Arthur Hanson
Well-known member
The drone strike at the Saudi oil facilities was carried out by an estimated ten drones that were estimated to cost fifteen thousand a piece. The previous large drone air strike that the US launched against Syria years ago was by a substantial number of cruise missiles at well over a million a piece. The dropping cost of autonomy in everything we are just starting to see, is going to change everything whether we like it or not. Warfare is about to change radically when drone strikes that used to cost millions now cost only thousands and are available to just about all governments at such a low cost, even individuals will be able to afford them. Hopefully the coming wave of automation will be mostly used for good. The potential for automation to be misused is almost infinite and might require a system like blockchain to keep track of technology not to keep it out of bad hands, but to know who it belongs to so as to avoid anonymous, untraceable destructive actions. Further accelerating price decay has now shown it has serious potential for good and harm and further price decay will only increase the impact of technology both good and bad.