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Autonomous Drone Attacked Soldiers in Libya All on Its Own, UN Report Says (cnet.com) 177

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
A UN report says that a drone attacked (and possibly killed) soldiers all on its own. CNET: It's thought to be the first recorded case of an autonomous drone attack. The incident occurred in March 2020 in Libya, a country that was in the midst of a civil war. Turkey, a key combatant in the war, deployed the STM Kargu-2 drone, according to the UN Security Council's Panel of Experts on Libya report. The drone, which the report refers to as a "lethal autonomous weapon," then found and attacked Libya's Haftar Armed Forces. Logistics convoys and retreating forces were "hunted down and remotely engaged by lethal autonomous weapons systems such as the STM Kargu-2," the report reads. "The lethal autonomous weapons systems were programmed to attack targets without requiring data connectivity between the operator and the munition: in effect, a true 'fire, forget and find' capability."
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Autonomous Drone Attacked Soldiers in Libya All on Its Own, UN Report Says More

Autonomous Drone Attacked Soldiers in Libya All on Its Own, UN Report Says

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  • Crimes against humanity (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Tuesday June 01, 2021 @10:12AM (#61442756)
    If UN wasn't sleeping on the job producing and releasing something like this would be considered a crime against humanity. There is no way such system has advanced-enough target recognition to only attack military targets.

    • Re: Crimes against humanity (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jeremi ( 14640 ) on Tuesday June 01, 2021 @10:17AM (#61442770) Homepage

      The UN can only do what itâ(TM)s member nations (and particularly the members of the Security Council) vote to have it do, and frankly there isnâ(TM)t a lot of good faith present amongst the voters there. Blaming the UN for inaction is like blaming your car for inaction when nobody has put gas in the tank.

      • Does getting rid of the Security Council require a vote of the Security Council?

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by higuita ( 129722 )

          The problem is always the veto power that some countries have that block the other people proposals
          Also, how to impose any resolution? how many UN resolution Israel failed to comply? should UN start wars to impose resolutions?

          • Re: Crimes against humanity (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Tuesday June 01, 2021 @11:15AM (#61443036) Homepage
            This, and the countries that like to use their veto (e.g. all of them that have one) are certainly not very likely to pass any resolution that removes that capability, are they? The whole setup is now so badly outdated given how global power has shifted and evolved since the concept of the Security Council was originally defined and its essentially self-appointed members assigned to the role, it's an embarrassment to the UN that it persists. Besides which, it's also ironic that those the nations with the (at the time, anyway) greatest ability to both wage war and equip/support other nations in their desire to do so (the permanent members are also the world's largest arms suppliers) were the ones tasked with preventing wars. Talk about assigning the fox to guard the hen house!

            Frankly, I think reform is long overdue. IMHO, short of major changes to process and structure, there to be more members of the Security Council (both permanent and rotating) with the power of veto, and there needs to be a requirement that something in the region of 20-30% of members with a veto must use it in order to prevent a given resolution becoming binding on all parties - assuming it gets a sufficient majority to pass in the first place - to negate the usual East vs. West partisanship. You also need a way of dealing with proven non-compliance, which pretty much means some form of sanctions on arms sales/support, both for the original infringer and any countries that then don't enforce those sanctions, etc. But, of course, my first point applies - any proposed change to the status quo, clearly dysfunctional as it is, is going to get vetoed clear out of the room by pretty much all the usual suspects.

      • this drone war has.

      • Re: Crimes against humanity (Score:4, Interesting)

        by stikves ( 127823 ) on Tuesday June 01, 2021 @11:37AM (#61443166) Homepage

        UN was designed to be *weak* on purpose, and it might be a good thing.

        They err on doing nothing, avoiding doing the wrong thing. And only act when there is global collective will to do something. If major powers disagree, nothing gets done.

        Again this is by design.

        Take EU for example. Regardless of how one feels about it, petty squabbles caused major rift between them and UK, and now Switzerland. Having UN *actual power* would have done the same. Countries that do not like a particular rule will just defect. In fact many opted out of "International Criminal Court" system sister of United Nations.

        (Look at the "red" and "orange" on the map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] . If you have a tyrant at the helm, you don't want to be held accountable)

    • Any worse a "crime against humanity" than land mines and other unexploded munitions years after the war's over?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by invid ( 163714 )
        Land mines are very bad. However, flying land mines that seek you out and throw themselves at you are much worse.

