we are going to see some slides play and i am not going to time these to my exact top. the are not going to click for bullet points. it is simply to give you a sense of the reality of where this technology is already. everything you see in these images behind me our system is already active in iraq or afghanistan right now or already at the prototype stage. there is nothing that you see in these systems is science fiction. nothing is powered by falcon technology. nothing is hollywood magic or fantasy. nothing is powered by teenage hormones harry potter. these are systems already here today. now, to pull back on this, there is something big going on in the history of warfare and maybe even history itself. u.s. military went into iraq with just a handful of unmanned aerial systems, uhs, uav, drums,

pilot plains, whatever you want to call them. a handful during the 03 invasion. we now have over 7,000 in the military inventory. our invasion force went into iraq on the ground with zero unmanned ground vehicles. we now have over 12,000 in the u.s. military inventory. now, these packbot predator drones are the model t fords, the wright brother flyers and the term killer app for killer application doesn't just describe what i posted in the industry, the take, a new meaning when you were talking about systems like this becoming armed with everything from machine guns to rockets to missiles, you name it. that's where we are at right now. one air force three-star general i met with what describe how very soon we will be using tens of thousands of these robots and our conflict. that's his quote, tens of

thousands. these numbers matter in another way because it's not just going to be tens and thousands of these systems because one of the things you have in these technologies will they called moore's law. the idea every two years we can pack more power into the microchips such that they double in their capacity. it's the reason if you gave your sweetheart a valentine's day card that opened up and played a little song that greeting card had more computing power than the entire pentagon had in 1960. that one greeting card. if more is law holds true and we have the doubling affect every two years doubling in the capacity within 25 years, our computers, robots will be a billion times more powerful than today. and i don't mean a billion in the sort of amorphous austin powers you know, 1 billion, i mean literally take the power of your computer, take the power of that droned and multiplying it

with a one and nine zeroes behind it. that means something important is happening and the kind of things we will use to talk about in science fiction like comecon need to be talked out by folks like us, talked about by people in the halls of power and people in the pentagon. we are living through a robot revolution. now i need to be clear. i don't mean a robot revolution where the governor of california is going to show up at as the terminator. it's a different revolution in war and history itself, that is every so often there is a technology that comes along that rewrites the rules of the game, a technology that forces us to ask questions about not only what is possible that wasn't before but also what is proper. things like the printing press, the computer, the atomic bomb. robotics are like that but there's an interesting thing in

terms of revolution and war. all previous ones were about changing the how of war. it was a technology that had a bigger boom like the atomic bomb. it was a technology that could shoot faster like the machine gun. it was technology that allowed you to shoot further like gunpowder. that's definitely happening with robotics but they are also not just affecting the howl of war. they are affecting the who at the fundamental level. that is they are affecting warriors experience and warriors identity. another way of phrasing this, humankind has had a 5,000 year monopoly on the fighting of war and the monopoly is breaking down in our lifetime. i thought i was a kind of big deals over last several years i went about interviewing anyone and everyone that connected to robotics and war today so interviews with scientists who built the systems come interview

with a science fiction author who inspire them and consult with the pentagon. what's it like to be a 19 year old john pilot sitting in the fattah flying a system that is over iraq or afghanistan? what's it like for the four-star generals commanding the sources? what about the civilian politicians, interviews with secretary army, secretary of the navy will make the decisions on when and where we stand the forces out? the other side of the coin. what are the insurgents think about our robots? what do they think about cost using these robots? what about news editors and places like lebanon or pakistan or india who are going to report on them and create the environment of the war of ideas out there. what about the people and places like international red cross or the jag officers or human rights watch who will argue over the law of war that's around this and so wired for war is just gathering the stories behind these people and what they're dealing with today also shines a light on some of the ripple

effects roi mix are having on the politics of the war fighting, on ethics, the laws, you name it and so i would like to do the rest of the time is give you a sense of some of these ripple effect splaying out with robots. the first of these is while the future of war might involve more and more machines they are not just going to be american machines. that is there is a rule when it comes to both technology and war. there is no such thing as a permanent first mover advantage. that is how many people in this class right now still use commodore computers? how many of you play atari video games? those i have been the dominant when video games first came out the they are not any more. it's the same thing and war. the provision into the tank. the germans figured out how to use a better. so the u.s. has had a military robot's right now but we are not the only player in town. there's 43 other countries

working on military robotics. countries like britain, israel, france, russia, china, pakistan, iran. actually three weeks ago we shot down and iranians don't fly in over iraq. and some of the things we have to question is where does the state of american manufacturing today as well as the state of science and mathematics training in our schools take us in this revolution? another way of putting it is what does it mean to be sending out more soldiers whose hardware is made in china and software is increasingly being written in india bought were fair just like software is going open sores and that's the other ripple effect that's happening here. that is the systems are not like an aircraft carrier, unlike the atomic bomb where you need a massive industrial structure. a lot of them are commercial off-the-shelf. you probably saw the video of the reagan jerome, the hand

