TED2009
P.W. Singer: Military robots and the future of war
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In this powerful talk, P.W. Singer shows how the widespread use of robots in war is changing the realities of combat. He shows us scenarios straight out of science fiction -- that now may not be so fictitious.
P.W. Singer - Military analyst
In P.W. Singer's most recent book, "Wired for War," he studies robotic and drone warfighters -- and explores how these new war machines are changing the very nature of human conflict. He has also written on other facets of modern war, including private armies and child soldiers. Full bio
In P.W. Singer's most recent book, "Wired for War," he studies robotic and drone warfighters -- and explores how these new war machines are changing the very nature of human conflict. He has also written on other facets of modern war, including private armies and child soldiers. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
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I thought I'd begin with a scene of war.
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There was little to warn of the danger ahead.
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The Iraqi insurgent had placed the IED,
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an Improvised Explosive Device,
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along the side of the road with great care.
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By 2006, there were more than 2,500
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of these attacks every single month,
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and they were the leading cause of
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casualties among American soldiers
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and Iraqi civilians.
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The team that was hunting for this IED
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is called an EOD team—
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Explosives Ordinance Disposal—and
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they're the pointy end of the spear in the
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American effort to suppress these roadside bombs.
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Each EOD team goes out on about
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600 of these bomb calls every year,
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defusing about two bombs a day.
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Perhaps the best sign of how valuable they
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are to the war effort, is that
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the Iraqi insurgents put a $50,000 bounty
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on the head of a single EOD soldier.
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Unfortunately, this particular call
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would not end well.
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By the time the soldier advanced close
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enough to see the telltale wires
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of the bomb, it exploded in a wave of flame.
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Now, depending how close you are
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and how much explosive has been packed
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into that bomb, it can cause death
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or injury. You have to be as far as
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50 yards away to escape that.
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The blast is so strong it can even break
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your limbs, even if you're not hit.
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That soldier had been on top of the bomb.
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And so when the rest of the team advanced
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they found little left. And that night the unit's
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commander did a sad duty, and he wrote
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a condolence letter back to the United
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States, and he talked about how hard the
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loss had been on his unit, about the fact
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that they had lost their bravest soldier,
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a soldier who had saved their lives
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many a time.
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And he apologized
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for not being able to bring them home.
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But then he talked up the silver lining
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that he took away from the loss.
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"At least," as he wrote, "when a robot dies,
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you don't have to write a letter
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to its mother."
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That scene sounds like science fiction,
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but is battlefield reality already.
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The soldier in that case
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was a 42-pound robot called a PackBot.
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The chief's letter went, not to some
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farmhouse in Iowa like you see
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in the old war movies, but went to
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the iRobot Company, which is
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named after the Asimov novel
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and the not-so-great Will Smith movie,
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and... um... (Laughter)...
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if you remember that
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in that fictional world, robots started out
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carrying out mundane chores, and then
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they started taking on life-and-death decisions.
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That's a reality we face today.
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What we're going to do is actually just
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flash a series of photos behind me that
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show you the reality of robots used in war
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right now or already at the prototype stage.
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It's just to give you a taste.
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Another way of putting it is you're not
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going to see anything that's powered
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by Vulcan technology, or teenage
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wizard hormones or anything like that.
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This is all real. So why don't we
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go ahead and start those pictures.
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Something big is going on in war today,
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and maybe even the history of humanity
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itself. The U.S. military went into Iraq with
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a handful of drones in the air.
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We now have 5,300.
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We went in with zero unmanned ground
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systems. We now have 12,000.
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And the tech term "killer application"
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takes on new meaning in this space.
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And we need to remember that we're
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talking about the Model T Fords,
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the Wright Flyers, compared
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to what's coming soon.
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That's where we're at right now.
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One of the people that I recently met with
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was an Air Force three-star general, and he
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said basically, where we're headed very
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soon is tens of thousands of robots
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operating in our conflicts, and these
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numbers matter, because we're not just
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talking about tens of thousands of today's
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robots, but tens of thousands of these
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prototypes and tomorrow's robots, because
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of course, one of the things that's operating
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in technology is Moore's Law,
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that you can pack in more and more
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computing power into those robots, and so
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flash forward around 25 years,
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if Moore's Law holds true,
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those robots will be close to a billion times
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more powerful in their computing than today.
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And so what that means is the kind of
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things that we used to only talk about at
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science fiction conventions like Comic-Con
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have to be talked about in the halls
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of power and places like the Pentagon.
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A robots revolution is upon us.
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Now, I need to be clear here.
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I'm not talking about a revolution where you
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have to worry about the Governor of
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California showing up at your door,
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a la the Terminator. (Laughter)
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When historians look at this period, they're
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going to conclude that we're in a different
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type of revolution: a revolution in war,
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like the invention of the atomic bomb.