        • Both are bad options, but eventually drones run out of power, and if they can't find a base station to reload ammo and recharge, they will either land or self-destruct. Land mines can remain active pretty much indefinitely, until people bring out the rats on strings and de-mine areas, centimeter by centimeter.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by invid ( 163714 )
            Just wait until they make flying landmines that can consume organic matter for energy and procreate.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Holi ( 250190 )
          "Flying landmines" will be gone a hour or so after you set them since they require batteries to fly. Standard landmines are killing people 50+ years later. I think the moral difference is pretty clear.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by memnock ( 466995 )

            I don't think it's that clear. I don't deny the problem with landmines at all. Obviously, decades of injury and death, especially after a conflict is over, is immoral. But just because the duration is shorter, that doesn't mean there is a moral distinction. How many people can that "flying landmine" maim or kill in the time it's active? I'm assuming it could probably attack more than a couple of people? If one drone can attack 20 people at a time, does the number of people offset how immoral it is? I don't

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Can we just agree they are both pretty bad?

            Also landmines are banned.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dryeo ( 100693 )

        There has been an attempt to ban land mines, mostly due to unexploded munitions left over when a conflict is over. Unluckily the big 3 haven't signed on.
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      • Any worse a "crime against humanity" than land mines and other unexploded munitions years after the war's over?

        Yeah, probably worse. Landmines are bad, I don't mean to defend their use, but at least they're generally in a known location. You can look up what the people who have to live with drones above their heads think about them - they're always there, and you can see or hear them, and they can blow you up at any point, whether you're at your home or at a wedding.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by guruevi ( 827432 )

      There's plenty of ways to recognize military targets. Per the Geneva convention, they should be recognizable with insignia, training an AI to recognize foreign insignia is relatively straightforward these days.

      • There's plenty of ways to recognize military targets. Per the Geneva convention, they should be recognizable with insignia, training an AI to recognize foreign insignia is relatively straightforward these days.

        No it isn't. Dust, mud, wear& tear, will all make the recognising of insignia by your fully autonomous drone highly unreliable. It also assumes that the enemy is too dumb to get out a rag and a bottle of solvent and remove the insignia. You could try to have the AI in your fully autonomous drone recognise the vehicles (which is what human combatants do hint he vast majority of cases) but that comes with the problem of conflicts where one side uses Russian T-55s and the other uses Chinese Type 59s or som

        • Beware of those who treat anyone who looks like a resident of the country being invaded as an enemy. Ie, anybody who moves in Syria is an enemy to someone. When you have civil wars these days there are no insignia, people don't form up into regiments and march up to well established lines of battle anymore.

    • The UN in 2018 attempted to begin working on a treaty that would ban autonomous weapons, but the move was blocked by both the US and Russia

      From link in OP story.

  • How long before ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Alain Williams ( 2972 ) <addw@phcomp.co.uk> on Tuesday June 01, 2021 @10:13AM (#61442758) Homepage

    these things become cheap enough to be bought by $terroristOrganisation and $rogueCountry who then deploy them over $myTown ?

    Definitions of who are $terroristOrganisation and $rogueCountry to be set according to personal taste.

    • Looks like that was about -5 years ago.

    • Re:How long before ... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 01, 2021 @10:22AM (#61442790)

      Found the bloody Perl developer! He can be the first up!

    • Why would a terrorist group need to buy them? Just use their hackers to take over someone else's drones and reprogram the targets.

      • Why would a terrorist group need to buy them? Just use their hackers to take over someone else's drones and reprogram the targets.

        Because being able to make your own munitions is always better than relying on buying or stealing them from somebody else.

    • Re:How long before ... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Tuesday June 01, 2021 @10:44AM (#61442892) Homepage Journal

      Imagine a delivery box truck full of Boston Dynamics robot dogs that can get within a few blocks of the US Capitol and deploy them during a televised joint session. Indiscriminate killing would be horrifying while facial-recognition killing of just one party's members would be world-changing.

      There's effectively no defense against something like this, and the technology clock is ticking. It's feasible today and will probably be 'easy' by 2030. I'd like to say nobody wants to see such madness but there are mad people out there.

      That's not a long time to act to outlaw AI GoF, before it's too late. One would hope that politicians could at least get their shit together to save their own asses.

      • Why stop there? Once the super-rich have perfected the technology enough, the next step will be to get rid of the "rabble" (you, me, everyone who isn't super-rich) and then create a world similar to one of Clarke's books where the planet is inhabited by a small group of "nobles" where all the rest of the work is done by robots.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by nagora ( 177841 )

          Why stop there? Once the super-rich have perfected the technology enough, the next step will be to get rid of the "rabble" (you, me, everyone who isn't super-rich) and then create a world similar to one of Clarke's books where the planet is inhabited by a small group of "nobles" where all the rest of the work is done by robots.