cost, one of the widely used drones by forces in afghanistan. you can build your own version for $1,000 so what that means is we have a flattening affect when it comes to war and high technology. not just the big boys can utilize the best technology in war anymore. so this can go interesting directions. one of the stories is a group of college students at swarthmore wanted to do something about the genocide in darfur so they held a fund-raiser. it turned out better than the expected. they raised about half a million dollars upon which these college kids at swarthmore entered into negotiations with a private military company for the rental of a set of crounse they were going to deploy to sudan. they held the negotiations with private military company out of their dorm room. there's the threat side of this. the war between israel and hezbollah that took place a year and a half ago and have been between a state and non-state actor. but both sides flume loans

against each other. hezbollah may not have a former military. it still flew for drones backend israel's we have a trend that comes from when we have to worry about what does this mean for the realm of terrorism and i think there are two ripple effects. what is it reinforces the power of small groups and individuals against the state. one of the people appears in the book is a scientist for the pentagon and he says look, if you gave me $50,000 i wanted to i could shut down manhattan right now. and he came up with a pretty scary scenario using current robotics he could buy off the open market to though is it changes the affect of suicide bombing. it takes away the calling effect on those organizations that is you don't have to be suicidal to have many of the same which allows new actors into the game they would have to look at al qaeda to .0 but also the next generation version of the timothy mcveigh because you don't have to persuade a robot

that is received by 70,000 in having to convince itself to blow up. but these ripple effect quote in other areas for example of our own politics and of the other people i thought it is well as former assistant secretary of defense for ronald reagan and this is what he had to say. quote, i like the systems because they save lives. but i also worry about more marketization of war. more shock and all talk to defray discussion of the costs of war. people are likely to support the use of force if they view it as cost less. and i thought that was a pretty interesting quote in terms of capturing the affect on our politics and some of the trends active right now that robotics me take to the final ending point that is we don't have a draft anymore, we don't declare war any more. we don't pay higher taxes for the war anymore and now we have a trend that takes more and more who would be going in harm's way

and our sources that to machines. and so we may be taking those already low bars to the war and dropping them to the ground. the real thing about this we see this right now in the strikes in pakistan. in terms of targets hit we have actually equaled over the last year the same amount of the opening round of the kosovo war but we don't talk about these strikes and to pakistan in our politics. we don't debate about it in congress or hear about it in the media the way we did with the kosovo war and it's in part because the risks are on our side. they are only on the other side. but the future of the war is also going to be a youtube war, that these these technologies don't just remove the human from risk. the record everything that they see so they don't just cliche with war.

there's already several thousand video clips of the footage from iraq and afghanistan online right now. you can download and watch it. this could either be a very good thing in terms of the relationship between the public and its war. others links between the home front and war front. it never existed before. but we need to remember these technologies may be like science fiction but they are playing out in a very real and very human and strange world so for some people the ability to watch a clip of combat on their iphone is turning war into a form of entertainment. and the soldiers have a name for that in the field. they call it war poured into a typical example i got was an e mail in the title line said "watch this." and we all get e-mails like this, quote ka watch this." and click the attached might be a quote don't edna basketball game or a fat kid in his basement dancing or something. we all get those kind of clips. in this case the clich of watch

this was a predator drone strike, a missile drops, goes to the target, explosions. bodies tossed into the air. it was set to music, to the pop song i just want to fly by the band sugar ray. so we want to watch more experience less when it comes to the war. and to have this working affect because it's very easy to forget when you are watching these clips the violence is real. it's easy to forget not everyone is fighting from afar and even more so, it is just the clips. so it's almost imagine it's the difference in terms of a basketball game. watching a basketball game on tv where the basketball players are a little figures on the screen versus watching a basketball game in person where you can see someone who is 7 feet tall really does look like. versus the experience of playing in that basketball game yourself and knowing exactly what it's

like to be dumped on by lebron james. but remember it is just a click show. you're not watching the whole game. you're watching a highlight reel of the war. that espn sports center version of the battle. so all the context, all the strategy, it all just become slam dunk. the irony is one of the future of war may be involved in more and more of these machines all of the ripple effects are about humans. wars are still driven by human feelings and the ripple effects that come out are still a human psychology, and in politics so we have a policy example of this right now. what are robots impact on the very real very human ideas fighting against radical groups around the world that is what is the message we think about sending as we use more and more on mant systems versus what is the message actually being received. and so i wanted to know is i

