Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
Speaker 1: Julie know it's been in the news recently. Weener's weener.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, yeah, but but then below the headline, Okay, yes, yes, uh,
Speaker 1: very important technological advances about drones. Yeah, tiny robots rootsiny
Speaker 1: robots that could be the the proverbial fly on the
Speaker 1: wall on the proverbial wall in the room where But
Speaker 1: we wouldn't necessarily want that. I think that we have
Speaker 1: enough media streaming about him. We don't necessarily need a
Speaker 1: microdrone hanging out in his bedroom exactly. Yeah. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's The New York Times had a
Speaker 1: great article called war evolves with drones. Some Tinese bugs
Speaker 1: and also the larger, more conventional drones were recently in
Speaker 1: the news. They were the ones that gathered intelligent on
Speaker 1: Osama bin Lan's Pakistani hideaway using one of the new
Speaker 1: stealth drones. Uh So, this is the technology that is
Speaker 1: getting a lot of traction these days, and it's pretty important.
Speaker 1: And the microdrone thing is incredibly cool. And definitely feeds
Speaker 1: into my paranoia about privacy and your paranoia is that
Speaker 1: tiny robots are listening to every word you say and
Speaker 1: watching you change clothes or something. Yes, yeah, yeah, perv
Speaker 1: tiny probos outside my window wearing little trench coats. Well
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's interesting, um talking about paranoia because Iran,
Speaker 1: that the government of Iran has A has shown some
Speaker 1: paranoid that and I'm not saying it's it's uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's bad paranoia because uh that they've they've been uh,
Speaker 1: there've been a couple of stories in the last few years.
Speaker 1: In two thousand eight, they they arrested a quote arrested
Speaker 1: to pigeons that were a suspected of spying near a
Speaker 1: uranium and richmon facility. And in two thousand seven, fourteen
Speaker 1: squirrels were supposedly captured. That we're armed with state of
Speaker 1: the art espionage equipment, um, which they sound ridiculous arresting
Speaker 1: squirrels and and uh and and pigeons. But but the
Speaker 1: charge was here that these were animals that had been
Speaker 1: geared up with some sort of espionage equipment and were
Speaker 1: being used by an outside force, probably the United States,
Speaker 1: to see what they were doing. So, but imagine that
Speaker 1: that paranoia taking a step farther to where it's where
Speaker 1: it's the paranoia is that the squirrels may not actually
Speaker 1: be squirrels. They may be robots. The birds maybe robots
Speaker 1: spying on us. The bugs may actually be robots spying
Speaker 1: on our every move and uh and if and certainly
Speaker 1: if you're a country like Iran, uh, this could be
Speaker 1: a very well possibility in the near future. Well, and
Speaker 1: also think that the context too, I mean with stuck
Speaker 1: snut in Iran, which we know is the computer virus
Speaker 1: that was developed to essentially like bring down the nuclear capacity,
Speaker 1: shut down the system. So you can understand why they
Speaker 1: might take help look around a park and start to
Speaker 1: get a little bit paranoid about the nearest chipmunk, right,
Speaker 1: especially since this is where the technology has been headed
Speaker 1: and and where it's continuing to to to head with
Speaker 1: with with some real impressive speed. Yeah, and when we
Speaker 1: talk about a drone, let's and particularly a microdrone, let's
Speaker 1: talk about what this is. This is essentially a super
Speaker 1: fancy remote controlled plane, and it's an unmanned aerial vehicle, yes,
Speaker 1: generally with some degree of autonomy. Um, there's a there's
Speaker 1: an important distance. Like the most famous examples are the
Speaker 1: Predator and the and the Reaper, which are have been
Speaker 1: just to stand out aerial drones for the U. S. Military. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we have an article on on both of these
Speaker 1: on the House Stuff Work website. So if you go
Speaker 1: to the House Touff House Stuff Works, go to the
Speaker 1: search bar, putt in Predator or put in a Reaper,
Speaker 1: and you'll you'll get a really nice article. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it'll tell you everything under the because we're not going
Speaker 1: to really go into the hood with these in this podcast.
