Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century

Citation

(2010), "Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century", Industrial Robot, Vol. 37 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2010.04937eae.001

Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century

Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century

Article Type: Book review From: Industrial Robot: An International Journal, Volume 37, Issue 5

P.W. Singer,Penguin,New York, NY,December 2009,512 pp.,ISBN: 9780143116844,$29.95,http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,0_9780143116844,00.html

Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century not only provides the reader with the latest cutting edge research on military robotics, but also discusses the technological future of unmanned warbots and their ethical, legal, and political impacts.

Author P.W. Singer, Senior Fellow and Director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution, profiles the details of the battlefield robotics revolution in 22 highly interesting chapters that combine well-researched hard data with unusual anecdotes of expert characters, resulting in a fascinating, unique methodical story:

1. 1.

   Introduction: scenes from a robot war

2. 2.

   Smart bombs, Norma Jeane, and defecating ducks: a short history of robotics

3. 3.

   Robotics for dummies

4. 4.

   To infinity and beyond: the power of exponential trends

5. 5.

   Coming soon to a battlefield near you: the next wave of warbots

6. 6.

   Always in the loop? The arming and autonomy of robots

7. 7.

   Robotic gods: our machine creators

8. 8.

   What inspires them: science fiction’s impact on science reality

9. 9.

   The refuseniks: the roboticists who just say no

10. 10.

    The Big Cebrowski and the real RMA: thinking about revolutionary technologies

11. 11.

    “Advanced” warfare: how we might fight with robots

12. 12.

    Robots that do not like Apple Pi: how the USA could lose the unmanned revolution

13. 13.

    Open-source warfare: college kids, terrorists, and other new users of robots at war

14. 14.

    Losers and Luddites: the changing battlefields robots will fight on and the new electronic sparks of war

15. 15.

    The psychology of warbots

16. 16.

    YouTube War: the public and its unmanned wars

17. 17.

    Changing the experience of war and the warrior

18. 18.

    Command and Control… Alt-Delete: new technologies and their effect on leadership

19. 19.

    Who let you in the war? Technology and the new demographics of conflict

20. 20.

    Digitizing the laws of war and other issues of (un)human rights

21. 21.

    A robot revolt? Talking about robot ethics

22. 22.

    Conclusion: the duality of robots and humans

While this absorbing book is specific to the warfare robotic evolution, the issues discussed make for a critical and thought provoking read, regardless of the reader’s domain of robotic expertise.

Joanne PranskyAssociate Editor, Industrial Robot