What is the political equilibrium?
One thing I can imagine is setting up a defensive perimeter around yourself with your own swarm of them. But that’s the kind of world that lies ahead, absent a technological collapse (which would be even more horrible).
Quoth the Instapundit: “Massive decentralization.”
Glenn’s got a point: If no one person is all that powerful, there’s really no point in assassinating him or her, as nothing much would change, or change quickly. To get change the assassin wanted, he’d have to disrupt the entire system, which is so hard as to be not worth doing, because of the decentralization.
My two cents’ worth.
Hale Adams
Pikesville, People’s Democratic Republic of Maryland
Massive decentralisation is possible in many important areas, and probably very desirable.
Worse yet, these things are only going to get smaller and cheaper. It won’t be just the terror groups we have to watch for.
If I was designing a house today, I’d consider installing a Faraday cage in the foyer to keep the teenage kids of 2020 from flying R/C drones through my house.
That won’t keep them from flying a programmable one through here, but maybe they’ll be satisfied peering into my neighbors’ bedrooms instead.
I am sure you have read Diamond Age…
“Hunter-seeker” from Frank Herbert’s Dune?
How is this capability that different from a modern varmint rifle, aka sniper rifle? Fairly easy to kill someone from 500Yds plus… away… 500yds is so far that its not really in your perception of whats around you… up the skill and or the technology a bit and 1000yds is doable…. we don’t have massive sniper problems today… we won’t have drone problems either…. Look at the societal disruption that the Malvo and the east coast sniping spree caused and realize that their longest shot was less than 150yds, really close by rifle standards… skill not really needed…
Nathan Myrvold’s Intellectual Ventures hired Jordin Kare to work on an anti-mosquito laser. It’s intended as a defense against malaria. I’m skeptical of its utility for that application, since it’s a point-defense weapon and malaria control really calls for a broad-area solution. Lasers would be more useful against drones, however. (The number of people who are likely targets for assassination is much smaller than the number who are at risk for malaria.)
Insect-sized drone anti-drone defenses!
(I am also with Mr. Breed, in general.
The signal difference between a notional “cheap assassin drone” and a hunting rifle is that the former is much more subtle – someone worried about being caught and punished may well believe [accurately!] that they have a good chance of getting away with a drone murder.
But someone who just wants to kill people, well, they can do that now – but mostly they don’t.)
Even combine the two… robot sniper rifle.. google internet hunting…
The GPS I used to win the spark fun autonomous vehicle competition gave me better than 20cm accuracy at 20Hz… a miniaturized GPS guided glide bomb would be almost unstoppable…
Society exists because those that are technically skilled find it more valuable to work within the system than to work outside the system. IMHO the real danger in the demonizing of success and confiscatory tax rates is that it might drive some small percentage of the technically skilled into doing things society would not like…. you are starting to see some of this with ATM card skimmers and compromised gas pumps etc…