Speaker 1: But but they are really cool. Um, I mean just
Speaker 1: the technology, you know, not any judgments on how they're used.
Speaker 1: But but but it's really interesting technology. So uh, it
Speaker 1: basically comes down to all these things are what we
Speaker 1: call in in the loop system. Okay, so they're not
Speaker 1: they're not really robots out there, you know. You know,
Speaker 1: you're not creating a machine and saying, hey, go out
Speaker 1: and kill go out and do this job and then
Speaker 1: come back and tell me how it went. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, it's not a guy setting there you know,
Speaker 1: uh and controlling it the whole time. It's uh, it's
Speaker 1: programmed to a certain degree. Yeah, it's it's essentially someone
Speaker 1: who's at at the controls to uh, to dictate the
Speaker 1: application of lethal force. Right, So it's kind of a
Speaker 1: hybrid between autonomy and remote control and UH. That's basically
Speaker 1: the state of these U A vise, these UM, these
Speaker 1: amand aerial vehicles that that are out there really in
Speaker 1: most of the skies over military zones that that the
Speaker 1: US is engaged in, that's right, And they're there are
Speaker 1: two different types. There's of surveillance drones, right, and there
Speaker 1: are combat drones with missiles. Surveillance like the UM. It
Speaker 1: would be like a predator just just seeing what the
Speaker 1: ladle land is, right or or in this case what
Speaker 1: we're talking with us and bin Laden used to tell
Speaker 1: where a target is and then the means of reaching
Speaker 1: that target may actually just be troops or Yeah. And
Speaker 1: it's very unusual that they will use a combat drone
Speaker 1: to take out UM like a compound like UM some
Speaker 1: op in lands which they did not, but you know,
Speaker 1: from time to time they've taken out all kind of members.
Speaker 1: If they were say driving UM in a car, you know,
Speaker 1: across the highway or whatever, they would use UM one
Speaker 1: of these drones to blow up the car. But again
Speaker 1: this is unusual. It's more likely used for surveillance. But
Speaker 1: um obviously if it's a combat drone and it's got missiles,
Speaker 1: then there's a higher level of engagement with the person
Speaker 1: was controlling it. Um. So this is from a Wired article. Rather,
Speaker 1: this is from their their Danger Roum, their blog. Um
Speaker 1: it says unmanned aerial vehicles are huge growth industry for
Speaker 1: the US and its closest allies, and the source of
Speaker 1: one of America's greatest military advantages. Starting in the mid
Speaker 1: ninety nineties, the unarmed Predator drone helped the US build
Speaker 1: an unprecedented persistent surveillance system capable of spotting targets around
Speaker 1: the clock. Later, armed with missiles, the Predator became an
Speaker 1: aerial sniper, picking off hundreds of of insurgents in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: and Pakistan every year. So the Pentagon has scores of
Speaker 1: communication satellites for linking drones and ground troops and imagery analysts.