          That sounds like Asimov's "The Naked Sun". An excellent book.

        • People complain about being exploited, soon instead they will be unprofitable. And it looks like military drones are going to be perfected before [your job] drones.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ksevio ( 865461 )

        There's a short film about that premise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

        It's pretty disturbing how plausible a situation it is

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        Oh, no, it's far too late for that. Outlaw it and you'll see R&D move to the hinterlands of Paraguay or Zimbabwe. Just like human gene manipulation the tech is out there, the quality of work is rising exponentially, automation is doing an accelerating percentage of the work, and the price is in free fall. The future is coming, whether we like it or not.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by reanjr ( 588767 )

        How do the robots get inside the building? Do they bring Trump supporters with them to break in?

  • Was only a matter of time before it became a reality. At least they're not modeling them based on ants yet.
    • and never revolt, then this is how you get that. You never have to worry about the Generalissimo overthowing you when it's an A.I. And it's not that hard to program in a kill switch despite what Screamers says.

      • So how come WE don't have a "kill switch" since it's such a great idea that no one thought of?

      • Having soldiers refuse to follow orders is a good thing. And yet military leaders often worry about that "problem".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rgbscan ( 321794 )

      Truly a great book. I don't know why they haven't made it in to a movie yet. Daniel Suarez's other books Daemon and Freedom are also quite good techno thrillers.

  • Hidden soldiers. (Score:3)

    by Ostracus ( 1354233 ) on Tuesday June 01, 2021 @10:27AM (#61442816) Journal

    Autonomous Drone Attacked Soldiers in Libya All on Its Own, UN Report Says

    Welcome to a future when programmers are "enemy combatants".

    • Autonomous Drone Attacked Soldiers in Libya All on Its Own, UN Report Says

      Welcome to a future when programmers are "enemy combatants".

      Welcome to a future where the most lethal weapon in any army's arsenal is poisoned Mars bars and Diet Coke.

  • Decoupling weapons control from humans (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday June 01, 2021 @10:35AM (#61442860)
    is a huge problem politically. Right now we have a balance between the ultra wealthy and the military they use to protect their wealth that limits their actions. If you take that balance away by allowing the ultra wealthy to have autonomous weapons they can control themselves (with only a handful of well paid engineers to maintain them) they can pretty much do anything they please to 99% of us and if we object they'll just carpet bomb us.

    And no, they don't need us to buy their stuff. Did the King need peasants to buy his stuff?

    We're either going to make some fundamental changes to how power is distributed in human civilization or we're going to end up in a horrifying dystopia. Trouble is a lot of folks really, really like hierarchies. And this makes them resistant to any changes in power structures, let alone an attempt to flatten them.
    • One could argue that extremely wealthy people manipulating in the background breaks hierarchies.

    • Usually three things happen to highly hierarchal societies:

      1: They run out of resources, the people on the top can't get their toys, start beating those around them, and the civilization collapses. This collapse can be relatively quick, or it can take centuries, like Rome.

      2: A war with another society leaves them weak enough that they implode from within, or just get overrun by a more powerful nation.

      3: Something like the Black Death happens which means too few backs for the nobility to hit with the las

      • The problem with your assertion is that it's predicated on existing history that happened before these technological advances. Basically things have changed and if we don't change with them bad things are going to happen.

    • "And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived." -- Starship Troopers.

      Yes, when some megacorp actually buys up or builds a fully automated army, they become their own authority, and can then decide the degree to which they will respect the laws imposed upon them by governments.

      But, this doesn't actually change any dynamics very much. For the most part, the politicians that operate governments are all beholden to the will of the wealthy elites anyway.

      • So you don't really understand how the military interacts with power of wealth. You can be forgiven for this because we don't really talk about it in this country or any other. Have you ever wondered why we give so many special privileges to ex-military? It's not to thank them for their service. We do that because if you don't take care of your ex military then they form around their generals and seize control of society and government in order to secure a comfortable living for themselves. This kind of tre

  • Autonomous drones don't have any. Whether it is a wonderful tool or a horrific weapon of oppression depends on which side of the battle you're on.

  • This is some scary shit.

    Western democracies can be all ethical about drone warfare and AI. In the end it won't matter, because countries like Turkey, China and Russia will develop this sort of technology regardless. Unless by some miracle the world comes together and starts to seriously regulate this stuff with severe sanctions for transgressions.