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But it may be even bigger than that,
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because our unmanned systems don't just
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affect the "how" of war-fighting,
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they affect the "who" of fighting
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at its most fundamental level.
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That is, every previous revolution in war, be
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it the machine gun, be it the atomic bomb,
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was about a system that either shot faster,
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went further, had a bigger boom.
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That's certainly the case with robotics, but
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they also change the experience of the warrior
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and even the very identity of the warrior.
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Another way of putting this is that
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mankind's 5,000-year-old monopoly
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on the fighting of war is breaking down
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in our very lifetime. I've spent
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the last several years going around
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meeting with all the players in this field,
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from the robot scientists to the science
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fiction authors who inspired them to the
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19-year-old drone pilots who are fighting
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from Nevada, to the four-star generals
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who command them, to even the Iraqi
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insurgents who they are targeting and what
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they think about our systems, and
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what I found interesting is not just
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their stories, but how their experiences
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point to these ripple effects that are going
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outwards in our society, in our law
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and our ethics, etc. And so what I'd like
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to do with my remaining time is basically
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flesh out a couple of these.
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So the first is that the future of war,
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even a robotics one, is not going to be
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purely an American one.
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The U.S. is currently ahead in military
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robotics right now, but we know that in
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technology there's no such thing as
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a permanent first move or advantage.
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In a quick show of hands, how many
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people in this room still use
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Wang Computers? (Laughter)
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It's the same thing in war. The British and
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the French invented the tank.
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The Germans figured out how
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to use it right, and so what we have to
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think about for the U.S. is that we are
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ahead right now, but you have
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43 other countries out there
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working on military robotics, and they
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include all the interesting countries like
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Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran.
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And this raises a bigger worry for me.
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How do we move forward in this revolution
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given the state of our manufacturing
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and the state of our science and
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mathematics training in our schools?
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Or another way of thinking about this is,
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what does it mean to go to war increasingly
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with soldiers whose hardware is made
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in China and software is written in India?
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But just as software has gone open-source,
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so has warfare.
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Unlike an aircraft carrier or an atomic bomb,
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you don't need a massive manufacturing
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system to build robotics. A lot of it is
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off the shelf. A lot of it's even do-it-yourself.
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One of those things you just saw flashed
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before you was a raven drone, the handheld
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tossed one. For about a thousand dollars,
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you can build one yourself, equivalent to
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what the soldiers use in Iraq.
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That raises another wrinkle when it comes
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to war and conflict. Good guys might play
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around and work on these as hobby kits,
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but so might bad guys.
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This cross between robotics and things like
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terrorism is going to be fascinating
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and even disturbing,
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and we've already seen it start.
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During the war between Israel, a state,
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and Hezbollah, a non-state actor,
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the non-state actor flew
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four different drones against Israel.
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There's already a jihadi website
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that you can go on and remotely
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detonate an IED in Iraq while sitting
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at your home computer.
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And so I think what we're going to see is
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two trends take place with this.
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First is, you're going to reinforce the power
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of individuals against governments,
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but then the second is that
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we are going to see an expansion
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in the realm of terrorism.
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The future of it may be a cross between
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al Qaeda 2.0 and the
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next generation of the Unabomber.
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And another way of thinking about this
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is the fact that, remember, you don't have
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to convince a robot that they're gonna
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receive 72 virgins after they die
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to convince them to blow themselves up.
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But the ripple effects of this are going to go
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out into our politics. One of the people that
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I met with was a former Assistant Secretary of
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Defense for Ronald Reagan, and he put it
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this way: "I like these systems because
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they save American lives, but I worry about
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more marketization of wars,
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more shock-and-awe talk,
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to defray discussion of the costs.
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People are more likely to support the use
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of force if they view it as costless."
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Robots for me take certain trends
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that are already in play in our body politic,
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and maybe take them to
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their logical ending point.
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We don't have a draft. We don't
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have declarations of war anymore.
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We don't buy war bonds anymore.
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And now we have the fact that we're
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converting more and more of our American
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soldiers that we would send into harm's
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way into machines, and so we may take
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those already lowering bars to war
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and drop them to the ground.
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But the future of war is also going to be
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a YouTube war.
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That is, our new technologies don't merely
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remove humans from risk.
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They also record everything that they see.
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So they don't just delink the public:
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they reshape its relationship with war.
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There's already several thousand
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video clips of combat footage from Iraq
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on YouTube right now,
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most of it gathered by drones.
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Now, this could be a good thing.
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It could be building connections between
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the home front and the war front
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as never before.