Speaker 1: And the Pentagon now has some seven thousand aerial drones
Speaker 1: compared with fewer than fifty just a decade ago. So,
Speaker 1: as you can see, this is a really important part
Speaker 1: of how the US is is uh, sort of trying
Speaker 1: to figure out this war on terror as their calling it,
Speaker 1: and just general security around the world. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: the advantages here are huge. Um, just to run through
Speaker 1: a few of them here, I mean most obviously, you
Speaker 1: replace putting a soldier into a dangerous situation and uh,
Speaker 1: and that's why there's there's there's a lot of effort
Speaker 1: towards creating land based drone technology too, and there have
Speaker 1: been a number of these have been tested, but nothing
Speaker 1: is really the standard. It hasn't been standardized in the
Speaker 1: same way that these U A v s or are
Speaker 1: ruling the skies now. Um. Then, but another important thing
Speaker 1: that reduces civilian casualties have used properly and if you
Speaker 1: have sufficient ethical programming developed, which is that's kind of
Speaker 1: like looking forward not so much now. Um. It also
Speaker 1: acts as a looking forward to. It could act as
Speaker 1: a force multiplier where um, you know, we talked about
Speaker 1: this in the loop situation, Man in the loop where
Speaker 1: there's a guy controlling it, uh, you know, and he's
Speaker 1: gonna jump in and you know, do the fine tuning
Speaker 1: or the application of lethal force. But they're they're talking
Speaker 1: about eventually moving it towards a man on the loop
Speaker 1: where you basically have like one guy manning a team
Speaker 1: of robots. Um. So there'd be these like you know,
Speaker 1: maybe six different U a v S mostly doing their
Speaker 1: own thing, with one guy supervising and uh you know,
Speaker 1: jumping into micro manage as need be. But that would
Speaker 1: be a force multiplier because then you have one basically
Speaker 1: have one combat pilot um in like six places at once,
Speaker 1: which um so. And then then there are a number
Speaker 1: of other advantages that that break down to the use
Speaker 1: of robots in warfare, which is, uh, you don't have anger, revenge, hunger,
Speaker 1: fear uh thrown in there with to to modify what's
Speaker 1: going on in the battlefield, um and uh. And it's
Speaker 1: just and they can also generally make faster decisions than humans,
Speaker 1: though that decision making process, of course, is something that
Speaker 1: that requires a great deal of discussion. Yeah, there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of questions ethically around that. Right so, um
Speaker 1: because there's this this growing disconnect between the American public
Speaker 1: and its wars and the drone. Again, the advantages that
Speaker 1: you're not putting anybody in harm's way, at least on
Speaker 1: the American front, right, but there is again, that distance
Speaker 1: between what is you know, what we're actually doing to
Speaker 1: someone else and uh, you know, the decision making process.
Speaker 1: So the farther the distance is, the easier it is
Speaker 1: to sort of make that decision, right, right, It's I
Speaker 1: mean it comes back to the thing where it just
Speaker 1: makes waging war potentially easier and killing potentially easier, because
Speaker 1: I mean, on one hand, like what's the huge um like, like,
Speaker 1: what's the worst thing that an army government engaged in
Speaker 1: military activity wants to see? Uh? And that is uh,
Speaker 1: images of coffins coming home with with dead servicemen and
Speaker 1: women in it. You know, that's just that's like, you know,
Speaker 1: pr nightmare. Things could be avoided. We've seen it, you know,
Speaker 1: banned in the past. But but if you remove that,
Speaker 1: where suddenly nothing there's like no risk to servicemen and women,
Speaker 1: you know, suddenly there are minimal risk, Like like it
Speaker 1: becomes a situation where the fear of one's own death
Speaker 1: or the fear of death of of of one's you
Speaker 1: one cares about, or just seeing the carnage you're not
Speaker 1: going to see the carnage on your own side because
Speaker 1: of all these robots. No, But of course the problem
Speaker 1: is is that we've seen this time and again Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: You have clian civilian casualties and um. The reason is
Speaker 1: is that when when you've got this sort of technology,
Speaker 1: it's essentially painting a target, the painting a target with
Speaker 1: a laser. There there's a host of variables that the
Speaker 1: computer has to calibrate the system for. So that includes wind, speed,
Speaker 1: direction and other battlefield variables. So something can go wrong.
Speaker 1: It's very possible in any technology, there's going to be
Speaker 1: a margin of air and deaths are going to happen. Well,
Speaker 1: even if it works perfectly, if you're you're using a
Speaker 1: basically robotic army against human insurgents, humans are gonna die
Speaker 1: on one side and robots will occasionally crash on the other.
