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Former CEO of Google has been quietly working on a military startup for “suicide” attack drones.

Former CEO of Google has been quietly working on a military startup for “suicide” attack drones.::The former Google CEO has been quietly working on a military startup called White Stork with plans to design “kamikaze” attack drones.

OutrageousUmpire ,

Terminator, you’re needed…

uriel238 ,
@uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Swift Beat Holdings...

Because Swift Boat Holdings might be too on the mark.

TheDeepState ,

Get them to Ukraine fast.

Chocrates ,

Don't these already exist? Ukraine has been using suicide drones to destroy tanks and other equipment for a couple years now.

Edit: I remember an anecdote as well that ISIS was hand building suicide drones as well whenever the hell that was.

Patch ,

The headline is kinda burying the lede. You're absolutely right that "kamikaze drones" already exist. Others have rather glibly pointed out that cruise missiles that have existed for decades are essentially this, and more recently there have been a great many "loitering munitions" drones which are what this startup is talking about.

The thing that seems to be novel here is that they are intending to make them fully automated, with AI-driven target acquisition, and capable of operating in a zero-comms environment. Currently drones generally still need a human at the controls.

The idea of what amounts to the equivalent of Tesla's "Full Self Driving" tech being in charge of deciding who lives and dies and what should be reduced to a smouldering crater is, it has to be said, faintly unnerving.

hoshi711 ,

...you mean a missile?

frezik ,

Yes, but more expensive.

hemko ,

No, a lot cheaper

pulaskiwasright ,

Yeah. That’s exactly what a cruise missile is and has been for decades.

flop_leash_973 ,

Yes, but ones that his company makes and he gets to profit from. It is the classic "tech bro" play. Come to market with some overly complex solution to a problem that has been solved to most peoples satisfaction for decades, claim you are disrupting a stale market that is not meeting the needs of the consumer, ignore any and all existing rules and regulations so you can undercut the existing competition, then bitch when those rules and regulations catch up after you have driven out the existing competition and made obscene profits.

agitatedpotato ,

Tech bros are simply middlemen in search of profitable problems that don't exist.

Mango ,

Slaughterbots are happening. They're probably already a thing.

https://youtu.be/O-2tpwW0kmU?si=In7fuf934_OMCtW9

TransplantedSconie ,
@TransplantedSconie@lemm.ee avatar

Ummm....you not been looking at what's happening in Ukraine? There may not be AI involved (not yet anyway), but UAV munitions are now the way of combat now.

I pity the foot soldiers even more now. War is hell. War with drones strapped with high explosives chasing you down is hell on another level.

Mango ,

I've watched dozens of hours of drone footage on Ukraine. That is not what this is. The implications are nowhere near as far reaching.

The simple fact that very few people involved in the production and implementation of slaughterbots need to know what they actually are is terrifying.

If you think police profiling is bad, wait until it's AI profiling based on the prejudice of a few ultra wealthy people.

We don't have any kind of counter measure against these.

BackOnMyBS ,
@BackOnMyBS@lemmy.world avatar

oh my, that's troubling.

Toes ,
@Toes@ani.social avatar

Manhacks are next

Bocky ,

http://archive.today/2024.01.24-141543/https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahemerson/2024/01/23/eric-schmidts-secret-white-stork-project-aims-to-build-ai-combat-drones/?sh=983f59b6f5a0

Paywall removed.

breakingcups ,

Imagine having an obscene amount of money for the rest of your life, and the thing you decide to do is to invent more devices and methods to kill people.

iopq ,

Imagine a world where US already had this tech and gave it to Ukraine to protect itself.

NeoNachtwaechter ,

A world where Us has ultimately superior weapons is ultimately doomed no matter what the idea was.

MajorSauce ,

And Israel, SA..., Don't forget their best buddies!

Anything that is in the way of $ is against the US interests.

iopq ,

Saudi Arabia having drones would have been able to destroy Houthi militants which would have prevented Houthis attacking shipping

MajorSauce ,

Conveniently ignoring Israel I see?

iopq ,

Israel has the right to strike back at terrorists

MajorSauce ,

And at how many 10s of thousand civilians does it stop being self-defense?

Reminds me of another war not so long ago.

4am ,

Tell them to stop striking the kids in hospitals then

drmoose ,

Because they're not good people.

I think we try to analyze stuff and always give benefit of doubt because life's weird but some people are just bad - Occam's razor and everything.

I recently watched a great video on how drug dealers who deal Tranq justify selling dangerous drugs (by Channel 5 on yt) and the host had a great monolog on how many of these people create these fake realities to justify that "their just a cog in the machine" and have no choice and obviously this is a spectrum of sorts. But this mega rich cunt has all of the choices. Literally. So, it's evil. No excuse.

remotelove ,

I think something cooler would be a fleet of micro-drones that seek out and destroy other drones. Since it doesn't need to have a transceiver itself, seeking out anything broadcasting from above it at ~2.4ghz would be a challenge, but not impossible.

