Table of Contents
Introduction: The Power Over Life and Death 1
Part I Robopocalypse Now
1 The Coming Swarm: The Military Robotics Revolution 11
2 The Terminator And The Roomba: What Is Autonomy? 26
3 Machines That Kill: What Is an Autonomous Weapon? 35
Part II Building The Terminator
4 The Future Being Built Today: Autonomous Missiles, Drones, and Robot Swarms 59
5 Inside The Puzzle Palace: Is the Pentagon Building Autonomous Weapons? 78
6 Crossing The Threshold: Approving Autonomous Weapons 89
7 World War R: Robotic Weapons around the World 102
8 Garage Bots: DIY Killer Robots 120
Part III Runaway Gun
9 Robots Run Amok: Failure in Autonomous Systems 137
10 Command And Decision: Can Autonomous Weapons Be Used Safely? 161
11 Black Box: The Weird, Alien World of Deep Neural Networks 180
12 Failing Deadly: The Risk of Autonomous Weapons 189
Part IV Flash War
13 Bot vs. Bot: An Arms Race in Speed 199
14 The Invisible War: Autonomy in Cyberspace 211
15 "Summoning The Demon": The Rise of Intelligent Machines 231
Part V The Fight To Ban Autonomous Weapons
16 Robots On Trial: Autonomous Weapons and the Laws of War 251
17 Soulless Killers: The Morality of Autonomous Weapons 271
18 Playing With Fire: Autonomous Weapons and Stability 297
Part VI Averting Armageddon: The Weapon Of Policy
19 Centaur Warfighters: Humans + Machines 321
20 The Pope And The Crossbow: The Mixed History of Arms Control 331
21 Are Autonomous Weapons Inevitable?: The Search for Lethal Laws of Robotics 346
Conclusion
No Fate but What We Make 360
Afterword
How Robotic Weapon Are Transforming the Battlefield Today 363
Notes 369
Acknowledgments 425
Abbreviations 427
Illustration Credits 429
Index 431