The Rise of Killer Bots

The Deployment of Weaponized Robots on Our Streets and Foreign Battlefields is Offering a Chilling Glimpse Into the Future of Policing and Warfare.

- Jim Daws

With the passage by San Francisco’s board of supervisors of an ordinance authorizing their use, killer robots have sparked an overdue national conversation. And while that ordinance may have seemed uncharacteristic for Baghdad by the Bay, there are broader implications to opening this particular Pandora’s box. So thorny are the issues, in fact, that San Francisco quickly revoked the ordinance amid howls of protest from citizens and civil libertarians.

The Dallas Police Department pioneered law enforcement’s use of killer robots when, in 2016, they deployed a bomb disposal robot to deliver a lethal explosive to a barricaded sniper who had murdered five police officers. At the time, it was an improvised response when necessity was the mother of invention, but other police agencies took notice and prepared for their own use of deadly force by human-controlled robots.

The use of killer robots would come as little surprise to the U.S. Air Force and Navy who began using radio-controlled Flying Fortresses & Liberators in World War II. These unmanned bombers were packed with explosives to be used, kamikaze-style, against hardened German U2 missile batteries. Those operations resulted in little success and killed many takeoff pilots, including Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., ( JFK’s older brother) when his plane exploded prematurely before he could bail out over England.

Killer Bots in the Modern Age