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But remember, this is taking place
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in our strange, weird world, and so
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inevitably the ability to download these
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video clips to, you know, your iPod
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or your Zune gives you
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the ability to turn it into entertainment.
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Soldiers have a name for these clips.
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They call it war porn.
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The typical one that I was sent was
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an email that had an attachment of
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video of a Predator strike taking out
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an enemy site. Missile hits,
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bodies burst into the air with the explosion.
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It was set to music.
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It was set to the pop song
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"I Just Want To Fly" by Sugar Ray.
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This ability to watch more
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but experience less creates a wrinkle
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in the public's relationship with war.
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I think about this with a sports parallel.
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It's like the difference between
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watching an NBA game, a professional
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basketball game on TV, where the athletes
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are tiny figures on the screen, and
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being at that basketball game in person
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and realizing what someone seven feet
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really does look like.
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But we have to remember,
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these are just the clips.
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These are just the ESPN SportsCenter
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version of the game. They lose the context.
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They lose the strategy.
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They lose the humanity. War just
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becomes slam dunks and smart bombs.
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Now the irony of all this is that
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while the future of war may involve
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more and more machines,
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it's our human psychology that's driving
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all of this, it's our human failings
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that are leading to these wars.
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So one example of this that has
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big resonance in the policy realm is
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how this plays out on our very real
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war of ideas that we're fighting
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against radical groups.
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What is the message that we think we are
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sending with these machines versus what
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is being received in terms of the message.
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So one of the people that I met was
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a senior Bush Administration official,
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who had this to say about
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our unmanning of war:
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"It plays to our strength. The thing that
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scares people is our technology."
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But when you go out and meet with people,
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for example in Lebanon, it's a very
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different story. One of the people
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I met with there was a news editor, and
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we're talking as a drone is flying above him,
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and this is what he had to say.
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"This is just another sign of the coldhearted
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cruel Israelis and Americans,
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who are cowards because
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they send out machines to fight us.
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They don't want to fight us like real men,
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but they're afraid to fight,
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so we just have to kill a few of their soldiers
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to defeat them."
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The future of war also is featuring
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a new type of warrior,
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and it's actually redefining the experience
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of going to war.
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12:47
You can call this a cubicle warrior.
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This is what one Predator drone pilot
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described of his experience fighting
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in the Iraq War while never leaving Nevada.
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12:56
"You're going to war for 12 hours,
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shooting weapons at targets,
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directing kills on enemy combatants,
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13:03
and then you get in the car
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and you drive home and within 20 minutes,
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13:07
you're sitting at the dinner table
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talking to your kids about their homework."
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13:11
Now, the psychological balancing
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of those experiences is incredibly tough,
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13:15
and in fact those drone pilots have
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higher rates of PTSD than many
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13:20
of the units physically in Iraq.
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13:23
But some have worries that this
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disconnection will lead to something else,
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13:27
that it might make the contemplation of war
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crimes a lot easier when you have
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13:31
this distance. "It's like a video game,"
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is what one young pilot described to me
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13:35
of taking out enemy troops from afar.
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As anyone who's played Grand Theft Auto
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13:40
knows, we do things in the video world
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that we wouldn't do face to face.
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13:46
So much of what you're hearing from me
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is that there's another side
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to technologic revolutions,
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and that it's shaping our present
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13:54
and maybe will shape our future of war.
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Moore's Law is operative,
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13:59
but so's Murphy's Law.
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The fog of war isn't being lifted.
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The enemy has a vote.
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We're gaining incredible new capabilities,
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14:07
but we're also seeing and experiencing
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14:09
new human dilemmas. Now,
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14:11
sometimes these are just "oops" moments,
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14:13
which is what the head of a robotics
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14:15
company described it, you just have
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2011
14:17
"oops" moments. Well, what are
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2000
14:19
"oops" moments with robots in war?
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14:21
Well, sometimes they're funny. Sometimes,
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14:23
they're like that scene from the
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14:25
Eddie Murphy movie "Best Defense,"
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2001
14:27
playing out in reality, where they tested out
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2001
14:29
a machine gun-armed robot, and during
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1988
14:31
the demonstration it started spinning
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2001
14:33
in a circle and pointed its machine gun
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14:36
at the reviewing stand of VIPs.
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14:39
Fortunately the weapon wasn't loaded
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14:41
and no one was hurt, but other times
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14:43
"oops" moments are tragic,
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14:45
such as last year in South Africa, where
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2002
14:47
an anti-aircraft cannon had a
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14:50
"software glitch," and actually did turn on
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14:53
and fired, and nine soldiers were killed.
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14:56
We have new wrinkles in the laws of war
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14:59
and accountability. What do we do
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15:01
with things like unmanned slaughter?