went around again interviewing people about this and one of the people i met with i think this will in terms of what we think we are sending and he was a senior bush administration official and said our on manning of the four plays to the strength of the thing that scares people is our technology. >> but what about when you speak with those people? and this is what the leading news editor of lebanon had to say and he said, quote, and he's saying this will there is a drone flying above at the moment. quote, this is another sign of the cold hearted pro-israel please and americans who are also cow words because they send out machines to fight. they don't want to fight like real men but they are afraid to fight so we just have to kill a few of their soldiers to defeat them. it's absolute disconnect between message sent and message received. as one and pentagon analyst put it, quote committee acting of this looks really bad and makes us look like the evil empire

from "the matrix" and the other side like a rebel alliance. but the war also involves a new experience of war. think about the phrase "going to war." guinn to war has been the same thing the last 5,000 years whether you talk about the ancient greeks went to war against detroit or my grandfather go into war in world war ii against the japanese fleet. going to war at fundamental level whenever the period meant going to a place there was such a danger you might never come home again. your family may not ever see you again if he went to war. compare that to the experience of the drone pilot describing what was like to fight insurgence in iraq while never leaving at that. quote, you are going to war for 12 hours shooting targets, directing cowles on enemy combatants and then you get in the car and drive home. 20 minutes later you're sitting at the dinner table talking to your kids about their homework.

this disconnect between being at war and at home is actually proving challenging. one of the surprising things we are finding is the rebels of combat stress among those units fighting remotely are actually higher than on many of the units physically deployed into iraq and afghanistan. it is also changing the experience of combat itself and killing. this is what one pilot described what it was like to take out any combatants. quote, it's like a video game. interesting question is as you all know there are certain things we might do in the video world as any player of grand theft auto can attest that we wouldn't do in the real world. we are also seeing a ripple effects on the demographics of the war. who can go to war. so we are at west point so you'll probably like this better than they did at the air force academy but one of the top pilots in the u.s. military right now is actually a 19-year-old high school dropout

who is in listed who joined the army wanting to be a helicopter mechanic, wasn't qualified because he failed high school english so they asked if he wanted to be a drone pilot instead. he turned out to be so good after service in iraq be promoted him and made him a specialist and he is now an instructor at the training academy. 19, enlisted high school dropout instructor. now when you tell that to an air force audience that is not a cool story to them and in fact when you add the fact this young soldier has taken out more in any targets, saved more american lives than every single f-15 pilot combined this is a ripple of change when it comes to who can fight. we are seeing other effects. robotics don't just happen al-sayyid. they happen within us. one of the particular calling cards of these ied roadside bombs is how they are actually

seemed lots of wounded lou was arms and legs. we have applied robotics to that. there's over 400 soldiers that have lost arms and legs and have not just gotten robotic prosthetics that allow them to live their lives again but actually over 400 have returned to their combat unit. the head of the program calls it the luke squall -- skywalker, he loses his hand and then is ready to go back to the july. that is and science fiction anymore. thousands have had the experience in the real world. we also see unit cohesion. one of the scenes in the book is taking out enemy mortar site just outside fallujah in iraq. to drones coordinator. the teams behind the drones never once met face-to-face. never once talked either over the radio or over the phone. the entire battle was carried out in an internet chat room.

i remember asking one of them tell me about one of your buddies who you worked with and he said there is mother goose. i said who is mother goose and he said i don't know that is all i know them as. so when he talks about the bodies that he made in the war it's going to be less like brand of brothers and more like facebook friendships. much of what you are hearing is that there is always two sides to a revolution so for example while we have more small and action it doesn't mean that we haven't gotten rid of murphy's law said you have these incredible technologies and what they allow you to do but the fault of the war isn't being lifted. the enemy still has a vote in what happens. mistakes still played out and even more so will you have science fiction like capabilities you are also getting new policy military dilemma is that you have to figure out. now, sometimes people say okay things don't work out with your robot is just a oops moment and

that is what the robot company said it is a oops moment when things don't work out with a robot, oops. what our oops moment when we are talking about robots and war? sometimes oops moments are funny like onetime the tested a machine gun or a robot id went squirrelly. during the demonstration it started spinning in a circle by accident and pointed its 50 caliber machine gun at the reviewing stand. they were not impressed. they were also glad there were no bullets and 50 caliber machine gun. other times oops moments can be tragic. last year in south africa and aircraft cannon had a, quote, software glitch. instead of firing up words from a training exercise it leveled and fired in a circle. it killed nine soldiers. we have new categories of wall to figure out these situations for example on manslaughter. what happens when you accidently