Speaker 1: And it's a there's a there's a certain there's a
Speaker 1: large inequity there. Yeah. Yeah, And again the main problem
Speaker 1: here is this question of autonomy as we go forward
Speaker 1: with this technology, because it will become more and more autonomous, right,
Speaker 1: this is the idea. I mean, you know, typically technology
Speaker 1: doesn't go backward, right, so if we create a system
Speaker 1: that is more enhanced that it can make more decisions
Speaker 1: than the margin of error could possibly go up. And
Speaker 1: we've talked with Dr Arkin from Georgia Tech before, who
Speaker 1: is a robotics ethicist and uh in deals with warfare
Speaker 1: and robots quite a bit, and he was talking about
Speaker 1: programming robots with UM the Geneva protocol, right, Yeah, having
Speaker 1: this ethnical ethical governor and the would they would dictate
Speaker 1: how it's going to carry out it's it's military, right,
Speaker 1: which makes sense. I mean, this is a this is
Speaker 1: a good step forward, right because if you can program that,
Speaker 1: if you can give the algorithm for for you know,
Speaker 1: if and then then you can avoid some some of
Speaker 1: the pitfalls. The problem is that people will point out
Speaker 1: is a robots do not have a nuanced ability to
Speaker 1: deal with emotions, and we know that emotions, for better
Speaker 1: or worse, can guide our judgment. So you've you know,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, you've got the passion of war
Speaker 1: is reduced with these UM autonomous machines. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, you know, there's this empathy and so on
Speaker 1: and so forth that sort of makes us humans and
Speaker 1: human makes us UM create exceptions, is not there? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I mean modern warfare, especially such a chaotic situation,
Speaker 1: and we're having there are enough obstacles and just creating
Speaker 1: a robot that can navigate the human kitchen. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: so it's uh, the the idea of creating a robot
Speaker 1: that could they could seamlessly navigate the environment of war,
Speaker 1: an environment that humans cannot even navigate without catastrophe is uh,
Speaker 1: it is quite a hurdle to overcome. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: but you know, here we've got these micro drones, which
Speaker 1: at this point they're not lengthal right, they're just surveilling. UM.
Speaker 1: So to talk a little bit more about the micro
Speaker 1: drones and less about UM drones like the predator, just
Speaker 1: kind of consider this stat again, this is from Wired.
Speaker 1: This is since September eleventh, UM, the hours the Air
Speaker 1: Force devotes to flying missions for intelligent surveillance and reconnaissance
Speaker 1: have gone up three thousand one, most of that from
Speaker 1: increased operations of drones. Every day, the Air Force must
Speaker 1: process almost fifteen hundred hours of full motion video and
Speaker 1: another fifteen hundreds still images, much of it from predators
Speaker 1: and reapers on around the clock combat air patrols. Okay,
Speaker 1: that is a huge amount of data. Now consider this
Speaker 1: micro aviary camouflage, this microdrone, UM, these you know, tiny
Speaker 1: little drones that are being developed and how much data
Speaker 1: they're going to be amassing. But before we talk about that,
Speaker 1: we probably talk about just the micro aviary UM drone
Speaker 1: because it's pretty cool. All Right, we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break and then we're gonna get back to all
Speaker 1: of this. So hanging there one second. This presentation is
Speaker 1: brought to you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow, and we're
Speaker 1: back when we're talking about biomimicry trying to make a
Speaker 1: drone that looks like a bird, flies like a bird,
Speaker 1: or flies like an insect, depending on you know which
Speaker 1: which direction they're going there. But this is fascinating in
Speaker 1: that biomamicry is generally more involved in I want to
Speaker 1: solve a problem, like an engineering problem or design problem
Speaker 1: of some kind, instead of trying to create some sort
Speaker 1: of like reinvent the wheel, I'm just gonna look at
Speaker 1: the way um nature has solved this problem through millions
Speaker 1: of years of evolution, So you know, it's stuff like
Speaker 1: I want to make a swimsuit that allows the swimmer
Speaker 1: to uh to move faster through the water. Uh. Instead
Speaker 1: of just trying to come with something off the top
Speaker 1: of my head, I'm going to look at how shark
Speaker 1: skin has evolved right right, or um or fins. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna look at dolphins and see how they can actually
Speaker 1: like eject themselves into the air and so on and
Speaker 1: so far. We actually have a couple of articles on
Speaker 1: biomimicry on the website. If you go to house stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com and just throw bio mimicry into the
Speaker 1: search bar, you'll find a couple of them. I think
Speaker 1: I may have written two of them. Probably did I
Speaker 1: don't know. Yeah, we're a handful of them. Um. But
Speaker 1: from my understanding that they are focusing more on insects
Speaker 1: right now rather than birds. Um. And I'm assuming that
Speaker 1: they've done birds so far because it's very hard to
Speaker 1: get you know, smaller and smaller. But birds are a
Speaker 1: little bit more difficult to mimic because of their musclature
Speaker 1: and because of the energy it takes to get them.