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15:03
What is unmanned slaughter?
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15:05
We've already had three instances of
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2000
15:07
Predator drone strikes where we thought
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2000
15:09
we got bin Laden, and it turned out
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15:11
not to be the case.
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15:13
And this is where we're at right now.
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This is not even talking about armed,
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15:17
autonomous systems
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15:19
with full authority to use force.
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And do not believe that that isn't coming.
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15:23
During my research I came across
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four different Pentagon projects
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1985
15:27
on different aspects of that.
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15:29
And so you have this question:
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15:31
what does this lead to issues like
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15:33
war crimes? Robots are emotionless, so
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15:35
they don't get upset if their buddy is killed.
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3012
15:38
They don't commit crimes of rage
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15:40
and revenge.
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15:42
But robots are emotionless.
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15:45
They see an 80-year-old grandmother
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15:47
in a wheelchair the same way they see
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15:49
a T-80 tank: they're both
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3002
15:52
just a series of zeroes and ones.
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15:55
And so we have this question to figure out:
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How do we catch up our 20th century
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laws of war, that are so old right now
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16:02
that they could qualify for Medicare,
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3008
16:05
to these 21st century technologies?
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16:08
And so, in conclusion, I've talked about
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16:11
what seems the future of war,
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16:14
but notice that I've only used
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16:16
real world examples and you've only seen
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16:18
real world pictures and videos.
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16:20
And so this sets a great challenge for
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16:22
all of us that we have to worry about well
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16:24
before you have to worry about your
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16:26
Roomba sucking the life away from you.
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16:28
Are we going to let the fact that what's
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16:30
unveiling itself right now in war
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sounds like science fiction and therefore
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16:36
keeps us in denial?
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16:38
Are we going to face the reality
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of 21st century war?
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16:42
Is our generation going to make the same
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16:44
mistake that a past generation did
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16:46
with atomic weaponry, and not deal with
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16:48
the issues that surround it until
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16:50
Pandora's box is already opened up?
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16:52
Now, I could be wrong on this, and
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16:54
one Pentagon robot scientist told me
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16:56
that I was. He said, "There's no real
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16:58
social, ethical, moral issues when it comes
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17:00
to robots.
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17:02
That is," he added, "unless the machine
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17:04
kills the wrong people repeatedly.
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17:07
Then it's just a product recall issue."
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17:10
And so the ending point for this is
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that actually, we can turn to Hollywood.
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17:18
A few years ago, Hollywood gathered
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17:20
all the top characters and created
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3006
17:23
a list of the top 100 heroes and
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17:25
top 100 villains of all of Hollywood history,
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2990
17:28
the characters that represented the best
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17:30
and worst of humanity.
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17:32
Only one character made it onto both lists:
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The Terminator, a robot killing machine.
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17:39
And so that points to the fact that
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17:41
our machines can be used
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17:43
for both good and evil, but for me
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17:45
it points to the fact that there's a duality
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17:47
of humans as well.
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This week is a celebration
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17:52
of our creativity. Our creativity
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17:54
has taken our species to the stars.
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17:56
Our creativity has created works of arts
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17:58
and literature to express our love.
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18:01
And now, we're using our creativity
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18:03
in a certain direction, to build fantastic
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18:05
machines with incredible capabilities,
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18:08
maybe even one day
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18:10
an entirely new species.
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18:13
But one of the main reasons that we're
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doing that is because of our drive
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18:17
to destroy each other, and so the question
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we all should ask:
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18:22
is it our machines, or is it us
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that's wired for war?
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Thank you. (Applause)
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
P.W. Singer - Military analystIn P.W. Singer's most recent book, "Wired for War," he studies robotic and drone warfighters -- and explores how these new war machines are changing the very nature of human conflict. He has also written on other facets of modern war, including private armies and child soldiers.
Why you should listen
Peter Warren Singer is the director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution -- where his research and analysis offer an eye-opening take on what the 21st century holds for war and foreign policy. His latest book, Wired for War, examines how the US military has been, in the words of a recent US Navy recruiting ad, "working hard to get soldiers off the front lines" and replacing humans with machines for bombing, flying and spying. He asks big questions: What will the rise of war machines mean to traditional notions of the battlefield, like honor? His 2003 book Corporate Warriors was a prescient look at private military forces. It's essential reading for anyone curious about what went on to happen in Iraq involving these quasi-armies.
Singer is a prolific writer and essayist (for Brookings, for newspapers, and for Wired.com's great Threat Level), and is expert at linking popular culture with hard news on what's coming next from the military-industrial complex. Recommended: his recent piece for Brookings called "A Look at the Pentagon's Five-Step Plan for Making Iron Man Real."
P.W. Singer | Speaker | TED.com