Coming full circle: Autonomous weapons

Abstract

The powerful asymptotic limit theorems of control and information theories illuminate target discrimination failures afflicting autonomous weapon, man/machine centaur or cockpit, and more traditional structures under increasing fog-of-war and friction burdens. Degradation in targeting precision by high level cognitive entities under escalating uncertainty, operational difficulty, attrition, and real-time demands, will almost always involve sudden collapse to the familiar pathological ground state in which all possible targets are enemies, historically known as ‘kill everyone and let God sort them out’.