The totally autonomous future of war

PLUS: More of WIRED's best longreads from this week.

View this email in your browser  |  Manage newsletter subscriptions  07.30.23 The AI-Powered, Totally Autonomous Future of War Is Here 13-MINUTE READ Late last year, around the time Russia was pummeling Ukraine's energy grid with flying drones and Ukraine was pummeling Russia's navy with floating drones, we asked senior writer Will Knight for a story about the future of war. The assignment brought him not to the Black Sea but to the Persian Gulf, where the US Navy was getting ready to test-drive an armada of robot ships. OK, "armada" may be an overstatement. One of the uncrewed vessels, Knight writes, looked like "a solar-powered kayak." Another looked like "a Google Street View car on pontoons." None of them carried weapons. Still, they represented the profound shift that is taking place in militaries all over the world—a shift toward robotics and artificial intelligence, toward autonomous military machines. In Knight's encounters with these systems, from the top-gun AI that flies F-16s better than active-duty Air Force pilots to the sailing drone that can dive when it senses danger, he begins to see what the future of conflict may bring. "We don't want to start World War III," one military contractor tells him. But that's the question: Will AI make everything better, or will it make everything fall apart?—Anthony Lydgate | Features Editor READ THE FULL STORY You Might Also Like ... Mykhailo Fedorov Is Running Ukraine's War Against Russia Like a Startup BY PETER GUEST | 19-MINUTE READ Ukraine's deputy prime minister has helped the country bootstrap and innovate its war effort, creating a defense industry from scratch, and using his Big Tech ties to cut Russia off from the world. The Robots Already Among Us Amazon is now one of the largest employers in the United States, but its empire was built partly thanks to a small army of robotic workers. Read the Pocket Collection by WIRED's Will Knight. ADVERTISEMENT Twitter Scammers Stole $1,000 From My Friend—So I Hunted Them Down BY SELENA LARSON | 9-MINUTE READ After scammers duped a friend with a hacked Twitter account and a "deal" on a MacBook, I enlisted the help of a fellow threat researcher to trace the criminals' offline identities. What My Solitary Confinement in Iran Revealed About the Dangers of Physical Fragmentation BY HOSSEIN DERAKHSHAN | 7-MINUTE READ Online platforms and near-future technologies will exacerbate our physical and cognitive isolation from one another, somewhat similar to how our bodies and minds are controlled in prison. Code Kept Secret for Years Reveals Its Flaw—a Backdoor BY KIM ZETTER | 9-MINUTE READ A secret encryption cipher baked into radio systems used by critical infrastructure workers, police, and others around the world is finally seeing sunlight. Researchers say it isn't pretty. The Curse of the Long Boom BY DAVID KARPF | 10-MINUTE READ I run into a lot of incorrect predictions when reading through the WIRED archives. What should the takeaway be? GET WIRED Get 1 year of WIRED for less than $1 per month. That includes Steven Levy's exclusive newsletter and a free tote! Subscribe now. ADVERTISEMENT Have questions or comments? Reply to this email.   This email was sent to you by WIRED. To ensure delivery to your inbox (not bulk or junk folders), please add our email address, wired@newsletters.wired.com, to your address book.   View our Privacy Policy Unsubscribe or manage your newsletter subscriptions