Episode 6: Autonomy Now! Ukraine, Iran, China, and the “Drone” Revolution

How will the US respond to new experimentations of unmanned systems?

The US built an expensive, exquisite, and highly controlled inventory of unmanned systems for the wars on terror. What would happen to that arsenal when faced with a new political world of a rising China, an expansionist Russia, and a nuclear North Korea? Enter today’s world where the unmanned investments of the war against terror may no longer feel relevant for the wars of today. As AI and autonomy advances, we are seeing new experimentation on the battlefield with small quadcopters, increasingly autonomous land and naval mines, cheap drones and cruise missiles, hypersonic ballistic missiles, and an increasingly crowded and important space domain. How will the US respond? In this episode, we discuss Ukraine, China, and Houthi rebels and talk to those leading the ideas and decisions about technology in the American military. How will autonomy shape the future of war and what should the US invest in?