They don't even need to have explosives. Just speed and a good collision path. If it tracks someone's cell phone that could be awkward, but not deadly.

SatanicNotMessianic ,

That’s an interesting thought. At first I was wondering what would distinguish them from standard anti-aircraft systems, and then it clicked.

They’d have to be fast - at least with the ability to put on a burst of speed significantly higher than that of the target drone. Making it have an explosive increases the damage and potentially area of effect, but if you think about it like the kinetic kill vehicles designed to take out ICBMs, I think you can just whack the target drone hard enough to knock it out while potentially increasing speed, decreasing weight, and decreasing costs.

remotelove ,

If not speed, just having something to entangle a prop would work too. It's not that I have anything against explosives, it's just that they are heavy and it's just another mechanical bit that can malfunction. (However, a device that is functionally equivalent to a shotgun shell isn't that heavy and doesn't need complex triggering.)

Also, what I was thinking of would only really work against drones that drop munitions or against drones that are used for recon. You did get me thinking about suicide drones again though... Once a suicide drone starts their kill run, its too late and it's hard to hit.

Since the war in Ukraine started, I have been thinking a ton about small anti-drone systems for grunts. They would need to be compact enough to carry in a pocket and be durable enough to survive trench warfare life and at least be functional 99% of the time. Manufacturing at scale would solve some cost issues, but not completely. These conditions also hamper the capabilities of such a drone, a lot.

Side thought-
If a shotgun-type concept is used, there is also a novel shell design that would be perfect:

https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/ce71ced5-05f8-4d75-a889-e80f294d5a35.jpeg

meyotch ,

I like the bola-shot shotgun shell. I was thinking of how to eliminate the need for super precise targeting, to keep unit cost and complexity at a minimum.

How about a stringy polymer like Silly String but serious. Formulate it to be gummy and stronger and use a tiny charge to eject it through orifices in all directions. It would gum up props and cause the target to drop out of the sky. You’d only need a drone complex enough to get within a couple of feet of the target in any direction.

remotelove ,

Yep. Super simple stuff. All you really need to do is disable one propeller and it's game over. No lasers, no explosives. All you need is something that functions as a bit of string, TBH. The drones that use more than 4 propellers may need a little more work, but it's the same concept.

Mango ,

What stops your fleet from destroying it's own?

remotelove , (edited )

They wouldn't need any kind of radio themselves.

Mango ,

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/0511d93f-4be4-48ce-a6e3-0a65ab1e8e1d.jpeg

andrew_bidlaw ,
@andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works avatar

I find ground-based systems more effective as a defensive measure, tho. No limit on weight, no added energy consumption just to be ready to react. I think germans showcased some autocannon like that. It's easier to spot and destroy, but also easier to maintain a drone-less perimeter.

On the other hand, flying antidrone fleet can be an offensive weapon. Everyone watches the front from the sky nowadays, so quickly pulling their eyes off before pushing forward can be a lifesaver.

skillissuer ,
@skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

That's Gepard, but there are also laser based weapons and loads and loads of EW (mostly jammers)

afraid_of_zombies ,

Interesting. What about helicopters and what not?

remotelove ,

As in, radio interference from helicopters?

Well, the intention is a last-resort defense. There have been hundreds of videos where soldiers on the ground see drones way in advance. (Not kamikaze drones, but recon/grenade droppers.) You open box, point mini-drone in the general direction of the bad drone that is tracking you and press a button. The time window would be very short.

In theory, only a small antenna pair on the mini-drone is needed to approximate the position of a Mavic if it's already pointed in that direction. I think even an ESP32 might be able to do the math fast enough, but I dunno.

If you mean to use a swarm of drones to attack a helicopter, I haven't thought about that.

Ghostalmedia ,
@Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world avatar

Remember, Eric Schmidt took Google public with the famous “Don’t be Evil” manifesto.

Now he makes murder bots.

random_character_a , (edited )
@random_character_a@lemmy.world avatar

There are company lines/slogans and then there are company action.

First one comes from PR and second is dictated by cold hard cash. Guess which one bends if there is a conflict?

iopq ,

Making weapons is not evil. Unfortunately, we live in a world where nations start wars. You need to be able to protect yourself and your allies

drmoose ,

I disagree - it's evil. I'm not saying we don't need military and weapons but I'd say that if from all possibile ways of approaching this is making suicide drones is kinda evil.

Imagine having all this status, money and arguably some real skill you choose to make weapons instead of any other alternative. That's incredibly sad.

kartonrealista ,
@kartonrealista@lemmy.world avatar

It's a weapon like any other. Maybe you're iffy on the name, but suicide drones are just another way to attack specific targets, like missiles but far more precise. What is evil about having a remotely controlled aircraft hit an enemy position as opposed to artillery, bombs or gunfire hitting enemy position?

Mikina ,

I disagree with this. There is one glaring issue with AI-powered weapons, in comparison to other traditional ones - the skill ceiling required to make massive damages at scale.