killed the wrong person like the three times we thought we got osama bin laden with one of our drone strikes and didn't. one situation it was an afghan civilian who was on lucky enough to look like bin laden through the predators drone footage. now these are systems where we still have a human linked up. they are not completely autonomous but don't believe that is and cunning. i found over four different projects on armed autonomous systems and there you get into a whole new areas to figure out. separate sample think about the issue of war crimes. on one hand you might think we could have less crimes with armed autonomous system because robots or demotion less. a robot doesn't care if their body gets killed commit crime of rage which is how most happen but robots or emotionless. a robot has no empathy, no sense of guilt. a robot looks that and 80-year-old grandmother in her wheelchair the same way it looks

at a tank. they are both just the zeros and ones in the programming language. so we have a challenge how do we catch up the 20th century law of war sold right now if they were people they would qualify for medicare. to these 21st century technologies like packbot that by the we are being used against 21st century adversaries like terrorists who hide out in a hospital or use an ambulance to move weapons so long or more are challenged on both sides. and so, and ending, a lot of this sounds like i've been talking about the future of war but notice how every single one of those pictures you saw was already something that's here. notice how every example i gave except that very last one of the 80-year-old grandmother in a wheelchair every one of those examples is already happened. and so it forces us to ask the question are we going to let the

fact that this looks like science fiction, sounds like science fiction keep us in denial that this is already a reality or another way of thinking about this are we going to be like the previous generation that looked at another science-fiction technology which h. g. wells, the sci-fi writer called atomic bombs. h. g. wells is the first one who came up with the name and first, with the concept and the previous generation looked at atomic bombs and said this isn't something we have to wrestle with all the political moral ethical military legal dilemmas the are going to come out of these until after pandora's box is already opened are we going to do the same. now i could be wrong and in fact one scientist who worked for the pentagon told me i was wrong and this is what he said. there is no real ethical moral problem that he could contemplate with robots. quote, that is unless the machine kills the wrong people

repeatedly. then it's just a product recall issue. now, i'm going to jump into science fiction and losing right here, which is a couple of years ago the american film institute, a fee afi gather a list of the top 100 holley what he rose and hollywood villains of all time. that is out of every single character in every single hollywood movie ever made, which characters represented humanity at its best and humanity at its worst. and there was only one character who made it on to both top 100 hero and top 100 fallin list, it was the terminator, a robot killing machine. and so i think it shows a couple of things. one is it shows the duality of technology. that is it can be used for both good and evil. but it also shows the duality of the people, the men and women behind the technologies. because think about it this way our human creativity is what

distinguishes us from the other species. our creativity is what took our species to the moon. our human creativity is what built these works of art and literature and express love for one another. and now we are using our human creativity to build these incredibly new technologies that if he believed both science and science fiction we may actually be creating an entirely new species, but the bottom line really only doing it because we can't get past this age-old human need to destroy one another. so the real question may be this: is it our machines or is it cost who is wired for war? thank you. [applause] so i think we have time left for questions and responses, so i look forward to engage in with you on that. i think they have a microphone to go around. >> whoever has the microphone, if you have a question please wait for the green light to appear on the microphone and

speak your name and the microphone and ask your question. >> my name is captain richard. i remember about ten years ago when i was a cadet with the projects talking about looking up machine guns on to an area drone and the instructor said that wasn't difficult. when did the change go from autonomous vehicles and weapons not being at the close to being okay and widespread? >> it's a great question because it is almost two parts. one is when did the attitude change we could start to move into this area and the second is the question can it ever be ethical, is it ethical or not.

and the magic moment is he was actually an air force colonel that i talked to that described 9/11. basically there's a before and after to the relation to the robotics industry and the pentagon prior to 9/11 most of the companies couldn't even get their calls returned by the pentagon. after 9/11 one of the executives at a company described they were told, quote, make them as fast as you can and it's the same thing the ec within the different specialties because robotics is a wide field whether you talk about drones to unmanned platforms within eod community they actually have small numbers of robots before 9/11 but wouldn't use them because it was seen as the not so courageous thing to do and in that community they have what is called the ski-ski effect. that is a certain day in iraq we

lost to eod soldiers who is both naim and it in ski and the committee's basic attitude changed to you know what, we may -- the courage aspect doesn't matter. we have to start using the systems. we're losing people too quickly. with packbots the describe the moment being deployed experimental ones out to the very first forces in afghanistan were trying to investigate the bunker complex and realized combatants astelin site or weapons it was the same technology that we were using backend world war ii and vietnam. a guy with a flashlight and a pistol. and so, they were asking afghan allies to go in first and check that out and then as one of them put it, quote, we began to run out of afghans. that's when the attitude shifted. so they sent out this experimentet