Thursday, March 19, 2026
PMT: Treasure, but not blood
For a century, people have been predicting that war would soon be fought by flying killer robots. It seems-- with the advent of AI guidance and the proliferation of combat drones-- that we are nearly there.
Once soldiers are effectively removed from the risk of combat, I fear that civilians will suffer much more; we are seeing that already. In the current conflict (well, war) with Iran, military deaths are low and civilian deaths are high as the war has been fought by flying unmanned killing machines targeting (on both sides) civilian or civilian-adjacent buildings and objects.
We are now into a phase of the Iran War where increasingly oil facilities are going to be targeted by both sides, threatening an ecological disaster and well as an economic one. Things are likely to get worse before they get better.