Speaker 1: That's the interesting thing about this, because most, like I say,
Speaker 1: biomimicry is about I need to solve a problem, so
Speaker 1: I'm gonna see how nature did it right, This is
Speaker 1: more about I mean, there's in robotics, there is that
Speaker 1: there's also a lot of interest in how insects move
Speaker 1: and behave because it's it's a sometimes it's a simple
Speaker 1: cognitive model to look at in terms of how it's thinking.
Speaker 1: And then also like you know, trying to create something
Speaker 1: that's gonna move across the floor. Uh. Some oftentimes, like
Speaker 1: a spider design just makes more sense than trying to
Speaker 1: make it walk like a human. So but but in
Speaker 1: this where they're trying to make a drone resemble the
Speaker 1: animal form. Uh. And certainly when we're talking about something
Speaker 1: that flies, uh, the nature is kind of forced to
Speaker 1: follow this this winged model, this flapping winged model, which
Speaker 1: is really not um all that that that doesn't make
Speaker 1: a lot of sense from an energy standpoint. It's not
Speaker 1: you have to spend a lot of energy to flap
Speaker 1: flap wings, but nature has not yet figured out how
Speaker 1: to evolve the rotor blade, so so that they're they're
Speaker 1: they're forced to flap. Um. But we've all seen stats
Speaker 1: about like hummingbirds, about how much food they have to
Speaker 1: consume and how much energy they blow through to flap
Speaker 1: those tiny wings so fastbeats per minute or something crazy
Speaker 1: like yeah, yeah, like some of them have to go
Speaker 1: into basically a state of hibernation and every night just
Speaker 1: because because they can't burn any more energy. Um, because
Speaker 1: it's not energy efficient. So they're having to when creating
Speaker 1: a flap of flapping winged robot Um, you're you're having
Speaker 1: to pursue u an energy inefficient design when you could
Speaker 1: really make a more energy eficient design being inspired by it.
Speaker 1: They're actually trying to mimic it so that nobody can
Speaker 1: tell that it's an actual robotic hummingbird spying on you, right, Um,
Speaker 1: So it's kind of a disingenuous form of biomimicry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. There's that the hummingbird drone that they unveiled. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's still a prototype, but it can rapidly beat
Speaker 1: its wings and it can propel the at eleven miles
Speaker 1: per hour and even perch on a window. So the
Speaker 1: problem is when you look at it, you know, if
Speaker 1: you just kind of if you glance it, didn't really
Speaker 1: look at it carefully. Okay, yeah, there's I see a bird, right,
Speaker 1: But when you look at it, it actually looks really inelegant.
Speaker 1: It moves, you know, kind of awkwardly, it looks mechanical.
Speaker 1: It reminds me completely of Biboo, the owl from Clash
Speaker 1: of the Times. Yes, the robotic owl that does the
Speaker 1: which I love, but I don't really think would make
Speaker 1: a great microdone right because it's very obvious. Well plus
Speaker 1: the hummingbird drone it says US Air Force on the wing.