    Once we have the armed autonomous drones, it's not much of a stretch to have an AI system coordinating them. A few more steps in that direction and Skynet isn't a

    • Truth. It is interesting how this started, not by First World countries, but by ones that are looking to win at any cost. Ethics can be talked about, but there are countries with leadership who find ethics at best... stifling, and who will use any advantage out there, be it nuclear, biological, chemical, etc. It is actually surprising that NBC weapons have not been used in the Middle East or North Africa yet.

      In theory, a country can put all its resources into armed autonomous drones, and that is the only

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ghoul ( 157158 )
        Funny how things which the US excels are not banned - airplanes and submarines and economic warfare for example

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ghoul ( 157158 )
      Western Democracies are the only countries to have actually used WMDs in war so call me a little skeptical.

      • Western Democracies are the only countries to have actually used WMDs in war so call me a little skeptical.

        True, but it was against a batshit crazy regime with a brainwashed population who would have fought until the last man, woman and child. Some of the war crimes and atrocities committed by that regime were worse than the Nazis.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ghoul ( 157158 )
          Its actually easier for Democracies to commit atrocities as the leaders think they have been elected so the peoples mandate is with them. Whatever they are doing is for the good of the people, to reduce casualties etc etc.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        Iran/Iraq were not considered 'western democracies' by anyone, but used gas against each other. South Africa was sort of a democracy, kind of, but not 'western', when it used biological weapons against a couple of its neighbors, nor was Japan when it used bioweapons in China. For that matter the Turkish ships that catapulted dead plague victims into (Venice? Naples? I forget now) were certainly not 'western democracies' in any form.

      • Western Democracies are the only countries to have actually used WMDs in war so call me a little skeptical.

        No, I'm gonna call you an ignorant moron, probably with nasi sympathies who trots around claiming that Hitler was elected.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ghoul ( 157158 )
          Hitler starved 6 million Jews to death. Churchill starved 14 million Bengalis to death. The only real difference is Hitler lost.
  • That's what these things are. The genie is out of the bottle folks.
  • I'm not surprised at all, since I've predicted most countries will start developing autonomous weaponry.

    Maybe after a while the larger powers will start to realize that it's in their interest to ban these weapons, since smaller nations will use these to offset the military might of a larger nation. The same applied to chemical and biological weapons. We outlawed them because we knew they're almost as effective as nukes, yet much easier to attain.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      Countries? Blackwater (whatever its name is this week) demonstrated an autonomous tracked vehicle with a chain-fed machine gun, auto-aimed by camera with human-recognition capabilities several years ago (IIRC about 2012). I think the things are already deployed for perimeter patrol at petroleum refineries in Nigeria. It still requires an operator to press the 'Fire' button, but that's a simple software edit to remove.

  • These drones were reported to be Turkish. The Turkish government is an Islamist government. Expect these drones to show up on the hands of other Islamists and Islamic extremists, such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      Wow, the ignorance displayed on SlashDot now is truly a wonder to behold. Do you often make declarations about things which you know nothing about? Huh, just checked your posting history, it looks like you do.

  • The world needs megasanctions on any nation that does this, without a human in the loop to give a final ok on targets.

    War crime level.

  • No different than a terminal guided missle (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rahmrh ( 939610 ) on Tuesday June 01, 2021 @01:13PM (#61443636)

    The device only has 30minutes of time. It has a listed range of 5km, that makes this pretty close to any slow moving fire and forget cruise missile. Even if all of the numbers are 4x higher, it is acting more similar to a terminal guided munition/time delayed land mine/area denial weapon. You launch it it the direction of the targets and it finds a target and eliminates. And there is just as much of a human in the loop of any of those older devices (usually none). The only real difference compared with the prior terminal guided munitions is that they generally have a lower loiter time (seconds to minutes), where as this might be in the lower hours range.

    Put a tag of autonomous drone on it and everyone seems to act like it is something completely new and different than all prior weapons. It is only an increase on loiter time over the prior fire and forget terminal guided munitions.

    • This thing is a Beserker.

      Not yet. It can't make more of itself.

      Personally I've always thought the Berserker series depicted a vastly more frightening enemy than the Terminator franchise ever did. Berserker anime movies would be amazing. Too bad they would get confused with Berserk.

  • The component capabilities are too useful not to employ separately in legal ways and the combination too militarily vital to leave on the shelf.

    Law does not trump force for law requires the ability to inflict violence to compel submission.

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