Overseas News

First up, killer robots are already here. Drones in Ukraine have already killed troops acting autonomously.

And there's a real difference between weapons being used in international warfare, and being normalised in local police forces. Police purchase weapons with intent for [potential] use against civilians of their own region, and history consistently shows weapons intended for (e.g.) hostage situations eventually making their way into regular use against the most basic resistance, like tear gas and riot control ammunition being used and abused in Australian protests. I mention 'abused', an example of this abuse would be using a round designed for long range hits to the chest being deployed at close range to the head.

So when I see police forces doing PR on these robotic weapons, I am threatened. I fully expect these to be deployed against citizen protests, even if they don't fire metal ammunition.

[robots vs. masses]

I'm getting an impression that you're picturing an all-out human revolution against the billionaire oligarchs - a world in which the "revolutionary consciousness" Johnstone mentioned is already universal. But I don't believe oligarchs need to directly suppress 10 billion people. They already have a position of dominance over much of our existing political state, through political donation and mass media influence and institutional pull of essential businesses and more, their power over the state is not just limited to the Liberal Party and One Nation. And that state includes the police force who are more-or-less governed by the laws our politicians enact.

The biggest individual marches Australia has seen would be around 100,000 to 300,000 people, such as the 2025 March for Humanity, the 2003 anti-war protests and the Corroboree 2000 Walk for Reconciliation, all in Sydney. The March for Humanity had a helicopter and mounted units present, and there was at least one drone, although I'm not certain whether or not it was police-operated. But I don't believe it's the kind of event where robot weapons would be deployed for crowdwork.

How about events where some people expect police to violently suppress... weapons exhibitions in Melbourne and Sydney. To be clear, this is still not an event where metal ammunition would be expected, but crowd-control weapons and violence are expected, so you might get protesters with the education, preparation and will to disable a robotic weapon. We're seeing numbers closer to "hundreds", at best maybe "thousands" but most of that crowd will disperse at the first signs of coordinated police aggression. Even if we assume no guns on the robots, I wouldn't even put this crowd at 1:1 odds in this scenario, unless they can very effectively use remote vulnerabilities (electronics jamming, paint bombing). I'd expect even a dozen robots deployed, alongside officers, would intimidate most of the crowd, and if you're allowed to add rubber bullets and tear gas to them, then it's a bloodbath.

But maybe I'm pessimistic or thinking too short-term, where most people today are living lives where an uprising isn't on the table. Let's assume ten percent of the population is rapidly educated, organised and mobilised against the state after a Bloody Sunday-type incident.

Firstly, I see no reason that such robots can't be industrially mass-produced and therefore could be somewhat expendable. A protestor flips the bot over like a tortoise? The operator can just start controlling a reserve bot that was waiting nearby on standby. A bot flips a protestor on their back? That could be days or weeks in a hospital. So it really is asymmetric warfare, even if we could each win 1:1 in a battle.

Another advantage of those robotic weapons is they can be remotely controlled - if an uprising occurs in Melbourne, teams of trained operators (e.g. some police and military) in all other cities could contribute to controlling the robot weapons. Depending on acceptable lag, they could even be controlled internationally, although maybe that's not as feasible in Australia if the robots aren't semi-autonomous. So to divide those resources, there would need to be widespread uprising to strain, or better yet, target the operators in many locations simultaneously.

My point being, I don't see a situation where 1,000 oligarchs would need to directly battle 10 billion people. They would need governments to turn against them first.