Speaker 1: It's giveaway. Yeah, a little obvious. Um, but I mean
Speaker 1: they're they're important because these micro jones could be used
Speaker 1: to get a much better view of myriad things like
Speaker 1: natural disasters, floods, fires, Um, you know if the politicians. Yes, Um,
Speaker 1: they're used in aerial photography and and they're even used
Speaker 1: in wildlife footage which are seen in nature documentaries. So
Speaker 1: and again, like you know, if a building implodes and
Speaker 1: there's uh, you know a lot of debris. These are
Speaker 1: things that we can use to get a better beat
Speaker 1: on things. It's not just you know, used for warfare.
Speaker 1: So they're really interesting and uh it kind of makes
Speaker 1: me wonder like if one day we're all going to
Speaker 1: have our very own micro own that we use, like
Speaker 1: I don't know, in in conjunction with our an iPhone app,
Speaker 1: so that we're on a zip line on vacation, you know,
Speaker 1: you just throw up your microdrone, get some really great footage,
Speaker 1: or you leave your microdone behind to attend meetings when
Speaker 1: you go out of town. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: I digress. We should probably get back to the actual
Speaker 1: military military applications of it, because if you if you
Speaker 1: throw it into this this this overall design that is
Speaker 1: this idea of like a robotic military, you can easily
Speaker 1: imagine like the micro Jones sort of doing the first
Speaker 1: level scouting and surveillance, and then there's there there's like
Speaker 1: a higher level of surveillance with with larger flying vehicles,
Speaker 1: and then you have the the attack you a these
Speaker 1: little it'll actually hit the target when needed, and then meanwhile,
Speaker 1: like all the humans are back at their base. Just
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, and they're also I wanted to mention us too,
Speaker 1: they're trying to increase the area that they can actually surveil.
Speaker 1: And right now they have what is called a soda
Speaker 1: straw view, uh you know with the with the drones,
Speaker 1: but um, they're looking at a gorgon stair technology that's
Speaker 1: what they're calling it. Yeah, and again that's another great
Speaker 1: band title, right well, and another clash in the Times reference,
Speaker 1: right oh, Because the idea is it's like a lot
Speaker 1: of little straws that are going to be like the
Speaker 1: snakeheads on the Medusa. I'm assuming so that are just
Speaker 1: going to freeze the landscape that it's looking at. It
Speaker 1: seems like they we just want to want. They must
Speaker 1: be really into Greek mythology or Clash of the times,
Speaker 1: because it seems like you just wanna, you know, compare
Speaker 1: to the the the eye structure of a fly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know whoever is uh doing all the marketing
Speaker 1: for this really has a good beat on histrionics, I
Speaker 1: have to say, because I mean if the the stealth
Speaker 1: drone that was used in Pakistans called the Beast of Kindahar,
Speaker 1: I mean nuts, how do you not love that? Uh?
