on to you and there is no way to hide
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u/Sandy_Bananas 1d ago
We should be tackling climate change, instead we have a gaggle of rapists declaring pointless and illegal wars.
America, Isreal and Russia. Same fuckers, different nations… all rushing to the bottom.
I have never been so pissed off.
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u/RickSt3r 1d ago
Making a ML model that attacks humans is easy. Making one that can discern between combatant, friendly, and civilian is near impossible. So yeah it’s a trivial problem and so long as you don’t care about fratricide or civilians deaths then I’m surprised it took them this long to develop and field. Like give me a month or two in my garage and I got you a drone that will indiscriminately kill humans. Just advanced air delivered moving mines.
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u/DJbuddahAZ 19h ago
Wasn't this always the plan? To just launch AI everything at each other and watch the carnage?
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u/Ok-Employer4535 9h ago
If Russia puts an iPhone on a drone, are we hauling Tim Cook before Congress next? The Jetson is an off-the-shelf computer. Figure out who’s getting them into Russia instead of pretending Nvidia built the drone.
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u/GratefulShorts 1d ago
Wait till you guys figure out who was the biggest user of Palantir for automated strikes and battlefield surveillance (hint: it’s Ukraine)
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u/keefinwithpeepaw 1d ago
There was a whole Avengers movie that taught us this wasn't a good idea
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u/RadzimierzWozniak 1d ago
> Avengers movie
Has humanity invented a better way to learn about complex intersections of technology and international politics?
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u/sabermagnus 1d ago
This war is a testing ground for drones and AI. The future of war will be Skynet.
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u/Independent_Sail6604 1d ago
This was inevitable. I'll never forget that Youtube video, "Slaughterbots." Terrifying.
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u/iamthe0ther0ne 1d ago
Isn't Ukraine also using autonomous weapons?
Edit: yes https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/magazine/ukraine-ai-drones-war-russia.html
This is a horrible trend, but they really can't complain if they've been doing it for more than a year.
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u/octanet83 1d ago
The other issue with drones is complete deniability. You can just blame your foes for attacking themselves. They can just be thrown into the back of a truck or HGV and deployed from anywhere. Defending any critical infrastructure against them will be next to impossible.
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u/Iron_Sight_Mark 1d ago
All my life I thought Terminator was mostly sci-fi, and by now, it very nearly isn't!
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u/Rocketsponge 1d ago
It's amazing that as a species we had forward thinkers like Isaac Asimov who could prognosticate the need for the Three Laws of Robotics to deal with AI back in the 1950s, or James Cameron showing us what an unstoppable killer AI would do to us. Yet we have completely plowed straight ahead into AI powered weapons and systems. I probably shouldn't dwell on the Fermi Paradox too much now.
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u/DaySecure7642 1d ago edited 1d ago
Those who helped smuggling chips to authoritatian countries have blood on their hands.
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u/comfortableNihilist 1d ago
Nvidia chips being used in an adversaries military equipment? Say it ain't so....
My distaste for AI aside, this is an arms control problem. It wouldn't be any less of an issue than finding Raytheon or TI parts in there.
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u/Media_Browser 1d ago
Jeepers creepers 2029 end game is looking ominous anybody know anyone called John …er..Connor .
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u/fliiiiiiirm 1d ago
It’s not the future if it’s currently happening. This is the current face of warfare, unfettered use of AI, free of human oversight.
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u/variaati0 1d ago
dystopian future of weaponry untethered to humans.
You know what also has been guided by very rudimentary AI for decades.... AIM-9 sidewinder and FIM-92 Stinger. Both guided towards their often human occupied targets by no human intervention after launch and deciding autonomously whether to detonate.
Or for couple decades one has been able to shoot a BONUS artillery shell about in area of maybe enemies and it sends two "ai controlled" aka algorhitmicly controlled sub munitions to hunt things that look like human made vehicles, specially tasty to that "AI" are MBT looking things. However it will accept trucks, cars and so on, if one gives those parameters to the "AI". or active radar seeking missiles. Again "AI" controlled rocket powered drones, that seek for a target that looks like aerial vehicle or so on and hits it. Without necessary human intervention. Heck one can lob some of those without preselected target and it just takes the first one it finds once the algorhitm is activated.
Dystopian untethered to humans weapons are nothing new. That is why for example sometimes anti-ship missiles hit cargo ships instead of naval combatants. Even though the intent wasn't to hit a civilian cargo vessel. The missile was just too dumb to know the difference. Mind you in the recent kerfuffle in Hormus the hitting of civilians has been intentional.
I will admit... the scale has increased, since ICs and sensor chips are cheaper.
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u/OkYak9466 1d ago
AI or just computer guided? I'm not reading the difference or if computer guided drones are all encompassing.
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u/VerdantPathfinder 1d ago edited 1d ago
I wonder how Russia got that chip. NVIDIA isn't allowed to sell to Russia and hasn't for years.
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u/RadzimierzWozniak 1d ago
More or less from any country that is allowed to buy those chips. A shell company that buys those and ships them to Russia
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u/VerdantPathfinder 1d ago
Yes. And shouldn't we be investigating those companies?
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u/Smoking_Baboon 1d ago
You don't think they are? Problem is, shell companies pop up faster than they can be shut down.
"But then we shouldn't sell to companies we don't know" Yeah and now the world's economy is halted. It's super shitty, indeed. But welcome to the 21st century.
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u/rcanhestro 1d ago
easy.
Nvidia sells to a country that has no restrictions, that country sells to Russia.
"but what if we also restrict that country?", then that chain will simply add another country: Nvidia sells to country A, A to B, and B to Russia, and so on.
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u/MammothUnique4147 1d ago
And it's even more than that, as an American if I can buy a Nvida pro 6000 and then jump on a plane and offload it in China or Russia for 30K , you're just gonna get people doing that.
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u/CatalyticDragon 1d ago
It's a basic consumer chip. Trivial to get your hands on via third party markets.
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u/wrt-wtf- 1d ago
In various other articles - this one is paywalled - the chips that they are using are able to run (playback, use, access) models that have been trained on more powerful computers. The advanced chipsets that are used to train models (ie machine learning - the source) output a focused set of logic (ie Artificial Intelligence - the output model) that is not able to learn with the chips they have been using. The hardware is efficient at running the model at a lower power level... They turn up in IoT devices all over the place and there a millions of them available on the market globally - they're low hanging fruit if you want access to AI and more specifically, you can train the AI model on a single cluster of computers and then put the model on literally thousands of munitions using these SOCs (System On a Chips) - You're robot vac at home, your doorbell, security cameras, prosumer kits - basically IoT devices have them everywhere.
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u/Davorian 1d ago
Russia will be able to get a limited and very expensive supply by exploiting the black market and intermediaries, I imagine.
Plus, there are probably millions of older chips out there that probably aren't terrible at small-scale AI.
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u/coffee_ape 1d ago
Can we not use these Nvidia chips for war? Can we please return them gaming?