Sure, you can probably level a whole town if you get your hands on some kind of advanced artillery. But it's still vastly more complex machine, that probably requires extensive training just to operate. You need an army for that, and army is made of people who will hopefully tell you "No, we're not doing that", if your request is not reasonable. And if you somehow try to do it yourself, good luck getting more than a few shots out before someone notices and tries to stop you.

If you have an army of hundreds or thousands of AI powered suicide drones, where you just slap an explosive on them, set a target and the whole fleet will start running, you only need one person with a computer. And once you send the fleet, it's vastly more difficult to stop it. Hell, you probably don't event need to physically get to the drones, if you can hack into the system that controls them.

And that's the biggest issue with any AI-powered weapon, and a reason why they shouldn't exist.

iopq ,

Russian army did not, in fact, say they are not doing that. They proceeded to level entire towns. Not once, but every time the order was given.

Mikina ,

That is true, and not exactly what I was getting at. I was more talking about stuff like coups or domestic terrorism, where you can cause a way more wast amount of damage if you have autonomous AI weapons.

Also, there was that one time in the cold war (I think) where the Russian guy refused to launch a nuke, and it turned out it was a false alarm, which has probably saved the world.

Should i.e. Putin decide to hold onto his power at all costs and started leveling cities in Russia, where most people don't agree with him, you'd probably get a lot of people in the army who wouldn't be OK with that. Maybe, I don't know. But should he have an army of autonomous AI weapons, all he needs is a few guys who do, and know how to launch it.

iopq ,

Not true, Russians are brainwashed to think Ukraine is actually Russia and they have been killing "Russians" and levelling "historically Russian cities" and killing "ethnically Russian population"

If there's a bullshit excuse to destroy a border town they will do it. Like "rebels took it over" or whatever

Mikina ,

You are probably right, it wasn't really a great example. I think that's probably because Russia is already deep into dictatorship and indoctrination, so the fear-inspired loyalty is deep enough for them to not really need an AI autonomous weapons to do whatever evil they need.

But the point I was trying to make is that with AI weapons, it's definitely easier in a more stable and democratic army to get there and cause massive amount of damages, stage a coup or just do domestic terrorism, because you don't need to convince large amount of people to fight for you. You just need a few who can operate the swarm, and getting loyalty of few people is way easier than convincing an entire army.

The same can be said about weapons of mass destruction, but most of them are also really difficult to get, and pretty hard to operate - or you can be easily stopped. If you unleash a swarm of murderous autonomous drones, it will not be pretty. And that's why I hope they will get treated with the same level of respect as nukes do, and not used as a part of common conventional warfare.

Draghetta ,

No, weapons are not INHERENTLY evil - as you seem to say - nor they are good, they just are and it so happens that countries need them, either to attack or to defend. Making weapons is not an evil act per se, supplying Russia with them would be a terribly evil thing to do, while supplying Ukraine or simply stockpiling them in the west in preparation for a possible escalation is a very, very good act.

We may go to war with Russia in the future, you need to be very naive to think that’s impossible. It’s not likely but it’s a possibility that we must consider. We are seeing in the past year or two that drones are the new game changers in contemporary battlefields. It’s only because of drones on both sides that nobody is able to make advances on the frontline.

Russia has adapted eventually and is now building a shitload of drones with increasing capabilities. China is doing the same. So is Iran. All of our (collective west) enemies are investing in this, with the aim of being able to hurt us and our allies.

Now how is us developing drones (through private enterprise, as is custom in liberal societies) a bad thing? About bloody time I say.

Quacksalber , (edited )

As long as they are used defensively, weapons are needed. And having the latest and greatest weapons really helps. We can see this play out in Ukraine clear as day. If Ukraine had more weapons in the beginning, Russia hadn't invaded. If they had anyways, Ukraine would've been able to rebuff them with more force. Whenever the West does send weapons to Ukraine, they have an immediate and devastating effect on Russian troops. But because we are sending so little, the war bogs down into a WW1-style slugfest.
Also, the ammunition given by the West allows Ukraine to do targetted strikes mostly. Russiaon the other hand is just sending wave attacks, accepting massive civilian casulties.

iopq ,

Defending yourself is not evil. What's happening in Ukraine is evil, because the US did not supply enough arms

drmoose ,

Small minded point of view. Imagine if those billions were spend productively to unite people rather than defence. I'm not saying no defence is necessary I'm just saying the other side is infinitely more efficient. We attribute diplomacy to one of the greatest human inventions not because it's more ethical (it is) but because it literally allowed us to prosper to the point where we can sustain 7 billion people with objectively great lives for the most part.

iopq ,

That didn't get 155mm arty rounds to Ukraine.

No amount of money can bring back people dying to Russian bombs.

OsrsNeedsF2P ,

Making weapons is evil, and I joyfully use my seat on the hiring committee to blacklist every candidate who worked at a "defense company"

afraid_of_zombies ,

Guess I could never work there. I worked for a big company 15 years ago that had a weapons division.

Still weapon making is evil

redcalcium ,

Don't be evil to shareholders

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