Speaker 1: But anyway, this gorgon stair technology can capture live video
Speaker 1: an entire city. But that requires two thousand analysts process
Speaker 1: the data feeds from a single drone compared with nineteen
Speaker 1: analysts per drone today. That being side, this is something
Speaker 1: technology that's going to be used pretty soon. Um, that's
Speaker 1: not much of a force multiplier. Though if that many
Speaker 1: people were required to sift through the data exactly exactly,
Speaker 1: and then again that's you couldn't actually send those people
Speaker 1: out to perch on, uh, somebody's shoulder in a war
Speaker 1: zone or you know, in an enemy nation's capital. That's
Speaker 1: the rub. We cannot shrink ourselves yet yet yet. But
Speaker 1: of course what does this do. This is kind of
Speaker 1: freaking out some people. Why because this could be used
Speaker 1: for non warfare applications. And in fact, there's a great
Speaker 1: Washington Post article called domestic use of aerial drones by
Speaker 1: law enforcement likely to prompt privacy debate and you know
Speaker 1: how this feeds into my whole privacy thing. By two
Speaker 1: thousand and thirteen, the f A expects to have formulated
Speaker 1: new rules that would allow police across the country to
Speaker 1: routinely fly lightweight on armed drones up to four feet
Speaker 1: above ground, high enough for them to be largely invisible
Speaker 1: eyes in the sky. And uh, it's it's cost like
Speaker 1: fifty bucks, so it's really not that expensive. It's actually
Speaker 1: less than a police helicopter. So it's very likely that
Speaker 1: this is going to be used a lot in the future,
Speaker 1: but it can with the The rub is is that
Speaker 1: they can record activities of public below with high resolution
Speaker 1: infrared and thermal imaging cameras. So you'll reach a point
Speaker 1: where someone like people will scattered there like, oh, my goodness,
Speaker 1: is a police pigeon. Well it's not. You know, it's
Speaker 1: not a real pigeon, it's it's mechanical. Well this for
Speaker 1: this application, then it will be an actual like says no,
Speaker 1: like drone. But you know, obviously, um, this could become minature.
Speaker 1: It could become cost effective enough to get a micro drone.
Speaker 1: I mean we're talking about that, this is going to happen.
Speaker 1: Who knows about microdrones might be in use all the time.
Speaker 1: What does that mean my bonfire? When I'm playing kumbay
Speaker 1: on my guitar, they're going to be seeing that. Nobody
Speaker 1: needs to see that. Now that the the idea of
Speaker 1: like a totally automated military like it, it fascinates me
Speaker 1: on two well on multiple levels. But two things immediately
Speaker 1: come to mind. First of all, the Dark Crystal. Have
Speaker 1: you seen the Dark Crystal? I've not seen the Dark Crystal.
Speaker 1: I feel like it comes up there like every want
Speaker 1: someone in our conversations and I have to see it.
Speaker 1: Well it's it's a classic. And but but in this
Speaker 1: world of the Dark Crystal, you have the evil Skexies
Speaker 1: who all kind of look like grotesque vultures and in costume,
Speaker 1: and you know they're they're cowardly and they stick to
Speaker 1: their their castle, and they want to hunt down the
Speaker 1: gelf links. Uh, that's their thing and uh. And so
Speaker 1: they send out these like these crystals that are on
Speaker 1: bat wings, the spy everywhere to try and find the
Speaker 1: gulf links. And if they find the gelf links, then
Speaker 1: they send out these giant beetle monstrosities that shamble into
Speaker 1: the village to try and chop them to pieces or
Speaker 1: bring them back captive. And so I would hate to see, like,
Speaker 1: you know, our nation follow the skexy model of military
Speaker 1: conguest to where we're a bunch of you know, disgusting
Speaker 1: vulture creatures who just send out are strange creations to
Speaker 1: get what we want from the surrounding world because it
Speaker 1: becomes easier to do so suddenly you need more resources.
Speaker 1: Well I don't have to actually fight a war. I
Speaker 1: just send off these robots to uh to secure it
Speaker 1: for me. It becomes this, you know, kind of a
Speaker 1: robotic surgical colonialism. Um. And then on the other hand,
Speaker 1: what happens when you have two opposing forces each with
Speaker 1: a robot military does does war? Ever? End. If too
Speaker 1: robot armies are fighting each other, it becomes who runs
Speaker 1: out of parks first? Right, Yeah, It's interesting because right
Speaker 1: now the United States is certainly on the cutting edge
Speaker 1: of this, right, but everybody wants it on the game
Speaker 1: and they will and and in fact that the Danger
Speaker 1: Room on Wired talks about how China is actually really
Speaker 1: like a couple of decades behind on this technology and
Speaker 1: they will eventually um catch up. But I mean, for
Speaker 1: right now, you know we're we're the big game changer
Speaker 1: on this, but I mean, this is this is the
Speaker 1: whole thing. I can sure we're game changers now, but
Speaker 1: twenty thirty years from now, how is it going to
Speaker 1: be used against us? And or will it be used
Speaker 1: against us? And that's that's the danger. Whenever you introduce
Speaker 1: a new technology, right yeah, you're you're actually essentially introducing
Speaker 1: it against yourself at some point. Well I guess I
Speaker 1: just hope that if if if worse came to worse,
Speaker 1: and like the robots of us and the robots of
Speaker 1: China we're about to fight, the Japan's Mecca Godzilla would
Speaker 1: would jump in and just calm everybody down, like like
Speaker 1: pulled up both of its claws and be like, all right, guys,
Speaker 1: settle it. Let's settle down. Yeah, yeah, most certainly, and
Speaker 1: then hopefully their technology will have filtered down to us
Speaker 1: and we can all just pull over our vending machine.
Speaker 1: Um cloaks, right that they've developed, Well they're not really cloaks,
Speaker 1: but you know what I'm talking to I've told you
Speaker 1: about this all right, where you look like a vending machine, right,
Speaker 1: it's actually like this little zip up thing that you
Speaker 1: can have that you erect. You know, it's it's portable,
Speaker 1: you can have it in your backpack, you whip it out,
Speaker 1: you set it up like a tent, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden you look like a vending machine. I see,
Speaker 1: that's good. I like I like that use of our
Speaker 1: ingenuity rather than let's figure out better ways to blow
Speaker 1: each other up. But I will say a microdrone app
Speaker 1: would be pretty cool on a zip line, would it? Like,
Speaker 1: instead of getting on the zip line, you would sense
Speaker 1: you have a microdone who actually filming while you're on
Speaker 1: the microdraze. Well, yes, that would be good. And I
Speaker 1: should also also mentioned to the Google CEO. I can't
Speaker 1: remember the name of this cat, but he purchased a
Speaker 1: microdone for his own personal use, which freaked a bunch
Speaker 1: people out because, of course they thought that Google was
Speaker 1: going to start using instead of street view, you know, microdrones.
Speaker 1: Huh well, I would be more concerned if, like it
Speaker 1: seems like the better use of that for a large
Speaker 1: corporation would be corporate espionage. Yes, y mm hmm. Well,
Speaker 1: if we see something flying around here that looks like people,
Speaker 1: we will know corporate espionage is going on. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: well yeah, so hopefully everybody knows to be a little
Speaker 1: more afraid of that unidentified bug or bird buzzing around
Speaker 1: outside the office. Now. Uh so, let's turn our attention
Speaker 1: to a little listener mail. All right, Eric, right, son,
Speaker 1: it says, I just wanted to share a quickie with you.
Speaker 1: It's untrue that the platypus does not get respect. We
Speaker 1: respect the animal. Here in Oregon. The Platypus Trophy is
Speaker 1: awarded every year to the winner of the Civil War.
Speaker 1: The n c A a rivalry football game held between
Speaker 1: the Saintly, Beautiful and Awesome University of Oregon Ducks in
Speaker 1: the Evil, Ugly Vile Oregon State Beavers. Because the two
Speaker 1: team maskets are the Dusk, the ducks and the beavers.
Speaker 1: Someone carved a beautiful wooden platypus that is now used
Speaker 1: as the trophy pome. Well that is pretty awesome. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's kind of not really but it's sort of thematic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nicely done, thanks er. Yeah. So, um hey, if you
Speaker 1: guys want to share anything with us, you can first
Speaker 1: of all find us on Twitter, Facebook. We are blow
Speaker 1: the Mind on both of those and uh we populate
Speaker 1: bocos fees with all sorts of cool links and thoughts
Speaker 1: and uh and you know stuff about our upcoming episodes,
Speaker 1: and you can always drop us a line at Blow
Speaker 1: the Mind at how stuff works dot com. Be sure
Speaker 1: to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Speaker 1: Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
Speaker 1: promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.